In spite of the rumors of an approaching wildfire that were sweeping through the salon, Lauren Wahl insisted that the hairdresser, the salon’s owner, complete her blow-dry. These fire scares were always overblown, she told the aggravated man. While her over-processed locks were being coaxed into her over-done hairdo, Lauren read a racy tabloid, raising her freshly manicured fingertips high above its glossy pages to dry. The tabloid’s absorbing content rendered her oblivious to the actions of her fellow patrons, who were hastily departing the salon.
Her blow dry completed, Lauren admired herself in the mirror. She watched her hair swirl as she rocked her head from side to side, turning in the swivel chair to see herself from every angle. Perfection, she thought. The hairdresser was now on his cell phone, speaking to his wife. Lauren overheard him say that he was closing the salon because of a fire and heading to Rancho High to pick up their daughter. Lauren was baffled. How could a hairdresser afford to live in the Rancho High School district?
After she signed her tab, adding her customary 10% tip, Lauren left the now-deserted salon and headed towards her car. With a touch of discomfort she noticed that there was more smoke in the air than was typical from a small brushfire, and the wind was also more intense than she recalled from previous Santa Anas. The eucalyptus trees around the parking lot were swaying alarmingly in the wind and small branches skittered along the asphalt surface of the parking lot. Most disconcerting to her, however, was that she had forgotten to have the hairdresser get her car key from her purse; she would now be obliged to risk her manicure in order to retrieve it. Gingerly, she fished at the key with one finger while keeping the rest of her hand as much as possible out of harm’s way.
The earsplitting crack was followed instantaneously by a thunderous thud. Lauren recoiled, uttered a shriek and raised her hands to cover her ears. A massive tree limb was sprawled across the pavement no more than five feet in front of her. After a few seconds she regained her presence of mind. She took her hands from her ears and placed them on the hood of her car to steady herself. When she felt ready, she opened the car door and got inside. Through the windshield she saw a tree leaning over her car; halfway up its trunk a massive gash showed where the fallen limb had been attached. Fearing that the tree would fall on her car, she hastily backed out and drove to the lot’s exit.
Before getting on the road, she stopped; she decided to call Christopher on his cell phone. No answer. She tried Brett, with the same result. She texted both boys, but still got no response. Why did Rancho High require its students to turn off their cell phones when in class? she seethed. To make matters worse, they refused to send messages into the classroom. How was she to reach her sons, if this really was an emergency? The inconvenience of just this one rule, she believed, more than justified the cost of sending the boys to a private school with more accommodating policies. Lauren determined that she would use this event to prove to her husband, once and for all, how wrong he was about private school. But first she would have to go to Rancho High to find the boys.
The drive took twice as long as usual because of snarled traffic. Lauren had to pull over, twice, to the side of the road to let emergency vehicles pass. When she got to the school parking lot she encountered a crush of parents and students seeking out one another. She maneuvered her car as close as possible to her usual pickup spot. Christopher and Brett were waiting for her. Christopher gave his mother the bad news.
“We can’t go home,” he told her. “ The whole of Rancho Secreto is under mandatory evacuation. We have to go to the shelter at the Fairgrounds if we don’t have someplace to stay outside of the evacuation area.”
“Mandatory evacuation? What are you talking about?” Lauren snapped. “That’s ridiculous. We’ll just go home and wait this thing out.”
“Mom, you need to listen,” Christopher said. “This is the real deal. We were told on the public address system that there are roadblocks to prevent anyone from going back into the Ranch. We need to figure out where we’re going to stay.”
Lauren glared at her son. “We’re not going to any shelter, I can guarantee you that,” she said. “We’ll find someone to stay with. I’ll call…” Lauren paused, running names through her head. But everyone she knew lived in Rancho Secreto. Flummoxed, she called her husband. When he did not answer, she left him an urgent message, emphasizing the importance of his calling her right back, right this minute.
“We’ll find a hotel,” she said to the boys. “The Belvedere would be nice, don’t you think?” Lauren liked the luxurious ambiance of the Belvedere. She envisioned herself spending the afternoon getting a massage and facial at its wonderful spa while the boys did their homework. She would get a suite with two bedrooms, and she and Philip would have dinner at the hotel’s elegant restaurant. As she approached the Belvedere a police officer flagged her to a stop. When he asked where she was going, she said that she was checking in. She beamed in anticipation.
“Sorry, ma’am, not today,” the officer said. “The Belvedere is booked up. You need to go to the Fairgrounds if you don’t have anywhere to stay.” Beginning to feel queasy, Lauren asked the officer if he knew what hotels still had rooms. “From what I hear, all the hotels are full,” he said. He waved her on.
“The electricity to the gate is out,” Nate said. “There must be a manual release. I’ll find it and get us out of here.” Nate pulled his jacket collar up against the falling embers. Georgina watched nervously as he scoured the perimeter of the gate. Locating the release mechanism, Nate cranked the lever and pushed one of the gates open. When he got back in the car Georgina whispered a raspy “thank you,” but the act of speaking triggered more coughing. Nate reached into the compartment between the front seats and produced a bottle of water.
Two fire trunks drove up to the gate. A fireman asked if anyone was left on the property.
“I’m not sure," Nate said. "There were people at the house and the barn. Is there fire in the village? Has the school been evacuated?”
“No fire in the village yet,” the fireman replied. “If you’ve got someone at the school you might still have time to pick them up. Otherwise, they’re busing everyone to the Fairgrounds.” The fire trucks drove at full speed towards the house.
