Firestorm-pigeon 4 by Nevada Barr Read Free Book Online Page B

place of logs. The hearth of the nineties. Hardwood floors, recently refinished, picked up the reflection from the screen. No other lights were on.

Long legs draped modestly in a battered terrycloth robe, Stan-ton lounged with his feet up and a glass of scotch—neat, no rocks. His bifocals were pushed down to where he could see over them. An aqua budgerigar with black tail feathers hopped down the length of one of Stanton's long arms, murmuring and pecking as if the man were made of delicious crumbs.

In the fireplace flames burned silently behind the anchorman's head as he read the news: "The storm front blamed for the blowup brought snow and sleet in its wake, damping the fires and grounding air support. Due to the weather and hazards caused by burned snags falling across the twenty miles of steep and twisting logging road that leads in to the remote spike camp thought to be in the path of the blaze, no machinery will be sent up until morning. A ground crew carrying food and medical supplies has been dispatched up the beleaguered fire road on foot. At present ten firefighters are listed as missing."

The anchor turned and looked expectantly at a blank wall behind him. After a second's delay film of a base camp in northern California was shown.

Frederick sat up. The budgie twittered in annoyance and flew several feet before landing on a bare knee to continue its foraging. One of Stanton's hands strayed to the black receiver of an old-fashioned rotary phone, a movement as unconscious as it was natural to a man who lived by the exchange of information.

The station cut to a commercial for fabric softener and Frederick pawed through a disintegrating hill of newspapers and magazines obscuring the coffee table. Outraged, the budgie flew back to his cage with a noisy flapping that metaphorically slammed the wire door behind him.

"Sorry, Daniel," Frederick said absently. The magazines began to slide and an avalanche of paper cascaded down around his ankles and over long white feet half concealed in slippers trod flat at the heels. The disturbance uncovered the remote control. Stanton caught it up and began clicking through channels. National coverage was over for the evening. All he could find was Chicago news.

For a few minutes he stared at men in blue-and-white football jerseys running from other men in purple and white. The Bears and the Vikings. Usually Frederick forced himself to watch the highlights and memorize the scores on the off chance he had to pass as one of the boys at some point the following day. Now he wasn't aware of what was on the screen. Behind his eyes he watched a small-framed, middle-aged woman, streaks of gray through the infernal braid she used to incarcerate her hair, crumpled naked in a shower crying and swearing at him.

More fun than petting a bobcat, he thought, and smiled. Somewhere in the heap of materials he'd dumped on the floor was a letter from her. He'd put off answering it one day at a time for three weeks. Too much to say and no way to say it that was guaranteed to charm and amuse. Several drafts had already been consigned to the trash as sophomoric. With Anna he had to use his best material, the new relatively honest stuff. From the beginning he sensed she'd spot anything glib—or worse, would know if he tried too hard.

In the short time he'd known her, he'd had the heady sense of being an angler with a particularly wily and powerful fish on his line.

Not that Frederick fished, except as a less than biblical fisher of men, but this was how he imagined a deep-sea fisherman might feel with a muscular iridescent marlin on the end of his line. A glimpse of rainbow sparkling through the gray of an ocean wave, a sense of triumph. The line suddenly slack; the prize eluding. Exhilaration at feeling the tug once again.

Frederick felt that tug now. Sipping delicately at the scotch, he wondered who had whose hooks into whom.

His right hand strayed back to the telephone. Pushing a button on the