I stood, almost ready to go to the bookshelf and take out the folder. But there was one thing I needed to know first. “You’re going to arrest Morrissey for this, aren’t you?”
“No. You won’t.”
The voice was almost unfamiliar and so cold and hard that I was surprised, when I turned, to see Jimmy holding the antique pistol in shaky hands, aimed at Lieutenant Leland.
CHAPTER 34
Dorie Armitage
January 26, 1945
Dizziness, panic, and fear made a cold braid down my spine as I squinted into the dark through the falling snow, down who knows how far.
“Sarah!” I shouted again. “Sarah Ruth, you answer me right now or I’ll . . .”
What was I doing? Threatening someone who was injured? Please let her just be injured and not . . .
I closed my eyes, straining to hear. Yes. A weak groan.
The edge was already too close, a yard away. But there was no way to avoid it. I fell to my knees and crawled nearer, fumbling for the flashlight in my pocket with glove-wrapped fingers, then aiming the beam down.
There. Thank God, it wasn’t a bottomless abyss over the edge of a sheer cliff like I’d been trained to expect from movies. Sarah Ruth had fallen, sure, but only about nine feet down, to a rocky, snow-covered ledge. Her right leg was splayed out awkwardly to the side at a painful angle.
“Did you break anything?”
She shifted, and I could see pain on her face. “I don’t . . . don’t think I can stand.”
Not unexpected, but not good either. Heroines were always twisting their ankle in stories, but usually when there was a muscular man around to lean on. At that moment, I actually looked around as if one might materialize out of the blizzard.
No such luck.
“I’ll come down for you,” I declared.
“You can’t . . . carry me back up. You need to get—” she paused, as if struggling to say the word—“help.”
My shoulders, squared nobly, sagged in relief. Help. Yes. I could do that. Mr. Morrissey would know what to do. Wasn’t that what rangers did? Rescue people and such? “I’ll find your father, I promise. Once I get back to the camp, I’ll drive into town if he’s not back yet.”
“We’re closer to the fire tower than the camp.”
Why would that . . . ?
She couldn’t be serious. “Yes, but that’s . . . up.”
“It’s the best way.”
The only way, she might as well have said. “But what if I get lost?”
“Follow the path.”
What I wanted to say was, “Right, the path that’s completely covered in snow?” But there was nothing for it, so instead, “Don’t worry, I’ll come back for you.” Because if you said things forcefully enough, they must come true.
I could do this.
“Get Gordon. Please.” Sarah Ruth’s voice, once all gruffness, sounded surprisingly weak, and that worried me more than anything.
“I will. And I’ll hurry too.”
Though not too much. After all, that’s what had caused Sarah Ruth’s fall.
“Gordon,” she’d said. Not Jimmy, her own brother. Maybe she figured he’d be too agitated over Leland to be of much help. Or maybe there really was something going on between the two of them. At the moment, I’d accept help from just about anyone I could find in this storm.
I pulled my borrowed coat tighter, and the flecks of ice that had been stinging my neck melted down my collar, burrowing the cold deeper. There was only one thing left to do: persevere in the direction that seemed most likely to lead to rescue . . . and pray that I hadn’t been on the wrong path from the start.
CHAPTER 35
Gordon Hooper
January 26, 1945
I’d faced down that pistol once already, when Sarah Ruth held it the day before, but that was different. She’d only been frightened, a woman startled into defending herself, and had lowered her weapon as soon as she recognized us.
Jimmy was angry down to his bones. A seething anger that, I’d learned with my father, you didn’t reason with—not if you were smart. You ran from it.
But unlike with Nelson, here there was nowhere for me to run or even hide.
“You can’t ruin my father’s life,” Jimmy said, spitting out the words. “I won’t let you.”
And I could tell from the way the lieutenant’s eyes widened, enough that I could see the whites, that he hadn’t known Jimmy was a Morrissey. In the next moment, though, he recovered, his voice completely unrattled, his eyes trained on the barrel of the pistol. “James, this won’t end well. Not for you, not for your father.”
