Primal Threat Page 5

  “Yes, I do.”

  They thought about that for a moment or two as they stood in front of Zak’s open locker, his folded sheets on a shelf, spare uniforms pressed and hanging neatly. Nadine perused the rest of the photos on the inside of his locker door and then spotted a racket hanging on the wall. “Racquetball?”

  “Yes. Do you play?”

  “Mostly I play tennis, but I love racquetball.”

  “If you have time, we could play right now,” he joked. “I’ll spot you five points because of the crutches.”

  She laughed. “Where on earth would we play racquetball around here?”

  “There’s a court downstairs.”

  “You don’t have a court downstairs.”

  Holding the bunkroom door open for her, Zak escorted Nadine across the apparatus floor then led her down the single flight of stairs to the basement, where they stepped inside a small court with a basketball hoop at one end and a row of screened windows on the street-side wall.

  As she surveyed the small court, Nadine said, “I miss sports so much.”

  “A couple of years ago I crashed into a horse and broke my collarbone, so I know how you feel.”

  “You crashed into a horse?”

  “On my bike. It’s a long story.”

  They were silent for a few moments until Nadine said, “I overheard somebody upstairs talking about a patient you had today. They said her blood pressure was three hundred over a hundred thirty? Could that be right?”

  “Yes, it was right. She’d had a headache for two days.”

  “What did you do for her?”

  “Called the medics, got her on O-two and up to the hospital.”

  “Why would her blood pressure be so high? Isn’t normal something like one twenty over seventy?”

  “Exactly, but she’s traditionally had high blood pressure, which she’s controlled by medication. She ran out of the meds.”

  “That was kind of careless, wasn’t it?”

  “She ran out because she couldn’t afford to buy them any longer.”

  “So why didn’t she go to the hospital a long time ago?”

  “No money.”

  “Not even a credit card?”

  “This might be hard, but use your imagination. No credit cards. No checking account. No savings. No daddy. No big-screen TV in the other room she might hock. Nothing but a crummy apartment with broken-down furniture and maybe a bus pass to get her downtown to her job five days a week and then to her other job all day Saturday. Babysitting on Sunday.”

  “You don’t have to talk to me like that.”

  “Maybe not, but if you can’t pay, you go bankrupt, lose everything you and your family have, and then you’re in debt for the rest of your life. It’s part of why my mother chose to die rather than suffer the indignities of debt collectors and all the rest of it. She’d already gone through that once. I guess I’m a little bitter over it.”

  “I guess. But you’re making it sound as if I’m responsible somehow. I’m not.” She was right. He’d lashed out at her and he didn’t know why, not exactly. Zak did not reply; being fair-minded on this topic wasn’t something he was capable of. “Okay. I’d like to ask another question. Do you mind?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Are you going to get sarcastic when you answer?”

  “Sarcasm is part of my basic nature, but I’ll fight it.” He grinned, unable to believe he’d gotten so antagonistic with someone he was drawn to as much as Nadine. It struck him that his belligerence may have been prompted by just that: how much he liked her.

  “What would have happened to this woman if you guys hadn’t shown up?”

  “She would have gotten worse. Maybe had a stroke. Maybe died.”

  “Excuse my ignorance here—and I don’t want you to get mad at me again—but I thought there were programs for people like her.”

  “There are. Us. We’re the program. The fire department. We send her to the public hospital. They treat her, give her a supply of drugs, she goes home, uses them up, and the cycle starts over. She works part time for a bank and doesn’t have insurance.”

  “My father says nobody dies in this country because they don’t have money.”

  “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your father’s full of shit.” Nadine and her family were oozing money, and it galled him in the same way it always galled him when anybody with money showed up. Everyone had at least one peccadillo. Money was his.

  She regarded him for a few moments, seemed to make some sort of decision, and then changed the topic. “I was really scared in that wreck.”

  “It’s a scary thing, getting trapped like that. Every time you get in a car afterward, it goes through your mind.”

