Dark Sky, page 26
part #21 of Joe Pickett Series
Specifically, Nate could recognize the rump of a horse on the left side of the thickest tree trunk in the stand, and the head of a horse to the right of it. Which meant Earl was hiding directly behind the tree itself.
Nate steadied his revolver and visualized where Earl’s body should be on the other side of the center tree. Then he fired squarely into the trunk six and a half feet from the ground.
A shower of needles fell as the tree rocked with the impact as the bullet passed through it. Earl, practically headless, tumbled to the ground in a heap.
The riderless horse crow-hopped from the surprise, then did a high-stepped canter out of the trees into the clearing with its tail swishing with relief from the sudden absence of two hundred and twenty pounds on its back.
* * *
—
Joe sat back on the rocks with the sun on his face and his oldest daughter next to him and Nate joining them from below. Price paced around them giggling and shaking his head from side to side, saying, “I can’t believe we made it.”
He was kind of delirious.
Nate scowled at him while he slid his revolver into his shoulder holster.
“I’m sorry,” Price said about his laughter, “I’ve never been through anything like this before. I can’t help it.”
“You can try,” Nate said. Then to Joe: “Are you all right? You look like shit.”
“Never felt better,” Joe said with a grin. “It’s good to see you.”
“He saved my life,” Price said to Nate about Joe. “So did you and Sally . . .”
“Sheridan,” she corrected.
“Whatever,” Price said, still giddy. “The Thomases tried to kill me, then we nearly froze to death, then we were attacked by wolverines. Wolverines!”
Price stopped abruptly. Joe looked up to see Price pointing toward Brad’s big body splayed out behind them.
“Shoot him in the head,” Price said to Nate. “We need to make sure he doesn’t get up again.”
“He won’t,” Nate said. “Neither will Earl. Kirby might survive, but I’m not going to get too worked up about saving his sorry ass.”
“He’s alive?” Joe asked.
“Barely. Broken neck. Do you want me to finish him off?”
“No,” Joe said with vehemence. “Come on, Nate. We can try to get him airlifted out.”
Nate shrugged.
Joe noted that Sheridan had watched the exchange with interest, turning from Nate to him as if watching a tennis match.
Then he heard it: the deep bass thump-thump-thump of a distant helicopter. He couldn’t yet see it in the sky.
“That should be the search-and-rescue team,” Sheridan said. “The sheriff finally got things rolling.”
“I need to call them in,” Joe said. Sheridan helped him to his feet and stayed close to him as he limped down the slope toward the grazing packhorses and his satellite phone. It bothered her that he seemed frail. It was a thought she’d never had before.
“You take first class,” Price called to him. “I’ll sit in coach this time.”
“Is he always like this?” Sheridan asked Joe.
“Off and on,” Joe said.
“I can’t believe we’re here with Steve Price himself,” she said with awe. “I mean . . . it’s crazy.”
“It is, I guess,” Joe said, putting his arm around her shoulders. “But I’d rather hang out with you.”
“Call Mom as soon as you can. She’s beside herself.”
“Will do.”
TWENTY-NINE
Steve Price cradled his phone in both hands with the ConFab app open. He simply stared at it as if it were a Christmas package he was scared to open because he didn’t know what was inside. Finally, he looked up to Joe and said, “I don’t even know where to start.”
They were sitting side by side inside the Bell 206B-3 helicopter as it lifted off from the mountain meadow and made a turn over the timber to fly west toward Saddlestring. Joe was entranced by the forest as they rose above it and the trees and clearings got smaller and smaller in view and became scenery. The contrast was jarring. Just a couple of hours before, he thought, he was down there on his hands and knees in the dirt moving in increments of inches.
Kirby was strapped down on a stretcher and laid across the other two seats of the helicopter. His mouth and nose were obscured by an oxygen mask, but his eyes were open. Because he didn’t have a headset on like Joe and Price, he couldn’t follow their conversation. But he watched them as if he could.
They’d left the bodies of Earl and Brad Thomas where they’d fallen. They’d be retrieved on the next flight.
Sheridan, Nate, and two deputies had gathered all the horses and were leading them down the mountain to the trailhead. Sheriff Tibbs and the rest of the search-and-rescue team were still on the ground as well, because they were documenting and photographing the scene of the shootout. They’d be up there for a while, Sheriff Tibbs had said sourly, because Kirby had told them there were more bodies to find: Zsolt Rumy, Aidan Jacketta, Brock Boedecker, and Tim Joannides.
Even though Kirby had been helpful to the search-and-rescue team, Joe had told him as they loaded the gurney into the chopper that he still planned to arrest him for his Game and Fish Department violations—if he survived. Kirby had scowled at him before the oxygen mask was attached to his face.
“What did you say?” Joe asked Price.
Price held up his phone. He said, “I don’t know where to start. So much has happened. It’s like I’ve been up here a lifetime. I’m nervous about my reentry into my world. How much do I post about what happened?”
