They got busy, Josh using the knife and the kid hacking and chipping away at the excess bark. The cut the rope into pieces and began to latch the cross sections to the two poles with the rope, wrapping it tight to hold the weight. Next, Josh took both sleeping bags and layered them onto the H frame they’d just built.
“Help me lift her,” Josh directed. Carefully the men lifted her onto the sleeping bags along with all the packs and supplies they intended to take with them.
Josh walked to the front of the travois and slowly picked up the front poles as Skye let out a small moan from the pain.
Kiya sent up a howl and went dashing into the water to take the lead.
Gently, he started off down the mountain as the boy followed. “We’ll take turns pulling her along,” Josh told him. “One hour at a time should be enough for both of us. But we can’t stop, not for any reason, until we get down the mountain. Understand?”
“Yep.”
“Then let’s go.”
Thirty
Monday afternoon
Brayden held pieces of the puzzle no one else knew. On the hike down, the boy was determined to tell Josh his story. Getting the teen to talk wasn’t difficult. Because during the eighteen months the teenager had spent as a captive, Michael Smith had locked him up for days at a time. Smith had done his best to make the kid a trained killer in the image of himself.
“But that nut job became unglued when I didn’t want to shoot the gun,” Brayden confessed, sneaking a look at Skye who still had her eyes closed. “I’m awful sorry about that. I didn’t mean to pull the trigger. I was so nervous trying to get a shot off at Smith that my hand started shaking.”
Skye heard the boy’s voice, his explanation. It drifted to her and over her, but she couldn’t tell the teen that it would be okay. She wanted to reassure him…of something. Another victim. There were so many over the years. So many vicious twisted killers to wreak havoc. Would she be able to stop the others? Evil like Michael Smith existed and had to be dealt with…if this was the price that had to be paid…
The cry of an eagle rallied her. She tried to reach up from the travois to grab at Josh. But her hand fell limp at her side. Her vision blurred. She fought the drift into darkness, that slow slide toward death. It pulled at her, tugging and yanking. She did her best to jerk herself back from the relentless black.
In the end, Kiya did it for her.
Skye left the light. But as she did so, the wolf flowed into her master using what life force the spirit had to give up. That energy had her floating somewhere to wait for relief, to regain her strength, to rebound until the darkness could come to an end. The last thing she heard was the wind whistling down the canyon wall as Kiya covered her in a protective layer of warmth.
Skye went to a place where she heard no more voices, only the sound of the drumbeats and flutes from the line of shamans safeguarding her will to live.
One look at how pale Skye was and Josh had Brayden pick up his pace.
On the trek out of the canyon, he learned that Brayden Lachlann was the missing man from the St. Louis murders back in late 2015.
“It happened the Saturday night before Thanksgiving. I woke up to see a man standing at the foot of my bed wearing a ski mask. His gun was aimed at me. It was a handgun with a scope. He made me change into a shirt and a pair of jeans. He then grabbed a bag out of my closet and told me to pack up some clothes. After that, he took me around to each room and showed me what he’d done to my mom and dad and to my younger sisters.”
“Are you aware that Michael Smith has killed using that same method since 2012?”
Brayden shook his head. “Not right away, but I found out later…from him. He bragged about it. How’d you end up here?”
“In Montana? It’s a long story that started for us back in Seattle. Smith executed a family of six several months before he killed yours. The murders of the Maldonado family in a suburb occurred in the spring. And that’s what got us involved in this whole mess. We got dragged into this by an FBI friend of ours, or so we thought. I’m not sure now Cannavale was ever a friend.”
“I still don’t know why Smith didn’t kill me that night,” Brayden declared.
“Sorry, but your story has some holes in it. I have a lot of questions still. For starters, how did you leave your house that night?”
“Smith had a truck parked a couple of streets over from our alleyway.”
“The police reports say your father’s motorcycle was missing and that’s what you drove away that night.”
