The Same End (The Lamb and the Lion Book 3)

by Gregory Ashe

  “I’ll shoot you.”

  Haggerty laughed quietly and kept walking.

  Gritting his teeth, Jem managed to roll onto his side again. It cost him a shout of pain that he only partially managed to suppress. When he blinked his eyes clear, he could see Haggerty advancing on Tean. The glasses hung on the tip of Tean’s nose, and sweat ran down his face in rivers. He was holding Jager’s throwdown piece, the revolver with the American-flag grip that they’d discovered in Jager’s locked filing cabinet. Tean must have kept it, the little miscreant. Jem had never been prouder.

  “Stop right there,” Tean said. “I’ll kill you. I mean it. I’ll—”

  Haggerty kept the same steady pace. When he was close enough, he slapped the gun out of Tean’s hand. Then he slapped Tean—great, openhanded blows that drove him backward until he had blood streaming down his face and was slumped against the Ford’s chassis.

  Jem didn’t understand the pain in his chest until he realized he was screaming, struggling against the handcuffs, trying to get to his feet.

  Haggerty grabbed Tean by the hair, spun around with the doc in front of him, and buried the muzzle of Ammon’s pistol in Tean’s side. The trooper’s light brown eyes, almost yellow, were cool.

  “Be quiet.”

  Jem swallowed his howls. He tried to catch Tean’s gaze, but Tean had lost his glasses again. Blood masked his features, most of it from his nose and a split lip. Nothing serious, Jem told himself. Nothing really serious. Then he heard his own thoughts, and he wanted to laugh.

  “Where’s the pickup happening?” Haggerty dug the muzzle deeper into Tean’s side. “I want the coordinates, and I want whatever instructions you were able to decode.”

  “We don’t—” Jem tried.

  Faster than Jem could believe, Haggerty pointed the pistol off at an angle and fired. The clap of the shot echoed across the valley. Then Haggerty returned the pistol to Tean’s ribs. Tean squirmed, trying to pull away from the hot metal, but Haggerty had a tight grip.

  “Next one goes into your boy’s knee. And after that, his ankle. Then his other knee. Then his other ankle. Then his wrists. Then I start blowing off fingers. I’ve got a box of ammo in my trunk. I’ve got all day, and the best part is, your boy will still be alive. He’ll live a long life, remembering every day how you pissed me off.”

  “You don’t have time,” Jem said. “And you have a witness.”

  Haggerty grimaced. Then, after a cautionary jab with the muzzle, he glanced over his shoulder. A blue Prius was parked on the shoulder behind his cruiser, and a heavyset woman was trudging toward them. She was carrying a first-aid kit and, from a distance, appeared to be wearing a pith helmet, although Jem was willing to admit that he might have been imagining it from all the blows to the head.

  After letting out a sigh, Haggerty squeezed off two shots in the woman’s direction. She turned around and sprinted back to the car.

  “Guess we’ll do this hard and fast,” Haggerty said, shaking Tean by the hair and then shoving him to the ground. “For fuck’s sake, why can’t one thing be easy about this?”

  “We can show you,” Jem said.

  Haggerty hesitated. He drew a bead on Tean, who was on his hands and knees.

  “We know where the pickup is going to be. It’s happening just after sunset, so you still have time. We don’t have coordinates, but we can show you.”

  Haggerty’s mouth was a thin line. He shifted his weight. His hand and the gun were coated with fine red grit like powdered blood.

  “All right, boys. We’re going for a ride.”

  “He needs his glasses,” Jem said.

  “Go on, Dr. Leon. Get your glasses.”

  “By the truck,” Jem said. The tide of adrenaline was pulling out, and he was shaking and about to be sick. “No, farther back.”

  Tean’s hand closed around the taped frames, and he settled them on his face. His face screwed up with worry when he glanced at the truck, and Jem willed him to stay silent.

  “Ready?” Haggerty scooped up the revolver, Jager’s throwaway piece, and shoved it behind his waistband at the small of his back. He kept Ammon’s pistol in his other hand. His own service weapon was still holstered at his side; he hadn’t even needed to draw it. “Here we go.”

