“Out in my car, I believe. You want me to go get it?”
“It wasn’t a blueprint,” Claire said. “I know what a blueprint is. This was a map, some kind of survey map. It wasn’t any damn blueprint. Don’t treat me like a child.”
Antwan raised both hands in defense, mimicking a chastened look.
“I’ll go get it if you want. It’s in the Mercedes.”
“How about the Faust brothers?” Frisco said.
Browning was admiring the gold, angling it so it glinted in the sunlight.
Antwan pushed his plate forward and stretched his arms straight above his head and yawned.
“What about them?” Browning glanced at his brother, then cut a look at Claire.
“Were the Faust boys here last night?”
“Not that I know.”
“Their car was here,” Frisco said, fingers still laced, wrists against the table edge. Same steady tone of detachment.
“Those two boys come and go. I don’t have tracking devices on them,” Browning said. “What’re you after, Frisco?”
“So they weren’t here last night?”
“I said they weren’t.”
“How about Gustavo? Why was he fired? Or was he?”
Browning stared indifferently at his brother.
“I don’t want to hear that man’s name mentioned in this house ever again.”
Frisco’s eyes were still cocked down.
“Earl mention anything about some big changes coming to the ranch? Some radical changes?”
Browning dropped the toothpick and pushed his chair back.
“Goddammit, Frisco. Cops been grilling me all fucking day, now I got to take a load of shit from you. No way. You don’t have any right to harass me. You don’t have a fucking clue what goes on out here. You think it’s all fun and games. Man, I’m busting my ass trying to stay even. Feed grain costs doubled last year, and same with fertilizer for the grazing pastures. You have any idea what a bag of clover seed or purple top turnips goes for? And Christ, our fuel bills are through the roof. We’re lucky to clear one percent on the cattle operation, and we haven’t started making money on the safari. I could put the same amount of cash in a T-bill and make four times the profit this ranch turns. Earl ran this place like a hobby farm. Every idea I had about improving things, he’d shoot it down in a heartbeat.
“But you wouldn’t know about any of that, because you’re off in your dream world, playing with your horses, riding around Miami like the Lone Ranger. So don’t come out here and bully me with that law-enforcement third-degree bullshit. Don’t pull that big-brother garbage on me. You know what I’m saying? I’m not a kid anymore. I’m not your goddamn punching bag.”
Frisco smiled down at his hands.
“Been polishing that for a while, have you?”
“Stop it, you two.” Claire rose and scooped up Antwan’s dish and held it out to him till he got the message and picked up his napkin and dropped it onto the plate.
Her husband’s cupid cheeks were blotched, and that vein angling toward his left eye was so swollen it seemed on the verge of rupture.
“And you, Antwan?” Frisco said. “Earl mention anything to you about a radical change around the ranch?”
Antwan produced the toothy grin he used to flaunt on the gridiron when a clear path to the end zone opened up before him.
“Much as I do love coming out here to Coquina,” Antwan said, “the affairs of this ranch ain’t no business of mine. I got no skin in this game.”
“Good to hear,” Frisco said. “Let’s try to keep it like that.”
Browning came to his feet, he tapped one end of the toothpick on the tablecloth as if gaveling the meeting to a close. He looked down at Frisco, at Antwan, saving Claire for last, giving her a dim meaningless smile.
“I’m going into Clewiston. Got a meeting with Lee White, Earl’s attorney at First Federal. And the accountants will be there, too. We’ll be opening Earl’s lockbox, going through the papers, whatever’s in there. You’re free to come, Frisco, this might concern you, too.”
“I’m not in the will.”
“I can’t believe that,” Claire said. “You need to go.”
“I’m the prodigal son,” he said. “Except I’m the one that never got around to making amends. I’m not in the will. And that’s just fine.”
Browning gave his brother a long level stare, then pocketed the toothpick and motioned at Antwan. Antwan rose, nodding at Claire.
“Please accept my most sincere condolences in this time of immense sorrow, Miss Claire.”
She carried the plate to the kitchen, and when she returned the two of them were gone. She stood in the doorway, looking at Frisco. He still sat with his wrists against the table, eyes down.
