The Keep of Fire Read Online Free PDF

wasn’t part of her job description, but Kyle Evans, the Castle County coroner, was at that moment in New Jersey burying his mother, so it fell to Jace to see to it this stranger made it to his own last rest. Not that Jace minded.
To protect and to serve
.That was the oath she had sworn to Sheriff Dominguez on her twenty-fifth birthday two years ago. And as far as Jace was concerned, anything that helped someone else was part of her job description.
    The deputy guided the van around a switchback, her eyes locked on the road behind green, wire-rimmed Ray-Bans. She took all the curves at exactly the speed posted on the yellow road signs, and she steered the van with precise movements of her small, strong hands. She did so because that was the right way to drive a vehicle. There was one right way to do everything in this world, and that was the way Jace did it.
    Although every day in her work she encountered people who broke the law, Jace never understood them. Some screamed and cursed at her as she wrote them a ticket or handcuffed them, shouting that the laws oppressed them, while others wept and sobbed that the laws weren’t fair. But Jace knew they were wrong. A world without rules was a world without meaning. Laws didn’t limit. Instead they made things like happiness, comfort, and beauty possible. Artists painted using principles of color, hue, and perspective. Music was based on mathematics. The laws of physics kept humans from flying off the planet and into space.
    The deputy was seldom troubled by dreams, but one that came to her from time to time chilled her to the core. She would dream she was in a tiny boat, tossed on a great sea that was neither light nor dark, liquid nor solid. Then a wave would come, tearing apart the boat. She would try to swim to safety, except it was impossible to determine which way was up. Jace would wake gasping and for an hour would stare into the night, looking at the hard, distinct outlines of bed and walls and floor before she could shut her eyes and return to sleep again.
    A world of order Jace understood, but the world she glimpsed in her dream, the great sea of chaos …
    All she could think was that that must have been the world her father had glimpsed the day she came home from fifth grade and found him hanging from a rafter in the garage.
    The road turned to gravel. Jace adjusted her speed to compensate, then guided the vehicle around the last few twists. She came to a halt in the dirt parking lot, scooped up the box of ashes, and stepped out of the van.
    There wasn’t much to the Castle Heights Cemetery these days. Not that there ever really had been. Throughout the last 130 years, most people in Castle County had their loved ones transported to the more fashionable and expensive cemeteries of Denver when it was time for the long sleep. Weeds tangled over anonymous graves, their wooden markers long turned to splinters, and wild raspberry gathered over other mounds like thorny shrouds. Elsewhere gravestones were planted in the ground at odd angles, as if at any moment the entire place might slide down the slope to the valley bottom for its own final burial.
    Jace glanced down at the box tucked into the crook of her arm. This was not how she liked cases to end up—without even a name to put on a marker. But there had been nothing left of the man to run an ID on, not even his teeth. Just a few splinters of burnt bone and a heap of ash. Jace had checked a description of the man, given to her by Travis Wilder, against a database of missing persons, but to no avail. She would keep checking, but doubted she would find an answer.
    How he had immolated himself was another mystery. The fire had been so hot, there had been no need for cremation. Yet the man had not set the Mine Shaft ablaze with him. The only damage was a black markon the floor and the smell of smoke. And Max Bayfield’s hand.
    Max had said that he touched the man before the fire started, but Jace was sure that was a