Free Fire (joe Pickett, #7)

The seventh novel in C. J. Box's Joe Pickett series opens when West Yellowstone lawyer Clay McCann walks into the remote Bechler River Ranger Station in Yellowstone National Park and hands over his weapons, calmly announcing he has just killed four campers near Robinson Lake.

By October, Joe Pickett, a Wyoming game warden recently fired by Game and Fish Director Randy Pope, works as a ranch foreman for his father-in-law, Bud Longbrake, near the town of Saddlestring. His wife, Marybeth, runs a successful business management firm, and their daughters Sheridan and Lucy are in school. Joe's life changes direction when Governor Spencer Rulon's chief of staff, Chuck Ward, summons him to a meeting at the local airport.

Governor Rulon presents two concerns. McCann murdered four employees of Zephyr Corporation, the park's concessions contractor, all members of an informal group called the Gopher State Five. A fifth member, Bob Olig, vanished the day after the murders. McCann exploited a constitutional loophole: The murders occurred in the thin strip of Yellowstone extending into Idaho, where no one lives. Under the Sixth Amendment, a jury must be drawn from the district of the crime, but with a population of zero, no jury can be empaneled, and McCann walked free. Rulon also received a letter from victim Rick Hoening, written a week before his death, warning that something involving park resources could "deeply impact" Wyoming's cash flow.

Rulon offers to reinstate Joe with back pay and benefits but insists he operate "without portfolio," not officially representing the governor. After consulting Marybeth, Joe accepts and recruits Nate Romanowski, an outlaw falconer who once vowed to help him whenever asked. Nate gives Joe a handgun for protection, since firearms are prohibited in the park.

At Yellowstone's Mammoth Hot Springs headquarters, Park Service officials view Joe as an interloper. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent Tony Portenson exposes Joe's cover story by revealing that investigators already know about Hoening's letter. Despite the hostility, Joe notes that McCann could have checked the guest register before his hike and seen the victims' names, suggesting premeditation.

Joe settles into the Mammoth Hotel, which triggers painful memories of his brother Victor, who died by suicide at 16 by driving their father's car into the stone arch at Yellowstone's North entrance. Ranger Judy Demming, first on the scene at Bechler, becomes Joe's unofficial partner. Joe reads through Hoening's e-mails and finds references to opposition to "bio-mining," the commercial harvesting of hot-spring microbes under park permits, and to "flamers," gas-emitting holes in the ground that can be lit, but nothing linking the victims to McCann.

Meanwhile, McCann returns to West Yellowstone to find a key payment missing. Only five percent of expected funds from a company called EnerDyne have arrived. McCann threatens EnerDyne's CEO, Layton Barron, but Barron claims securities regulators are auditing the company's finances.

Joe and Demming travel to the crime scene in the Zone of Death, the unpopulated Idaho strip where the no-jury loophole applies. An armed survivalist confronts them, but Nate, hidden in the trees, disables the man with precise shots. At McCann's law office in West Yellowstone, Joe spots corporate binders including one for EnerDyne.

The investigation turns when Mark Cutler, the Old Faithful area manager and amateur geologist, takes Joe and Demming to Sunburst Hot Springs. Cutler explains that unique thermophiles, or microbes, from Yellowstone's hot springs are being harvested by bioengineering firms, and that McCann filed the bio-mining permit application. Joe notices gas-emitting holes near an exposed coal seam. Cutler later calls to say he has "figured something out," but the next morning Joe finds Cutler's body boiling in the hot springs after nearly colliding with a black SUV speeding from the area.

At the Old Faithful Inn, Joe discovers his long-absent father, George Pickett, living in the park as a member of the Geyser Gazers, a group of geyser enthusiasts. A bitter reunion follows; Joe confronts George about abandoning the family after Victor's death and walks out.

McCann lures two associates into the Zone of Death and shoots them, then surrenders again at the Bechler station, raising his body count to six. In custody, he refuses to leave, and Joe realizes McCann fears someone inside the Park Service will kill him if released.

Joe returns to Sunburst and lights the flamers, confirming they burn in clean columns parallel to the coal seam. He and Demming secretly download surveillance footage from park entrance gates, hoping to identify the black SUV.

Demming spots the SUV and initiates a traffic stop with Park Service backup, but the backup ranger turns out to be Chief Ranger James Langston, who shoots her in the back. She survives. That same night, an attacker beats Joe's father nearly to death in Joe's hotel room, mistaking George for Joe. George sustains severe brain damage.

Marybeth and the girls arrive for a planned visit. Using documents Marybeth researched, Joe and Nate identify EnerDyne as a Colorado start-up using microbes to convert underground coal into natural gas. The incorporation papers list Barron as CEO, the chief ranger's wife Katherine Langston as VP of development, Chuck Ward as VP of operations, and McCann as attorney of record. Demming, from her hospital bed, confirms Langston shot her and identifies the SUV passenger as Ward.

The conspiracy becomes clear: EnerDyne's partners discovered that Yellowstone microbes react with coal to produce natural gas, a discovery worth billions. McCann killed Hoening and the others to silence opposition to bio-mining. Langston, Ward, and Park Service investigator Eric Layborn were recruited to protect the operation.

After discovering that someone sabotaged the gas valve in the cabin where his family was originally staying, Joe sends Marybeth and the girls home. He calls Portenson and offers the biggest arrest of the agent's career in exchange for a secret FBI assault team at Old Faithful, provided Nate is left alone. Nate extracts McCann from jail and forces him to call Langston, claiming he is going to the FBI with Bob Olig. During the drive, McCann confesses the entire conspiracy on Joe's recorder. Joe and Nate find Olig hiding in the Old Faithful Inn, where Cutler had been sheltering him, and set up an ambush with supervisory agent Del Ashby and the FBI team.

Langston, Barron, Ward, and Layborn arrive by snow coach. McCann, wearing a Kevlar vest, goads them into incriminating statements while FBI equipment records. When Layborn shoots McCann in the chest, the vest saves him. The FBI team kills Layborn and arrests the other three. Ward tells Joe that the governor "knows everything," a claim Joe cannot dismiss. The assault team commander then turns on Nate, arresting him on independent orders despite Portenson's deal with Joe.

In the chaos, McCann and Olig slip away. Olig drives McCann to Sunburst Hot Springs, lights the flamers, and pushes the handcuffed lawyer into the boiling water. As Joe and Ashby drive back to Mammoth, Steamboat Geyser erupts and a major earthquake shakes the park before the tremors subside.

Joe visits his brother's grave in the Gardiner cemetery, standing in the snow with nothing to say. He calls Rulon, who denies knowledge of Ward's involvement and deflects Joe's plea for help freeing Nate by pretending the phone connection is failing. Joe returns to Sunburst to find the hot springs dry, the microbes dead, and the flamers silent. The coal-gasifying reaction has been extinguished. Joe drives out of Yellowstone, thinking it is the most beautiful place on earth and that he cannot wait to get home.