His gray T-shirt fit snug across his compact torso. Almost a foot shorter than Browning and leaner by a hundred pounds, Frisco had the ideal body for a bronc rider. Low center of gravity, wide shoulders, narrow hips, strong legs. For all Browning’s physical advantages and his brute superiority, her money would be on the older, slimmer brother in any kind of brawl. A David to his Goliath.
She wasn’t sure where all that came from, this sudden awareness of Frisco’s physicality. But for all the years she’d hung around jocks and observed their fixation on size and the potency it implied, and for all the time she’d watched the endless one-upsmanship they engaged in, she’d never seen a man of Frisco’s modest stature who so clearly had the intimidating edge.
“Care to take a ride, Claire?”
She blinked and came into the room. He was watching her with curiosity.
“A ride?”
“Horseback.”
“You want to go riding? A time like this?”
“Swing by the Pintos’ place. Pay our respects. That interest you?”
She drew a long breath and directed her gaze toward the living room, where the same two crime-scene techs were huddled in conversation.
“I’ll need to change.”
“So change,” he said. “Meet you in the barn.”
TWENTY
* * *
THORN WAS STOOPED OVER, HANDS on his knees, gasping. He’d run flat out for at least three miles, half an hour traveling east across open plains and rocky pastures and weaving through sparse stands of pine, coming to rest in a dense grove of cabbage palms, stumpy palmettos, and a few oaks and pines.
What stopped him at that precise spot was the patch of rare shade, and a herd of elegant antelopes that was grazing nearby on the yellowed grass in a narrow stretch of meadow. The last thing he wanted was a stampede of antelopes giving away his position.
In the grass, mingling with the herd, were a few white cattle egrets feasting on the bugs kicked up in the antelopes’ passage. At least he thought they were antelopes. Their long horns corkscrewed up and back. From their withers to their rumps they were jet black, while their underparts were snowy, as if they’d once waded in a shallow river of bleach. White fur circled their black eyes. Exotic as hell. From Asia or some mountain grassland on the other side of the globe. Not more than a yard tall at their shoulders. As close to a flock of unicorns as Thorn was ever likely to see.
There were around forty in the herd. They turned as one to look him over, decided he was fine, and continued their happy snack. They seemed as docile and innocent as a troop of Brownies on a picnic. A man who would shoot such an animal for sport should be strung by his testicles to a sturdy branch and left for the rodents and insects.
He sat and rested his back against a palm. When the barrel of the Glock stabbed his crotch, he drew it from his pocket and set it beside him on a pile of leaves.
For the last half hour the midafternoon sun had been his only guide in that disorienting landscape. He’d tried to keep his shadow before him as he ran, accomplishing at least a straight line. Though he might as well have been on the Australian Outback, the pampas of Argentina, or some equally far-flung spot. Heading east was a flip-of-the-coin choice. He had no map in his mind
of the shape of Coquina Ranch. He knew only that it was immense, and even if he managed to come to one of its boundaries, the land beyond it was also largely uninhabited.
Luck was going to get him out of this, bad luck or good. Maybe he could shade the odds a little, but no strategy had come to him yet. Keep moving in the same direction, try not to circle back on himself, and hope his path eventually intersected with some friendly circumstance. A public road, a house, a fellow traveler.
At the crunch of brush nearby Thorn stiffened. He swiped up the Glock and craned to the side and peered around the trunk of the palm. Twenty feet away one of the antelopes was nosing at some green shoots of grass on the edge of his oasis. It lifted its head and studied him for several seconds, its eyes so oddly large it seemed to be in a permanent state of amazement. Thorn held his position until the young buck made its evaluation, dismissed his menace, and resumed feeding.
Thorn eased back into place and delicately set the pistol aside. He was settling his spine against the tree when he felt a nudge at his rump, like a thick braid of rope tugged forward an inch. He held still, suppressing a groan. Before he looked behind him, he took a steadying breath. He already knew what it was and had gathered a sense of its size. He was only hoping it was a dusky pygmy or maybe a rare indigo, not one of their more deadly cousins.
