|
Wild Inferno
Sandi Ault
Wild Indigo introduced rough and ready Bureau of
Land Management agent Jamaica Wild. Now she
returns—deployed to a wildfire on the Southern Ute
reservation, where a puzzling plea whispered by a burning
man points to a mystery more menacing than murder.
Wildfire erupts on a patchwork of land including the
Southern Ute Reservation, and BLM agent Jamaica Wild is
called away from her normal duties to serve on the Incident
Command Team. A cantankerous old man from the Ute tribe
named Grampa Ned has reportedly snuck around barricades and
entered an area to one side of the fire. Jamaica risks
danger to go after him, but before she can find him, the
fire crowns and torches through the area, forcing her to run
for her life. As she escapes, Jamaica discovers a
firefighter smoldering and wavering on the side of the road.
The man, part of a hotshot crew that is trapped in the burn
area, sputters a cryptic message to Jamaica before losing
consciousness.
While the burned man lies comatose in a burn unit, the rest
of his crew is found deep inside the black—where the
fire has burned through—singed and suffering from smoke
inhalation, but alive thanks to their fire shelters. The
charred body of Grampa Ned is discovered nearby in the
seared forest—but he has not died from the fire, but
rather from a blow to the head. The FBI investigates the
murder, and the agent in charge asks for Jamaica's help.
The Chimney Rock Fire intensifies, threatening homes,
highways, and a major power line feeding much of Southern
Colorado.
Meanwhile, even as the fire threatens the high mesa on which
they are encamped, a determined gathering of Puebloans,
descendants of the ancient civilization that built the ruins
at Chimney Rock, are doing ceremony atop the high cuesta.
They refuse to evacuate because the sacred Lunar
Standstill—an event that takes place every 18.6 years,
when the moon rises exactly between the two spires of
Chimney Rock—is about to occur. One of them is Momma
Anna, Jamaica's medicine teacher from Tanoah Pueblo, who has
brought Jamaica's wolf Mountain with her to Chimney Rock and
into the path of danger.
Jamaica must work to ensure that the Native Americans and
her beloved wolf are safe while she tries to discover what
happened to both Grampa Ned and the burning man. What was
Grampa Ned doing on the mountain before he was
murdered—and why didn't the burning man stay with his
crew? What would make them risk incineration in a WILD
INFERNO?
(A Wild Mystery #2)
Berkley, February 2008
304 pages ISBN: 0425219224
Hardcover
$23.95
Also by Sandi Ault:
Wild Indigo, February 2008
Wild Indigo, January 2007
(Notify me via e-mail when Sandi Ault releases a new book.)
|
