“Stop here.” He raises the gun.
She brakes the Explorer to a standstill.
Silence fills the cab, there’s just the sound of the motor idling beneath the hood.
“Get out,” he says.
Nobody moves.
The woman sits in the driver seat, both hands wrapped around the wheel.
“Maddie? Did I just tell you to get out?”
She reaches for the door, opens it. Pushes it wide. Climbs out, her body rigid.
Anthony sits frozen.
Belaski opens up the rear door, steps after her. “You carry a gun?”
She stares, her face blank.
He looks into her eyes.
She nods.
“Take out the gun, throw it over here.”
She pulls up the bib coat. Reaches down to her duty belt.
“Careful,” he says.
She pops the restraining strap on the leather holster. Eases out the semi-automatic P229.
“Toss it over here.”
She swings her arm, lets go the butt of the pistol. It falls into the snow.
“You wearing a radio?” he says. “Open your coat, let me see.”
She unfastens the coat.
“Take that off,” he says.
She unclips the Motorola two-way transceiver. Drops it.
“Take out your cuffs,” he says.
She only looks at him.
“Those handcuffs. Take 'em out.”
She unfastens the leather holder on her belt, takes out the stainless-steel cuffs.
“Walk around to the passenger side.”
She takes a breath. Steps forward, around the hood of the big Ford.
Anthony watches, mouth gaping.
“Get out,” Belaski says.
The young man flinches.
“You want to eat this plus a bunch of glass, it's all the same to me. Or you do what I tell you.” He levels the gun.
Anthony opens his door, sits forward. Unfolds himself from the Ford. All the air seems gone from his body. “I don't know anything...” His voice chokes in his throat. “I don’t know a thing about any of this...”
“Maddie,” Belaski says. “Put the cuffs on him.”
The woman’s eyes drill his.
Belaski gives a shake of the head. “Put your arms out, hands together,” he says to Anthony.
Maddie Cook takes a pace forward. Fastens the cuffs around the young man's wrists.
“Alright, now you put him in the back there.” Belaski jabs the gun at her, then at Anthony.
She walks slow to the tail gate, opens it.
The space inside is big, dark, the glass panels blacked, rear windshield the same.
In the bed of the trunk is a canvas carry-all, tire chains, assorted tools. At one wheel-arch is a ten gallon gasoline tank—ratchet-strapped to a chainsaw.
“Get in,” Belaski says.
Anthony sits at the edge of the trunk, cuffed hands in his lap. His face is sick-looking, he swings his legs up, snow falls from his boots.
“Lay down.”
The young man lets out a breath.
“Close it up,” Belaski says.
Maddie brings the hatch door down, thoughts racing behind her eyes.
Belaski grabs her shoulder, pushes her out into the middle of the fire cut. He walks her ten yards from the Ford. Raises the pistol.
“Jesus God, no...”
He thumbs back the hammer.
“Please...”
He holds the barrel straight at her midriff.
“Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I'd shoot you down, right here. But there's something you're going to have to do for me.” Belaski looks off into the forest, at snow tumbling from the leaden sky. “If you don't freeze to death, you're going to walk out of here.”
She stares, unmoving.
“You need to get a message to a woman named Lauren DeLuca.”
Maddie looks at him, mute.
“You tell her a message from me. You tell her, it's time for her to do the right thing. If you make it out of here alive, law enforcement are going to want to talk with you...”
She doesn't answer.
“They'll talk to you. About this. About me. About what happened here.”
She gives the faintest nod.
“You tell them the message. For Lauren DeLuca.”
“Who are you?”
“She knows who.”
Maddie stares at him, round-eyed.
“You pass the message; it's time to do the right thing...”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
At the camp ground on Elk Lake, Whicher stands in the lee of the cookhouse cabin, holding down his hat in the wind.
By the ice-bound lake, Galen Coburn dismounts his quarter horse.
He holds the reins of his mare, his face tight and red from the cold. “I don't know what the hell is going on,” he says, “I brought you out here, I didn't ask questions. You said you needed to get to Anthony, I took you at your word.”
The marshal nods.
“Anthony was placed in my charge,” the ranch owner says. “We turn up, some maniac's crashed his car into a tree, Anthony’s taken at gunpoint—with a park ranger...”
Whicher cuts him off; “Can we make it back to the ranch before nightfall?”
Coburn’s horse steps sideways, picking up her feet. The ranch owner grabs her high at the bridle.
“We're a sitting target here.”
“Why the hell are we a target?”
Whicher takes a pace back, into the shelter of the cookhouse wall. “I'm not at liberty to tell you that.”
“People shoot at me, I'm not allowed to know who they are?”
The marshal watches three horses by a slat-board shelter, his mare among them, still saddled. “I don't make the rules, Mister Coburn.”
“You expect folk just to do whatever you want?”
“I have to go talk to her.”
Coburn rubs a leather-gloved hand across his chin.
The marshal gestures with his head toward the cabin.
“You think she's hurt?” the ranch owner says.
