The next day he started to eat bland solid food. He began drinking lots of fluids. A strapping man in his mid- to late-30s showed up to help him to and from the bathroom. The man's name was Luke. Every day, with the bedroom door closed, the doctor bathed him. Grissom's headache continued to diminish. Some of his wounds looked to be healing. Others didn't. The agony of breathing continued. His chest felt tight. The deep wound on the left side continued to seep blood, now joined by pus.

The next morning, just before dawn, he dreamed; he thought it might have been the first time. He was making love to someone. At first he thought it might be Cassie, but the woman had long, dark brown hair, brown eyes so deep he could get lost in them, and a smile that made the world seem fine. Her hands on his skin, caressing him, knowing exactly how to create his highest state of arousal, kissing him until he couldn't breathe, using her tongue on his body from his face to his thighs, her mouth around his erection as if it were her favorite flavor of ice cream … he needed to be inside her so badly. He called out to her, reached for her.

Cassie had entered his bedroom when she heard him moan. She watched his face and decided that, this time at least, the sounds hadn't been the result of pain. At least not the kind of pain you could observe in his wounds. As his animation continued, she sneaked a look under his blanket and saw instantly that this dream was very real to him. She entertained a notion of helping him finish it when suddenly she saw that his mind had been all the help he needed. She'd be washing those shorts in the morning. She smiled and was happy for him. She wondered about the woman in the dream, who she was, where she was, what she looked like. She must be something.

In the morning, he remembered nothing of the dream. He had developed a serious fever. He had a hard time following the argument between Dr. Firth and Luke over the idea of calling for medical help. But the argument went on all day, and for several days thereafter. Why was everyone reluctant to do take him to a hospital? Why had they helped him up to this point if they were just going to let him die now?

Why?

xxxxxxxx

Day eight.

Sara had put her life at the university on hold. She wasn't teaching classes. She wasn't attending classes. With full understanding and approval of her dean and her faculty advisor, colleagues had taken over her instructional duties and her course work could be made up when – or if – she ever decided to pick up her quest for a PhD. If Grissom was gone, she though she'd never be able to generate any enthusiasm for it again. He was her reason to achieve. He was her rock, her support, her biggest fan. Without him, the underpinning of her world would be gone, along with her motivation and, quite frankly, her interest. She could talk about her enthusiasm for scientific achievement with him, and he would always understand and join her in the quest for knowledge. As a team, discovery was a thrill. Alone, it would be hollow. Who wants to watch a glorious sunrise with no one to share it?

She tried to help Nick with the search for the pickup truck that had carried Grissom away, but there really wasn't enough to keep two people occupied. So far, four police and two sheriff's departments had looked at records on all 11 large tire dealers within 50 miles of Grissom's accident.

Even though the records were computerized at all 11 stores, going through them consumed enormous chunks of time. Inventory records were easy enough to check for sales, but no one knew how far back to go. The tread-wear pattern in the molds Nick made suggested the tires had been used for a while, but weren't near the end of their lives. The Goodrich T/A all-weather, all-terrain tires were warrantied for 50,000 miles. Assuming a truck ran 15,000 miles a year, on average, that would cover a little more than three years. But since the tires had tread life remaining, the first search through inventory records was capped at three years.

Only three sets of the tires had been put on Dodge Ram Quad-Cabs with 160.3-inch wheelbases. One in Laughlin, one in Bullhead City, one in Kingman. The three current owners had made the purchases. All three had viable alibis for their trucks the night of the accident. None of the three had blood stains in the interior or the bed.

Next up had been the smaller dealers, where records tended not to be computerized and invoices had to be hand-checked, one at a time. There was no guarantee that some records hadn't been lost, or that one or more wouldn't be overlooked by a weary-eyed cop who just wanted to get home to a beer and dinner.

It didn't look promising.

xxxxxxx

In the first few days, the hunt for Grissom had been strictly local news. There was a brief story in the Laughlin Times about a Las Vegas man missing after a bicycle accident in Pyramid Canyon. But wilderness accidents were so commonplace that no one followed up the initial story.

It was much bigger news in Las Vegas, of course, and the story was updated daily, including accounts of Grissom's life and his biggest cases, interviews with the sheriff and courthouse denizens who knew him. Only his closest colleagues declined to be interviewed. Their emotions were too raw, and their lives to full of the hunt for him.