“Just tell ’em you’re alive,” Joe said. “That’s what I told my wife.”
Price nodded his head, unsure. Then he used his intercom to ask the pilot if his jet would be waiting for him at the airport. The pilot assured him it would be.
“You’re leaving right away?” Joe asked.
“Just as fast as I can. I need to get back to work. I need to put all this behind me.”
“What about some of those things Brock said about ConFab? Are you going to make any changes?”
Price stared at a spot above Joe’s head, then said, “I’ll think about it. I’ll think about a lot of things.”
As Price talked, Joe could see a change in him. The vulnerability and fear Price had revealed in their ordeal was melting away and being replaced by the arrogant and indifferent shell he’d been wearing when he arrived. Even his posture was different.
“I think the sheriff wants you to stick around and give a statement,” Joe said.
Price waved it away. “He knows where to find me.”
“There’s something we never had a chance to talk about,” Joe said, hoping his voice didn’t sound as uncomfortable as he felt.
“What’s that?”
“Governor Allen was hoping you’d be impressed enough with our state that you’d consider locating your big server farms here. He has lots of reasons why it would be a good idea for everybody.”
Price looked at Joe without expression. For a good long time.
“I can’t,” Price said finally.
“Why not?”
Price gestured toward the tops of the mountains out the window as they streaked along. “This,” he said. “All of this. I can never look at this place or think about it again without the image of me smashing that rock into Brad Thomas’s head. I was excited to do that at the time. I wanted his brains to come out of his ears. In three days, I turned into an animal. That’s not how I like to think of myself.”
Joe sat back. The scratches on his back hurt and his brain was numb and fuzzy. The effects of what they’d gone through were starting to overwhelm him, as they obviously had with Price.
“That’s not all,” Price said. “Last night in that shack, Boedecker tore me a new asshole. It was just relentless abuse, Joe. That’s never happened to me in my entire life—to be treated with such contempt and disdain like that. I’ve testified before Congress and they were gentle compared to that. It made me realize that Boedecker probably isn’t the only person out here who thinks like that.
“These people don’t respect what I’ve done and they don’t have a filter. They don’t understand that I live in a different world, even though you tried to show me a new one. Joe, I’ve gone from being scared to death of germs and viruses a few days ago to having my life threatened by violent men and getting ripped up by a fucking wolverine! And trying to brain some mouth-breather with a rock. I don’t ever want to experience those feelings again.”
Price sat back. “No, I need to be with my own kind.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“It’s okay,” Price said. “Your governor thought that maybe I’d have such a good experience that I’d want to urge my team to build here. That’s how things are in my world: everybody wants something from me. It is what it is.”
Joe couldn’t argue with that.
“This is the last elk hunt I’ll ever go on,” Price said.
“They aren’t all like this,” Joe replied.
“I hope not.”
“I was really hoping you’d be more open to the governor’s request,” Joe said. “I’m being purely selfish here. He all but threatened me and my department if it didn’t go well for you. And it didn’t go well for you at all.”
Price placed his phone screen down on his lap. It was an immense concession, Joe thought.
“Tell your governor something for me,” Price said, his mouth tightening. “Tell him if he goes after you in any way that I’ll sue him. I’ll destroy him and his administration. Tell him I think he put me in a position where I lost two of my people and nearly lost my own life because of his negligence. I can throw an army of lawyers at him that will keep him and his administration tied up in court for the rest of his natural life. Tell him that.”
Joe didn’t know how to reply.
“I owe you a well of thanks,” Price said. “You’re not selfish at all. I know you could have given me up at any time with no cost to you. No one would have even known about it. But you didn’t.”
“I . . . I just did my job,” Joe said, stammering.
“That wasn’t your job,” Price said. “You went so far beyond your job I’ll forever be grateful. I want to reward you if I can.”
“You can’t,” Joe said.
Price made an I don’t take no for an answer face. He dug in a side pocket of his seat until he found a crumpled blank envelope and a pen. With writing that scrawled with the vibration of the rotors, he scratched out a message and folded it in half and placed it facedown on his lap next to his phone.
“When we land, I’m giving you this. You have to accept it and you can’t hand it back,” Price said. “I’ll tell my people to be ready for your call.”
“What is it?”
Price ignored the question. Instead, he tapped out a quick message telling his millions of followers that he was alive and well and that the hunting trip was a “tragic misadventure.” Joe could see the screen because they were in such close proximity.
Then Price wrote: More to come . . .
* * *
—
As the helicopter descended to the tarmac and Joe could see Price’s Gulfstream taxiing over to meet them, Price said, “You’re a good man, Joe Pickett. I can’t say I’ve met many like you. It warms my heart to know men like you still exist.”
Joe looked away, his face flushing hot.
Before Price unbuckled his seat belt and exited the aircraft, he turned and handed the envelope to Joe.
“Take it,” he said.
Joe did, reluctantly. Then Price was gone.
