by Bart Paul
Erika and I headed toward the creek at a walk so we wouldn’t draw attention, the darkness coming and going with the clouds. We stopped short of the crossing to let our horses cool down a minute before we let them drink. Then we rode out of the creek into the timber on the opposite bank. Erika followed me single file to a half-hidden wire gate on the pack station road. We finally saw headlights turning on. One set was down by Harvey’s trailer, a second out by the bridge. I figured those last lights to be Mitch’s. He must have figured that waiting there where he could block a vehicle was his smartest play. Or maybe he was just taking a snooze. I got off to open the gate, the smell of rain-wet pine all around.
“Did you have all this all planned out?” Erika said.
“Not a bit.”
I shushed her and led my horse up the road. I saw the Silverado up by the trailhead gate just where Sarah said it would be. Then I saw Sarah. I was always pretty happy to see her, maybe more right then than normal. We held on to each other for a second, not saying a word.
Finally, Sarah looked over at Erika.
“You two need to get out of here,” Sarah said. “Take the truck down to Becky’s and wait for Aaron Fuchs there. He and I traded texts, and he said he’d take you into custody, but I haven’t been able to speak with him yet.”
She watched Erika slide off the zebra dun and almost fall when she touched the ground.
“I didn’t recognize you, Erika,” she said. “It’s been a while.”
Erika was half covered with mud, her black-dyed hair pasted over her skull from the rain and her right arm dangling. She kinda looked like she really had spent the winter in a bog. The smile she gave Sarah was lopsided, like something from beyond the grave.
I loosened my cinch and ran my hands over my horse’s legs, checking his tendons for bows. Then I felt his face and brisket and flanks for bruises and cuts and found a few. I picked up his left hind foot just to satisfy my vanity. The reset shoe was still snug.
In the canyon, the yard lights flooded on, blazing up to the treetops. Erika flinched like somebody’d called in an airstrike.
“I’ll lead these two down to the corral,” Sarah said. “Harvey and Dan should be unsaddling the rest.”
Erika thanked Sarah for minding her horse, then started to ask something about Dan.
“You’ve put my husband in jeopardy,” Sarah said. “You two are safe now, so let’s just get this over with.”
Erika nodded.
I felt in my shirt pocket and pulled out my phone. Except it wasn’t my phone. I looked down at it. It was the one I took off Twister Creed. I scrolled down, messing with the unfamiliar screen. I got to a list of recently called numbers and found one for “Snake.” I pushed the name on the screen and waited.
“You got the woman?” VanOwen said. He’d answered on the third ring. He sounded cranky but relaxed.
“Yup.”
“What about the soldier?”
“He’s still alive.”
“Shit,” VanOwen said. “What the hell happened?”
“I guess I wasn’t cowboy enough to take him.”
By then he’d figured he was talking to me and not Creed. I could hear him breathing. “So,” he said after a long minute. “Where’s Twister?” he said. “And where’s the woman?”
“You’ll never see either of them again, so don’t bother asking.”
He was quiet again except for the breathing, figuring his next move. When he talked, it was slow.
“But you’ll see me,” he said. “You know what I want. I want into that goddamn account.”
“So?”
“I’ll leave you alone. I’ll leave your family alone. I’ll leave the woman alone.” Now he was panting into the phone. “But if she don’t transfer that money, all bets are off.”
“Too late. I’m turning her over to the FBI.”
“When?”
“Tonight. You got no play. You never did. Your plan was dumb.”
“We’ll see, dude.”
“You went to a lot of trouble with this bullshit body and bank account crap. You came up with nothin’. It’s over.”
He laughed then. “Not so fast,” he said.
I heard him talking to someone, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. The storm was still gusting, muffling the sound.
“Don’t be mad, Tommy,” a voice on the phone said just as clear as could be. “Sonny told me he was gonna see the spirit lady, and did I want to come? I did, Tommy. I want her to take me to my mom.”
“Jesus, Audie. Where the hell are you?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“You’re mad at me,” Audie said. “I can tell. I’m sorry, Tommy. I’m so damn sorry, but I miss my mom something bad.”
