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Cantrell Townsend. “And I suppose it was when you wouldn’t open the door that the social worker called Sheriff O’Halloran?”
    “Yeah. Along with half the police in the state, it looks like,” Shawna said. “They’re all outside. The TV stations are out there, too.” She paused. “Mama Ida also told us that we weren’t to bother you. And I’ve always tried to do what she says, but there are a lot of men with guns in the driveway.
    “And I don’t want to scare Renee or Gwen, but I think you’d better get here as quick as you can. Before they send in a SWAT team to break down the door or something.”
    Her knees grew weak. Raine sank back down into her chair and tried to ignore the movie hostage scenes flashing through her mind. The rain streaking down the window blurred the view of the tulips and spring green trees in the nearby park.
    “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Meanwhile, do you have a phone number for the sheriff?”
    “I can look it up. He’s called the house a couple times, but after I saw Mama Ida’s news conference on the television—”
    “My grandmother gave a news conference from her hospital bed?”
    As she twisted open the cap and chugged the Maalox, Raine told herself that she shouldn’t be surprised. Her grandmother was a lifelong firebrand. Ida had even gone to jail back in the fifties for setting up a mobile vasectomy clinic in the parking lot of the annual Sawdust Festival and offering two-for-one bonus pricing during the three-day event.
    “Yeah. She looked real good, too,” Shawna said. “For a lady her age. Though I don’t think the sheriff is real happy about her callin’ him a storm trooper…Gwen taped it so she could watch it when she got home.
    “Anyway, Mama Ida told us—on the TV—not to talk to anyone until she managed to escape the jackasses at the hospital. Those were her words, not mine,” Shawna added, as if afraid Raine might not approve of the vulgarity. “So I took the phone off the hook.”
    After assuring Shawna that she’d take care of matters with the sheriff, Raine asked Brian to book her on the first flight to Seattle’s Sea-Tac Airport. From there she could rent a car and take a ferry to Coldwater Cove. Fortunately, she always kept a suitcase packed with essentials in her office, which would prevent having to waste time by going to her apartment to pack.
    She was anxious to call the hospital to check on her grandmother’s condition, but along with marshaling her thoughts before speaking, law school had taught her to prioritize.
    Raine vaguely recalled Sheriff John O’Halloran to be an intelligent, easygoing man who continued to generate enough good will in the county to get elected year after year. She couldn’t imagine him attacking a house inhabited by three unarmed, frightened teenage girls.
    Still, it didn’t take Clarence Darrow to realize that the most critical item on the agenda was to prevent any one of the other cops Shawna had mentioned from deciding to play Rambo.
    Olympic National Park, Washington
    Cooper Ryan had received three calls in as many hours regarding the strange goings-on near Heart of the Hills. The third call, and the one that had captured his attention, had begun the same as the others—an illegal campfire, discordant music, and eerie chanting. However, a new wrinkle had been added: several women were reported to be gallivanting around the forest, as naked as jaybirds.
    Ascribing to a live-and-let-live philosophy, normally Coop wouldn’t have been all that bothered by the reports. However, a Boy Scout troop was scheduled for a nature hike through that area tomorrow and he doubted that their parents would be thrilled if the usual environmental ranger talk was replaced by an up-close-and-personal demonstration of the differences between boys and girls.
    Coop drove out to the trailhead nearest the site of the reports and began hiking through the old-growth rainforest. They couldn’t be far, he determined when the