  “That’s exactly what happens. But you were great. I don’t mind telling you, it was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I haven’t told that to anybody else. I mean, when my grandfather died it was awful, but this was so sudden. I really thought I was going to pass away. And then you came and you were right there with me. I mean, you were right there, whispering in my ear. It made me feel…just made me feel like it was going to be all right.”

  “I’m glad everything turned out okay. You’re a nice girl. Bad things shouldn’t happen to you.”

  “They shouldn’t happen to anyone.”

  He regretted his harsh words. He fancied the way her long brown hair flowed when she moved her head, and he fancied the way she looked at him brazenly now that they were alone, even though upstairs she’d seemed about the shiest human he’d ever met. He even fancied the way she’d faced up to his insane verbal onslaught about money. He liked the strength in her arms and shoulders when she scooted around on her crutches. He wondered if her life was as simple as he thought: playing tennis, going to school, pleasing Daddy.

  “What’s that on your arm?” she asked, pointing to a scab that wrapped around either side of his elbow and ran under his shirt-sleeve.

  “We were mountain biking in a local park, and I took a couple of spills.”

  “It looks terrible.”

  “You should have seen it before.”

  “Let me see.”

  “It’s too ugly.”

  “No, I want to look at it.” When he pulled his sleeve up, she stepped close and examined the wounds with interest. “Where else were you injured?”

  “My hip. All down one side of my knee. That was the worst.”

  “Can I see?”

  He leaned over and pulled one pant leg up carefully, exposing the thick scabbing above his knee while she stared like a kid in a spook house. “You in premed, or something?” he said.

  “Social work. What are these here?”

  “Old scars. I got this one at a criterium in Port Townsend a couple of years ago. These others are mostly from mountain bike crashes. This is where I got torn up by blackberry vines last summer.”

  “And you have one on your hip, too?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not going to drop my trousers,” Zak said, at the same time that the door to the court opened.

  “You’re not going to drop your trousers?” Lieutenant Muldaur repeated.

  “We were just talking,” Nadine said, embarrassed.

  “We’ve been looking all over for you. Your boyfriend’s getting worried.”

  “It was nice talking to you,” Nadine said, looking at Zak and then squeezing past Lieutenant Muldaur, who was still smirking. “And thanks for the tour.”

  “Sorry about what I said earlier.”

  “No problem.”

  After she left and the door swung closed, Muldaur said, “Were you hitting on her?”

  “She wanted me to drop my pants.”

  “So I gather.”

  “She wanted to see my scabs from that crash.”

  Muldaur laughed. “Apparently, her family’s got a lot of money.”

  “There is that.”

  “Your tone of voice makes the money sound like a disqualifier.”

  “Th
e boyfriend’s a disqualifier. I didn’t know she still had one until you said it. Besides, I’m not interested in someone that much younger than me.”

  “Don’t try to palm it off on her age. Zak, you’re pretty well grounded when it comes to most things, but she’s rich and you hate rich folks. Admit it.”

  “Okay, maybe I do. But only the ones with too much money.”

  “And which are those?”

  “All of them.”

  Muldaur laughed.

  Afterward, Zak wanted to go back and retrieve those moments with her so he could be civil this time. What a perfect ass he’d been.

  7

  August

  As he turned the .30-30 over in his hands, jacked the shells out of the magazine, and then sighted down the inside of the oiled barrel, Kasey marveled at how much he loved the precision of a fine rifle. He admired the heft of it and savored the heavy cartridges sagging in his pocket. His father had given him the carbine on his fourteenth birthday, and it was still his favorite. It wasn’t hunting season, of course, and he didn’t hunt anyway. He liked to drive up into the hills to shoot wine bottles scavenged from one of the several restaurants Chuck and Fred’s parents owned.

  All of them owned guns, even Jennifer, although only three had thought to bring them along on this trip. Perhaps tomorrow morning they would cork some empties and toss them into the river, then plink them as they floated past. Kasey hadn’t done any shooting since last summer out on his father’s boat in the Pacific, when he’d gone through a thousand rounds of ammo in one day. He still remembered the blister on his thumb and the ache in his shoulder, but it had been a blast.

