Back of Beyond

by C. J. Box

  “You found it,” Rachel said, “but it’s still my money. Now Jed, we need to see your hands. Pull your hands out and put them out in front of you on the rock.”

  Then Gracie realized what Rachel had done. She’d gathered them around her in case Jed came out shooting. Not only would Jed think he was outnumbered, but a bad shot would kill a kid. They were standing, unaware hostages, she thought. And she knew at that moment every suspicion she’d had toward Rachel was true.

  Jed said, “Yours?” But he pulled his hands out and put them on the rock. He had nothing in them, but the backs of his knuckles were smudged with dirt or soot.

  Rachel said, “Mine. I guess I should be surprised someone else was after it, but I’m not.”

  Jed raised one of his hands to shadow his eyes from the glare of Rachel’s headlamp. He said, “I see you got Justin and Danielle with you. Gracie, too. What, are they part of your gang?” When he said the word he grinned. He shook his head and said, “That goddamned Dakota. She just can’t keep her mouth shut, can she?”

  Gracie thought there must be something wrong with him. Rachel held a gun on him and he was making jokes? Then she realized Jed assumed Dakota had not only told them about the printouts she’d found, but that he thought she was still alive.

  Which meant …

  “Look,” Jed said, chinning behind him toward the hidden fuselage of the plane, “I’ve been down there and it ain’t pretty. The pilot and copilot are long dead. They’re suspended from their seatbelts and the scavengers have been working on them for months. Worse,” he said, looking directly at either the muzzle of the gun or Rachel’s eyes or both, “the birds and mice have shredded whatever money is left. I haven’t been able to find a single bill that isn’t chewed up. That isn’t to say maybe if I keep digging I might find a bundle of cash somewhere the rodents haven’t chewed through, but I’ve been at this twenty minutes and I’m discouraged as hell.”

  Gracie glanced over at Rachel. Her face was frozen into a porcelain mask of rage. Her lips looked almost blue. Her voice was tight and threatening when she said, “I don’t believe you.”

  43

  Cody spurred his horse wildly up the mountainside on the well-trod trail in the dark. He felt out of control because he was; he’d lost his balance once and slipped down the side of Gipper and nearly tumbled to the ground under his hooves but managed to pull himself upright. A few minutes after, he’d been swept out of the saddle backwards by riding under a low-hanging branch he couldn’t see in the dark. Cody’s shoulders and back ached where he’d hit the ground and the branch left a gash across his nose that oozed blood. He felt his ear burning where he’d been injured and realized he’d probably left the scab from it back on the branch. Ted Sullivan had done no better, and he’d fallen straight off the back of his horse and said he was pretty sure his tailbone was broken.

  Cody relied on his horse to find the rest of the herd up ahead. That, and there was nowhere to go but up.

  It was full dark in the trees now except for the perfectly blue-white orb of the full moon that winked down through openings. Cody was astonished how bright it was in the clearings now that the moon was up, and how the stars lit the ground as well, like an upside-down city illuminating overhead clouds. Without electric lights around for dozens of miles, the forest was capable of lighting itself, he thought. Who knew?

  He was starting to question himself if they were on the right path when he saw a gold splash of light up ahead on the side of a tree. The top of the J-shaped glacier came into view and Cody heard a sharp voice, then another.

  Cody pulled to a stop on Gipper and Sullivan’s horse slammed into him and both horses crow-hopped away from each other. He held on to the saddle horn and kept his head down but heard Sullivan fall heavily behind him with a grunt. Gipper calmed down, and he looked back, making sure Sullivan’s horse was in its proper place and not crowding him again. “Horses, Jesus,” Cody said under his breath. “They’re worse than kids.”

  When he dismounted after clearing his rifle from the sheath, he heard rather than saw the thundering of Sullivan’s horse running away back down the mountain. Sullivan lay in a heap, writhing. Cody tied off Gipper to a tree trunk and crab-walked up the last twenty feet of the trail before it leveled. As he neared the top the voices got louder.

