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CHAPTER ONE

MAYA JACKSON was going to find the bastard who'd killed her little brother and she was going to make him pay

But first she had to take care of the details The stupid, goddamned details

She turned the key in the lock of Tony's cottage on the edge of the Tahoe National Forest and her throat grew tight How could he be dead?

Gone

As of Tuesday, Nove but ashes, the remains of his bones and skin and spirit lost in the rubble of an aparto he'd walked through flames to save a couple of stoned ski bums And he'd died a hero

At twenty-three

Tony's landlord needed the place cleared out to show to potential tenants He'd been nice about it; if she couldn't co of value in a storage shed behind the building Maya had wanted to throw the telephone through a

Everything of value was already gone

Standing on the top slate step, Maya forced herself to open the cottage door All she needed to do was pack up Tony's T-shirts and jeans and books and shaving creaet the hell out of there But it wasn't that simple Because the last time she'd been in Tahoe it had been her brother's birthday Twothe ti babes, hitting the slopes when the poas fresh

Iled up inside her head as she held on to the doorknob like it was a lifeline Judd Jackson had also been a firefighter A hotshot, one of the elite who put out the fires everyone else ran from

As a kid she'd marked time by her father's presence For sixher to school Kicking a soccer ball with her and Tony in the backyard until they were called in to dinner She'd loved falling asleep to the rough sound of his voice as he read from storybooks, then closed them to make up stories that were even better For the other sixthe worst fires that had ever been The Wheeler Fire in Ojai, California The Siege of 1987 in Oregon Judd Jackson was a national hero, tiain

Maya knew kids with hotshot fathers who left one day with a smile and chainsaw and never caht phone call and unexpected visitors at the front door Her dad always cah And then, a year ago he'd been diagnosed with aggressive lung cancer All those years of sucking in ash and black smoke had taken their toll

She was still recovering from her father's death when Tony's fire chief had called One less Jackson in the world

Maybe, she thought, if she and Tony had an antagonistic brother-sister relationship like so many of her friends it wouldn't have hurt so much But he'd never been the kind of little brother who pulled her pigtails and h she was four years older she didn't treat his

Their mother, Martha, had lived on pins and needles whenever their father ay fighting fires And since organization and details weren't hersuit in the best of circuned up for teams and had his school projects done on time It was nice to be needed, so she hadn't reallycare of her brother And then, when their father had died, everything had flipped around, and Tony had taken care of her

Noas gone too She hadn't cried yet How could she when her chest felt like a block of ice?

Her girlfriends were trying to say all the right things, but none of them really understood Her boyfriend, Dick, a San Francisco firefighter, was completely out of his depth He'd practically seemed relieved when she'd said they should take a break And Martha was a co

There was no one else to take care of Tony's things Only Maya

She'd ive away, gather important letters and pictures, close his bank accounts, collect his mail, and tell everyone Tony had loved—and everyone who had loved hione But she couldn't le step into Tony's house

Desperation tore at her All she wanted was to close her eyes and forget for one second So her in two, needed to forget everything Not just that she and her et her name, who she was

She didn't drink much, never had, and she'd never before turned to alcohol for deliverance But now that Tony was dead everything had changed

She'd changed

She shut the door without having yet set foot inside the cottage and walked past her car in the driveway, heading down the pine tree-lined street at a steady pace toward town Tony's house was at the top of a steep hill and Maya's walk soon turned into a sprint She gasped the clearpast the liet farther away fro to her body as she tried to run away frorief

The casino towers on the Nevada state border rose high in the sky off to her right—with enough booze to drown in—but they were miles away and Maya didn't have

She knew she should be praying for a church so that she could fall down on her knees and find some solace But she didn't want to believe in a God who could take away a barely grown boy just trying to do soood

Please, God, you took Tony away You took Daddy You owe

A fresh wave of anger jolted her Actually, I' for a hell of a lot more than that I need to find Tony's killer And I need you to lead me to him

The soles of her feet burned in her sandals as she took a sharp curve And then she saw it: the Tahoe Pines Bar & Grill

Thank you, God, she thought And then, as another flood of bitterness descended, But I' you You still owe me

She sprinted toward the restaurant, running to purge her de wasn'tTony back to life

After a cursory glance at traffic, she crossed the two-lane road, co to a dead stop in front of the restaurant Sharp pains knifed into her sto froround