“No,” Allison said. “You don’t know more than I do about it. Have you heard them speak to each other?”
Jamie Bennett stayed silent.
“I didn’t think so. Until you’ve heard them, you don’t know.”
She was both surprised and disappointed that the other woman had begun to cry.
“He was your problem,” Allison said, though her heart was no longer in the attack, and she hated that, because, damn it, she was entitled to her anger. “It was your job to keep him safe. Not anyone else’s. You were supposed to do your job like a pro. Look at what’s come of your game.”
“I couldn’t do it like a pro,” Jamie Bennett said.
“Obviously.”
“I wanted to. You don’t believe that, but I wanted to. There was nothing I wanted more in the world than to keep it professional. But it is absolutely impossible to do that with your own son.”
Allison opened her mouth, felt the sting along the lines of stitches, closed it, and tried again. Speaking softer now. “Your son?”
Jamie Bennett nodded. One tear traced her cheekbone.
“That boy who is missing, the one they came for, that’s your child?”
“That’s my child.”
Allison didn’t say anything for a long time. Outside, a cart squeaked by and someone let out a too-loud laugh and the patient in the room beside them hacked a wet cough and the two women sat there and stared at each other in silence.
“Why?” Allison said finally.
“Why to which part? Why am I here? I’m trying to find him. That’s the only thing that I—”
“Why do they want him?”
Jamie Bennett crossed the room and sat in the chair where Ethan had been earlier.
“He saw them kill a man. He found a body, and then he saw these men appear with another man, and they killed him, and Jace saw it all.”
“Jace.”
“That’s his name, yes. He was Connor Reynolds when you met him.”
“Yes. Ethan’s gone after him. He left me here and went back to find him.”
“I’ve been trying to reach Ethan. I haven’t gotten through.”
“You don’t get a cell signal in the wilderness, Jamie.”
“And they haven’t found the men who…who did this to you.”
“No. They have not.” She lifted a finger to her face and touched the bandages and said, “Who are they?”
“I have no idea. I have their physical descriptions, and I have the names they call themselves, and beyond that…nothing.”
“They’re brothers,” Allison said.
“I understand that they look alike.”
“More than looks. They’re brothers. The names might be lies, but that part is not. They go together. It’s a shared blood.”
“I’d like to promise you that we will find them,” Jamie Bennett said. “But I’m done making promises.”
“Who did they kill? Who did…Jace see them kill?”
“Witnesses. My witnesses. For a federal trial, one that was supposed to put seven people in prison, including three police officers. I was hired to do part of the protection assignment. I failed.” She took a long breath, brushed hair out of her face, and said, “My witnesses—they weren’t just killed. They were taken to Indiana, to the place where my son lives with my ex-husband, and murdered there. They’d sent me a note indicating the location. I was supposed to discover the bodies, or have them discovered. Instead, my son saw it. And now…now they have to address that.”
“Why would they have done that? Killed the men and dumped the bodies by your family?”
“To prove that they can’t be touched, and I can be,” Jamie Bennett said. “I’m sure the message was a threat, and one that entertained them. It’s their pattern, or what we understand of it. They’re very good at what they do, but they’re of…more creative minds than your typical hired killers. More like sociopaths than professionals, frankly. They like to entertain themselves while they work. Killing the witnesses I had promised to protect and then leaving them so close to my son…I think that pleased them.”
“They know that he saw them.”
“Yes.”
“But they didn’t kill him. Why not?”
“They didn’t find him. He hid well that day, and they ran out of time. I got him away then. To a safe house. The sort of thing I told you his mother wouldn’t trust. Remember that, the night I met you, that night in the snow? It wasn’t a lie. His mother didn’t trust the safe house. His mother had just lost two witnesses from one. Do you remember when I said I would protect the boy for free if I thought I could?”
Her voice broke and she turned from Allison. That was the only motion she made, but somehow she seemed to continue retreating.
“His mother was never a very good mother,” she said. “That’s why he lived with his father. But his mother still loves him. She loves him more than…” She stopped talking and gave a sob of a laugh and then said, “You like that? How I still have to talk about myself as if I’m not the mother?”
“I understand it, at least.”
She turned back to Allison and said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Serbin. I’m so sorry. I should never have involved your husband. Or you. It was just an idea that came to me in a desperate time, and I remembered your husband, remembered that training and how good he was and how remote this place was, and I thought…I thought it might work. For long enough, anyhow. Just enough time for them to be caught. I’m so sorry you’ve paid for my mistake.”
Allison stared past her and out the window to where the lights of the town glowed. On the other side of the lights, the mountains lived in blackness, and somewhere on them were Jamie Bennett’s son and Allison’s husband and the two men who smelled of smoke and blood.
“You might have made a lot of mistakes,” Allison said. “But coming to Ethan wasn’t one of them. I can promise you that. I can’t promise you that he’ll get your son back to you safely. But I can promise you that nobody has a better chance.”
“I’m going after him.”
“No, you’re not.”
