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connection.”
    “Yeah.” He nodded. “I know how that goes. Okay, the Forgotten… Well, it’s a federal buffer zone beyond the state park, too far away from civilization to interest regular campers and not challenging enough to interest the hard-core mountaineers. Doesn’t have anything really in the way of natural resources or any real reason for anybody to pay attention to it, although it recently changed hands, going from federal to the city, and then almost to a public sale.”
    “I saw that in the file,” she said, reaching up to sift her fingers through the dry, wispy strands of the parasitic fungus that was gnoming the trees, killing them. What are you? she asked inside. Aloud, she said, “What happened with the sale?”
    “Mayor Proudfoot was pushing to sell the land to a private investor who, not surprisingly, dropped the negotiations when things broke.”
    “I assume you’ve taken a good, hard look at the investor? It would seem to me that buying the property would be to the militia’s benefit.”
    He shot her another sidelong look. “Thought you were a plant…whatever it was.”
    “I’ve got a couple of cops in my family. You learn the thought process.” Among other things.
    “Well, it’s not a bad theory, but the investor was legit, if an idiot. He had some geologist swearing to him that there’s gold in the area, and thought he was going to put one over on the government by buying the Forgotten and striking it rich.”
    “I didn’t think there was gold around here,” she commented as they moved into a clearer area, where infected trees were more sparsely distributed among clusters of huge boulders. These trees were more severely affected than the surrounding clusters, though, which had her antenna quivering. Was there some environmental component at work?
    Jack shook his head. “There isn’t any gold. Just some played-out copper mines.”
    “Right.” She had seen that from the photos, just as she had learned about the land deal from the dossier. She needed something else, something more. So, as she wentinto her pack for the first of the sampling kits, she said, “What about rumors, old campfire stories, that sort of thing?”
    “You want to use old legends to figure out a tree disease?”
    “Like I said, you never know what’s going to make a connection.” And, yeah, maybe she liked the sound of his voice when he wasn’t being condescending, and she liked being back on her professional footing where things made sense and she didn’t feel nearly so off balance, even with him only a few feet away.
    “Local legends, huh? Well, depending on which story you believe, the Forgotten was either considered cursed by the native tribes in the area, or the story of the curse was whipped up later to scare people away from what was actually a hideout for the toughest of the Wild West outlaws in the decades after the Civil War.”
    She made a “bring it on” finger wiggle with her free hand as she tweezed fibers into a series of sterile sampling units, sealing them shut and tucking them away.
    “Okay, here’s how the story goes. There was once a young brave named Bear Tooth, who was smaller and weaker than his friends, and always came in last when they raced. But then one day—”
    Sudden gunfire split the air, cutting him off. They were under attack!

Chapter Four
    Jack reacted instantly, tackling Tori and hurling them both into the lee of the nearest boulder. His arms went around her and he muffled her scream in his chest, protecting her from the impact as they collapsed together against the stone.
    Moments earlier, the fallen slab had seemed huge. Now it felt small and thin as shots rang off the far side and he anticipated the burn of a bullet crease, or worse. There was just the one shooter, but his weapon was high-powered; he was shooting from the concealment of a trio of larger rocks on higher ground; and he wasn’t missing by much.
    Body going into automatic mode, Jack shouldered