“What am I supposed to do? Let you run down the mountain, call in your army buddies, and arrest Dad for treason? They hang people for that, you know.”
Leland almost chuckled, catching himself so barely with a cough that Jimmy must have noticed. “No one is getting hanged.”
Clearly, he didn’t understand how serious this was, probably thinking Jimmy was just a nervous kid who had watched too many gangster movies.
I tried to interject. “Why don’t you listen to him, Jimmy? He just wants to talk.”
“I don’t want to hear it, Hooper. His kind doesn’t care if people like us get hurt. Remember? You agreed with me. You said we can’t trust them.”
There it was, the language of us versus them, Jimmy trying to keep me on his side against Lieutenant Leland.
“Before I do anything, I want all the facts. That’s all.” The lieutenant started to slowly stand. “That’s why I want to see any documents your father found.”
“Don’t move,” Jimmy burst out, and Leland froze. I tensed too. Sweat streaked Jimmy’s pockmarked forehead, but he didn’t move to wipe it away, keeping both hands, slightly unsteady, on the gun.
Does he know how to use it?
Of course he does. He and Sarah Ruth regularly supplemented our dinner with game from the forest.
“Take out your weapon,” Jimmy ordered. “Slowly. And set it on the ground.”
His weapon?
Of course. An army officer would be armed.
Leland complied, moving sunrise slow toward his army-issue holster, drawing out the sidearm. “All right. But you have to understand that—”
“Shut up!” Jimmy said, and I heard the desperation in his voice. He had no plan for what to do next, did he? His gaze flitted around the room like a bird searching for a place to land, then turned to me. “Gordon, pick it up.”
No hesitation. He knew the gun would be safe with me, safer even than slid across the floor or flung out the door into the snowstorm. I was his ally, and more important, a pacifist.
“I don’t want—” I began but was cut short by a slice of a glare from Leland. Take it, he seemed to be saying.
Jimmy wanted me to hold the pistol. But so did Leland, a man I’d just met, an army man.
My mind couldn’t answer why, not fast enough, and while it puzzled over that, my hand reached down and accepted the gun.
I’d never held one before, unless you counted the Brown Bess musket carried by a reenactor on the Revolutionary War float of a Fourth-of-July parade. Leland’s military sidearm was different. It wasn’t a prop or a tool. It was cold steel, made to tear through flesh and blood. Maybe it already had.
Now both Lieutenant Leland and I were facing Jimmy, with him standing between us and the door. Leland was still trying to explain. “The other officers and I came because we wanted your father to know why we can’t have newspapers across the nation reporting the bombs. If he’s a reasonable man, he’ll understand that.”
But the glazed look in Jimmy’s eyes told me that, even if he heard what Leland was saying, he didn’t believe him.
He’s not going to listen. Dear God, he’s going to shoot.
I could feel my heart thumping in my chest, so loudly I thought Jimmy would whip around and shoot me instead.
You could stop it. Like Clara wished she had done. You could save a life.
By taking o
ne?
No. Firing a bullet didn’t mean killing a person. Of course not. There were nonlethal places I could shoot.
But is it the right thing to do?
I felt the gun shake in my hand. Could I even aim?
Leland looked at me briefly, not long enough for Jimmy to turn and notice. But somehow he saw the struggle and . . . nodded.
Do what you have to, he seemed to be saying.
What I wanted was to run out the door and down the ladder, storm or no storm.
“Love thy neighbor as thyself,” Jesus had said. But there was no battered Samaritan on the side of the road to make it clear who most needed my help.
“Go, and do thou likewise.”
There was no likewise here, nothing that remotely resembled any story in Scripture.
Dogging the panic, anger irrationally filled me again. As if it were God’s fault for not telling me how to respond to this, for not making it clear to me. Just like Clara.
“And who is my neighbor?”
I. Don’t. Know.
“What are you going to do now?” Leland asked, his voice low and level.
