"Oh, I have earned the hell out of my cupcake," Sierra said out loud, thinking ahead to the s’mores cupcake she’d had Joy set aside for her at Donner Bakery. She always earned her end-of-day treats. So much exercise that she never had to count calories was one of the many perks of being a National Park Ranger. As was permission to talk to herself. Because who was listening, except the trees?
But she rarely earned her dessert and the bourbon drink she liked to have at the end of a long day before she crested the hill that overlooked Bluebell Fields, the name she'd made up for the picturesque wildflower meadow she passed near the end of her route. That usually came at around 16,000 steps, according to her pedometer. But it was barely noon on a Tuesday—not even her busiest day of the week—and she’d already passed 12,000.
She had erratic weather to thank for that. Temperatures that rose more than 5° above normal had pretty much defined her summer. Hotter weather meant changes to delicate ecosystems; it meant harsher conditions for hikers; and don't even get her started on what it meant to animal behavior.
Mitigating all of this meant that more duties landed on the Park Service. Already that morning, Sierra had monitored conditions for a congress of red-cheeked salamanders. She’d maintained a watering system that had been built for a rare species of elk. She’d checked in on new calves that had been born to one of the cows a few weeks earlier, in mid-June. And that barely scratched the surface of her official work.
"Dispatch to Betts 4-1-5."
Her radio sounded abruptly—quick static followed by Rick’s commanding twang. Rick was efficient, precise and a very loud talker both on and off of the ham. She’d never asked what path had brought him to become a radio dispatcher, but he seemed born to do this job.
“Dispatch, go ahead.” She plucked her repeater off of her belt and pressed the side button to speak.
“Verify your position, 4-1-5. Over.”
Following protocol, Sierra pressed the test button on her emergency beacon, which transmitted a signal Rick was meant to receive. A second after, she rattled off the coordinates from her GPS watch. Rick was meant to compare the beacon data with Sierra's spoken coordinates to measure the accuracy of the device.
“35.5628° N, 83.4985° W. You get the beacon? Over.”
“Verified,” Rick came back. Then, “The fire-warning level has risen from Moderate to High. Over."
"10-4,” she acknowledged evenly, even as her heart rate spiked.
“We still on for a drink on Friday?” Rick asked. “I need a second opinion on Kevin. Over.”
Sierra smirked. “I’m pretty sure your first opinion was correct. Over.”
Rick’s track record with men was even worse than hers. But he was a good friend and said track record had been the source of much bonding and commiseration.
“I’ll buy the drinks. And be careful out there. Over and out."
Her radio gave a final crackle before going silent. As she clipped it back on to her belt, she let loose the words she’d kept at bay.
"Motherfucking shit.”
Yeah. She cursed out loud, too. She usually saved bad language for giving the universe a piece of her mind when the 49ers fumbled the ball. She was from Sonoma County. She would resume her weekly TV cursing when the season opened in the fall.
Slowing her walk, she angled her face to bite down on the straw threaded through the shoulder strap of her pack. She'd be no help to anyone if she got heat stroke and collapsed in the woods. It meant she had to set aside her Superwoman complex and practice what she preached to hikers about twenty times a day: she had to pace herself and hydrate.
It might take her until after sunset, but she had to make all of her stops—the unofficial ones, too. Jake Stapleton wasn't supposed to be living on federal land. Jake Stapleton also wasn't bothering anybody. And she had it on good authority he had reason to hide and no better place to go. She hadn't actively hidden him, but she hadn’t reported him, either. What he had or hadn’t done didn't matter to the fact that he was in this forest. Conditions were dangerous, and he needed to know.
Sierra was still busy hypothesizing on Jake’s situation—wondering whether it was true that he’d taken his one way out. In town a while back, it had been the subject of no small speculation. Jake’s father, Mortar, was a known felon who’d done time on and off at the Riverbend Maximum Security Penitentiary in Davidson County. He’d been back in Green Valley for just under a year after time inside for trying to kidnap Ashley Winston.
To hear some people tell it, being born male and being born into the Wraiths meant you had no choice but to go in. And that, even if you left for a while, you were right back in the second you returned. To hear others tell it, there was an out, but only one: to leave Green Valley the day you came of age. No son of any Wraith rumored to have exited in this manner had ever been seen again.
Her musings were halted by the last interruption Sierra wanted: the faintest aroma of fire. It took her a minute to figure out the direction from which it came. On days this hot, she left her Bernese Mountain Dog, Everest, back at the ranger station. If Everest were with her now, she’d have long-since led Sierra in the direction of the fire.