Kingman, Arizona had a newspaper, the Daily Miner, but no local television outlets. The newspaper had no interest in early stories about Grissom's disappearance. He wasn't even close to being a local. But as the search grew wider and more desperate, the DM did pick up an AP story that ran on the front page with a photo of the missing investigator.

The trouble was, only four people in all of Arizona knew the man in the photo was lying in a bed just outside Kingman, and none of the four read the Daily Miner.

xxxxxxx

Day 9

James Firth wandered into Short Cuts, the barbershop where he got his hair trimmed when he couldn't keep it out of his eyes any longer. Jack Gonzalez, the owner and the only barber in the place, had one client in his chair and another waiting.

"How're you doin', James," he said, looking up from the blond boy he was trimming up. "Ain't seen you in here in a while."

"Been busy," James said. "It got so hot so early this year, we can't keep up with the folks just figurin' out their AC isn't working."

Gonzalez smiled, his black hair, dark eyes and sun-weathered skin contrasting with very white teeth. "Well, take yourself a chair. Be with you in about 20."

"No rush," James said. "I need a rest."

James thumbed through the magazines on a small table beside him and found nothing of interest. He's read the same issue of "People" the last three times he'd been in. The hunting magazines didn't interest him. He had two freezers full of fresh kill. Neither did the car and truck publications. He got up and wandered over to another table, with other magazines. It sat just below a bulletin board that Jack kept crammed with fliers announcing local events, or items for sale by customers.

James did a double take when his eyes fell on a newspaper clipping, and the face that stared off the paper at him, smiling and healthy, was one he knew all too well. He had to stop his hands from shaking before he removed the pushpin holding the newsprint to the cork board and took it down to read it.

Unsteadily, he walked over to Jack.

"Where'd this come from?" he said, holding out the clipping.

Gonzalez glanced at it and nodded. "It was on the front page of the paper yesterday," he said. "You didn't see it?"

"Musta missed it," James said. "Why do you have it up on your board?"

"Well, there's lots of folks stop through her on their way to and from Vegas and Lake Mead," he said. "I figured somebody might spot him." He looked at James over his half glasses. "Why? You seen him?"

"Me, no," James said. "Just passin' time."

It took all the effort James could muster to stay in the shop until his hair was trimmed. When he'd paid Gonzalez, he headed straight for his Uncle Bill's house and called Luke, who, it turned out, was already there to help with the patient.

As luck would have it, the man had taken a serious turn for the worse.

xxxxxxx

Brass was seriously worried about Sara. He knew she wasn't eating; he was pretty sure she wasn't sleeping. She wouldn't leave the lab, cat napping instead on Grissom's office sofa, showering in the locker room, going home only to do a load of laundry.

She had no color. Her weight loss was noticeable in only a week and a half. And the circles under her eyes were so dark they looked like smeared black mascara. She was living on black coffee and vending machine popcorn.

She was just about to open the microwave to retrieve the latest bag when Brass snagged the door and pulled the bag away before she could get it. He tossed it across the break room.

She looked at him with weary eyes wide and bloodshot.

"You're going with me for a real meal, Sara," he told her firmly. He raised a finger to her lips when she started to protest. "No. Don't argue. I can't put you to bed and make you stay there until you sleep, but I can get some decent food into you. And if you resist me, well, we'll just keep sitting in the restaurant until you realize the only way you're going to get back to the lab is to put what's on your plate into your mouth, with chewing and swallowing to follow."

Her shoulders slumped. She was too tired to argue.

"I need to tell Nick where to find me," she said.

"Nick knows," Brass told her. "Nick learned all about cell phones, uh, last week, I think. He's a quick study, too. He's got your number and mine on speed dial. Let's go."

So they wound up at an upscale vegetarian place just off The Strip, where Sara ordered a cup of black bean soup.

"That it, Honey?" the waitress asked.

Sara nodded.

"No," Brass said. "That's not it. Bring her one of those baby spinach salads and a veggie omelet, too. And I'll have the same thing."

"You know I'm not going to eat all that," Sara said. "And if I try, I won't keep it down."

"I told you I was prepared to sit here for the rest of the week, didn't I?" Brass said.

