Author: Jill Shalvis

“Wow, evading,” Josh said. “Subtle.”

“Why don’t I climb with Ty?” Matt wondered out loud. “He doesn’t ask stupid questions.”

“Because he’s too pussy to climb.”

Matt laughed. Ty wasn’t “pussy” about much. Except heights.

They were halfway down when something caught Matt’s attention across the long, broad chasm at Widow’s Peak, the cliff three hundred feet across the way. Climbers. They were at the midpoint plateau of Widow Peak’s face, which he knew they’d had to have gotten to by way of a closed-off trail. He knew this because he’d closed off the trail himself.

The climbers were whooping and hollering it up, and Matt shook his head. “Shit.”

“Kids?” Josh asked.

“Can’t tell.”

“Isn’t that entire area closed off?”

“Yeah,” Matt said grimly, scrambling down. “I closed it because of rock slide problems. It’s not safe.”

Josh hit the ground only three beats behind him, squinting through the sun, shading his eyes with a hand. “Looks like a total of four idiots. Nope, five.”

Matt pulled binoculars from his pack and took in the sight of the climbers passing something between them. Tension gathered in a ball at the base of his spine. “They’re getting high first,” he said, shoving the binoculars at Josh, then gathering his gear.

“We going to go scare them off?”

“Hell, yeah.”

They moved to Matt’s truck, where he replaced his climbing gear with a utility belt, including weapons.

“Do I get one of those?” Josh asked.

“No.”

“But I get to look all scary and intimidating, right?”

Matt looked Josh over. Out of his scrubs, Josh didn’t look much like a doctor. He looked like a six-foot-four NFL linebacker. “I don’t know,” Matt said, baiting him. “Can you do scary and intimidating?”

Josh narrowed his eyes. “If I hadn’t taken an oath to save lives, not take them, I’d show you scary and intimidating right now.”

“Save it for the idiots.”

Fifteen minutes later, Matt parked at the trailhead to Widow’s Peak. “Hell.”

“What?” Josh asked.

“The gate’s open.” And he’d locked it personally. “The CLOSED sign is missing.”

“That’s not good.”

“Nope.” Matt drove through the gate, taking the fire road that would bring them to the same midpoint plateau that the climbers were on. They had to park about a quarter of a mile from the area, where they found another truck—the climbers’ vehicle, no doubt. Matt and Josh hiked the rest of the way in, startling the guys just as they were getting ready to take a go at the peak.

“This area is closed,” Matt told them.

The climbers were in their late teens. Three of the four of them took one look at Josh and Matt and just about shit their pants. Not their ringleader, whom Matt recognized as Trevor Wright, the teenage son of Allen Wright, a very successful builder who thought he was God’s gift to the entire county. With a cocky grin, Trevor held his ground. “Who’re you, the climbing police?”

“Yeah, I’m the climbing police.” Matt badged him. “And you’re not supposed to be here.”

“Public property, dude.”

Matt shook his head. This was the problem with the Wrights in general. They thought they owned Lucky Harbor, and everything around it. They also thought the laws didn’t apply to them. All four boys smelled like weed. Hell, there was practically a cloud of it around Trevor’s head. “The gate was shut and locked,” Matt said mildly. “And there was a CLOSED sign.”

“Sorry, man. That gate was wide open, and I didn’t see no sign. And you’re hassling us for no reason. We haven’t done nothing wrong.”

Trevor’s friends weren’t looking so comfortable anymore and had started to back up. “Come on, Trev,” one of them said. “Let’s hit it.”

Trevor widened his tough-guy stance. “They can’t do anything to us,” he said, smiling right at Matt. “They’re only rangers. They know the names of the flowers and how to start a fire.”

“Luckily I know how to do a little more than that,” Matt said. “And if you’re carrying drugs, I’ll arrest you.”

Trevor shrugged out of his backpack and tossed it over the cliff, where it promptly vanished into thin air, careening off the rocks as it fell to the valley floor hundreds of feet below. “I’m not carrying anything.”

“Jesus, Trevor,” one of his friends said. “You’re crazy.”

“Yeah,” another said. “We’re outta here.” He and the others took off.

Trevor stood there posturing for a long beat and then started after his friends, shoulder checking Matt hard as he did. “You see that?” the little dickwad said to Josh. “Your partner pushed me.” He pointed at Matt. “Not cool, man.”