“I was fifteen. I didn’t even have my driver’s license. Still don’t.”
“Then what did Smith do with the motorcycle?”
“You mean the dirt bike? It wasn’t a motorcycle. He loaded it up on the back of this pickup he had with a ramp, then drove me out to this remote area in a rural part of the state, just before we crossed the state line into Tennessee. The property had a barn on it. He told me to get down on my knees. I did like he said because I didn’t want to die. And then he pulled the trigger but the gun jammed or maybe it was empty. I don’t know exactly. I was too scared to think straight.” Brayden lifted a shoulder. “From that point, he changed his mind and decided instead he’d take me with him and keep me alive. He got rid of my dad’s dirt bike by tossing it in some pond nearby.”
“Wait a minute. It wasn’t a full-fledged motorcycle like a Harley?”
Brayden looked confused. “No way. It was a Yamaha, something my dad had owned since he was a kid. He used to do the motocross circuit when he was younger.”
“I’ll be damned. Maybe that’s how the guy got to all these places without drawing attention. He’d park far enough away and then take whatever transportation was available from the house and make it look like the ‘missing man’ drove off. I’m surprised he hit so close to Nashville. With you. I mean, St. Louis is what, a five-hour drive away?”
“Something like that. And the minute we got to his house, he took me down into the basement and chained me to a wall for almost that entire first year. He didn’t let me out until I promised I’d learn how to do what he did. He called me his protégé. I think he was nuts…and mean to boot.”
“What else do you know about him?”
“He bragged about killing his wife and her boyfriend, called her a bitch. Boasted that he’d fooled the cops and her family into thinking she’d run off. Her name was Maitlin Collier-Smith. I remember that name. And the guy was a coworker named Phillip Columbus. I remember that because…well…it sounded like Christopher Columbus. But I don’t know what Smith did with the bodies. There was never any wife at the house when I was there.”
“Didn’t it back onto a golf course?”
“Yeah. How’d you know that?”
“Nashville cops are still crawling all over that place.”
“Good for them. You know once Smith left my restraints off and I climbed up to the top of the stairs. But that’s as far as I got out of the basement.”
“Why didn’t you run?”
Brayden looked ashamed. “Because I was terrified of him. And I it occurred to me it might be a trick. That he might want me to try to sneak out and make a break for it and then he’d have a reason to shoot me. I thought long and hard about running out the back door to the sixteenth hole and just start screaming my head off. But then Smith had cameras everywhere. He seemed to always know my every move. It was probably some kind of a test just to see if I’d run away. For all I know he was standing in the living room waiting with a gun and then I’d get another beating. I figured since he’d killed my folks, he wouldn’t think twice about doing it to me.”
An hour went by before Josh stopped to check on Skye again. Her eyes were closed but he made sure she was still breathing. Lifting her shirt, he looked at the rough bandage. The blood hadn’t soaked through, but it was still oozing. That’s when he spotted her bluish fingernails. The color indicated her heart didn’t have enough blood to pump into the rest of her organs.
&nb
sp; “I’ll take a turn at pulling the travois,” Brayden volunteered.
“Okay. I just hope we don’t have to spend the night out here again,” Josh muttered.
“It’s spooky out here to me. I don’t much like it.”
“Where did Smith hide his stash of weapons out here?”
“After leaving the Lundquist place he made a beeline right to this unique rock formation, an easy spot to remember. That’s where he stashed all those guns he wore. Then we headed out to uncover his second stockpile in an old mine shaft located between those two waterfalls where you found us. But there wasn’t anything inside the hole. For an expert survivalist, Smith didn’t do much after we barreled out the back door and went on the run. He got real mad when he found out somebody had taken his supplies.”
With Brayden pulling the travois, Josh studied the back of the kid’s head. Something nagged at him. He tried to replay the scene at the river. But everything had happened so fast it all seemed a blur now. He wasn’t completely sure anything about this kid rang true. Which was another reason he didn’t want to spend the night out in the wilderness with a stranger he didn’t completely trust.