  Painfully, he straightened his legs and rose up until he could see over the lip of the flat rocky bench. Horses blocked his view, but between their legs he could see four people standing side by side with their backs to him. Beyond them was the tail of an airplane and Jed McCarthy’s hands waving around in a beam of light as he talked. He appeared to be mostly underground, with only his head and shoulders visible. The dented white metal of the tail stood out in bizarre juxtaposition to the rock and trees that overwhelmed the area, but Cody instantly could see why it hadn’t been spotted from the air.

  Justin was there. He recognized him because his son towered over the others. Justin held hands with a girl with long dark hair. He could tell by their rigid grip that the situation they were in was tense. A woman he couldn’t yet identify but guessed was Rachel Mina was next to them pointing a handgun toward the aircraft. Next to Mina/Chavez on her right was a slim younger girl shifting her weight nervously from foot to foot.

  Cody spun and ducked back down and jogged down the trail to where Sullivan was. The man had managed to sit up and rest his back against a trunk. His face was contorted with pain.

  Cody leaned in to him and whispered, “They’re up above. All of them. I’m not sure what’s going on yet, but I need you to stay here and not make a sound.”

  “Are my daughters there?”

  “I’m pretty sure. There are two girls, but I can’t see their faces. But it looks right. My son’s there, too.”

  “Don’t let anyone hurt them.”

  Cody reached out and squeezed Sullivan’s shoulder. He noticed how the man was positioned by, in effect, holding his buttocks in the air by digging in his bootheels and flexing his legs to avoid contact between his tailbone and the ground.

  “Must hurt,” Cody said.

  Sullivan nodded frantically.

  “Don’t yell,” Cody said, and left him there. “Let me do my work here.”

  * * *

  Jed tried to stifle the grin that pulled on the sides of his mouth. Rachel Mina didn’t respond. In fact, the glint in her eyes and the set of her face said trouble.

  He ignored the teenagers even though he wasn’t sure why they were there. They didn’t seem to know what was going on, the way their eyes shot back and forth from Rachel to him as if watching a tennis volley. Still, he felt responsible for them. They were his clients.

  “Rachel,” Jed said, “there’s been a big misunderstanding, obviously. We can work this out. A couple of nights ago Dakota handed me some printouts she said she found in Wilson’s tent, but she must have been in the wrong damned tent. She must have been in your tent.

  “I got curious as hell and wanted to see what he was looking for, so I rode up here tonight. How could I know there was a plane crash, or what was in the plane? Come on.”

  Gracie thought, He’s lying.

  Dakota had said Jed had some kind of scheme going. This was it.

  Jed had fed them a story to convince them all to take an alternate route that would get him closer to the location.

  He’d left Camp Two to try and find his missing clients, he’d said. So why was he up here on the side of a mountain, at least a mile off the trail?

  She stole a look at Rachel Mina. She didn’t buy it, either.

  So why did he keep smiling?

  * * *

  Cody’s sight lines were blocked by the horses and he couldn’t get a bead on Mina. He could clearly see her forearm and hand gripping the pistol, but the heavy front shoulders of a horse blocked the rest of her. Shooting guns out of hands was reserved for old Western movies. He needed a bigger and better target.

  Feeling his way, he shinnied along the lip to his right. As h
e did so he got brief vignettes of Justin, Mina, and the girls through the horses’ legs, like viewing a set piece through the blades of a slowly spinning fan. He could see Jed clearly now, lit up in Mina’s headlamp. Jed seemed surprisingly relaxed, smiling even. Cody had a thought: were Jed and Mina in it together? Was this a falling out among conspirators?

  But when he got a quick glimpse at Rachel Mina’s face and posture, he concluded it didn’t matter. The woman was cold as ice, and determined.

  * * *

  Jed said, “You need to let me crawl on up out of here, Rachel. I’ve got one foot on a ledge of the crevice and the other on a piece of metal. Either one might give the way I’m balancing myself. If you want, you can come over here and shine your light down this hole. You’ll see what I saw: dead guys, and a whole shitload of shredded cash. Below that, it drops down farther than hell. I couldn’t even see the bottom of this crevice, even before it got full dark.”

