Dominick grimaced. “Once I get out of here, I’m not driving back in. As it is, we’ll have to back up.”
“Want me to get out and direct you around the boulders?”
He considered it and then nodded. “Good idea. The way this road curves, it’s hard to see very far back. Just stop me if there’s anything terrible.”
Fiona climbed out but walked a few yards down the road instead to look for Greg.
When she did not see him, she came back to the truck and circled behind it, trying to direct Dominick away from the worst rocks. It was a minefield. She winced as he had to scrape the truck bottom over a boulder shaped like a sleeping guard dog and narrowly avoided hitting a large upright triangle.
He was definitely right about not driving back in. Sighing, almost stumbling backward over a high rock herself, she stuffed down the memory of gunfire. It had definitely come from the top of the mountain. What kind of game would they have up there?
As she turned the bend that led to the better road, she realized that something larger than a boulder was blocking the way. Putting her palm up to stop the Explorer, she looked again.
Slanted across the good road, filling it completely, was a huge black four-wheeler that stood high off the ground. It was outlined in lights like an off-season Christmas tree and on the door was a painting of a frenzied horse’s head, red lips open in a frothing scream. Painted below it in white script was “The Death Squad.”
Wonderful. The Death Squad. If the truck had been parked facing ahead instead of across the road like a slash, there would have been the possibility of asking the owners to move so they could get by. But there was a different message here.
Fiona squinted at the windows, but they were tinted too dark to be able to see inside. The best she could hope for, she understood suddenly, was that the truck would be empty, the Death Squad off on business elsewhere. But as she started back to the Explorer, she heard the metal hinge of a door creak open behind her. Unwilling to look, she kept walking, then ran the last few feet to the truck. This time after climbing in, she banged the door shut.
“Lock the doors!” she screamed. She realized she was shaking and wrapped her arms around her knees to stop the motion.
“What is it?” Dominick asked, moving his eyes from the rearview mirror to look at her. “You mean those guys?” But as he said it he pressed the master lock. Rosa sighed deeply.
The men appeared at Dominick’s window, one several inches taller than the other. Both were blond, both dressed in fringed black leather vests with Western tooling, white shirts, and jeans. They were even featured and could have been handsome, but their eyes were brown beads, their jaws too long for their faces.
The taller twin motioned at them with a small silver gun to get out of the truck.
“Stay inside; I’ll handle this,” Dominick commanded. As he opened his door the two men moved to the front of the truck. Dominick stayed behind the door, using it as a body shield. “What’s the problem?”
The man waved the gun again. “I mean all of you!”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Rosa, shoving the woven bag off her lap as if this were in the same league as the bathroom jingles at the Powderbush.
Wasn’t she afraid? Fiona’s own heart was beating a frantic tattoo. But after Rosa got out and moved around to the front grille of the Explorer, she slowly opened the door and climbed out too.
“You from around here?” the gunslinger asked, smacking his gun rhythmically against his thigh.
“No,” Dominick said. “We’re from New York. Is something wrong?”
“They got private property back where you come from?”
“Of course. But we didn’t see any signs posted.”
He turned to his brother. “Hey, Jake, you forget to put up the signs again?”
Jake looked amazed. “You put up signs where you come from? Like in your driveways and stuff?”
“How can a mountain be private property?” Fiona asked as calmly as she could.
“We didn’t know we were trespassing,” Dominick said quickly. “We’ll be glad to leave.”
But the Death Squad grinned at that. They had beautiful teeth, Fiona had to admit, then thought how absurd it was to think about teeth when they were about to be murdered by the Doublemint twins.
“You from New York too?” Jake was addressing her.
“Uh-huh. Iowa, originally.”
“That’s right, you got that funny accent. Say Long Island for me.”
“What?”
“Not what. Long Island.”
What was going on? “Long Island.”
The pair nudged each other. “You don’t say it right. Lon-guyland. If you’re living there now, you’re supposed to say Lon-guyland!” Then the gunslinger waved his weapon at Rosa. “Say ‘toilet.’ ”
Rosa looked disgusted. “Toilet.”
Jake wiggled a roguish finger at her. “I bet that’s not how you really say it. I bet you say terlet, don’t you? Erl and terlet. Now say it right.” He reached into his holster and pulled out his own gun, a gun that Fiona had not allowed herself to notice.
“Toilet,” said Rosa stubbornly. “I’m not from Brooklyn!”
She’s going to get us killed. Fiona opened her mouth to give them what they wanted, but it was swallowed up in gunfire as Jake aimed his pistol at the ground near Rosa’s feet. A rock shattered, a cyclone of dust spiraling up. He raised the gun to Rosa’s chest.
“What the hell are you doing?” Dominick demanded, hoarse. He stepped around, blocking Rosa.
From the road came a siren.
The brothers turned on each other. “Shit!” Jake yelled. “You had to play games with them instead of—”
“You’re the one who kept it up.”
“If you’re shooting, shoot to kill.”
“Now what’re you boys up to?” The small, dried-up character stepping around their truck looked less like a sheriff than an Appalachian apple-head doll, but Fiona knew from the set of his mouth that he was the law. Dressed in a turquoise-and-black checked shirt, his air of authority replaced a badge.