But goddammit they were making lousy time. He wanted out of this forest, out of these mountains. He wanted to get to a hospital.
Grilling the kid didn’t make a lot of sense but it was the only thing he had. “I’m curious, did you ever help that sociopath out by participating in any of his murders?”
Without skipping a beat, Brayden kept tugging the sleigh over rocks and muddy terrain. “No. This was the first time he trusted me enough to bring me along without using the bomb collar, or at least that’s what he called it. I never had to wear it out in public, though.”
Josh’s face showed the stone-cold jolt of that. “Couldn’t you have slipped a note to a flight attendant?”
“Are you kidding? You’ve never been in a situation like that before. He watched every move I made.”
“So you never had a chance to escape, not one time?”
“No. He left me locked in the basement for long periods of time, chained to a wall. What would you do?”
“But what happened when you weren’t chained up? Did you try to escape then?”
“I did try. Once. But he caught me before I got four steps out of the cellar and then beat the crap out of me. He was hiding around the corner, just waiting for me to make a move, like he expected me to try.” Brayden stopped his progress and set the travois on the ground. He turned to face Josh. “You don’t believe me.”
“Let’s just say the woman I love more than anything in the world is bleeding out because of you so I’m skeptical about what role you played.”
Brayden reached down and took out a small red knife from his boot. He held it out to Josh. “Back there at the river I wasn’t sure you wouldn’t kill me, too. So I kept this just in case. Here. You take it. It’s the only weapon I have on me.”
Josh stared at the boy and then at the Swiss Army knife. He wouldn’t exactly call it a weapon. The mini knife was less than three inches in length closed, and came with several useful tools that slid out of its casing. Things like scissors, tweezers, a nail file that could be used as a screwdriver, and a key ring. “Where did you get this? How long have you had it?”
“I found it inside a drawer at the cabin Smith rented that first night we got there. I squirreled it away in case I needed it.”
Josh narrowed his focus and took several steps toward Brayden. “You won’t mind if I make sure this is all you have, right?”
Brayden held up his arms. “No. See for yourself.”
Josh proceeded to pat the kid down—couldn’t believe he’d waited this long to do it—and found nothing else in the boy’s pockets or anywhere else.
Brayden picked up the travois again and started walking. “I was fifteen years old the night when he kidnapped me. I won’t be seventeen until summer. I’ve spent almost two years of my life locked up by a mean-ass nutcase for my jailer.”
“Not to nitpick, but I’m fairly certain Smith was much more than that, more like a natural-born psycho.”
“You called him a sociopath a minute ago. What’s the difference?”
“A psychopath is born that way. A sociopath picks up certain behaviors growing up due to outside forces, like child abuse. But in the end, it doesn’t matter how they get there. They’re both sick and dangerous as hell. They both manifest the same traits at around fifteen or so, sometimes earlier. Neither type feels much remorse, guilt, or empathy for another human being. By the time they start their reign of terror they’re completely devoid of any sympathy for anyone, except themselves. They might be pretty good at faking it, but it isn’t genuine. They don’t have a conscience like most of us do. They’re manipulative and self-serving. They think the rules don’t apply to them.”
“Wow. Are you super smart or something? Because that fits Smith to a tee.”
“Not super smart. But Skye and I took a course last year in behavioral science at the University of Washington. It was…enlightening to say the least. When’s the last time you saw the inside of a classroom?”
“I spent Christmas 2015 and all of 2016 chained to a wall. Does that size it up enough for you? My life is probably ruined.”
Josh thought about the insurmountable odds Skye had overcome. “You’re too young to give up.”
“Mind if I ask you something?”
But Josh didn’t hear the boy’s question because it suddenly dawned on him what he needed to do. He remembered the list of cell phone towers he’d had his team put together before leaving Seattle. He reached in his pocket and found the piece of paper, reading the GPS coordinates for each one. He took out his compass and scanned the ridgeline, the tops of the trees.