  Mina didn’t budge. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. He was getting tired of looking straight into the wide O of the muzzle of her revolver.

  Finally, he said, “Rachel, there’s something you’ve got to know because this is getting old. When Dakota went to the wrong tent the other night she found that gun. Here, let me show you something. Don’t worry, I’m not armed.”

  He slipped his right hand along the rock and cautiously dropped it down out of view, never taking his eyes off her. Wondering if she’d pull the trigger before he could show her.

  * * *

  Gracie braced for an explosion while Jed took one of his hands out of view. The man, she thought, was incredibly brave or foolish. Or he knew something no one else did.

  Then she thought she heard something—a grunt or moan—from back beyond the horses and broken trees where the trail came up to the rock ledge. Had someone followed them?

  She looked at Rachel out of the corner of her eye to see if she’d heard it as well. If she had, Gracie concluded, she showed no reaction. Gracie guessed Rachel was so focused on Jed and what he was doing she’d blocked everything else out.

  * * *

  Cody wanted to holler to Ted Sullivan to get the hell back. The man had crawled up the trail and was at the lip, peering across the rock toward the scene. He’d grunted in pain as he hefted himself to see.

  Cody tried to get Sullivan’s attention by waving at him. But Sullivan couldn’t or wouldn’t look over.

  Instead, Cody turned his attention to the plane. One of the horses had shifted slightly to the left and he could see the side of Mina’s face clearly. The background was good; the teenagers were to the sides and wouldn’t be hit by an exiting bullet or a possible miss.

  Cody lowered himself to the rock and pulled the rifle butt to his shoulder and leaned in to the peep sight. Forty yards. An easy shot if his sight lines were clear.

  The side of Rachel Mina’s face filled the tiny metal ring hole of the back peep sight. He noted her high cheekbones and attractive profile, her smooth skin, the glint of her eye.

  His insides churned. He’d never in his life pointed a gun at a woman, much less shot one in the face. The realization and revulsion came out of nowhere.

  * * *

  Jed brought his hand back up as slowly as he dropped it. His eyebrows were arched in a way that suggested he was about to reveal a magic trick. He could sense Mina’s trepidation, he thought, and feel it from the others. Not that he was worried.

  He laid his fist out on the rock knuckles down and opened his hand. Six bronze-colored .357 Magnum bullets winked in the light of their headlamps. Jed said, “Dakota took these, also.”

  * * *

  Gracie turned for Rachel’s reaction, hoping it was over.

  Rachel shook her head at Jed. She said, “You must think I’m stupid. You have no idea what I’ve had to do to get here. You actually thought I’d bring only six bullets?”

  Jed’s mouth opened and Rachel shot him between the eyes. The bark of the gun was sharp and Gracie saw the big tongue of flame. Jed’s head jerked back, his hat flew off, and he dropped out of view.

  Despite the ringing in her ears, she could hear Jed’s body dropping down the crevice, smashing on the sides of the walls, until it landed with a thump several seconds later.

  * * *

  “Girls! Run!” Ted Sullivan bellowed.

  Cody cursed and tried to keep track of the sudden activity through his sights.

  Justin and Danielle let go of their horses and bolted for the far wall of trees. Mina spun on her heels with her smoking pistol in firing position. The horses, startled by the gunshot and the yelling, backpedaled away from them, then joined together and ran the opposite way from Justin and Danielle, crossing Cody’s view and blocking everything out for a moment as they passed by. The horses plunged over the lip of rock to Cody’s right a few feet away and crashed down through the timber.

  And when they were gone Cody saw that Mina had grasped the younger girl around her throat and held her in front of her like a shield. The gun was pressed against the girl’s temple.

  The girl, Gracie, was terrified. But she was taller than Cody thought, and blocked most of Mina’s body. When he peered down his sights he could see Mina’s flashing eyes, but barely over the top of Gracie’s head. He couldn’t take the shot and regretted he hadn’t fired moments before.

  * * *

  “It’s my dad,” Gracie said to Rachel, her voice altered by the pressure across her throat. “Don’t hurt him, please.”