“Just having some fun with our new friends,” Jake smirked.
“Looks like they don’t got the same toys as you. That’s not fair.” He might have been talking to a pair of eight-year-olds.
The taller brother spat on the ground. “What gives you the right to keep on our ass this way? My lawyer says it’s harassment!”
“Just happened to hear gunfire and came to investigate.”
“You’re tailing us!”
“Not hunting season yet.”
Fiona’s heart fell miles. If it wasn’t hunting season, then what were the shots on the mountain about?
“You git on now,” he added, gesturing at the brothers, “or these good people may decide to make a complaint.”
Jake’s brother spat again, a gob that landed on a yellow bush and hung, glistening. Everyone watched it, mesmerized.
The pair turned and stomped away.
The sheriff looked at Dominick. “No telling what they might have done. Glad I came along.”
“So are we!”
“But who are they?” Fiona gasped. She felt as if her body were dissolving.
He twisted his mouth. “They call themselves ‘The Death Squad.’ ”
“I know, but who are they? Are they from around here?”
The sheriff looked uncertain as to how much he should tell her, then said, “They’re Jesse Wilcox’s boys. Jesse and Ginger Lee are decent enough folk, but they should have kicked these kids’ butts years ago. Tried some of that tough love stuff.”
Another Day Star connection. “Would they do things like flatten your tires?”
He peered at the Explorer. “You got a flat?”
“No, I just—”
“Honey, they’d do worse things than that. They used to like to lasso kids on bikes, pull them off the bike and drag them along the ground. For fun. Then they grew up and got this Death Squad
idea. Going around, righting wrongs. Only their idea of right and wrong . . . It’s what happens when you got too much money, too much time, and no good reason for being alive.”
But if they had been waiting for them in the truck, they couldn’t have been up on the mountain shooting Greg.
“Don’t know what set them off, but you don’t want to go messing with them.”
There was the sound of an engine revving, a crash of broken shrubbery. It sounded deliberate, one last temper tantrum.
The sheriff opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Dominick held out his hand. “How can we thank you?”
“Just glad to help out.”
But Fiona wasn’t ready to let him go. “Have you heard anything about a plane having problems around here?”
He pulled at his wrinkled chin. “A little two-seater banged into Mount Lindsay last week. That kind of thing?”
“No, bigger than that. There hasn’t been anything unusual happening?”
“No . . . ” But then he brightened. “Up north around Monarch, a friend of mine’s been complaining about a lot of mysterious comings and goings. Strange people in the area. He was thinking maybe drugs. Something like that?”
“Maybe.” But she felt excited. “What’s the town again?”
“Monarch. Right in the mountains about fifty miles up.” He folded his arms. “If you don’t have stuff to do around here, I suggest you get on out. I can’t watch the Death Squad twenty-four hours, and they’re mean dudes. I’ll watch, make sure you get outta here and onto the highway.”
“That’d be great,” Dominick told him.
Hands were shaken all around.
“You have a good day now.”
“You too.” But Rosa, though restored to good humor, seemed to be studying the man as if he didn’t fit into her scheme of things.
They climbed back into the Explorer and Dominick locked the doors.
“I’m too old for this.” Rosa exhaled, letting herself collapse against the seat. “I’ve never almost been shot before.”
Dominick nodded vigorously. “I think he just saved our lives. Don’t get out again; I can make it from here,” he told Fiona. “The road wasn’t that bad in the beginning.”
She nodded, troubled by something she could not yet define. It had to do with Rosa. And more urgently, Greg. “But what about Greg? One of us should go back and look if we can’t drive back in.”
“Well, we certainly can’t stay around here! That sheriff already warned us.”
“I know. But—”
“We’ll come right back and wait for him on the road. Nothing can happen to us on a main road,” Dominick said.
“Okay.” But she vowed privately that she would walk back in. With water.
When Dominick finally reached the highway, he asked, “Which way?”
“Back the way we came,” Rosa said. “We know there are places not far away.”
“Yeah, there’s that gas station.” Dominick waved to the sheriff, who was sitting in a white car opposite the mountain road, and signaled left. Then he gave them a stern look. “Next time, don’t get out. That’s the way mass murders happen. We could have all gotten killed.”
“But if they’d shot you, they wouldn’t have let us just drive off,” Fiona said.
“You’d still have been safer locked in the truck. Keeping down and leaning on the horn. If the sheriff hadn’t been right there . . . ”
“But why would perfect strangers decide to kill us?” Rosa asked.
“Because they’re not,” Fiona told her. “They’re Jesse Wilcox’s sons. Day Star?”
“You think they knew who we were?”
“Of course. Why else would they mention Long Island? They knew exactly who we were.”
“You think they were sent to warn us off?”
“I do.”
DOMINICK PULLED INTO the gas station with the small grocery store attached. Fiona found a water fountain by the restrooms and drank for a long time. The others did too. Then, moving quickly, they picked out two gallon jugs of water.
