Free Preview: Chapter 1 (and a bit more!):

SIGHT SEEING

 Copyright © 2020, 2025 by Kristina L. Woodall

 All rights reserved. 

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. 

The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred. 

Book Cover by Angela M. Glenn

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CHAPTER ONE

The ground was hot. The heat was dry.

Words from a song Ethan Wilkes didn’t care if he ever knew worked their way through his mind as he let a handful of dusty Colorado soil sift through his fingers onto the ground.

Bone-dry mountains in June was a bad sign.

Or not.

Chuckling, Wilkes grabbed for a nearby bottle of whiskey with one hand and helped himself to his feet with the other.

Smile fading, he stared down at the pile of wood stacked within the traditional circle of what would appear, under eventual investigation, to have been nothing more than a careless camper’s fire.

Hungry, aware that it was getting way on past lunch time, he twisted the lid off the glass bottle. Tipping it upside down, he splashed the amber liquor out over the wood, around on the dusty ground, and up the base of a nearby wall of lodgepole pine thirsty enough to drink in all the poison he could spare.

After twelve years of working for the California Department of Forestry to snuff flames out, he felt no particular thrill in creating them. But, hell, the money was a lot better on this side of the line. And a job’s a job.

With two fingers and the practiced ease of a chain smoker, Wilkes worked a small butane lighter out from the hip pocket of his dusty blue jeans and into the palm of his right hand.

Crouching down, he flicked the lighter into life and used its thin blue flame to turn alcohol, wood and oxygen into fire.

Satisfied with the awakening, he eased himself up and took a slow lumbering step back from the instant flash of heat.

Combing his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, he slid his gaze through the troops of trees stationed in front of him, then up toward the commanding mountain peaks towering above him, knowing all they could do was watch.

Somewhere about halfway between Copper Mountain and Vail, he could only guess whether it would be one of the local towns or the United States Forest Service that would come gunning in first to protect and preserve.

Not that it made a damn bit of difference. By the time anyone spotted this one, it would be well on its way to consuming another piece of the White River National Forest.

Glancing down at his creation, he watched it gulp for air and lick out for food as it seared a path across the carefully placed logs and then hurl itself out toward the dry pines rooted thick and tight inches away.

He studied the growing blaze as it began to blacken a path through the stand of eighty-year-old bark and felt none of the raw sexual pleasure he’d heard about from so many of the fire starters he’d helped put away.

Feeling only hunger, he tossed the empty bottle into the fire and turned his back on the rupturing flames. Never one to take chances, he peeled off the latex gloves and shoved them into his pocket. He would safely dispose of them later, in a county an oblivious world away. In Denver.

Unhurried, knowing the fire would burn its way uphill faster than it would down along the road toward his old Dodge Ram, Wilkes chose Chinese over American for lunch.

A wispy coil of charcoal black smoke reached his emerald green truck at the same time he clunked open the heavy metal door.

Climbing up into the truck’s cab, he turned the key in the ignition and felt the engine jump to life. Releasing the brake and tossing it into gear, he let the truck jolt down the rutted road.

Glancing into his rearview mirror, all he could see now was flickering red eyes darting about the thickening black shroud mushrooming faster than even he had anticipated.

An involuntary shudder flashed through his square frame. Damn it all if he wasn’t the only hungry animal on this mountain.

Maybe a steak would be better.

He turned his eyes back to the road.

Fire away.

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CHAPTER TWO

The searing eruption of a fiery-hot inferno exploded out from the depths of McKynna Lane’s most inner mind, hurling all that was sane and normal into cubbies and corners of her more conscious mind.

Fire?

Losing the connection to sights and sounds from the present moment, McKynna grabbed hold of her breath and let the flames burn through.

No.

Damn it. Not now.

Familiar with such uninvited, and unwelcome, onslaughts into private inner spaces, McKynna closed her eyes and coerced reason to return to the here and the now.

Pen frozen in mid-air, she took a deep breath and focused on her client.

She had no other choice. The woman had already slipped through the gates of hypnosis McKynna had opened for her and was edging deeper and deeper down into the timeless dimension of her own subconscious landscape.

Looking for answers that could only be found there.

Looking for McKynna to guide her to those answers.

Struggling for control, McKynna slammed the top of her body back against the black leather office chair. Just to feel her weight shift.

She dug her fingernails into the leather arm rests. Just to know that she could.

God, not a fire.

Where?

No, not now.

Unable to fight it back, she saw flames snake through a field filled with rainbows of small fragile flowers scattered through summer green alpine mountain tundra; saw a burst of wind coil and swirl the flames in teasing circles, turning beauty to black.

No! Focus, damn it.

McKynna bit down on the thought that it was neither the time nor the place for visions, at least not her own.

She had work to do.

Easing out a slow, even breath, and then taking in another, she opened her eyes and filled her vision with the moist, pale face of Kate, her 36-year-old obese client.

Kate. This moment was all about Kate.

Just about Kate.

“Going deeper and deeper now…to that perfect level for healing,” McKynna pulled out her calm and professional voice, “you can relax more and more with every breath in, and release tension with every breath out.”

Right.

McKynna took another deep breath in, and let another deep breath out, willing the vaulting inferno back to whatever Hell it had come from. “Tell me what you’re feeling.”

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