“I’m not mad at you, kiddo. Just worried. I thought you were at my mother’s, for chrissakes.”
“I was,” she said, “but I snuck out. She don’t know.”
“How?” I tried to sound careless. To sound not afraid. To keep her talking.
“I was walkin’ Hoot around out by the barn after supper. Hoot was huntin’ rabbits. Sonny was parked out on the lane. He waved to me. Waved me to come over. I was scared not to go. He told me he’d seen my mom. If she was dead, I don’t know how that could be, but he knew I missed her. When I asked him if he knew the spirit lady, he said sure. He could take me to her. He told me to sneak out after bedtime and not let your mom know. To meet him on the road.” I could hear her crying. “Your mom’s gonna be pissed at me and make me go back to Sonny for good, and I’ll never see Hoot again, neither.”
“That’s not going to happen. Where are you?”
“I dunno. Another ranch or something. We drove through Paiute Meadows to get here.”
I could hear muffled noise and talking.
“Okay, dude,” VanOwen said. “Little Audie wanted some quality time with the old Snake, but now it’s reckonin’ time.”
“I’m listening.”
“I got something you want,” he said, “and you got something I want. We’re gonna do a little straight-up trade. You and me, bro.”
“Keep talkin’.”
“Sweet little Audie for that skanky Erika Hornberg and those bank codes.” He sounded like he was enjoying himself. “I know you got her. We’ll do a little swap-a-mundo.”
“Where are you?”
“At her brother’s. Kind of a pretty place with the lights off. Moonlight on the old rancho. It looks like dog-crap in the daytime, though. If it was mine, I’d burn it to the ground and turn it into a truck stop. But stroll by, cowboy. Buddy’s here. We all got a lot to talk about.”
“Talk fast. Pretty soon that place’ll be crawling with deputies.”
He laughed. “Ain’t they all up your cabin? Waitin’ to arrest your ass? Harboring a fugitive and all?”
I just stood there in the dark with Sarah and Erika staring at me. Erika moved close, doing her best to listen. I couldn’t help but think it was always the boneheaded bastards who thought they had the world wired. The ones who were still pimping children and calling themselves Snake and peddling stolen chopper parts and setting arson fires for insurance money when they were pushing fifty. And all the time dreaming that outlaw dream of that one last big score. Wasting a single thought on somebody like Sonny VanOwen didn’t make me very smart, either.
“I’ll meet you at Hornberg’s. I’ll give you the account codes for Audie.”
“And the Hornberg bitch.”
I looked Erika straight in the eye. “She’s already on her way to the Feds. And they know she’s alive and her brother’s ID of the body was a lie. So it’s Audie for the codes.”
There was silence for a minute.
“Then come on down,” he said. “Hell, I’ll leave a light on for you.” The call went dead.
“I should go, too,” Erika said.
“You’re not going. You don’t deal with guys like him. You don’t trade.”
“You are,” she said.
“I got no choice.” I stuck my
hand out. “Give me the thing with the codes.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Where the hell is it?” Sarah said.
She looked from Sarah to me. “Audie has it,” she said. “Audie has my thumb drive.”
“The hell?”
“How could you put a child in that position?” Sarah said. I thought she was going to shoot Erika right there.
“She doesn’t know it,” Erika said. “I hid it in the sleeping bag I gave her the night she was alone in the canyon. I told her—”
“Oh, for shit’s sake.”
Erika started blubbering.
“It doesn’t matter,” Sarah said. She gave me a grim look. “You can’t go in without that drive, babe.”
“I can’t just leave the kid.”
“How are you going to get the girl if she’s with Sonny?” Erika said.
“I got her once before.”
A big gust made it hard to hear a thing for a minute. The two of them stared at me in the dark. Erika was impulsive and heedless and could get us all killed if she was along. I wouldn’t take her on a bet.
“If I don’t have the money,” Erika said, “then what do I have to bargain with? What do I tell the FBI?”
“I’ll tell Aaron Fuchs everything the FBI needs to know,” Sarah said. “That you came to us with the account codes. To turn yourself in.”
