to the uneven river bottom, the girl clutched her with an unexpected force.
“I won’t let go,” Fiona promised.
In the distance a siren wailed, an ambulance from St. Luke’s Hospital less than a mile away. Someone had called 911. More applause as the pickup driver led her to dry ground and Fiona dropped to her knees, never relaxing her embrace of the child, who in turn pressed herself closer to her rescuer.
“You’re okay. You’re okay,” Fiona whispered into the matted hair, as a dozen people rushed down the embankment and the pickup driver called out to give them room.
More cameras fired off shots, including her own, currently in Kira’s hands. Too many cameras to ever control. She could imagine the images already being sent over the Internet. One moment, anonymous in a sleepy Idaho town. The next . . . out there.
Helpless to do anything about it, she understood that this moment represented the saving of one life and quite possibly the loss of another: her own.
2
Walt Fleming entered St. Luke’s emergency room to the stares his sheriff’s uniform typically provoked. Reaction was never neutral, and it affected him, to varying degrees. People were both afraid of and impressed by police. Everyone was guilty of some infraction, no matter how minor; it came down to how much of it they wore on their sleeves.
“Kenshaw!” he barked at the nurse behind the registration desk, never slowing a step. Despite his concern for the well-being of the child fished from the Big Wood River, he was impatient and tense about the condition of the child’s rescuer.
“Observation two!” the nurse called down the hall after him.
The walls were beige, the ceiling lighting intense, the complex aroma—medicinal disinfectant, bitter coffee—vaguely nauseating. He ran, did not walk, to Observation 2. He yanked back the privacy curtain, not waiting for permission.
“Oh, damn!” he barked out unintentionally upon seeing her. He stepped inside and drew the curtain closed behind him.
A nurse tending to an IV bag turned and was about to let loose on the intruder when sight of the uniform stopped her.
“Leave us a minute,” Walt told the nurse as he met eyes with Fiona.
“I’m fine,” Fiona said.
“Yeah, I can see that.” She looked horrible.
The nurse gave Walt the once-over on her way out. She clearly had some choice words to offer, but contained herself.
Fiona wore a blue and white hospital gown—a loosely woven yellow blanket covered her from the waist down. Her face and arms were badly scratched, both carrying some butterfly bandages. Her scalp had been shaved in a spot about the size of a quarter over her left ear and was dressed with a small bandage. On her upper left shoulder he saw the glow of a bruise forming.
“They took some X-rays,” she said, “against my better judgment. I really am fine. It’s nothing. I realize I must look like hell, and you have no right to be—”
“You look good,” he said. He’d rarely paid her any kind of compliment about her looks. It hung in the air uncomfortably. “Alive is good,” he added. Fiona would never win any beauty contests, but in his opinion she’d turn heads decades into the future. Her kind of tomboyish looks didn’t need a surgeon’s knife to remain interesting. She changed her looks frequently, using ball caps or haircuts. It was impossible to pin down her age, but she was over twenty-eight and under thirty-five if he was any judge. She took a lot of sun from her hours as a fishing guide, but she wore it well, not leathery the way some of the Ketchum women aged. In a strange way, her wounds added to her attractiveness, as if mystery were all she’d ever lacked.
“Given the options.”
“What’d you do, fight a bear to get to her?”
“A fir tree, I think it was. Lots of nasty branches.”
“That kind of goes hand in hand where trees are concerned—the branches thing. I heard the kid’s fine.”
“So I’m told.”
“You’re a hero.”
“I may need your help with that,” she said. “Sit.”
Walt drew a rolling stool up to the side of the bed and rested his hands on the bed’s stainless steel frame. He’d been reaching for her hand, but stopped himself.
She took his hand in hers, stretching the IV to do so. “Is this what you wanted?”
“Yeah.” He absentmindedly glanced toward the pulled curtain.
She let go of his hand. “It’s all right,” she said, sensing his reluctance and misinterpreting it as embarrassment.
He regretted losing her touch, regretted having looked behind him, regretted