Holding his head still, he slanted his eyes to the right but couldn’t make it out because its body was hidden beneath debris and fallen fronds. What he did see was the rabbit hole five feet off. The snake he was pressed against had been staking out the entrance to the rabbit’s den when Thorn sat down.
So exhausted from his sprint, he hadn’t paid attention. If he’d noticed the goddamn rabbit burrow he would’ve steered to a less risky spot. In woods like these, it was a common configuration. Snake guarding food source.
He inched his head to the right and finally made out the wedge of the snake’s head. Not good, not good at all. Hexagonal pattern, white and tawny and black and as thick as his wrist. He didn’t need to turn the other way to estimate its length. Five to six feet. Seven or eight rattles on its tail. A mature diamondback. In one bite it could deliver enough venom to kill six Thorns. The eastern diamondback was a perfect fit for this terrain. It absorbed humidity through its skin, could sleep for days in ambush, wake when it smelled its prey. Like most creatures in the wild, the rattler wasn’t naturally aggressive, but trapped like this one was as it waited for the rabbit to appear, it would be royally pissed. Diamondbacks only bit for two reasons: fear and food. And Thorn had both of those covered nicely.
Luckily, the snake was as straight as a staff. Hard for it to attack from that position. It would take the rattler at least a couple of seconds to coil for a strike.
Thorn was picking the direction he intended to dive when he heard the distant grumble of an engine. At the same instant, the snake edged forward an inch as though the motor’s approach had stirred it into action.
So there it was. Thorn had made one more bad move in a long string of them. This grove he’d chosen was way too obvious. He saw that now. He’d taken the predictable path and invited his own discovery.
To the west a plume of dust rose off the prairie behind a red ATV with oversize tires. Perfect for navigating the marshes and gullies of this harsh land. On most days, if a crafty hunter tacked with the wind to carry away the engine noise, that four-wheeler would be an excellent vehicle to stalk a nervous herd of antelope.
But not today. This hunter didn’t give a shit who heard his approach. He was bouncing recklessly across the rough terrain, his engine at full bore.
The young buck who’d been feeding nearby pricked up its ears, bleated once, and broke into a gallop. Behind him his tribe followed in tight formation.
Thorn felt the diamondback seep forward another inch. A foot of its body was out in the open, and the rattles were humming against the base of his spine. The snake had turned its head and was flicking its tongue toward Thorn, trying to suss out his potential as nourishment or threat.
Thorn didn’t wait for the creature to decide, but rolled right, rolled again, and twice more until he butted against a pine sapling. He came up in a crouch, searched for the snake, and located it finally, coiled in the leaves, pine needles, and decaying fronds, forming a perfect circle around the Glock.
A swirl of prairie dust filtered into the glen.
The motor shut off.
In the steady breeze, old seed pods and dry fronds chattered, and in the high branches of the canopy the dust cloud broke up and swirled away.
The diamondback continued to guard the pistol as if it were some prized kill it had dragged back to its nest. Its head hovered a few inches off the ground and that shiny tongue worked the air.
Thorn scanned the area for a fallen branch but saw only brown and crumbling fronds. Maybe one of the palm stems would serve his purpose, but he discarded that. Too unwieldy for what he needed. He looked down at the sapling he’d collided with. Six feet tall, an inch thick at its base.
Not perfect, but it would do. He picked a spot as far down its trunk as he thought he could snap, gripped it with both hands and bent it until it broke. Filaments of the green wood held on, dozens of pine strands as tough as ligaments. He rolled the sapling back and forth against the grip of the rubbery fibers, but they didn’t give. He took a step away from the base, threw his weight into it, and jerked the sapling free.
“You in there, Thorn? That you back in the shadows?”
Jonah’s voice was off to his right, thirty, forty feet away.
Thorn stepped closer to the diamondback, extending the sapling’s ragged end. The snake bobbed its head and glided forward a few inches, tracking the movement of the stick. Three-quarters of its length still circled the pistol, but its focus had shifted to this new intruder.
Thorn feinted the stick left, drew the rattler’s head that way, then poked the blunt end of his lance beneath the diamondback’s coil, hooked the snake as close to its midpoint as he could, then lifted and slung it five feet into the brush.