Picking up to a jog, she hastened along her unmarked path. Most hikers who descended upon her little corner of the Appalachian Trail were well-trained. But there were always a few who ignored all safety and common sense. It didn’t take long for a small plume of smoke to come into view.
At least it's at a campsite.
Campsites had clearings, and clearings meant less dry vegetation to carry embers off in the summer wind. A recent series of suspicious blazes had everyone on high alert. There had been three of them—and they’d occurred under such strange circumstances that a fire set anywhere in her territory would warrant an astonishing amount of scrutiny.
Sierra approached the campground with caution. You never knew who you were gonna get. People drank, carried firearms, and did all manner of other prohibited things. It didn't help that she was a woman, let alone a Black woman, let alone one who was barely thirty. People weren’t used to authority coming wrapped in a package that looked like her.
“Hey, girls…” Sierra began in her sorority sister voice. She didn't like to call grown women “girls,” but “Hey, ladies” was what men around here opened with when they wanted to talk to you and your friends at the bar. Judging by the expensive camping gear Sierra had spotted from thirty paces, they weren’t local.
"Oh, hey!" the first woman bubbled, turning her attention away from the pot over the cooking fire. "Great day, huh?" She motioned to the sky with her spoon.
Sierra pegged them for nineteen or twenty. If their gear hadn’t been a dead giveaway, their accents certainly were.
“Wanna join us for lunch?”
"Thank you, no…” Sierra answered quickly. “I’m here to tell you that you can't cook with fire during the day. Do you have a permit?"
Sierra asked the question neutrally, curious to see how they’d play their cards. When people were genuinely clueless, she went easy. But when people knew the rules and didn’t follow them…well that was a different story.
"Oh my gosh—we are so sorry!" The woman extended out the “oh” of her “so” in a way that reminded Sierra of how people talked back home.
"The guy we ran into at the bottom of the hill told us we didn't have to have one.” The second one crossed her arms as she chimed in. "He said we could pick one up at the ranger station.”
Sierra ran into this every day: hikers leading other hikers astray with misinformation.
"Fires are only permitted on some areas of the trail,” Sierra explained. “Part of why you have to get a fire permit is to confirm that you’ve read the full set of rules."
"That's not how the other ranger made it seem,” the second one challenged again.
“What other ranger?” Sierra narrowed her eyes.
“The guy ranger.” Her righteously indignant expression was replaced by a dreamy smile. “The hot one,” she clarified.
Her friend elbowed her.
“What? He was totally hot.”
“What did this ranger look like?” Sierra demanded. The parks were teeming with crews of scientists. Could be, one of them was giving hikers unauthorized advice.
"He had a uniform like yours, except blue…" The first one dug in her pocket. "Here. He took a selfie with us."
Sierra stepped forward with interest and craned her neck to get a glimpse. She scoffed in disdain when she saw it was Forrest. She scowled when she saw his smug, bearded smirk. He stood between the two women, both hands extended before him in a way that proved he’d held the phone for the selfie. His forearms weren’t visible, but his shoulders were. His shirt was snug-fitting—either that, or he just filled it out really nicely. Each of the two women cuffed a bicep so strong it dwarfed their hands.
Forrest Winters was, indeed, not a National Park Ranger. What he was, was a thorn in Sierra's side. The way he swung his big axe, fixed her with his chameleon gray eyes, and always talked about his jurisdiction had a way of breaking her concentration.
“He’s a fire marshal,” Sierra admitted. He was the fire marshal, really—the one responsible for determining the cause of all of those suspicious fires. During any normal season, he’d have come around only once in a blue moon to personally inspect fire conditions. Since the investigation had started, he’d been around all the damn time.
“Either way…” She pulled out her card. “I’m a park ranger and I’m telling you to put your fire out. If you have any questions, you can call the number on this card or visit Sugarlands, the ranger station in Gatlinburg. For now, I’ll have to stay to make sure you properly extinguish this fire.”
And Sierra did stay, seething and smoldering much like the embers of the ruined fire, still hot even after the initial spark had died. The two hikers—who weren’t at all happy—may not have been the only ones headed to the ranger station to file a grievance. Sierra would have her cupcake—maybe two—before the day was done. But first she’d find Forrest, who really ought to quit charming hikers and get back to doing his own job. Forrest Winters would hear where he could shove his fool claims of sweeping jurisdiction. Before the sun set, Sierra would give him a piece of her mind.