  38

  The cruiser rumbled along a dirt BLM road, heading northeast up the canyon. They were half an hour on the other side of Moab now, heading toward the Dolores River and the coordinates that had been encoded in the burner phone. The desert was a boneyard at the cusp of evening: the twisted, ossified outlines of ocotillo, jackpine, juniper, and scrub oak; the bristling, dead-man’s-hair of locoweed, quinine, sage, and panic grass; the sun licking its way along rimrock like wood catching fire, old stone burned by an even older flame.

  Tean had stripped off his shirt, and in the back seat of the cruiser, he wadded it against the side of Jem’s head. Haggerty had reopened the nasty laceration that Jager had given Jem, and Jem definitely had at least one broken rib. He was leaning against Tean, the position allowing him some relief and enabling him to breathe more easily.

  “He needs these cuffs off,” Tean said.

  “I heard you the first five times, Dr. Leon.”

  “He can’t breathe.”

  Haggerty sighed. That had been his attitude through this whole thing: tired and mildly frustrated, as though he’d been forced to give up his Saturday morning to help an elderly aunt.

  “I’m sorry,” Tean whispered to Jem for what felt like the millionth time. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do it. I’m sorry I let you down.”

  Jem just shook his head.

  “Let me see your eyes again,” Tean said. “I don’t think you have a concussion, but I want to check.”

  Groaning, Jem let Tean maneuver him until Tean could check his pupils.

  He’s going to kill us, Jem mouthed. His color was terrible, and he’d already been sick once, forcing Haggerty to stop the car so that Jem could puke on the side of the road.

  Tean nodded.

  For a moment, emotions battled in Jem’s face; Tean ignored them. Instead, he helped Jem recline against him again, adjusted the improvised bandage, and laced his fingers with Jem’s good hand. His skin was textured with the desert’s red dust, and his grip was strong.

  “At this point,” Tean said, speaking loudly to be heard over their rumbling passage along the dirt road, “there’s still a way you can walk away from this. Jager is convinced that the sheriff killed Antonio, so you don’t have to worry about him. Jem and I are the only ones who know you’re involved, and we’re good at keeping secrets. You can take the cuffs off Jem, leave us right here by the side of the road, and nobody has to know anything.”

  Haggerty laughed. “I don’t think you’re as smart as you think you are.”

  “What am I missing?”

  “The whole thing is fucked to hell now. Too bad, really. We had a good thing going.”

  “You were all in on it,” Tean said. “All of you.”

  “Like I said: we had a good thing going. Everybody had their part. Moab’s a nice, safe place. Tourists come and spend their money, but you can raise a family here too. I grew up here. We make sure we don’t have any problems.”

  “Sure,” Jem croaked. “You keep the drugs moving safely, and they stay out of your little bubble. Oh, and you fellows get rich off it.”

  “Well,” Haggerty said, flashing a smile in the rearview mirror. “I’ve got to retire sometime. The rodeo kid bought his horses. Nobles was smart; lived off the cash, invested most of what he earned as chief. Bet you didn’t know he was a bona fide millionaire. Too bad the rodeo kid turned out to be the little twat I predicted he’d be. I watched that kid grow up, and he thought he was the biggest thing since Jesus because he could get cheerleaders to give him a zinger in the back of his truck, and the only reason he got elected to sheriff was because he won that championship. Good riddance.”

  “You k
illed him,” Tean said quietly.

  “Jeez, you really think the worst of me. The kid had a crisis of conscience. It started when your friend Tanner got his hooks in McEneany: pictures of McEneany with girls, with drugs, McEneany out of his head on crystal. When he sobered up and realized Tanner had his balls in a vise, the kid wanted to be done with everything. Tanner kept riding him, though—made him go out and help him clean up the mess with Weckesser. That’s when McEneany told me and Nobles how stupid he’d been. I don’t know what he was expecting, but we told him he had to play out the rest of it. That was the first we’d heard about drugs moving in on the Dolores, and we didn’t like the idea that somebody was trying to run something through our territory without paying the toll. McEneany threw a fit, of course, but it got even worse after he killed that fellow in the motel, the one he shot in the shower. You should have seen the kid after, crying, praying, begging for help. Nobles told him to come over, and they’d talk it out. Figure a way to deal the rodeo kid out of the game. Nobles already had everything set up: plastic drop cloths covering everything. One tap to the back of the head. Then he drove him into the Maze.”

