“Were we still in the park? I thought we had left it.”

“You did, but we were the closest rescue unit. Inyo County Search and Rescue was farther north, and the CHP helicopter out of Fresno was looking over on the western side. We were just to the south of you when the call came in, and so we flew right up. Plus, there were some other elements that made this case relevant to us.”

Gwen took this all in. If she hadn’t been so out of sorts, she would have been impressed.

Ranger Montez got up and went to the door, where she gestured to someone out in the hallway. A middle-aged male ranger came in, thick through the middle, with slightly burned cheeks and deep wrinkles. His face was kind, though, and the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth looked like they’d been caused by laughter.

“I’m Ranger Perry,” he said, holding out a beefy hand. “Glad to see you’re awake. You’re in good hands here with Ranger Montez.”

“Nice to meet you,” Gwen said, shaking his hand. She didn’t know what else to say. “I can’t believe I’ve been asleep for three days.”

“You’ve been in and out,” said Ranger Montez, returning to her seat. “And you were tossing around quite a bit, especially the first day. Talking about A.J. and needing food. And someone named Robert. You kept saying that you had to get moving.”

Gwen closed her eyes for a moment; she wasn’t ready to think about where she’d been. But the image of A.J.’s face appeared unbidden—his smirk, his touch, the confusion and horror on his face as he went sideways over the cliff.

“We were able to reach your mother,” Ranger Montez said. “She was very relieved to hear you’re okay.”

So relieved that she rushed right up here to see me, Gwen thought. “Are my friends here too?” she asked, and Ranger Montez nodded. She exchanged a glance with her colleague.

“Todd Harris is in good shape,” Ranger Perry said, pulling up a chair. “He was checked over and given fluids and then discharged. Oscar Barajas is critical but stable. He lost quite a bit of blood and he’s been fighting an infection. But he’s over the worst of it. Tomorrow they’re taking him by ambulance back to LA.”

Gwen closed her eyes again. “Thank God. And Tracy?”

Ranger Montez tilted her chin a bit. “We’re not sure where she is. She was there when we took Oscar up in the rescue litter—we gave her something for her pain and wrapped her up. But when we went back to get her, she was gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?”

“I mean, she wasn’t there. We did pick up Todd, of course, a couple of miles to the south. But he hadn’t seen her, either. Inyo SAR’s still searching the area.”

Gwen tried to digest this. Tracy was gone. She still had the gun when Gwen left her—had she tried to go after the men tied to A.J. or José? Had someone connected to one of them found her and killed her? Had she wandered off in pain and confusion? Or had she simply disappeared?

“We did find three bodies, though,” Ranger Perry said, leaning forward, and Gwen was alert again. “Two men associated with the Mexican drug trade. And a known domestic criminal, Arthur James Miles.”

Gwen glanced around the room, avoiding his eyes. There was a TV on the wall, muted, playing an afternoon talk show. Her heart was beating out of her chest. She felt the eyes of both rangers watching her steadily.

“Do you want to tell us about them?” the ranger asked softly. His voice was deep and soothing.

She did not know where to start. She did not know how all their actions looked now, in the light of day, when they were out of the mountains.

“A.J. shot a young Mexican kid. We accidentally stumbled onto a marijuana garden the kid was protecting.”

Ranger Montez nodded as if Gwen had answered a test question correctly. “This is part of why we’re involved, because of the grows in the national parks and national forests. We found it and finished eradicating it the day after we rescued you.”

“The second guy, I don’t know,” Gwen said. They’d never seen a second guy—had A.J. killed him too? Or—and now she felt a chill of realization—had that been who Todd shot?

“Someone was shooting at us,” she continued. “I thought it was A.J.”

“But then?”

“But then I saw A.J. the last day we were up there. I was totally surprised. I thought—” She was about to say she thought he was dead, she thought that Todd had shot him. But it occurred to her that she didn’t know what Todd had told them.

Ranger Montez waited to see if Gwen would finish the sentence. When she didn’t, the ranger asked, “And what happened to A.J.?”

Gwen’s heart felt like it was coming up in her throat. In a moment she’d change from someone who’d been fleeing a pursuer to someone who’d caused a person to die. She looked at Ranger Montez, then Ranger Perry, straight in their eyes.

“He attacked me. He’d captured us back at the pot garden but we fought him and tied him up. But he got loose and followed us, and then he caught up with me and began to assault me. Then the dog—it had been his dog, but she’d come along with us—she bit him, and I grabbed my bear spray and sprayed him in the face.”

Ranger Montez nodded. “That would explain the residual bear spray on your hands and clothes. And then he fell over the edge?”

Gwen kept her voice steady. “I pushed him.”

The rangers exchanged a look again, and now Ranger Perry pulled his chair up closer. His face was grim. “We appreciate your honesty, Miss Foster. But we’re going to pretend we never heard that.”

“What?”

“Arthur Miles fell over the cliff on his own. I told your friend Todd to forget what he told me too—that he shot the other individual, a Mexican national. The gun that killed the second man was the same one that killed the first. It was Arthur Miles’s gun, and as far as we’re concerned, Arthur Miles was responsible for both deaths.”

Gwen stared at him, confused. Todd had shot the second guy? And that was who had shot Oscar? And this ranger was making up a different story? And this other baby-faced ranger, this girl who’d saved their asses, was going along with it?

“I’m perfectly happy to take responsibility for what I did. And it sounds like Todd is too.”

“That’s honorable of you,” Ranger Perry said. “It is. But you take the blame for this publicly, and you’ll put your lives at risk. Your lives, and the lives of your loved ones.”

Ranger Montez pushed her chair closer to the bed, the legs squeaking on the linoleum. “You stumbled into a drug war, Miss Foster,” she said. Her eyes were bright and intense, and for the first time, she seemed older. “A drug war, and a race war. Those people aren’t messing around. They’re fighting over where to grow their crops and how to distribute them, and they each cut into what the other one thinks is their territory. There are millions of dollars at stake here. Tens of millions of dollars. And it’s all intensified by the racial angle, since Miles was part of an antigovernment white supremacist group.”

“I got that.”

“Part of why they got into the drug trade in the first place was to fund their other activities—conferences, concerts, printed materials, websites that preach hate. They want to do battle with the cartels for economic and racial reasons. And then all of you show up, and it’s like fuel on the fire.”

“He was terrifying,” Gwen said, her voice shaking. She remembered the look on his face when he pressed up against her, the rough hands on her breasts and stomach. Thank God for Timber, she thought. Thank God for that damned crazy dog.

“Yes,” Ranger Perry said. “He is. Or he was. He’s one of the most notorious leaders in the California white supremacy movement. And he’s under suspicion for two other murders, which is probably just the tip of the iceberg. There’s no question that you did the right thing, Miss Foster. He would have killed you without a second thought.”