Sara forced herself to smile, but when she looked up at Brass, he saw the tears running down her face. He started to reach over to brush them away, then stopped. He'd seen Grissom do that too many times. It wasn't his place to touch her.

"Where is he, Jim?" she said, her voice low and wrapped in sadness and defeat.

"I don't know, kiddo. I really don't know."

"What have we done that God is so mad at us?" she asked. "Why does it always seem just when we're truly happy that something comes along and wrecks our lives? We used to do it to each other. We're long past that. But the heartbreak doesn't come with an expiration date. It just keeps blindsiding us for no reason, over and over again."

Their soups and salads came then. Brass deliberately waited for Sara to start before he would, a way of pushing her without words. It worked. She should have been starving, but she ate slowly. Half spoons of soup, a leaf or two of spinach at a time. Between bites, she stared at the food without seeing it. If she was waiting for Jim to answer her questions, she didn't show it. She probably realized they were questions for which he had no answers.

She had eaten all of the soup and about half of the salad when the omelets came.

She looked at hers and frowned.

"I can't, Jim. No more."

"Just a little. Please, Sara, try. You've got to stay strong."

Just then Brass's phone rang. The caller ID said, "STOKES."

"Yeah," Brass said.

"Where are you?" Nick said, nearly breathless.

Brass told him.

"Sara's with you?"

"Yeah."

"Don't move. I'll be there in 15."

xxxxxxx

He was alone and reveling in it.

He was a man happy with his life. Contented with his lot. He had a wonderful, amazing, beautiful wife (Why suddenly couldn't he recall her name or what she looked like?) who fulfilled him and brought him joy. He felt strong, young and vigorous. And moments like this, when he could put his busy existence on pause and enjoy the solitude and beauty of nature, brought him serenity.

The air carried the scent of perfume and crackling pine campfires.

He stood, incongruously, next to his mountain bike in a lush green meadow dotted in profusion with wildflowers: the yellows of sweet-clover, golden pea, heartleaf arnica, balsam root and columbine, the purples of monkshood, lupine and larkspur, the brilliant pinks of alpine laurel, sweet vetch and Wood's rose, and a smattering of red Wyoming paintbrush. It never ceased to amaze him that flowers never clashed, regardless of their colors.

The meadow rose at a gentle angle and disappeared above him into a lodgepole pine forest. Below him, the Firehole River ran a gentle, winding course, silently gliding by on the same plane as the meadow's edge, with no visible bank. He could barely make out the roar of the water coming from somewhere downstream as it ran through a narrow gorge, picked up speed and crashed over a rocky falls into a roiling pool before continuing its journey south.

It was sunset in Yellowstone National Park, the sky a free-form painting of gray and purple and orange and pink and blue and yellow and red, one color blending into the next, constantly shifting and reshaping as the sun sank lower beyond the western mountains.

How did he know this place? He thought he must be making it up in a dream. He didn't recall ever being here. But then he didn't recall anything anymore.

In a heartbeat, everything changed.

The evening mountain breeze, which should have been quite cool, even in early summer, blew blazing hot in his face. He tried to draw a deep breath and was slammed by an avalanche of pain. It started deep in his chest and radiated to his arms, his shoulders, his neck, his head.

He sank to his knees and then stretched out on his back in the grass, lying down before he fell down. His breathing was too shallow and too fast. He felt his heart racing. He felt sweat pour off him.

He realized then the colors in the sky were not the sunset but wildfire, raging out of the mountains, racing at him at incredible speed, incinerating everything in its path. The roaring he heard earlier had not been a waterfall; it had been the forest fire.

He needed to escape. He looked for his bicycle, but it had disappeared. He willed himself to get up and try to outrun the flames, although he knew he couldn't. Still, he tried. His left leg kept buckling on him generating shockwaves of pain. A pine tree exploded and hurled a blazing branch at his head. He raised his left arm to protect himself and screamed in pain when the missile hit his elbow.

Now the fire was leaping over his head, sparking everything around him.

Flame, hot, hungry and angry, seared his body and burned his throat.

He thought he could feel his eyes begin to melt.

He couldn't draw a breath without agony. His lungs ceased working. His chest constricted.

It was so hot.

He fell again, and try as he might, he couldn't get up.

He rested his face in the still-cool grass and let the heat and blackness of death sweep over him.