Jimmy opened his mouth, then closed it, uncertainty in his eyes, his hand slightly unsteady on the gun, and I felt a pang of sympathy. That was the question, wasn’t it?
For both of us.
CHAPTER 36
Dorie Armitage
January 26, 1945
I’d expected to see the lookout from afar, like the illustration of Rapunzel’s tower in my childhood storybook with the jam-print stains, rising like a sentinel out of the mists. A beacon of hope, easily visible to the one questing after it.
But the only things I could see past my frosty lashes were rocks, snow, trees, and the swirling darkness beyond, while behind me, Sarah Ruth was hurt and huddled against the mountain, waiting for my promised rescue.
Stop being dramatic. That’s what Gordon would say. I’d wandered slightly off the path in a national forest during a snowstorm, and soon enough, the wind would die down and I’d see the fire tower.
Yes. Everything was going to be fine. If only Jimmy hadn’t foolishly decided to protect his father, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
But who told him anything was justified as long as his motive was right? the critical part of my brain argued back. You practically argued him into this.
I was the ignition, the first step in the chain that got the engine roaring to life. Never the last step, so I could always claim, with complete sincerity, that I wasn’t to blame for what happened next.
“You didn’t kill him, Dorie, but you sure did make him want to die a hero’s death. Can you blame him for taking his chance?”
It wasn’t true—it couldn’t be. Jack made his choices, him and his stupid conscience he was always going on about. And my choices, why . . . I hadn’t thought them through quite so much. Didn’t take the time to follow them to their logical ends like my overly studious brother. But that’s no crime.
Suddenly I wasn’t so sure of that.
Keep going. I couldn’t get distracted, not now.
Sarah Ruth was born and raised in these mountains, made of sterner stuff than I. She’d be fine. She’d have to be.
Unless she lied about how badly she’s injured. Unless the loose rock falls again, this time on top of her. Unless you can’t find your way and she freezes to death, alone.
No.
In the frozen silence, I prayed and tried to ignore my fears as I kept taking one step forward after the other, my boots aimed in an upward direction. It was all I knew to do.
And then I heard it—a crack pitched just above the wind—and I turned. Was that a twinkle of light?
I chose to believe it was, directing everything I had in the direction of the sound. But even as I took a few steps, something in me faltered. That sound . . . the wind had distorted it, but it had sounded an awful lot like a gunshot.
Maybe one of them is shooting into the air as a signal to us from the fire tower. Cheered by that thought, I forged ahead, visually marking the direction where I’d heard the gunshot, determined that their efforts to alert us wouldn’t be wasted.
Until I remembered that no one knew Sarah Ruth and I were coming, not even Jimmy and Leland.
Oh no.
Jimmy and Leland. Together. With the evidence of Earl Morrissey’s treason just within reach.
Instead of a deeper chill at the realization, it felt more like a fire lit inside me, pushing me on toward that beautiful light and that terrible sound.
And then, before a prayer had even made it past my lips to crumple into a puff of steam, the sound cracked through the air again.
Dear God. Not one gunshot.
Two.
CHAPTER 37
Gordon Hooper
January 26, 1945
After years as a smokejumper at Flintlock Mountain, I was used to smelling smoke.
But never from the barrel of my own gun.
The bullet had lodged over Jimmy’s shoulder, into the door, where I’d meant it to. Just to get his attention.
Which I most definitely had, along with the direction of the gun’s barrel.
I thought he’d swear a blue streak, the way he looked at me, betrayal in his eyes. Instead, he hissed, “I thought you were on my side.”
Was he crazy? “I can’t let you do this, Jimmy.”
If possible, his eyes narrowed even further. “You’re all ‘peace on earth’ until the chips are down. I see how it is.”
Beside me, I thought I saw Leland take a step forward. Would he try to rush Jimmy, tackle him . . . with a gun still pointed at me? “We can talk about this. I wasn’t going to—”
“There’s been enough talking, Hooper.” Jimmy cocked the pistol, his hands less shaky now. “More than enough. Put the gun down, or I’ll shoot you.”