“If I get a chance at the sleeping bag, what am I looking for?”
Erika described a little plastic deal about the size of a pack of gum with a plug at one end. She said she’d cut a slit at the bottom of the bag on the inside. I asked her where the account was.
“In a bank in Cyprus. All the most discriminating dictators and Russian gangsters use it.” She tried a lame laugh and told me the bank’s name. “I think at some level Sonny can’t grasp that the money only exists electronically. I think he was kind of hoping for a duffle bag full of cash.”
“Ain’t we all.”
Even in the uneven darkness with tree-branch shadows bouncing all over our faces, I could see Erika worry. Those numbers had been what she’d counted on to keep herself alive for almost a year.
Sarah pulled my rifle out of the scabbard on the sorrel and handed it to me, looking sad. She took a half-full box of Remington .270 soft points out of my saddle pockets and handed them to me as well.
“I guess these are your bargaining chips, now.”
“You know I’m not going there to bargain.”
“Why the hell do I bother worrying about you?” she said.
I stowed my rifle behind the seat of the Silverado, gave Sarah a long hug and a last kiss goodbye, and told her to have Fuchs meet me at Hornberg’s before he went to Becky’s. I knew he’d never get there in time, but Sarah might feel better thinking that he would. I told Erika to hide in the trees below the trailhead until Sarah could get word to Dan Tyree to pick her up on his way home, and for the two of them to sit tight there at his mother’s ranch until they heard from Sarah, Aaron, or me. And not to budge.
Sarah and I watched Erika shuffle across the clearing by the trailhead and disappear in the dark. Sarah grabbed the front of my coat and buried her face in it.
“Should I be worried?” she said. “I mean … more than usual?”
“I think me going in alone will be the best way out of this. What VanOwen wants most is the money. If I can get my hands on that sleeping bag with the thing inside, I can probably get Audie back safe.”
“As long as you get back safe, buster.”
“I plan on it.” I leaned into her to feel her warmth. “I will. I will.”
We saw headlights flare up across the meadow and head towards the bridge.
“That should be Dan’s truck. I better get moving.”
She gave me another kiss, then started walking down the hill leading the two horses towards the bridge.
I stood next to the cab of the Silverado ready to duck or run until Dan’s truck passed by. Sarah stopped with the two horses when the headlights hit her. She was keeping the animals to the side of the road against a cutbank so the vehicle could pass, and I thought I saw her look back at me. Then I saw why. It wasn’t Dan’s truck heading towards her. It was a Frémont County Sheriff’s SUV. I ducked behind the Silverado with my back against a rear tire. The SUV passed Sarah and slowed when it hit the trailhead. A spotlight swept the Silverado and the beam paused on the cab. After a minute the light dimmed off and the SUV drove away down the canyon. I couldn’t see who was driving, just that two officers were inside.
Dan’s dually followed a couple of minutes later. I kept to the shadows and didn’t flag him down. It wasn’t just that I didn’t want any other deputies to notice Dan’s truck stopping if anyone was watching from the pack station. I didn’t want to talk about Erika Hornberg anymore, and I didn’t want to get into it with Dan about what he thought he’d been doing with her.
I waited another few minutes after he passed me to fire up the Silverado. I crept away from the trailhead with lights off till I hit the quarter mile of pavement that marked the Forest Service campground and watched a black bear mosey across the road ignoring my headlights. In fifteen minutes I was rolling off the logging road onto the Summers Lake Road when my phone buzzed. It took me a second to dig it out of my one damp jacket pocket. It was Becky Tyree.
“Hey, Tommy. We’ve got a problem. Erika just blasted out of here in Dan’s truck.”
“Shit. Was he with her?”
“No,” she said. “They pulled into the yard about five minutes ago. Dan had called, and I was waiting for them. I hadn’t seen her since she vanished last year, and I wanted to talk to her. Dan was stowing his bedroll in the saddle house, and she was pretty distraught. That guy VanOwen had called her on Buddy’s phone. He said that he had Buddy and would kill him if she ran out on him again. He’s holding Buddy at their ranch and said he’ll trade Buddy’s life for hers. She was talking wild that no matter how she tried to do the right thing, she always ended up putting people’s lives in danger. You, the little girl, my son, and now her brother. I went back into the house to put on some coffee and try to talk sense into her. Then I heard the pickup spinning around, and I saw her fly out the lane like a madwoman.”