“It’s why I’m here. That’s my son. You heard me say it; you’re the only one who knows. I’m going to help find him.”
“No, you’re not,” Allison repeated. “You don’t know how. If you were with Ethan, maybe. Without him…you’ll just get stopped.”
“Then help me. Tell me where Ethan would have gone.”
“I don’t know! If I knew, I’d be there myself! To tell him to quit.”
“How would Ethan have started? So far, all I know is that he’s gone to search. You have to know more than that. This is what he does. What has he told you about the way he does it?”
He would have gone to the last place he’d seen the boy. He would have hiked back up the Pilot Creek trail and found their camp, and there he would have begun to track him.
“Would he have listened?” Allison said.
“What?”
“Your son. Was he the type of kid who would have paid attention to what Ethan said? Would he have listened and retained, or would he have been too scared? Would he have been concentrating only on staying with his false identity and hoping that nobody came for him?”
“He would have listened. It’s one of the reasons we…one of the reasons I picked this approach. I wanted him off the grid, yes. But I also thought that your husband would help him. Mentally, emotionally. That he wouldn’t be alone in the way he would have been in other situations.”
Allison looked at the dark mountains again and said, “It will probably be too late.”
“I’ve got to try. Mrs. Serbin, if you have an idea, then you’ve got to let me try. Just tell me where to go or who to talk to and I will leave you alone, I will—”
“We’ll go together.”
Jamie Bennett didn’t say anything, just looked Allison up and down. Taking inventory of the damage.
“I’m burned, and I’m sore. I’m not broken. I can move.”
“You don’t need to—”
“Bullshit. Your son is out there, and my husband. And I hate hospitals.”
“You’re in one for a reason.”
Allison pushed herself upright. It wasn’t pleasant—there were throbs of pain from places she hadn’t known were hurt—but she could do it. She swung around and got her feet down on the floor. All that was required now was standing. That was all. Tango had been standing for three months. How many people did she need to explain that to? Only one. Herself.
“Stop,” Jamie Bennett said, but there wasn’t much heart in it.
“Ethan gave them escape routes this summer,” she said. “Every night, at every campsite. He said Connor—sorry, Jace—fell back when they were hiking last night. If he hasn’t been found yet, then he’s not on a trail. They would have found him. If he went into the backcountry, and if he was the type of kid who listened, then he might have tried to get out using the escape route. It would have been the only option he knew.”
“So where would he be?”
“Trying to hike into Silver Gate down the back of a mountain.”
“Silver Gate,” Jamie Bennett said. “That’s…that’s where the fire is.”
“Yes.”
“Would it be close to him?”
“I have no idea what’s happening in those mountains. Now, I know you can drive fast. You’ve demonstrated that. So drive fast again, but this time stay on the damn road, all right?”
Part Three
The Dying Kind
28
The fire came into view for the first time at the plateau that ran below Republic Peak, which Hannah and Connor reached gasping and sweating. It had not been an easy climb. They could see Amphitheater, the next peak, in the distance, and below them, a long way down, were glimmers of orange and crimson. It looked like the dying embers of the world’s largest campfire, but Hannah knew it was hardly ready to die. What looked like small flares from up here were probably flames climbing forty- or fifty-foot pines. The crews down there had lost the blaze to the wind and had likely retreated for the night. She’d heard no helicopters, which was unsurprising considering that it was dark and storms were on the way. There’d been no choppers during the day either, so she surmised that they’d thought they could contain it without the helitack units. Now they were backing off, giving themselves some rest and counting on rain, waiting to see what the storm front would do to the fire.
“That’s it?” Connor said, staring down at the colored glows. There was awe in his voice.
“That’s it.”
“I didn’t know we’d be able to see the actual flames. I thought it would just be smoke. I know it’s not right to say, but from way up here, it looks kind of pretty.”
“Yes,” she said, and she was agreeing with both sentiments—it wasn’t right to say, and it was pretty. It was absolutely gorgeous, in fact. “You should see it from the ground,” she said. “When the flames turn to clouds. When the fire runs up on you like something prehistoric, and you can see it and feel it and hear it. The sounds it can make…it’s a hungry sound. That’s the best word I can give you. Hungry.”
“How do you know so much about fires?”
“Spent some time with them, Connor. Fighting them.”
“Really?” He turned to her. “They let girls do that?”
“They do.”
“And you were down there?” He pointed. “I mean, you would have been right down there?”
“Yes. Usually, we would have trenched and watched the wind and pulled back by now. Waited for sunrise. Not always, though. It depends on the weather, depends on the circumstances, what your time window looks like. Sometimes we worked all day and all night. With this weather blowing in, though, we’d be waiting. We’d keep a safe distance and wait to see what it would do to the fire.”
“Was it fun?”
She loved him for the genuine quality of the question. It was something adults would never ask; they’d search for a different word, wonder if it had been rewarding or a rush or something of that nature, but they’d want to know the same thing this kid did: Was it fun? She was silent for a long time, looking down into the shifting lights in the blackness, shapes that moved like scarlet shadows, a role reversal of light and dark.