He bounded up the stairs of the jet with more energy than Joe would have imagined the man still had. Before the stairs telescoped up and the door was closed, Price turned and took a last look at the mountains, the sky, and Joe, who was still seated in the helicopter.
Price shouted, “Nature sucks!” Joe couldn’t hear the words because of the jet engines wrapping up. But he could read his lips.
Joe unfolded the envelope and read it. Then he read it again.
In a childlike wavery script, it said:
I.O.U., Joe Pickett
100,0000 First-Class Shares of Aloft Corp.
Signed,
Steve-2 a.k.a. Steven Price, CEO
He slid the envelope into the back pocket of his Wranglers and stiffly climbed out of the helicopter to solid ground. He was stunned.
Joe thought, Won’t Marybeth be surprised?
THIRTY
Nate drove home in the borrowed pickup with the now-empty horse trailer clattering along behind him and raising a cloud of dust. As he did, he dug out the cell phone Liv had insisted he take along and powered it up.
The screen showed four missed calls, all from Liv. They’d come within a five-minute stretch two hours before. None came after. She’d not left a message.
Liv never did that. Something was wrong. He jammed the accelerator to the floor while calling her back. She didn’t pick up and his call went to her voicemail.
* * *
—
Even from a distance, as he topped the hill that led to his compound in the sagebrush prairie, he could tell that things weren’t right at home. The symmetrical lines of his falcon mews were crooked and the wire mesh that had been stapled to the frame of it was torn away.
The Yarak, Inc. van Liv usually drove was parked in the open outbuilding next to his home. Meaning she was there but not picking up.
Two of his red-tailed hawks strutted around on the roof of his house. Their hoods had been removed and they’d been set free but had apparently returned.
He blasted by the mews with a sidewise glance as he passed by. There were no live birds inside sitting on their stoops, but there were at least three lifeless falcon carcasses on the ground, their feathers rippling in the wind.
With a flood of adrenaline and outright dread roaring through his body, Nate slammed the pickup to a stop in the front yard and bailed out with his weapon drawn. There was no movement from the closed drapes in the window, because no one was looking out.
He followed his gun through the front door, ready for anything.
Liv was seated in a kitchen chair in the middle of the front room. Her eyes were swelled shut, but he could see her pupils on him through the slits. Her face was bruised and the left side of her hair was flat with matted blood. Her ankles were duct-taped to the legs of the chair and her wrists to the arms of it. Silver duct tape had been wrapped around her head so she couldn’t speak.
He was enraged.
“Are they still here?” he whispered.
She emphatically shook her head no. He shoved his revolver into his shoulder holster and removed the tape from her face. It left a two-inch mark and indentations in her cheeks.
“Kestrel,” was the first word she said.
He went cold. “Did they take her?”
“No. I think he would have, but he didn’t know about her. I hid her before he came in.”
They’d discussed their safe place before, a place Liv was to hide in if danger came to their house. He closed his eyes for a second in relief that both Liv and his baby girl were there.
“I heard him out there in the mews,” Liv said as he cut the tape from her wrists and ankles. “When I looked out, I saw him loading the falcons he wanted into his vehicle. He took a bunch of them and he snapped the necks of those he didn’t want. That’s when I called you the first time. You didn’t pick up.”
“I’m sorry,” Nate said.
“Nate, he scared me. He had a really cold look in his eyes and I think he would have taken Kestrel if he’d known she was here.”
“You did the right thing. Are you hurt?”
“I think I’m okay, but he beat the shit out of me,” Liv said. “He must have tied me up when I was unconscious.”
“Who was it? How many?”
“One man,” she said. “But he was strong and he was a demon. When I yelled at him to leave the falcons alone, he came after me and started swinging. I don’t think he realized anyone was at home. The SUV had green Colorado plates.”
The second she was free, Liv stood up and ran to their bedroom. Nate followed.
Before she could throw the rug back and grasp the steel ring on the floor, he heard Kestrel say, “Da!”
“I’ll do it,” he said as he opened the panel that led to the crawl space beneath the house. It was dark down there and Kestrel sat on the dirt floor. She clutched her plush dinosaur companion and looked up at him and beamed. When she saw Liv’s face, Kestrel was startled and she began to cry.
He snatched her up and his impulse was to hug her so tightly it might crush her. He kissed her chubby cheek and handed her over to Liv. Kestrel clutched handfuls of loose dirt in each hand.
“She’s okay,” he said.
“She didn’t yell out at all,” Liv said, nuzzling her baby. “She’s such a good girl.”
“You both are,” Nate said.
* * *
—
On the way to the emergency room with Kestrel strapped into her car seat, Nate said, “After you get looked at, I’m taking you both to Joe and Marybeth’s for a few days.”
“Joe’s okay?”
“Joe’s okay.”
“Thank God.”
“I can’t say the same for some other guys.”
He briefly told her what had happened in the mountains, and while she took it in, she listened with disbelief. He tried to keep his voice calm as he fought against the cold black rage building up inside of him.