I thought about it for a second too long, keeping the pistol raised, because a slow smile wavered on Jimmy’s feverish face. “No. Wait.” And I knew what he was going to say as his eyes shifted away from me back to Leland, closer now. “You put it down, or I’ll shoot him.”
In that second, with Jimmy swiveling toward Leland, his arm not yet in position, I lunged forward, wrapping him in a tackle like the football players I’d watched on campus from afar.
In that moment, I felt a sudden certainty. What can a man do when there are no good choices?
Protect.
Jimmy twisted, trying to squirm free of my hold and, failing that, trying to pry me off, his arms corded from hours of smokejumper training. But I’d done those same exercises, pounded in just as many fence posts, dug fire line after fire line, until I’d become strong enough for this moment.
There were no words, just heavy breathing and struggle, cold metal and warm flesh, my finger on the trigger . . .
And an explosion of sound as another gunshot split the air.
Jimmy’s body tensed, his face inches from mine.
I shot him.
“It was an accident!” I wanted to scream, but the words didn’t come. I could only look at him, now limp in my arms.
God and Mother and Great-Great-Grandmother Clara all held their breath—but Jimmy’s eyes didn’t close. He didn’t slump to the ground, bleeding on the tower floor.
Why not?
A sharp realization cut into my wondering, and I looked down to see blood staining my pants just below the knee.
My blood.
The gun had gone off. Who had pulled the trigger, we might never know, but the shot had hit me.
And then, so did the pain. I cried out, stumbling backward on my good leg. Still alive? Yes. If I wasn’t, it wouldn’t hurt like this.
Everything felt foggy, distant. I collapsed on the cot, propped against the wall, watching Jimmy stare at me like I was a ghost.
Leland had his pistol back, but he wasn’t pointing it. “Give me the gun, James,” he ordered. He had a tone that reminded me of someone. Who?
Oh yes. Jesus. The voice he might have used when he tol
d the storm to be still or demons to be gone or Lazarus to come forth out of the grave. Commanding miracles from people and creatures and forces that ordinarily wouldn’t obey.
“Give me that gun,” he repeated.
And of all things, Jimmy did, surrendering it with a look of horror on his pale face, his hand outstretched toward me, toward the wound in my leg. “Is he . . . what did I . . . ?” And then he was bent, retching over the pot in the corner we used as a makeshift latrine when we didn’t want to climb down to do our business in the woods.
Leland was in front of me in an instant, blocking the sight. “Lie down now.”
I couldn’t do that. I’d bleed on the cot, on the sheets that Mrs. Edith washed with sprigs of lavender so they’d smell nice, even up here in the middle of nowhere.
But gravity and the force of a hand on my shoulder lowered me without my consent, and I was looking up at the rough beams of the ceiling. Dark splotches filled my vision, crowding out the heat, the pain, the light. . . .
“Focus, Mr. Hooper,” that miracle voice boomed again. “Stay with me now. This is going to pinch.”
Dimly, I remembered this terminology from childhood doctor’s appointments and had only drawn a breath to ask what he was doing when every nerve in my body spasmed at once, starting from my leg. I gurgled out a yelp, then clamped my mouth closed again.
“You got any bandages here, or do I have to tear up the sheet?”
“Crate,” I managed. Full sentences took too much work. “Under cot.”
He rummaged around, and I tried to think of something, anything, other than the pain.
Counting. Yes. Counting good things. Like Mother had told me to.
The smell of earth after a rain. The sound of Mother’s laugh, rare and beautiful as a diamond. The elk I’d spotted looking proudly out over the forest, as if it secretly ruled it all.
Through the throbbing, I felt a sudden tightness. Something was cinching my leg. Good. There was too much blood already. I tried to sit up to see how bad it was, but Leland’s firm hand pressed me down again. “Don’t you move.”
So I didn’t. I just tried to breathe. In. Out.
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