Josh waited until Trevor vanished down the trail after the others. “Okay, so why didn’t we crack some heads, specifically his?”

Matt slid him a look. “You have a contact high. You save lives, remember?”

“Yes, but the occasional head cracking would be fun.”

Matt shook his head. “My job’s to chase them out of here. They’re chased. Let’s go.”

They closed the gate, and Matt radioed dispatch that he needed a new lock and sign brought out. Then he and Josh drove all the way around the canyon and hit the meadow floor, looking for that backpack.

They didn’t find it.

An hour later, Josh, who’d called in to the hospital that he was going to be late so that he could help Matt search, rubbed his stomach. “I’m starving. You’re buying.”

“Why me?” Matt asked. “Your paycheck’s a lot bigger than mine.”

“You got laid last night.”

“What does that have to do with who’s buying breakfast?”

“Everything.”

“How much farther?” Grace asked breathlessly.

“We’ve only gone a quarter of a mile,” Amy said.

“But I’m ready for a chocolate break.” This was from Mallory, who swiped an arm over her damp brow.

“You both walk farther for your morning coffee,” Amy said. She’d been worrying about Riley, and was tired of waiting for the girl to come to her. Amy was going proactive. So they were heading toward the Squaw Flats campgrounds, though Amy had told the Chocoholics only that it was a great day for a hike and had lured them up the mountain with the promise of brownies as a prize.

“Here’s another good girl lesson,” Mallory said. “Never refer to your friends’ lack of fitness.”

Grace looked around at the lush, thick growth and inhaled deeply. “It smells like Christmas out here.”

“Tell me again why we’re hiking instead of sitting in a nice booth at the diner?” Mallory asked.

“We’re calorie burning,” Amy said. “It means guilt-free brownies. Just another quarter of a mile or so.”

“Seriously,” Grace said, huffing and puffing as they moved along. “This taking the Chocoholics on the road experiment might be a bust. Are we almost there yet?”

Amy shook her head. “And I thought I was a city girl.”

“I have to pee,” Grace said.

“There’s a bunch of trees,” Amy said. “Pick one.”

“Like I trust your judgment on pee spots.”

“Maybe you should,” Mallory said. “It caught her Ranger Hot Buns.”

“True,” Grace mused. “Do you ever call him that?” she asked Amy.

Amy laughed. “Not if I want to live.”

They came across a small clearing. The sun was strong here, and it was beautiful. But they weren’t the only ones enjoying it. Leaning with their backs to a fallen log sat Lance and Tucker. The two brothers were eating sandwiches and sucking down bottled water. Covered in dust from head to toe, their grins appeared all the whiter when they flashed them.

“Hey, ladies,” Lance said in his low and husky voice, roughened from years of the lung-taxing coughing the CF caused him. “Looking good.”

Tucker held up a baggie of brownies. “Anyone want to join us?”

“Oh my God, yes,” Grace said with great feeling. “Amy’s being a brownie Nazi.”

Mallory put out a hand and halted her, serving the brothers a careful, narrow-eyed gaze. “Are those brownies home-made?”

Tucker grinned, slow, lazy and unabashed, and Amy burst out laughing. She hadn’t thought about the quality of their brownies, but she should have when it came to Tucker.

Mallory shook her head at the guys. “What did I tell you about your brownies?”

“Uh…” Tucker said, trying to think. “That they kill brain cells?”

“Chocolate doesn’t kill brain cells,” Grace said, oblivious to what they were talking about. “Chocolate is God’s gift.”

“Not the way these two make it,” Amy told her as Mallory gave them the bum’s rush back onto the trail.

A few minutes later, they neared Squaw Flats. “You two rest here for a few,” Amy said, and pulled out the lunch she’d packed from the diner, handing out sandwiches. “I’m going to just go up the road another half a mile to check out a vista I want to draw later. Wait here.”

“Where’re the brownies?” Grace asked.

Amy pulled out the stash. “Not as good as what Tucker had,” she said dryly. “But they’ll do. I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t fall down any ravines,” Mallory said, and took a big bite out of her brownie. Apparently she liked dessert first, too. “I’ve got the same first aid skills as Matt, but I doubt I’ve got the same bedside manner.”