  They’d made camp where the local had told them to, uncertain if they had the right place until Jennifer spotted one of the cyclists up the hill. Over the next few minutes they saw the others in turn, although neither Kasey nor Scooter recognized Zak among the distant figures. They’d dusted them bad. Scooter had been laughing since it happened and, energized by the incident, was uncharacteristically doing all the work of making camp: sipping from a bottle of beer and setting up the tent, lighting the campfire, heating up the LPG portable barbecue they’d brought along.

  “I wish we’d videotaped it,” Scooter said. “We could put it on the Internet.” He drained the beer bottle and was cocking his arm to throw it at some nearby rocks when Kasey stopped him.

  “What are you doing, man? We need to be good conservationists. Put the cap back on, and we’ll shoot it in the river.”

  “Right. Conservation. That’s my game.” Scooter placed the bottle carefully on the tailgate of the Finnigans’ truck. “We’ll be recycling these items,” he announced to Jennifer.

  Jennifer Moore was a nice enough girl and had done her job back at the guard shack, but Kasey wished she hadn’t come along. Women on a trip like this cramped his style. Besides, Chuck went apeshit if anybody so much as looked her. A guy that big, you’d think he would have all the self-assurance in the world, but he had about as much confidence as a squirrel burying a nut.

  “I like that,” Jennifer said, tossing her long blond hair to one side. She had a habit of flipping her hair and standing so that her breasts jutted out, and every time she did it Chuck was looking around to see who was watching. “We’re out here in the woods, but at least we can leave nature the way we found it.” Ironically, she picked up a piece of wood and threw it onto the fire. “How about if we go up and invite those guys down? Wouldn’t that be fun? We’ve got enough steaks for an army.”

  “Uh, I think they might not want to be grilling steaks with us,” Kasey said.

  “Why not? We have way too much food.” Turning to Chuck, Jennifer bounced up and down and said, “Come on, honey. I think we should introduce ourselves. It’ll be fun.”

  Chuck said, “Why not?”

  Kasey watched Jennifer walk away in her tight pink shorts and white deck shoes, her astonishing legs long and sleek and tanned. She was about the only one in the group who didn’t know Zak Polanski was the reason they were here. When he looked back toward the camp, Fred was watching him watching her, so he winked, hoping Fred wasn’t going to tell Chuck later. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought the steroid brothers. On the other hand, as long as the Finnigans were along, nobody was going to mess with them, which would be a good thing once Zak and his group realized who had showered them with dust.

  Zak was the first to spot them walking up the hill. They were having such a hard time, Zak wondered how he and his four friends had pedaled up the steep slope. Moments later the two were standing in front of the cyclists’ somewhat disorganized encampment trying to catch their breath. They looked like brother and sister. He was tall and thick through the neck and chest, blond and blue-eyed, with legs like tree trunks. A sheen of sweat glistened on his upper lip, and his muscle shirt was damp with it. She was a long-haired blonde, also with blue eyes, also somewhat thick, though attractive. Zak recognized her as one of Nadine’s friends. As Zak recalled, she’d played years of soccer, thus the legs and the lungs—she wasn’t breathing nearly as hard as her companion. Zak noticed that Muldaur had slipped into his thick Coke-bottle glasses and put his bicycle helmet back on, pulling it low on his forehead.

  “Hi. I’m Jennifer Moore, and this is Chuck Finnigan. We’re camping just down the hill here.” Finnigan nodded but didn’t say anything. She gave a start when she noticed Zak. “Oh, hi, Zak. Funny running into you here.”

  “Hello, Jennifer. What are you guys doing?”

  “We’re just out for a lark.”

  “Odd that you should end up right next to us, huh?”

  “That is weird.”

  Stephens, Morse, and Giancarlo stepped forward and shook hands with both of them while Zak busied himself with some bike gear.