  “And you shot Nobles in the back,” Jem said. His breathing had a whooshing noise to it that worried Tean a great deal. “Is that it?”

  Haggerty shrugged. “By then, I knew we were fucked. Time to close up shop. Like you said, nobody else can put this on me. I’ll find a way to unload the pickup, and that’ll be the last of it.”

  Jem’s hand tightened again around Tean’s, and Tean nodded. Haggerty didn’t know that the pickup was fake. Haggerty didn’t know that Kristine and Nathaniel had cooked up the whole thing as bait to draw out Tanner.

  They drove into the narrowing canyon, and Tean played out every possibility he could imagine until the future blurred. When the dirt road ended, Haggerty stomped the brakes and glanced over his shoulder. Through the security partition, his gaze was hard as slickrock.

  “You haven’t been playing games with me, have you, Dr. Leon?”

  Tean visualized the map he had pulled up. Then he scanned the ground ahead of them. Clumps of antelope brush were broken and sagging, and something had snapped a Russian olive’s branch, which now hung from strips of bark. Tean pointed. “You should have brought a vehicle with higher clearance. We have to go off-road from here.”

  Haggerty spun in his seat and considered the faint trail. Then, shoulders drooping, he shifted into gear. The Charger nosed up onto the uneven slope; the clumps of antelope brush crackled under the chassis like Black Cats. When the tires rolled over a clump of snakeweed, the dry stalks hissed like their namesake. They limped forward, the Charger rocking from side to side, dipping abruptly when the ground dropped away, Jem groaning as the movement jostled his injuries.

  When they reached the edge of the bluff, the western sky had purpled, and shadows thickened in the canyon below them. The last light traced the Dolores with silver, outlining the flat, rust-colored water. Tamarisks and cottonwoods grew thick along the bank, and in one clump of salt cedar, Tean spotted the outline of a ranger’s cabin. An inflatable raft had been dragged up onto a gravelly strip of shore.

  “Well,” Haggerty said, his smile flickering in the rearview mirror. “Fuck me.”

  “Now let us go,” Tean said. “We’ll walk.”

  “Not just yet. I don’t see any cargo.”

  “They probably moved it inside the cabin.”

  “That seems like a lot of extra work,” Haggerty said slowly. “Just to turn around and load it again.”

  “There’s a comment box,” Jem said. “Make sure you leave them a suggestion.”

  “And how the hell are they going to get a couple hundred kilos of meth up here? They’re sure as fuck not going to carry it.”

  “I don’t know, man. They didn’t write out their master plan for us.”

  “There’s probably a trail that leads down there,” Tean said. “A dugway. Or a switchback. Something big enough for an ATV so they could shuttle it up here.”

  Haggerty was quiet for a long time. The silence stretched out, broken only by the engine’s rumble and the hiss of the A/C. In spite of the cold air, Tean was sweating, and he could smell his own fear. Then Haggerty seemed to reach a decision, squaring his shoulders and reaching for the door handle.

  “We can check the cabin,” Tean said, the words coming out so fast they were a jumble. “You need more information. They might have hidden the shipment inside the cabin. Or it might be nearby. Jem can find it.”

  Haggerty craned his head, glancing at them over one shoulder. Then he shook his head. “I think this is the end of your road, guys. I’m going to open your door, and you get out nice and quiet.” The car rocked, adjusting for the loss of Haggerty’s weight as the trooper stood. His door slammed shut. When he got to the rear door, he had Ammon’s gun in his hand again. He rapped on the glass with the barrel, three times, and repeated, “Nice and quiet.”

  Tean’s breath caught in his throat.

  “It’s ok,” Jem whispered, squeezing Tean’s hand. “Let me go first. Maybe I can surprise him.”

  “No.” Tean resettled his glasses and put a hand on Jem’s shoulder to keep him in place. “No, Jem.”

  When Haggerty opened the door, Tean scooted along the seat. The vinyl upholstery stuck to the bare skin of his arm and shoulder. He suddenly wanted his shirt, but it was a crumpled, bloody mess in the footwell, and it was too late anyway. He planted his feet on sun-hot ground and stood.