  “That’s up to him,” Rachel said. Then to her dad, “Ted, turn the fuck around and walk back down that trail or you’ll get your girls killed. Is that what you want?”

  From the darkness, Gracie heard her dad say with a choke in his voice, “No, Rachel.”

  Rachel said, “Are you here alone? Is anyone with you?”

  * * *

  Cody thought, That son of a bitch will say the wrong thing.

  He prayed for Mina to shift her position. To move. Even if she’d turn to the right a little he might be able to see the back of her head and put one there.

  Thinking, If only I’d fired earlier.…

  * * *

  Gracie said again, “Don’t hurt him, please, Rachel. He does his best.”

  Rachel snorted bitterly. “And we both know that isn’t much, don’t we?” Then lowering her voice, she said to Gracie, “I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t want to ever see his face again, but I don’t want to hurt him. And I don’t want to hurt you. But I want what’s mine, and I want to get out of here with it. My life is in that plane. I’m not leaving without it.”

  Gracie didn’t think it was wise to mention Jed said all the money was shredded.

  “Ted,” Rachel called out, “you never answered me. Is anyone else with you?”

  Suddenly, Gracie realized someone was. Because although her dad could never communicate well, he’d never lied. He wasn’t capable of telling a lie, even now. He was probably beside himself, she thought, trying to figure out what he could say. And the fact that he’d said nothing meant yes, someone else was out there.

  “Ted?”

  Gracie glanced down. Rachel stood with her legs braced behind her. She could see the top of the knife handle poking out of Rachel’s right boot.

  The pressure of the muzzle eased slightly on her temple as Rachel yelled for Ted to answer her. Gracie took that moment to slump back and let her legs buckle, as if she’d suddenly passed out from the tension. She felt herself slide down Rachel’s body. Rachel braced herself and reset her grip on Gracie’s neck, but in the moment she did so Gracie felt the muzzle of the gun lift up and away.

  She touched the handle of the knife with her fingertips then closed her hand around it and drew it out fast. Before Rachel realized what was happening, Gracie jerked the knife out and away from her, then back as hard as she could in a chopping motion, plunging it nearly to the hilt in Rachel’s right thigh.

  The whimper that came from Rachel was wholly unexpected and a sound Gracie would
never be able to forget. But the pressure on her neck eased and she was able to pull herself away and tumble to the rock.

  * * *

  Cody shot Rachel Mina in the heart twice with a furious double-tap. The woman was likely dead before she hit the ground.

  * * *

  Gracie saw the cloud of bright red mist balloon from the back of Rachel’s jacket, and felt the heavy gun drop on her leg. She heard the dull crack of Rachel’s head as it slammed down against the rock as she fell.

  * * *

  Cody was up and scrambling. He approached Mina’s body with his sights set on her head, hoping he wouldn’t need to pull the trigger again. He was struck by how small she looked now, like a broken doll. Rivulets of blood streamed from her body and filled cracks in the rock like a spring flash flood hitting the plains.

  Gracie was sitting up covering her mouth with her hands.

  He said, “You all right?”

  She nodded.

  “Damn, that was brave what you did,” he said. “Gutsy as hell, Grace.”

  “It’s Gracie.”

  “Gutsy as hell, Gracie.”

  She nodded and he liked that she knew she’d been tough.

  Gracie nodded toward Mina’s body. “She’s just so … dead.”

  “That’s how it goes,” he said. Then to the others, “You can all come out now.” He almost said, Even you, Ted, you stupid moronic son of a bitch who just about got your daughter killed. But he didn’t.

  * * *

  Cody looked up to see two figures coming out of the woods. One of them had a flashlight.

  “Justin?”

  “It’s me.”

  His son shined his flashlight beam up so his face was illuminated. Although the shadows should have looked monsterlike, Cody saw a huge smile and an expression he could only think of as awed.

  And for the first time in at least ten years, Justin walked straight up to him and threw his arms around him. Justin said, “My God, Dad. I just knew you’d come. As soon as things went bad, I knew you’d be here.”