He snatched up the Glock and flattened himself behind the closest palm.
Maybe Jonah saw him move or heard the snake landing.
He started firing. His automatic weapon tore chunks from trees nearby, kicked up plugs of soil, put a scent in the air of pine and muck and a flowery residue. Jonah raked the cabbage palms from right to left, then back the other way. The gray rabbit that the diamondback had been waiting for darted across the glen, brushed Thorn’s bare ankles, and ducked into its hole.
Jonah worked closer, spraying bursts of five or six. Tearing away branches, spinning up tiny cyclones of bark and leaf and moss, meaty chunks exploding from long-leaf pine, oak, and saw palmetto. A gash opened a foot from Thorn’s face. Then more silence.
Thorn squatted down, ducked a look around the edge of the palm. He could hear Jonah tramping nearby but couldn’t spot him. From the sound, he might be ten feet away or five times that. Hard to tell with his eardrums throbbing.
With only two rounds in the Glock, there was no future in a full-scale shoot-out. He’d have to be frugal. Take nothing less than a perfect shot.
The rising wind was Thorn’s only ally. Kicking up leaves and broken bits of foliage, hundreds of small distractions tumbling across the ground, while overhead there was a screech of limb and the clatter of brush, and on the forest floor the sunlight and shadows flickered and flashed like some disco dance club.
Directly across from his position, he saw an old slash pine with a patch of bark rubbed away about two feet off the ground. It had the look of a scent post, a tree used by a wild hog to rub its bristly body. One of its prehistoric grooming habits. A few inches above the barkless patch were several scars in the soft wood. Another of the wild hog’s endearing traits was to gash its tusks into the most prominent trees. Both the scent and the gouges were left to mark wild hog’s territory, warn off rivals.
Thorn decided, all in all, to move. The scent post and the diamondback were p
art of it. But he didn’t much like the cabbage palm where he was hiding, either. It was too exposed, and all the shooting angles in Jonah’s direction were obscured. He glanced around and chose another tree ten feet away across mostly open space. He set his feet and skipped out into the clearing, staying low. Halfway to the tree, he caught a flash of movement to his right and dodged behind the trunk of a good-sized oak.
Jonah let off a burst of fire that shredded the fronds of a palmetto and dug up a trail in the forest floor ten feet from Thorn’s new location. He fired another half dozen rounds. No way to count how many he’d used up and no way to calculate when he was running low on ammo. He might have brought a month’s supply.
“Can’t we just get along?” Jonah called out. “Just be friends.” His voice was neither loud nor troubled. “You hear me, Thorn? Can you hear me?”
Thorn saw him clearly now. Close. Twenty feet to the east. He was stooped forward, aiming his weapon into the densest part of the grove. Unaware of Thorn.
Thorn stepped from behind the tree. He had no qualms about shooting Jonah in the back. Whatever moral restraint he’d possessed twenty-four hours before, he’d left behind at the bottom of that sinkhole, bearing down on a dying man’s throat, watching his arms flutter at his side.
He angled his pistol slowly to the left, but with so many trees and shrubs and saplings between them, there wasn’t an open shot.
Tucking back behind the oak, he pressed his cheek against the rough bark, brought the pistol up, extended it, and focused his aim on a break in the understory about ten paces ahead of Jonah. He waited, trying to time the man’s gait as he disappeared behind a dense stand of palmetto and tall grasses. He estimated it would be five or six seconds before Jonah reappeared in the clearing.
Thorn counted them off, then counted off twenty more. No Jonah.
Half a minute passed. Thorn lowered the pistol. He heard only a squirrel chittering on the high branches above him and the creak of the wind through the old growth.
He was rattled. Not sure of his next move. Was he the hunter still, or had Jonah faked him out? The kid didn’t seem savvy enough, but then again, this was his home turf. Maybe he knew this glen, knew its escape routes, its shortcuts and switchbacks. Or maybe it was all a bluff and he was stopping at every stand of woods and throwing out the same bait, trying to lure Thorn into the open.
Silencer Page 16