“Let’s get food,” Fiona said. “We won’t have time to stop again.”
Quickly they assembled a pound of sliced Jack cheese, bread, tomatoes, tortilla chips, and grapes. When Fiona picked up a jar of Creole mustard, she saw that her hand was shaking.
In the dusty parking lot, two little boys in chaps and red felt cowboy hats ran around next to a van shooting each other as their parents shopped inside. They fell dead, then pushed back up out of the dust, again and again.
Climbing into the Explorer, Rosa gave a sudden amazed laugh. “It was a skit,” she cried, pointing at the boys. “It was just a show.”
Dominick, back in the driver’s seat, gave her a tolerant look. “Kids like to shoot at each other. It’s only a game.”
“I liked the guy playing the sheriff best,” Fiona said, catching on immediately. “The other two overdid it. The way he kept slapping his gun against his thigh . . . ”
Dominick included her in a frown that was turning cross. “What are you talking about?”
“Rosa means, what happened to us wasn’t real. The shot was the cue for the sheriff to turn on the siren and come in and ‘rescue’ us. That’s one of the things that bothered me, that help was so conveniently waiting in the wings.”
“But he was—”
“No, he wasn’t,” she interrupted. “He never said.”
“He never said he was a sheriff? Are you sure? They sure acted like he was.”
“Acted. I rest my case.” It was not that she was eager to prove Dominick wrong. It was that she felt relieved that what had happened made sense.
He turned to Rosa.
“Look at it this way.” The same relief made her jovial. “If someone who has just saved your life warns you that you’d better leave town for your own safety, and if he tells you that what you are looking for is fifty miles up the road, what are you going to do? If you’re smart you’ll leave town and go fifty miles up the road.”
“You’re saying there’s nothing going on up in Monarch?”
“I think it’s going on right here in River City,” Fiona said. “The good news is that we’re getting close.” The bad news is that we may not live to figure it out.
Dominick started the SUV, looking truculent. “Next you’ll tell me that those guys aren’t even brothers.”
“No, I think that part’s true. And I definitely think they’re from Day Star. Jesse’s sons. Remember, he wasn’t sure about giving us that information. Unless that was part of the act.”
“Well I don’t get it, and I’m a pretty good judge of character. I have to be. I can tell you, I was mighty relieved when that sheriff happened along.”
“We all were. Then.” Fiona exchanged a look with Rosa.
“So you don’t want to go to Monarch after we pick up Greg?” He sounded as if they had already discussed it and made that plan. Turning to Fiona, he added, “That was your idea, wasn’t it, to go around asking people if they’d noticed anything suspicious? Then when someone does, you ignore it.”
“If you can believe him.” She sat back, exhausted, unable to discuss it anymore.
“You can’t. He was an unreliable narrator,” Rosa said firmly. “You don’t listen to someone who’s trying to con you.”
Dominick made a disgusted sound and pulled into traffic.
“DO YOU THINK Greg will know to come out and find us?” Rosa looked at her watch. “Four thirty? It can’t be!”
“I think he’d keep walking till he found the truck,” Fiona said with more hope than she felt. If he had found anything on the mountain, anything at all, they would go straight to the police and report it. No more sleuthing around on their own in the shadow of the Death Squad. If Greg hadn’t seen anything, they could head on to Denver.
Chapter Forty-Two
GOING BACK, IT seemed shorter to get to the entrance road than it had to the convenience store.
Greg wasn�
�t there. Where he and his red backpack should have been standing was only a backdrop of cottonwood trees.
The sheriff’s white car was gone.
Dominick slid the Explorer onto a narrow shoulder, close to the road that led into the mountain. “I thought he’d be here by now.”
Fiona stared out the window, silent. The others had heard the shots on the mountain as clearly as she had. Were they still denying the danger they were in? These people are hiding something. They’ll do anything to keep us from finding out.
“I’m going to walk in and find him,” Dominick said.
“No!”
He looked at Fiona in the mirror, surprised.
“It’s one thing to be out here on the road.” She gestured at the line of cars coming from the other direction, evidently leaving the Great Sand Dunes Monument. “But it’s not safe to go back in there alone.”
“You’re the one who said it was all a play.”
“That doesn’t mean they weren’t serious about warning us away.” Next time, shoot to kill. “When we left here before, I was going to go in and find him myself once we got back. Now it feels too dangerous.”
“I’ll just go in a little way and yell for him,” Dominick promised, opening his door.
“Eat something first.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You don’t know how long you’ll be in there. Here, I’ll make you a sandwich.”
Rosa was looking at her, surprised.
“We don’t have time. He may be hurt and need our help.” And with that, Dominick was out the door and moving around the front of the Explorer.
“What was that about?” Rosa asked her. “Why don’t you come up here and keep me company?”
“I don’t think he should be out there alone. What if it gets dark early and he gets lost?” Grayish clouds already obscured the tops of the mountains. Fiona got out and climbed into the front, pressing the door lock button. Dominick had left the keys in the ignition.
“He’ll be okay,” Rosa promised, then said grimly, “What an exciting day. All we need now are piña coladas and a piano bar.”
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