Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(9)

The tree canopy opened as he climbed. He could smell the heat of the sun on the redwood bark. The sky was a high brilliant blue, and the peaks and valleys of the Coast Ranges stretched out around him, wearing their undulating pelt of trees.

Finally he saw above him a slender triangular platform. As he got closer he saw it was some kind of netting stretched between the tops of several trees, maybe twenty feet on a side. Irregular shapes showed through the netting at one end, maybe tools or supplies left behind. Above the netting hung a triangular sun cover, larger than the platform, turning the sun strange dappled shades. It would keep the rain off, too. Redwoods grew in rain forest, after all.

This was not just some tree hugger’s weekend nest.

It was too well-designed, too organized.

“Ahoy the platform,” he called out. “Anyone up there?”

He counted to twenty. No response. The platform cover rattled softly in the breeze. The sun was warm on his back. Through the branches he could see trees without end, or so it seemed.

“Okay,” he called out. “I’m coming up.”

A broad horizontal branch stretched toward the platform, with safety ropes strung at waist height, making an easy path. He noted where the platform was tied off, checking each rope and knot before he trusted the netting with his weight.

When he stepped onto it, the netting gave slightly beneath his weight, like a trampoline. He heard a faint twanging sound behind him. Then a voice.

A female voice.

“Hands up, asshole. That’s far enough.”





3





Peter turned and saw a woman with a bow and arrow standing on the broad horizontal branch, ten feet away. The bow was stretched taut, the arrow set to the string and pointed at his chest.

She wore a faded pink Riot Grrrl T-shirt, patched hiking pants, and a daypack on her back. Behind the bow, he saw red hair cut short over a freckled face, intense eyes, and a long narrow nose that came to a point like a rapier. She had serious climber’s arms, and held the bow steady. The branch she stood on might have been a city sidewalk for all the attention she paid to it. She was entirely focused on Peter. It was not a comfortable feeling. He was an ant under a magnifying glass, and her gaze was the sun.

Peter put his hands up. The movement made him bounce slightly on the netting, which was probably why she’d waited until he made it to the platform. He’d have trouble moving quickly on the spongy surface. She had good tactics, whoever she was. Better than some infantrymen Peter had known.

“Hi,” he said, trying for cheerful and harmless. “Nice place you got here. I’m Peter. What’s your name?”

Riot Grrrl looked at him with those blazing eyes, but didn’t answer. She had the edge of her lower lip between her teeth, thinking. Her arms did not shake with the tension of the bow. She projected utter confidence and capability, but Peter thought he saw a muscle twitch at the edge of her eye.

It was a compound bow, the kind with pulleys to maximize the force of the projectile and minimize the arm strength required. The business end of the arrow had a broad head, designed to cut its way in and do some damage. Although Peter had given up killing animals for food or sport after the war, he’d been a bow-hunter in high school, and knew that the arrow, at this range, would probably go all the way through his body and a fair distance into the tree limb behind him. Unless it hit bone, in which case it might well become a permanent part of his anatomy, for whatever short time remained to him as he bled to death on a trampoline at the top of a giant redwood.

The bow had a quiver holding three more arrows, so she had several opportunities to put a hole in him.

Peter had led a Marine infantry platoon for eight years in two war zones. Many professional soldiers had pointed their weapons at him, and it was never something he’d enjoyed. But it was the amateurs who really made him nervous. Again he saw the flutter at the edge of her eye. A stress reaction.

“I’m going to sit,” he said calmly. “Maybe you’d like to tell me what’s on your mind.”

With his fingers laced on the back of his head, Peter crossed his ankles and lowered himself to a sitting position as the netting gave gently beneath him. It felt like he was floating. It would have been pretty cool if it weren’t for Riot Grrrl pointing a medieval weapon at his center of mass.

She didn’t say anything. She was still thinking. The branch she was standing on creaked and swayed in the breeze, but it had no effect on her.

“You could rest your arms,” he said. “You look pretty strong, but I’d rather not get shot by accident.”

She didn’t relax her arms. Finally, she spoke again. “How did you find me?”

“I wasn’t looking for you,” he said. “I was hiking north and a grizzly bear chased me up a tree. I kept climbing. I saw your rope.” He shrugged. “I got curious.”

“You’re a bad liar. California grizzlies are extinct.”

“He might have been on vacation from Montana,” Peter admitted. “But he was brown and very big and he took a bite out of my boot. Here, I’ll show you.” Peter slowly unfolded his legs and held up his boot so she could see the bite mark in the sole. It was fairly dramatic.

She glanced at the boot, then looked Peter up and down with a critical eye.

He wore fast-drying hiking pants thinned down by the trackless miles, and a high-tech T-shirt that was supposed to keep him warm wet or dry, but after several months of almost continuous wear it had begun to smell like a goat’s ass. Washing his clothes in a stream helped with the dirt, but not the stink. He figured it was some kind of chemical reaction with the technology of the fabric. He’d carried cleaner clothes in his pack that he usually wore after he stopped hiking for the day, but they were probably shredded and covered with grizzly drool now.