I could tell Becky was really fried. She’d stuck by Erika when half the valley wanted to string her up.
“Damn. All she had to do was not answer that phone.”
“Where are you now?” she said.
“On my way to Hornberg’s.”
“Do you want to wait for the sheriff?”
“I’m meeting my FBI guy there. Can you call Sarah?”
“It’ll be light in three more hours. Would it be better if …?” She let it hang.
“In this kind of deal, dark is my friend.”
She told me that she’d get Sarah right away, and my mom next to fill her in.
“Becky?”
“Yes?”
“How come it was you called and not Dan?”
“He thinks you’re disappointed in him,” she said. “For helping Erika when she was hiding from the law. For letting her get away just now.”
“Tell him no worries. Ain’t none of us fortunetellers.”
Then she called me honey like she did when I was a kid and told me to be careful and do what I thought was best.
Halfway towards town, the pavement of the Summers Lake road took a ninety-degree left following the old homestead boundaries through the treeless grazing land. A local would know that turning right instead of left would put you down in front of a wide gate across a fenced dirt lane that was the division between Becky Tyree’s land and the Hornberg ranch. On a hunch, I turned right onto the grass and got out. I looked a mile southeast across the pastures to Hornberg’s headquarters and saw what looked like a single yard light in the rainy mist. I scanned the grass under my feet with my pocket flash and could see fresh dually tracks in the ground soggy with rain where someone had just pulled up to the gate. Judging by the black spot the exhaust made
on the grass, the driver left the diesel idling. If that someone was Erika, she probably tried to get the gate to budge. It was a stout wooden thing, not locked, but too heavy for a short person with a just-sprained wrist. I could see where the truck had been thrown into reverse, the wheel jerked around and the tires spinning as the driver almost got themselves stuck. The vehicle left mud and grass tracks on the first few feet of blacktop once it climbed back up on the road. All this told me that Erika had been trying to take the old Hornberg Lane, not because it was quicker than circling through town, but because she was hoping to creep up on the ranch unseen. That’s the same thing I was hoping when I dragged the gate open and drove down the lane with my lights off.
I drove a quarter-mile south, then the lane turned due east toward the ranch headquarters another mile off. It was slow going between the fences on a cloudy night. Ahead I could see a single light was on but the house was dark, the whole ranch just shapes and shadows. A quarter-mile on, I drove through a gravel crossing of the East Frémont River. The water ran swift to the top of my tires and ripples flashed in spotty moonlight. The far side of the crossing put me in sight of the first outbuildings. The lone light was shining through the open slaughterhouse door, but that was off to the side of the empty feedlot and not in the direction I needed to go.
The headquarters sat on flat ground about fifteen feet below a curve in the Reno Highway, with a steep bluff rising from the opposite side of the pavement. A southbound set of headlights swept into the curve, then slowed to turn sharp and drop down the dirt lane between the corrals and the house. It was a pickup, heading in my direction. For a second the headlights caught Audie standing alone and perfectly still out by the corrals. She was holding her sleeping bag to her chest and blinking into the light. I almost yelled out the window at her but didn’t want to expose myself just yet and maybe put her in jeopardy. If I could get her alone, I might be able to get my hands on the dingus Erika hid in the bag. As the headlights swept farther into the yard, Audie disappeared in shadow. The pickup was Dan’s dually, which was no surprise. I could see Erika crouched behind the wheel peering into the shadows like she was figuring just where her life would end. The headlights finished their arc and lit up the spot where Audie had been, but by then the kid had vanished. The truck pulled up along the feedlot and stopped. Down the fence line a five-hundred-gallon above-ground fuel tank sat high on angle-iron legs. The truck lights threw the long shadow of the tank fifty feet across the open yard.