“I worked with some wonderful people,” she said. “And I got to see some things that were…special. Majestic. There were days when, yes, it was fun. There were days when it was inspiring. Made you think of who you were in the world.”
“Why did you quit?”
“Because,” she said, “I got a taste of the other kinds of days.”
“What does that mean?”
“Sometimes you lose to it.”
“To the fire?”
“Yeah.”
“Did somebody get hurt?”
“A lot of people got hurt.”
Lightning flashed regularly and closer now than before. The warm wind wavered between calm and howling. Stars disappeared in the west as the clouds thickened and crept along. Moisture was heavy in the air. Every warning was being offered, the mountains whispering one imperative instruction: Get low, get low, get low. She glanced back at the fire. Miles away still. Not a chance in this world that it would climb toward them fast enough. Not a chance. And if these lightning storms blew in, and they were exposed on top…
“We’re going to go another quarter of a mile,” she said. “Maybe half, no more. And then we’re going to shut it down for the night. It’ll be windy, and it might be rainy. But we’re going to stay up top, where we can see what’s happening. In the morning, we’ll figure out how to call for help.”
“Ethan said people should always be off the peaks when it storms. He said at this altitude, you’re already sitting on an aluminum roof, and the last thing you should do is start climbing an aluminum ladder.”
“Ethan sounds like a very smart guy,” she said, reaching for her pack. “But I don’t know if Ethan’s been burned yet, Connor. I have. We’re going to stay on top.”
He didn’t argue, just walked on with her, but she knew he wasn’t altogether wrong. Storms were coming, there was no question of that. The wind was gusting just as hard as it had been but now it was sticky-hot; it had swung around to the southwest, and when the gusts came, they howled. Looking back toward the tower, you could see a sky littered with stars, the Milky Way never more stunning than it was in Montana at night, but to the west, the stars vanished, and that was trouble. The front that had pushed all this warm air ahead of it and caused havoc with the fires was about to reveal itself for the monster it was, and Hannah expected it to be a hell of a storm. It had been building too long to go any other way.
The question was, How long before it arrived? She didn’t want to be on the peaks when it came, but hiking down the steep, rock-scree slopes at night was begging to break an ankle. If one of them got hurt, both of them were likely to die come morning.
She also didn’t want to go down into the tree-lined drainages. The fire was still far away, but not far enough for her comfort. And with a wind like that behind the blaze? No. She wouldn’t chance it. They’d stay high as long as they could, and they’d camp if they had to, and if the rain came, maybe it would slow the spread of the flames.
Or maybe you’ll get killed by lightning.
It was a greater risk than the fire, she knew. But still…
Deploy or die, Hannah! Deploy or die!
She wouldn’t take them down into those gulches yet. Not until she knew what the wind was going to do. Up here on the high rocks there was nothing for the fire to eat. Below them lay the land of the burnout, where scorched trees glittered like a field of candles, tributes to the dead, and that led all the way to where the main blaze raged, several thousand feet down. The wind and the terrain would hold the fire there.
“How long are your legs?”
Hannah stopped walking and looked at Connor. He’d been in front since they left—after informing her of the importance of rotating pace se
tters so that they didn’t wear each other out—and he hadn’t talked much as the first mile fell behind them and darkness came on.
“Pardon?”
“Are they the same length?”
“I don’t follow, Connor.”
“Some people have one leg that’s a little longer than the other. I don’t know about mine. They look the same, but it’s probably not an obvious difference. Do you know about yours?”
“I’m pretty sure they’re the same.”
“Well, if they’re not, we should know.”
“Yeah?”
“We’ll be veering in that direction. If your legs aren’t even. You veer without even thinking about it. That’s one way you get lost.”
“Connor, we can still see what we’re walking toward. We aren’t going to get lost.”
“It’s just something to keep in mind,” he said. There was a touch of defensiveness in his voice. He was full of these random facts, and while many of them—like the length of people’s legs—were useless, she had to concede that the boots had been a decent idea, and leaving the light on a very good one, and bringing the map so obvious as to embarrass her. She also realized that he took comfort in the odd collection of wilderness trivia. It was where he’d gone to convince himself that it was worth getting up off the floor and trying to run. Where he went to keep the fear away.
“What else?” she said.
“Nothing.” He was disgruntled now, and she couldn’t have that.
“No,” she said, “I’m serious. What else should we be thinking about?”
He was silent for a moment and then said, “We’re going uphill.”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s a good thing, I think, except for the storm.”
“Why is that?”
“Most people go downhill when they’re lost. I forget exactly what the percentage is, but it’s high. We’re not lost, but we’re trying to get out, so it’s about the same thing, and most of the time, people who want out of the woods head downhill.”
“Makes sense.”
“Not necessarily. If people are looking for you, it’s a lot easier for them to see you if you’re up high than if you’re down in a valley. You can signal better from up high. And you can always see a lot better. Like in your tower, right? It was easier to figure out the route from your tower than it would have been on the ground, just looking at the map.”
Those Who Wish Me Dead Page 19