  “Officer Haggerty, you won’t be able to find it on your own.”

  Haggerty’s yellow eyes were steady. “I’m not so sure about that. They left the boat just sitting out in the open. I figure I’ll walk through the cabin door and find that stash just fine.”

  “Do you want to take the risk? You’ve got a lot riding on this. It’s your last score. Do you want to lose it because you—” Tean had to stop to swallow here; the desert had sucked the moisture from his throat. “Because you were hasty?”

  “I prefer the term cautious.”

  “You’re not being very cautious. Someone muled the cargo down the Dolores. Where is he? Waiting inside that cabin? Hoping someone stupid walks through that door? And you can’t wait him out, either. Kristine and Nathaniel, or whatever you want to call them, they’ll be here soon. They’re not going to miss this pickup, and they’re not going to be happy if they find you here.”

  Shifting his weight, Haggerty hooked one thumb in his utility belt. His eyes cut past Tean to the road they had followed. After a moment, he said, “I’d better hurry up, then.”

  “You won’t be able to find it. I wouldn’t be able to find it either. The only person who’s going to be able to find it is Jem, and you need me to help him down there.”

  “Not necessarily. I could get him down there; I think I can motivate him.”

  “The only thing that motivates me,” Jem said from inside the car, “is McDonald’s. Do you have McDonald’s? Fries would be ideal. Tean, get out of the way. This motherfucker is dead set on being stupid, and we’re holding him up.”

  But Tean held his spot, blocking Jem’s exit, the cruiser’s door between him and Haggerty. “And how are you going to get it all back up the bluff? That was your question. How are you going to move it up here before Kristine and Nathaniel arrive?”

  “Your busted-up boytoy isn’t going to be good for carrying anything.”

  “He’s going to find the drugs. I’ll move them.”

  “Tean’s stronger than he looks,” Jem said. “He’s like one of those old, broken-down mules that can still carry hundreds of pounds.”

  “Quit helping,” Tean whispered. To Haggerty, he said, “You don’t lose anything by letting us go down there.”

  “You guys are determined to make this more complicated than it needs to be,” Haggerty said. His gaze moved back to the dirt road, west, where the swollen sun was sinking behind the goblins and hoodoos and sandstone fins. “Let�
��s get this over with. We’re running out of day.”

  It took Tean a few minutes to find a switchback hiking trail that led them down from the bluff. No matter what Tean argued, Haggerty refused to remove Jem’s cuffs, and so Tean had to balance both of them on the steep, slickrock path. Jem did his best, but his injured ribs made everything more difficult, and he was gasping and making sharp pained cries that only got worse as they made their way down. After the third time Jem stumbled, almost pitching all three of them off the slope, Haggerty ordered them to go ahead.

  “I’m sorry,” Tean whispered, steadying Jem as they rounded another switch. “I know this is really painful, and I’m so sorry.”

  Jem rolled his eyes.

  Tean moved on autopilot for the next five steps. Then he whispered, “Oh my gosh.”

  “Don’t act so surprised,” Jem whispered back.

  “Oh my gosh.”

  “You really ought to know better by now.”

  “But I saw him kick you. I saw—” Tean tightened his grip, nails digging into Jem’s arm. “I’ve been scared sick.”

  “Ow, ow, ow. Does it make you feel better that I really do think I have broken ribs?”

  Tean thought about this and relaxed his grip. “A little.”

  “Were you always this evil? Or is it just my influence? Ow, ow, ow. Stop it, I was just kidding.”

  Their conversation paused so that Jem could do more moaning and whimpering. After the next switch, Tean whispered, “Jem, what if I’m right? Somebody might be waiting in the cabin.”

  “Your imaginary drug courier?”

  “No, dummy. Tanner.”

  “Good. I hope he is. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do with that fuckstick.”

  “You won’t feel that way when he shoots both of us as we walk through the door.”

  “I might. You don’t know how I feel.”

  “Jem!”

  “Tanner won’t shoot to kill. He likes to play with his food, remember? And he’s probably pissed, seriously pissed about the missing drugs. He’s going to want answers before he kills Kristine and Nathaniel. On top of that, he’s going to be disoriented when he sees us instead of those two. It’s going to give us a few seconds to work.”