Ill Wind Read Online Free Page A

affair with a married man so discreet it had to be imaginary. The pipeline was a bandwagon made for jumping on.
    “Ah. Chindi.” Anna used the Navajo word for spirit or—she was never quite sure—evil spirit. “Could be. Listen, I’ve got to slip into something less deadly.” She grimaced at her gun and escaped down the hall.
    Once divested of the dead weight of her gun and the airtight shoes required by NPS class “A” uniform standards, Anna felt less hostile. By the time she’d poured herself a generous dollop of Mirassou Pinot Blanc, she was civilized enough to join the party in the front room.
    The television was on with the volume turned down and Jamie was verbally abusing Vanna White as she turned the letters on “Wheel of Fortune.” It was a nightly ritual that seldom failed to amuse.
    “Arms like toothpicks! Look at that,” Jamie was exclaiming. “I don’t think she’s pretty. Do you think she’s pretty? Who in God’s name thinks she’s pretty? Little Miss Toothpick Arms. Little Miss White Bread.”
    Anna curled her feet under her on the nubby fabric of an armchair. The boxy room was furnished in Early Dentist’s Office but it was serviceable. Anna, barefoot, in pink sweat-pants and an oversized man’s shirt, surrounded by girls with Budweisers—or women that looked like girls from a vantage point of forty—had a sense of being an uncomfortable traveler in time. Even the cheap southwestern print of Jamie’s sarong put her in mind of the India-print bedspreads she’d found so many uses for in her college days. In a gush of self-pity she felt her world as dead as that of the Anasazi. She missed Christina and Alison, the woman and her daughter with whom she’d shared a house in Houghton, Michigan, when she worked on Isle Royale.
    Chris was a rock: gentle and soft and stronger than Anna ever hoped to be. Alison, at six, was like a kitten with brains—irresistible and a little scary.
    Anna’d left on the pretense Mesa Verde was a promotion as well as a return to her beloved southwest. In reality she’d cleared out because she knew Chris was in love but wouldn’t move in with her sweetheart if it meant abandoning Anna. So Anna’d abandoned her.
    I’m a fucking saint, she thought sourly, watching Vanna turn E’s on “Wheel of Fortune.”
    The job wasn’t too bad. Though at times Anna felt more like a nurse than a ranger.
    Mesa Verde was an old and staid national park. As early as 1906 it was clear that the ancient cliff dwellings, though already largely looted of artifacts, were a part of America’s heritage that must be preserved.
    Visitors to Mesa Verde went out of their way to get there and had the money to do so. Consequently, the clientele tended to be older, with gold cards and expensive RVs. Retired folks with bad hearts and tired lungs from San Diego, Florida, and the south coast of Texas found themselves up at altitude for the first time in thirty years. If drug dogs were called in Anna suspected they’d sniff out more nitroglycerin tablets than anything else.
    There’d been two fatalities—both elderly visitors with cardiopulmonary problems—and eleven ambulance runs, five of them out of Cliff Palace. And it was only early June.
    Swallowing the last of her wine, Anna leaned back and let the alcohol uncoil her mental springs.
    Jennifer wandered back to the TV with a fresh beer.
    Short was a round-faced woman with good hair, bad skin, and too much makeup. Fresh out of Tennessee State’s one-semester course, she was the new law enforcement seasonal in her first national park job. Jennifer was a Memphis belle in what Anna had thought was a bygone tradition: all magnolia blossoms, little-ol’-me’s-led-a-sheltered-life, and eeka-mouse . Proven tactics, guaranteed to turn the boys to putty.
    Anna hadn’t yet decided whether she was more irritated or intrigued with the femme fatale routine. On the one hand it would be interesting to watch. On the other, given the job, it could