His voice hoarse from inhaling smoke, Nate told Georgina that he needed to get his son from school. Georgina nodded her head, remaining silent to prevent more coughing. They drove past Wahl’s construction site. The eucalyptus trees surrounding the property were now fully engulfed by fire but the cleared area around the house and the house itself were unscathed. When they reached the main road they found that it was jammed with evacuating vehicles. They inched along the road until they came to the village, where Nate turned off and drove to Rancho Elementary. The school grounds and environs were crowded with parents attempting to pick up their children. Nate asked Georgina to take over driving the car so that he could go inside to find his son.
Georgina’s mind raced as she drove around the perimeter of the school. She wanted to call a taxi and go directly to the airport. That would get her out of harm’s way. But Rios would be waiting for her at the Horseman’s Club and, as much as she wanted to get out of this situation and back to New York, she knew that she had to finish the deal. On her fourth pass around the school she spotted Nate waving to her from the sidewalk; a young boy held his other hand. Since there was no place to pull over Georgina stopped the car in the middle of the road. Ignoring the angry honking coming from the cars behind, Nate opened the rear door and strapped the boy in. Georgina retook the passenger seat and Nate got back behind the wheel. “Thanks for helping out,” he said. “Meet my son, Gordon.”
Georgina looked back over her shoulder at the boy in the back seat. “Hi there, Gordon,” she said. “Exciting day, huh?”
“Got out early,” Gordon said with a grin.
“Where are we going now?” Georgina asked Nate.
“The Horseman’s Club,” Nate replied. He joined the line of cars on the main road, h
eading west out of the village. Fishing a headset from the compartment next to his seat as he drove, he made a call. “Hey, Nate here,” he said into the microphone. “Have you heard about the fire in the Ranch? Don’t worry. I’ve got Gordon. The Ranch is evacuated, so you can’t go home tonight. No, I’m not kidding, it’s true. Listen, I’ll call you later and we’ll figure out what we’ll do with Gordon. He can stay with me tonight, if that works out best.” Nate took off the headset. “My ex,” he explained to Georgina. “We’ll have to take Gordon with us to the Horseman’s Club but he won’t be any trouble.”
Sam was alone in her office in the Detective Division. She was tempted to log on to one of her favorite Web sites, a Japanese retailer that specialized in goods for discerning Geisha. She enjoyed looking at pictures of the merchandise on this site, but she had never placed an order because her command of Japanese was too rudimentary to navigate the process. But, concerned that the police department might be monitoring activity on its computers, she checked out the local news instead. A breaking news report flashed across the screen. Within the hour, it stated, a small brushfire in the backcountry had escalated into a full-fledged wildfire and was racing at breakneck speed towards the coast. It had already entered Rancho Secreto.
Terrified, Sam called home. Her mother answered; she told Sam that her brother had come from his office in the Ranch village to take her to safety. They were about to leave in his car. She offered to retrieve some of Sam’s belongings from the teahouse before they left. Sam urged her mother to forget about saving any possessions and to leave immediately. She grabbed her keys and sprinted to her car.
At the coast the air was less smoky and the wind less intense. Georgina’s breath came more easily; she was able to talk without coughing. The tension brought on by the morning’s events started to lift. California Highway Patrol officers were directing the mass of vehicles that had descended on the Fairgrounds into its cavernous parking lot. Nate parked the car. Gordon jumped out, whooping, “We’re going to the Fair!”
“Sorry, Gordon,” Nate cautioned his son. “I don’t think there are any rides today.”
“No rides?” Gordon said, looking up at his father with disappointed eyes. “Why not?”
“Because it’s not the right time of year for rides. Maybe we’ll get to see some horses. That would be fun, wouldn’t it?” Nate smiled encouragingly at Gordon, who continued to look let down.
Wave after wave of people washed past them, on their way to the Fairground’s entrance. Judging by the number of vehicles in the parking lot Georgina guessed that there were already several thousand people inside the shelter. She asked Nate how far it was to the Horseman’s Club. Running to the barn in high heels had made her feet hurt; she was not looking forward to a long walk. When Nate told her that the Club was about a quarter mile away, Georgina flinched. She took her purse and the tote containing the sale documents from the car, willing herself not to think about her feet.
After more than a half hour of jostling through the crowd they reached the Horseman’s Club. Georgina was dismayed to find it closed. She called Wahl with the news. He was with the caravan of horse trailers, he said, and they were just entering the Fairgrounds. Once he got the horses to the racetrack area, he would call her back with a new location.
When her cell phone rang a few minutes later, it was Nick. “You can’t believe how relieved I am to hear your voice,” he said. “I was worried about you being in the fire.”
“I’m OK,” Georgina said. “But how do you know about the fire?”
Nick explained that there were wildfires burning all over Southern California. The fires were so big that the national news media was covering them. Georgina was shocked. Until that moment she had understood the fire to be a local event.
“FNBS has an affiliate station in Los Angeles. I’ve been watching the raw feed from them in our control room,” Nick said. “They have a helicopter up over Rancho Secreto, and from the footage they’re showing, it looks really bad there.” Nick described what he had seen—fire racing up low hills covered by dry scrub, trees turning into torches, and the rooftops of houses smoldering and then erupting in flames. He told Georgina that he had become concerned about her safety when the helicopter had begun to circle over a property with a full-scale racetrack. From her description of her visit to Rios' private racetrack, he had guessed that it was his estate. “I almost don’t want to tell you this part,” Nick said. “The helicopter was circling the property for a reason.
“Why?" Georgina said. "What’s happened?”
“Georgina, the firemen found a body.”
Chapter Nine