  Jennifer bit the inside of her cheek and said, “I guess we passed you kind of too fast earlier. Was that you guys?”

  “I think it was,” said Muldaur, altering his voice and staring down at his lap. “I think maybe it was.”

  Zak recognized Muldaur’s voice and demeanor as those of Hugh, an alter ego the lieutenant sometimes adopted around the fire station as a practical joke. Why he was playing Hugh now was a mystery, though.

  Stephens and Morse, not realizing what he was up to, turned in unison and stared at Muldaur. Stephens turned back to the young woman and helped her with excuse making. “You were already going so fast when you came up on us, it was probably just best to keep going.”

  “I got a ton of dust in my boogers,” said Muldaur. Again Morse and Stephens stared at Muldaur, who was now hiding his face in a towel.

  “We’d like to make it up to you,” Jennifer said. “We’re putting some steaks on. We’ve got plenty. Why don’t you all come on down and meet the others?”

  “Fine with me,” said Giancarlo, who was easily as large as Chuck Finnigan. Morse nodded, and so did Stephens. Zak said, “Sure.” Muldaur shrugged, his face still hidden in the towel.

  “Are you planning to stay all night?” Morse asked.

  “We thought we would,” said Jennifer. “We’ve got a campfire. It’ll be fun.”

  “You’re not supposed to have a fire in these mountains,” said Zak. “You know about the fire alert, don’t you?”

  Neither Jennifer nor Chuck replied.

  “So you guys are just out here for the one night, or what?” Morse asked. “You have plans after that?”

  “I really have no idea,” said Jennifer. “Do you know, honey?” She turned to Chuck.

  “We follow Kasey, I guess.”

  “Kasey’s here?” Zak said.

  “Down the hill with the others.”

  “How about we’ll be down in five minutes?” Stephens said.

  “Sounds great. We’ll go back and tell the others to throw some more meat on.”

  “They don’t seem so bad,” Morse said after they were out of earshot.

  “No,” said Stephens. “I think that speeding thing must have been a…well, a miscalculation. I mean,
how would they have known there would be bicyclists on the road? You have to agree, we weren’t supposed to be here.”

  “Neither were they,” Zak said.

  As the five of them walked down the hill a few minutes later, Muldaur had his false teeth in, his Coke-bottle glasses on, and his helmet adjusted tight and low over his ears. Zak turned to him and said, “You sure you want to do this?”

  “Abso-fucking-lutely.” Muldaur strode ahead in an awkward gait neither Stephens nor Morse had seen before. The walk alone made Zak laugh.

  Giancarlo smiled at Zak and said, “He’s Hugh? The guy who’s always visiting your station?”

  “Yep.”

  “Does anybody else know?”

  “Just me.”

  “What’s so funny?” asked Morse. “What the hell is he up to?”

  “Just play along, okay?”

  “Yeah,” Giancarlo said to the others. “You’re going to have to see this to believe it.”

  8

  As they walked down the hill Zak and Muldaur threw each other looks to show their unease over the venture, while Morse and Stephens, seemingly content, led the way into the camp at a leisurely pace. Muldaur was in full disguise and was moving in that ungainly, jerky motion he was so good at. Even his friends at the station hadn’t been able to see through his modest getup, the slightly altered modulation in his voice, or the distorted body language. As far as Zak could tell, he was the only one who knew that Hugh, who had been regularly visiting the fire station for months, was actually Muldaur playing his most elaborate practical joke yet.

  Every fire station has at least one learning-disabled civilian with an obsession for firefighting apparatus who hangs around the station as much as he can. With few exceptions, most crews treat him with tolerance and generosity and enjoy having someone they can think of as their station mascot. So it wasn’t all that surprising that no one at the station saw through the Hugh disguise or that, undetected, Muldaur chose to keep his alter ego alive. It was unclear, however, why Muldaur had chosen to play Hugh just now, or why he’d bothered to bring the glasses and fake teeth along on the trip. But Muldaur was full of surprises.