Vanishing Edge

    I WAS PEERING DOWN at two broken ski poles on Yosemite's Line of Fire when the call came in to my satellite phone. [...]
    Bracing myself against a tree, I got ahold of my sat phone and immediately recognized the number as the Investigative Services Branch field office. I took a breath, the kind that rattled a bit on the way in. I hoped the caller figured it was altitude, not nerves.
    “Felicity Harland,” I said.
    “Special Agent Harland with the Investigative Services Branch?”
    “That's – yes.” [...]
    “Hello, ma'am. This is Rick Corrigan with the Park Service,” he said. “I'm the chief ranger out of Mineral King Ranger Station in Sequoia. You familiar with it?”
    I was, thanks to an extensive orientation to the National Park System in the months prior. There were sixty-two national parks in the United States, and in terms of annual visitors, Sequoia was somewhere in the middle. “Yes, sir,” I said.
    “I called the ISB switchboard, and they told me you were the one covering my territory this time of year. That right?”
    I had my schedule memorized – that is to say, the one that came down from headquarters in Washington D.C. My first official assignment had me working the nine California national parks, but it wasn't a permanent post. In ISB, temporary duty assignments were typical; you could be sent to Alaska one week and Florida the next. For the next six months, though, I was more or less based in California, which was not an easy assignment. Yosemite was essentially Disneyland at this point, with millions of visitors every year.
    “Yes, sir,” I said again.
    “Well, I've got a situation out here.”
    A situation – probably the most dreaded word in my vocabulary. It itched the corner of my brain that liked facts and logic and hard evidence. I could handle a dead body or an accident or even murder, but I didn't like the sound of “a situation.”
    “What do you mean by that?” I asked.
    “I've got an abandoned campsite way up at Precipice Lake,” he said. “I called you 'cause the ranger who found it doesn't feel right about it.”
    I'd been warned about such calls. An abandoned campsite wasn't a crime in and of itself, and to be honest, it wasn't all that unusual for people to ditch their stuff in the woods. The most common explanation was that a group of delinquents with no concern for “leave no trace” had simply moved on out of boredom. Usually the rangers waited a while to see if the campers returned, and if they didn't, then they called ISB.

    “What did the ranger say?” I asked. He took a moment to consider his reply. “Well, he said the tent hasn't been wastin' out there all winter – it looked like somebody'd been there just a day or two ago. Left in a hurry, though. Gear all over the place. Oh, and about the gear – it's nice. Real fancy stuff. Glampist is the outfit. You ever heard of 'em?”
    “I think so,” I said.
    There was a pause.
    “Actually, no,” I admitted.
    “It's a private company that specializes in luxury camping,” he said. “In other words, the devil incarnate.” [...]
    I wondered how reliable this ranger was. In Yosemite, a lot of the rangers were lifers, in larger part because YOSAR – Yosemite's search-and-rescue team – was world-renowned. But Sequoia was a much smaller and lesser known national park than its neighbor to the north. Corrigan's ranger could very well be a kid fresh out of high school with no investigative experience whatsoever.
    “Tell me again when he found the campsite,” I said.
    “About an hour ago. He was up there conducting a wildlife survey.”
    Today was Monday, April 8th . I made a note of the date and time of the discovery on my hand because my iPad had died – which was unfortunate for all kinds of reasons. I used the same model that was issued to the military for their missions, but mine, somehow, had decided to crap out on me an hour into the hike up Line of Fire. The only good news was that I had a pen from a LaQuinta Inn in my jeans pocket.
    “Any clues to where they might have gone?” I asked him. “Footprints?”
    “No. Not up there. It's all rock.” [...]
    “Did they give you the names of who was camping there?”
    “No, ma'am.”
    Of course not. My mentors at ISB had told me about these luxury camping services and their obsession with protecting their clientele's privacy, but I had yet to interface with any of them. It made sense that Sequoia or Yosemite – the parks with relatively easy access to Silicon Valley and Hollywood – would be the first to go that way. Corrigan asked, “You nearby?”
    “I'm in Yosemite,” I said. “On a mountain, actually.”
    “Might not be worth your time, then. Got a storm movin' in.”
    “The weather's irrelevant, Mr. Corrigan. You called me, so I'll be there.”