Whicher doesn’t reply. He eyes the snow driving in over a tree-covered hill.
“I suppose you're not about to tell me who she is?”
“You suppose right.”
Coburn gives a shake of his head.
“I'm sorry for what happened,” Whicher says. He looks over at Will Jacobs, the ranch guide attending to the group of horses. “If there's any way of getting back before nightfall, I'll call law enforcement, we’ll get the hell off of your property. I give you my word.”
“We need to get the horses fed, get 'em watered. Before we can do a damn thing.”
“There's still time?”
Coburn casts a weather-eye at the darkening sky. He tugs at the bridle on the horse. Doesn't answer.
Janice Rimes steers down the cleared highway, headed south. She smokes a cigarette down to the filter.
No point staying at the bottom of a snowed-up logging road—no word from the marshal, no word from anybody else.
Head back to Rapid City—she can call in to the office, see if anybody had an update. Forty minutes, she can be there. She steers the car along the twisting road.
Ahead is a junction, where a county two-lane leads back up into the hills. Beyond it, a truck stop, RVs and campers huddled to one side in a lot.
She slows the Chevy—the road is flat-looking—she stops.
It’s white over. She shakes her head. Bad enough last time, trying to make it up to Mystic.
She scans the sky. Grinds the cigarette in the ashtray. Better to stay on the main routes, head down through Merritt.
Her foot comes off the brake pedal, she gets on the gas.
The tires slip then spin before they grip.
Don’t stop again, she tells herself.
She drives past a snow-bound field, on around the curve of a long, wooded hill.
The nose of a vehicle appears
suddenly at the exit of a forest road—a big white SUV.
She gets off the gas, swerves into the center of the roadway.
The SUV dives on its brakes.
It skids slowly, stopping at the highway's edge. Light bar and a green stripe along its side. The words, U.S. PARK RANGER.
Rimes gives the driver an irritated glance—a park ranger ought to know better than to hare out from an iced-up turn.
Something about the man’s face strikes her—hawk-like, his eyes intense.
She shrugs it off. Eases back on the gas pedal. Steers the car back on-line. Continues south.
Lauren DeLuca sits on a wooden chair, the marshal's coat down around her waist. Flames from the wood stove light the dim interior of the cabin, her blonde hair is tinged with a sheen of red.
Whicher closes the door to the cookhouse. He studies the side of her face.
She said her head hurt. And her neck.
She holds herself entirely still in the straight-backed chair.
Walking up to the campground from the logging road, he’d been silent with her—unwilling to let her talk.
She was stiff, limping, no doubt in shock. He’d told her to follow Coburn, the ranch owner leading, with his horse, Whicher guarding the track from the low side—listening for any sound of a vehicle, any sign the shooter was coming back.
“So, that was your brother?”
Lauren stares into the stove.
“Down there,” Whicher says. “Down that hill.”
Her eyes blink, she gives a slight nod.
“The guy with the gun was who?”
He waits a long time for her to speak.
She stares at shifting pieces of burning wood behind the glass door of the stove.
“I don't know,” she says, finally.
Whicher crosses the room, leans against a kitchen countertop.
“He said he got on to the train at Denver,” Lauren says. “Our train. The same time we did.”
Denver.
Twenty-four hours back.
Nobody knew they were catching a train.
They'd ridden a bus from Pueblo, bought tickets for cash. They’d sat in the Union Station waiting room, on high-backed wooden benches. With a handful of other passengers. Nobody knew they were there.
“At McCook,” Lauren says, “when the train was stopped—he just appeared. He came up out of nowhere.”
She stares into the fire.
The marshal folds his arms, watches her.
“You were outside,” she says, “off the train, somewhere. I don’t know where.”
Whicher thinks of prowling the snow-covered rail yard—waiting for the night crew to clear the line.
Lauren lets out a breath. “He came up to me. He said; ‘Tino Coletti sends his regards’...” Her voice trails off.
“Tino Coletti?”
She stares at the rough plank floor. “He said Anthony's whereabouts were known.” She looks up. “He told me the place where he was staying.”
“This place?”
“He told me the name of a ranch. In South Dakota, the Black Hills.”
Whicher glances at the window as wind rattles the shutters against the cabin walls.
“I knew Anthony was on a ranch...” Lauren nods. She wraps her arms around her sides. “He said Coletti's people knew where Anthony was—either I got off the train with him—or they’d have him killed.”
The marshal turns toward her.
“He was carrying a gun,” Lauren says. “Holding it so no-one would see.” She mimes the action, placing her fist close to her chest. “Just here,” she says, “inside his jacket.”
“You got off the train?”
“I tried to play for time...”
“Describe it,” Whicher says.
She brushes back a strand of hair behind her ear. “It was dark. There were no lights. He made me run. We were at the back of some grain towers,” she says, “he had his gun out. We went up some street. Then he broke into a house, he stole keys, he stole this car...”
“You waited? Then got in a car with him? Because he said they’d kill your brother?”
She swallows.
“They could kill him anyway...”