He took out the map again and studied the surrounding rock formations before comparing them to the list. “There! See that? There should be a tower a hundred or so yards over that ridge. We make it over that and I should be able to make a call.”
Josh took over from Brayden, dragging the sled toward what he thought should be the nearest location of the cell tower.
With each step, he hoped they were getting closer to a signal. Near a pocket of bedrock, he stopped his progress and took out his cell phone. Holding up the device as high as he could, he moved around until one bar showed up in his display.
He held his breath and punched in 911.
When he heard a voice answer, he described the situation in short spurts. “This is Josh Ander. I’m in the Beartooth Mountains with my wife.” He rattled off GPS coordinates. “I need a medical evac for a gunshot wound. Female. Get us some help up here. Hurry. We were after the Cross-country Killer. We work with Harry Drummond, a retired Seattle homicide detective. You can contact him for verification.” Jittery with alarm, he fired off Harry’s number from memory. “We’re losing the light. It’ll be dark soon. You need to find us and quick. My wife needs to be airlifted to the hospital. I need to get her out of this place. Please hurry. Hurry. She’s hurt and unconscious.”
There were more questions from the dispatcher and Josh answered them with a panic rising in his throat. It didn’t abate until he heard the words, “Help is on the way.”
Josh sat down on a rock to wait, holding Skye’s hand, squeezing it intermittently, trying to get her to wake up. But because of the blood loss she drifted in and out of consciousness.
“Can I ask you something now?” Brayden continued, plopping down next to Josh on the boulder.
“You talk a lot, don’t you kid?”
“I guess I do cause I’m not afraid anymore. Besides, talking will take your mind off things while we wait for help.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How did you pick that Smith dude up like you did and toss him around like a rag doll? It’s like you had superhuman strength or something. You used this cool move that you usually only see in fake wrestling.”
For the first time since leaving the river, Josh’s lips curved
up. “Let’s just say I have a knack for dealing with assholes.” He glanced over at Skye. “And when she isn’t lying flat on her back from a gunshot wound, so does she.”
“Are you guys famous or something? Because you seemed to know what you’re doing out here.”
“We’re just regular people.”
The sound of choppers approaching had them looking toward the darkening sky. Brayden got to his feet and started waving his arms back and forth. The teen watched the choppers land and held out his hand to Josh.
“I don’t know what I would’ve done back there if you guys hadn’t come along when you did. Eventually Smith would’ve killed me. I know it in here.” The boy tapped his chest at the same time his eyes started watering. “Thanks for what you guys did, for getting me away from him.”
Josh wrapped the boy up in a hug that was broken up by the flight paramedic and the flight nurse who both came running across the open field.
Josh’s attention turned to Skye and he started babbling. “She’s been in and out, mostly out, on the way here. She’s lost a lot of blood. The wound looks ugly and deep to me. I’m pretty sure the bullet is still in there. I couldn’t find an exit wound. I lied to her about that. I told her it went clear through when I knew that it hadn’t.”
The paramedic smiled as he knelt down beside Skye and went to work. “It’s okay. You were trying to make her feel better. We’ll check her vitals, start an IV, maybe redo the bandage. After that, we’ll get her loaded.” He pointed to the other helicopter. “That one’s your ride.”
“Come on, she’s my wife,” Josh protested. “Let me ride with her in case she wakes up.”
“Sorry. No can do. Regulations. It’s not like you see in the movies. That’s why we brought two choppers. Her ride is heading to Billings Trauma Center, it’s the closest. Don’t worry, you guys won’t get left behind. Flight time is less than twenty minutes from the time we load up. I recommend you step on it. Go on, get out of here. That chopper will take off as soon as you guys get on board. You’ll probably beat us there and will be waiting for her.”
Truth in the Bones Page 28