Cassie Miles - State Of Emergency

She squatted beside him. “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen an aspen before.”

“Only from a distance, and I never understood why you people get so excited about a couple of yellow trees.”

“You don’t really appreciate Colorado, do you?”

“’Fraid not.” Jordan was a southern boy, born in Atlanta where the lush hardwood forests were far more forgiving than the stern, rugged Rockies. Even then, Georgia’s hilly terrain had been too much for him. All those trees felt claustrophobic. On the Gulf coast of Florida, he found wide vistas and open space, palm trees and sultry, ocean-scented air.

He inhaled a deep breath. The cool breeze smelled fresh and earthy. And the gold shimmered all around him.

When he looked up at Emily, hovering over him like an angel, her face seemed to glow. Her curly blond ponytail glistened like warm honey. She wasn’t strikingly beautiful, not like Lynette. Emily was the sort of woman who might be overlooked in a crowd, but when you noticed her, you knew you’d discovered a hidden treasure.

She clambored to her feet and dusted off her jeans. Disdainfully, she said, “If you think you can make it that far, there’s a stream up ahead.”

“Okay.” He forced his legs to move.

Beside the trickling stream which was only a few feet wide, they shed their backpacks and sat side by side on a wide weathered rock. Though Jordan was still enjoying the golden leaves, he felt a warning chill in the air. The sun was about to dip behind the mountains. He started to pull off his shoes, thinking how good the cold, clear stream water would feel on his ten stubbed toes.

“Don’t,” she said.

“Why not? My feet are killing me.”

“On a hike, it’s always better to keep your feet dry. Besides, putting your shoes back on again will be sheer agony.” She groaned. “I don’t know why I bothered to tell you. You deserve the pain.”

Her job was healing. He didn’t think she’d willingly allow suffering. “What’s that motto for S.A.R.?”

“…That Others May Live.” She glared at him. “But I don’t think it applies to escaped convicts.”

He called on her wisdom again. “I know you’re carrying a little water purifier in your pack. Is it safe to drink from the stream?”

She shrugged. “You take your chances.”

But Jordan followed her example, taking a swig of lukewarm liquid from the canteen in his backpack. Not as satisfying as scotch and soda, but it was liquid. With all this exertion, keeping hydrated was important.

Pookie, on the other hand, seemed to think the Rocky Mountain spring water was just fine. The pup splashed through the glistening ripples.

“Pookie!” Emily reprimanded. “Get out of there.”

“Moof, woof.” He slipped on a rock and got completely drenched.

“How am I ever going to train him?” Emily asked.

“Leave him be. He’s just a pup.”

“But he needs to start learning now or he’ll never be any use as a rescue dog.”

“I understand about working dogs,” Jordan said. This was the closest they’d come to a conversation, and he wanted to prolong the moment, to win her trust. “When I was a kid, I had a bluetick hound that I trained for weeks to be a good hunting dog.”

“Do you hunt?”

“Not anymore,” he said. “Do you?”

“No, but I have two older brothers who used to go hunting all the time. I’d go with them.” But Emily had never taken pleasure in stalking and shooting. “I’d patch them up when they sprained their ankles or cut themselves with their hunting knives.”

“You liked nursing even when you were a kid.”

“It comes naturally.” In spite of her warrior heritage, she didn’t need to kill anything. She carried on the family tradition by being a healer, just as her father had taken on the job of medic before he was killed in Vietnam.

She watched as Jordan dug into his backpack, pulled out the walkie-talkie and tuned to the police band radio. Listening to the static dispatches, he stretched out on the rock and stared up into the quaking aspen leaves. Though she considered his hatred for the mountains to be a damning quality, she couldn’t quite believe he was a murderer.

Still, she removed the package of tissues from her pocket and tore off a small piece which she dropped to the ground. All along their route, she’d been leaving markers which Jordan was too preoccupied to notice.

“I have a question for you,” she said. “If you despise the mountains so much, how did you end up married to a woman from Aspen?”

“We met while she was on vacation in the Florida Keys, had a whirlwind courtship and got married before we figured out that we didn’t have a single thing in common.”

“Opposites attract,” Emily said.

“But they don’t stay together for long. We were married for two years and probably lived in the same house for only two months of that time.”

“The newspapers said you were going to ask her for a divorce.”

“That was why I came to Aspen,” he said. His lack of apparent emotion seemed odd. The newspaper reports had hinted that Jordan’s motive for killing his wife was passion. “Did you still love her?”

“Not love. Not hate.” He stretched the muscles in his back. “There weren’t any strong emotions left.”

“And you asked for the divorce?”

“That’s right.”

“What did she say?”

“She agreed. It was all real civilized and calm. But she asked me to wait a month so she could clear up some kind of financial problem with her estate.”

If Emily eliminated passion as a motive, it had to be the money. Lynette Afton-Shane was a multi-millionaire who owned two ski lodges and prime real estate. Even by Aspen standards, her wealth would be considered impressive. “How much do you inherit?”

“We had a prenuptial agreement that gave each of us ten percent of the other’s estate.”

“In Lynette’s case, that might be a million dollars,” Emily said.

“I really don’t know,” Jordan said. “I wasn’t in her class financially, but I do okay. I have my own computer hardware manufacturing company in Florida with twenty-seven employees.” And Emily remembered that he’d written the ten-thousand-dollar contribution to S.A.R. on his own account. Jordan certainly didn’t project the image of someone who needed to kill for the inheritance.

He bolted to a sitting posture on the rock, concentrating hard on the reports from the police band radio. “They’re coming closer to Cascadia. Do you have those maps, Emily?”

She reached into a zippered pocket on her backpack and pulled out three different maps.

He unfolded the worn paper and studied the detailed terrain which included topography and landmarks as well as roads. Though Emily wasn’t good at map-reading, she had an innate sense of direction in the mountains that seldom led her astray.

“Does this stream have a name?” he asked.

“I don’t think so. It’s too small.”

“But you’ve been here before,” he said. “You knew there was a stream at the bottom of the hill.”

“I knew because I heard the rushing water,” Emily explained. “Plus, we’re at the base of a slope, and the presence of aspens generally indicates that the water table lies close to the surface.”

He pinpointed their location on the map. “I’d say we’re about here.”

Pookie bounced up to them, paused and shook himself, sending out a spray of ice-cold stream water.

“Not on the map,” Jordan said. “Geez, Pookie. Get a grip.”

“You were the one who didn’t think he needed training,” Emily reminded him as she corralled the wet dog in her arms, then pushed his butt to the ground. “Sit, boy.”

“Moof,” Pookie said.