Lauren flinches.
“If they wanted,” the marshal says, “if they already knew where he was.”
“We started to drive.” She looks at Whicher. “I realized I was making a big mistake. All I could think of was Anthony...” The muscles tighten in her face.
“How come you weren’t restrained in any way?”
Her eyes come up on his. “What do you mean?”
“Where’d that Nissan come from?”
She searches his face. “A rental car office.”
“A rental office?”
“In North Platte,” she says. “This morning.”
“Y’all drove all that way?” the marshal says. “To North Platte in a stolen car. All of that time, just the two of you? You didn’t try to get away?”
A sound is in her throat, muffled. “You don't know these people. You have no idea what they're like.”
“You thought you were giving your brother some kind of a chance?” The marshal walks to the window, stares out into the blowing snow.
“I told him I have something,” Lauren says.
Whicher watches the tree line, wind battering the limbs of the pine.
“Nobody's told you?” she says. “About me?”
He shoves his hands into his pockets.
“I have money. A lot of money.”
“Mob money?”
“I offered him a share.”
The marshal steps from the window, crosses the room to the stove. Heat is strong against the side of his face. He takes out the Glock checks it over.
From a twenty-round box of .40 calibre Smith & Wesson, he reloads the rounds fired on the logging road.
“The world I lived in,” Lauren says, “that's your life. A deal. This for that.”
He finishes reloading the gun, slips the box into a pocket.
“I told him I'd split the money with him. All of it.” She shakes her head. “I was trying to play for time, for God’s sake...”
“You tell him you got money?” Whicher says. “What's to stop him doing what he needs to do with you, and taking the money anyway?”
“I have to be there.”
He looks at her.
“I have to sign. In person.”
He holds her eye a long moment.
“I have to be there at the bank—sign paper. There's no other way you can get that money out.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Maddie Cook holds the bib coat close to her body—her un-gloved hands stuffed deep inside her pockets. The waterproof boots are holding out, the bottoms of her pants wet and cold.
Walking beneath the pine and oak at the edge of the track, she follows her own wheel marks in the snow. Where the pine is close-grown, there's just enough cover to keep from sinking to her ankles. She can drop back further into the forest—but the trees are dense, progress will be too slow.
She thinks of the man, pointing a gun at her belly. She could be dead already, she tells herself.
She's alive. She'll stay alive.
She wonders about the woman. Time to do the right thing.
Her foot catches on a tree root—she trips, falls forward, to her knees.
Thrusting her bare hands into the snow, she pushes up as fast as she can. Her clothes can't get wet, she can’t afford for that to happen. She stands a second, feels her hands burn with cold—thrusts them in under her coat.
She feels a tear form at the corner of her eye.
No, no.
Fuck you, no.
She won't cry. She won't let that in.
She thinks of the hook-nosed bastard with the gun, thinks of ramming it into his ugly face. Following it up with a baseball bat, like the one in her son’s room.
She nods. Alright. Better. She works her painful hands into her pockets, moves
forward again.
In her mind's eye she sees the track through the forest, sees its progress, thinks of features along the way, points she remembers. A stack of felled timber in a clearing—power lines to hill-top ranches. She pictures a stand of yellowbark pine that always catches her eye. A gulch of exposed granite, a burn from two years gone.
One foot after another. All she has to do.
Both of her feet are numb from cold—at least they're not wet.
Five more miles.
Five more miles till she reaches the logging road. The descent to the highway is at least another four. It’ll be choked with snow, she knows—she tries not to think about the descent.
Her face is sore, pain throbs in both ears. Snow is working its way down her collar, melting down the back of her neck.
The logging road is exposed, wind scoured, it’ll be deep in snow.
She glances out from under the canopy of pine.
The blond-haired boy was not much older than her own son. They'll have gotten down to the Rochford Road. They'll have driven down, snow or not, the SUV could get there, four wheel drive and winter tires.
The thought of the warm cab catches her just for a moment. She pushes it away.
She can follow tracks.
All she has to do. Put one foot in front of the other. Not rush, not think of cold and fear, not think of stopping. Not think about the feet she can no longer feel. Or the rawness of every exposed piece of skin.
She can walk the forest, walk the logging road, get down on the highway.
A sickening thought reaches her—will they keep it open?
God.
Please, God.
Let it be open.
On 16 West, dirty snow is piled on the double-wide median. Belaski drives in frozen wheel ruts, staring out through the salt-encrusted windshield.
Off the highway, openings show every mile or so; single-lane roads and tracks into the forest—barely any are marked or posted—private, he guesses, access to ranches and farms.
You'll have to pick one, he tells himself.
He pushes back against the driver seat, flexes out his arms.
Some will lead to unincorporated settlements, to scattered houses.
Behind him, there's no traffic. Nothing moving up ahead on the road.
He lets the SUV slow, the note of the motor dropping. The highway’s running north and east, through a wooded valley. A sign ahead reads; Rockerville 2 — Rapid City 13
An American Bullet Page 14