There’d been nothing he could do to ease the situation between them.
Until now.
He could enter the park and get Audrey out of there before she landed in jail. He could vouch for the issue with the cameras and explain why the site was important—to Audrey, to the tribes, to the park.
He had legal right of entry and a role to play. As a law enforcement ranger, his job was to document the crime and search for the looters.
Plus, Jae hoped to move up into the investigative unit for the National Park Service. If he failed to do his job to protect this cultural heritage site, it wouldn’t look good on his application when a position opened up in the unit.
He might get in as much trouble as Audrey for interrupting the training, but he could justify his actions and maybe save Audrey or Xavier from theirs. He donned his wide-brimmed ranger hat and climbed from the vehicle. Rain pummeled him, having picked up in the minutes he’d sat in the car making calls and debating his course of action.
He crossed in front of his headlights and pulled out the key to the heavy-duty lock. He would drive to the lodge, find Audrey, and extract her from the training.
It was the right thing to do and a good plan.
A great one, even. Except he hit a major snag: his key didn’t work.
He studied the key and the lock. Had the Navy gotten a concession from the park on the gate lock after all? Or had the Navy changed the lock without permission?
But if they changed the lock, then Audrey didn’t have a key either and couldn’t have entered the park. At least, not on this road. And there was no other road to the lake or lodge. It was a dead end with only jeep trail spurs in a few places along the winding eighteen-mile stretch.
One way in, one way out.
Well, except for the SEALs, who were probably parachuting or being helicoptered in. Jae presumed they’d be airlifted out as well.
He returned to the vehicle, taking shelter from the rain as he considered his options. He couldn’t ask about the gate lock over the radio because the exact timing of the training was secret—no details were to be broadcast over the radio. He would check in with park management about the gate at the end of his shift tonight.
His radio chirped, and the dispatcher spoke. “Ranger Son, we just received a request from George Shaw’s family for a law enforcement ranger to check on the tribal elder in his cabin near Lake Olympus.”
Jae frowned. George should have vacated his cabin with the other inholding landowners. But his cabin wasn’t on the lake, so maybe he’d been excluded from that order? Jae had no role in the process, and so he didn’t really know. It wasn’t like he could have asked Audrey for the finer details.
“I’m unable to do a check tonight,” he replied, “but I’ll head to the lodge tomorrow.” If the Navy had changed the locks without permission, he’d make sure they coughed up a key.
“Isn’t tomorrow your day off, Ranger Son?”
He smiled, thinking of the attractive young woman who was on the other end of the conversation. She’d completed her law enforcement ranger training at the same school Jae had up in the Skagit Valley and was working as a dispatcher during the off-season as she applied for seasonal ranger jobs at all the major parks. She was kind and smart, and now it appeared she was aware of his work schedule. He wanted to ask her about that, but that conversation would be better if it happened over beers after work and not over the park radio.
“It is, but George is a friend, and I need to follow up on the cameras and potential looting anyway.”
He pulled out onto the highway that skirted the north and western margins of the mountain range that defined the peninsula, heading north toward Forks. He’d check in with Audrey later, after his shift. She lived only a few miles from him in Port Angeles. If she didn’t call him back, he’d stop by her house.
Thick sheets of rain swamped his vehicle, and he imagined being a SEAL, out in the rainforest right now, role-playing combat in this miserable, drenching storm.
No, thank you.
Jae participated in plenty of search and rescue operations and could do the work that was necessary. But to be faking it? In this? He was more than thankful for the shelter of his SUV.
The thankful feeling proved to be short-lived when less than a mile from the intersection to 101 that would take him to Forks, he came across a mudslide that partially blocked the road.
He’d driven this road just twenty minutes before.
Still, he should have seen this coming with the heavy rain. Washington was among the most mudslide-prone states, suffering hundreds—sometimes even thousands—each year, and this stretch of the Olympic Peninsula had more than its share with the storms that roared in from the Pacific.
Thankfully, there was no sign of other vehicles on the road, and there were no homes or businesses in the area.
He alerted dispatch to the slide, then backed up well past the slide zone and set up barriers, alerting drivers to turn around. Anyone passing through would have to take the road all the way back to Queets to catch the main highway.
A long-ass detour, but better than getting swept away by a mudslide. He was informed that first responders in Queets were posting detour signs already. Good.