by Emery Hayes
“In the state of Montana, the age of consent is sixteen.”
“I know, but seventeen is young, even with all the responsibility she’d taken on. And I was twenty-four.” He held her gaze. “So we waited.”
He spoke openly, and that was good enough for her. It had to be. He trusted her, and she needed to trust the officers she hired.
“Adelai said you were honorably discharged,” she began. “That you were wounded and wouldn’t be able to return to your position.”
He nodded. “I was a pilot. That’s all I ever wanted to be. I flew an Osprey—an assault helicopter,” he explained. “Shrapnel”—he tapped his head—“was superficial, all except one piece which lodge in my inner ear, right up against the auditory nerve.”
“Does it affect your hearing?”
“No, but they worried it would affect my balance. It hasn’t yet,” he said, “but I get it.”
She stopped and turned toward him, careful to keep her head lamp averted. “That’s a tough break.”
“There’s worse,” he assured her.
“You’re right about that.” She cleared her throat, which had thickened with emotion when she thought about the worse that could have fallen close to home. “Thank you,” she said. “For your help with MacAulay.”
“You’re welcome.” He shrugged. “It comes naturally.”
“The training. But it’s more than that.”
“Yeah, I miss it,” he admitted.
* * *
Nicole paced. Jordan sat in the chair that opened into a bed and munched on takeout from McDonald’s. He was growing, for sure, but she thought it was more about maximizing this occasional treat that he’d ordered two quarter pounders with cheese, upgraded to a large fry, and gotten both a vanilla shake and a Coke. Or was this how teen boys ate all the time? Although they had time before that milestone happened. The trip to Disney and the Star Wars attraction to celebrate Jordan’s twelfth birthday was still four months away. It would be a family trip. A mother, father, and son trip. For sure, she and MacAulay would be married by then.
He hadn’t woken yet. It was late, close to ten PM. Three gunshot wounds from a fifty-caliber, and every one of them had managed to miss important anatomy. Relief made her feel weak in the joints. She sat down beside him, on the edge of his bed. He would need PT to recondition the pectoral muscles and he had a fractured rib. The rib had stopped the bullet, but a piece of that bone had punctured an air sac and deflated a lung. He would have respiratory therapy too. But the doctors expected a full recovery.
She felt his hand tighten around hers and brought her gaze back to his face. His eyes were open.
“Hey,” she said, her voice soft, hushed. “You’ve been asleep a long time.”
“Blood loss,” MacAulay said. “And Demerol.”
The ride down the mountain in the ATV had been bumpy, jostling MacAulay. Nicole knew Matthew Franks had done his best, but the QuikClot had begun degrading. By the time they’d reached the evac chopper, MacAulay had lost a pint of blood.
“You look good,” she said. His color was back.
“My ability to recover quickly is legendary,” he said, and managed, somehow, to waggle his eyebrows.
Nicole laughed, and it loosened up the tightness in her chest.
“How did it end up there?” MacAulay asked.
“It’s not over,” Nicole said. “Lars left earlier, on horseback. He has Luke Franks with him, and Sisk. They’ll meet up with RCMP. Green’s the only man left standing.”
Lars had called in earlier and reported finding the body of the third man. He was a BP agent, fairly new to the agency, and had been shot in the head.
“Gates is dead,” MacAulay said.
Nicole nodded, and the imagery flashed in front of her eyes. Gates lifting the Deuce, MacAulay throwing himself in front of her. The shots. The impact of the bullets on MacAulay’s body. The blood.
“No more heroics,” she said. Her voice was thick with emotion.
“No promises,” he said.
“I was wearing a vest.”
He shook his head. “It wouldn’t have helped you.”
“No,” she agreed. Gates had aimed for her head and, with automatic delivery, was likely to have hit his target. She bent over MacAulay and brushed her lips against his. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.”
“Let’s hope not.”
Jordan abandoned his food on the tray and came up alongside MacAulay’s bed.
“Hey,” MacAulay said. “It’s good to see you.”
Jordan nodded. Nicole could tell he had something to say, but his lips trembled and his eyes became fluid. MacAulay gave him time, and he reached and lay a hand over Jordan’s, which seemed to help.
“You gave it all up for my mom,” Jordan said.
“I love her,” MacAulay said.
“Me too.”
“I asked her to marry me.”
“I know.” And Jordan smiled. “I was there. You showed some serious moves.”
“Yeah? I thought I kept it rather simple.”
They all laughed until MacAulay clutched his side, over the gauze wrap, and winced. “I guess I’m not ready for that.” He grabbed the remote and raised the head of his bed slightly, and he sought Jordan’s gaze. “But we should have told you before I made it public like that.”
“You were in the clutch,” Jordan said. “Some of the best plays are made that way.”
“Well, maybe on the football field,” MacAulay said. “I just knew I didn’t want to miss my chance.”
“I’m pretty sure Mom knows she’s got a good thing going.” Jordan looked past MacAulay and connected with Nicole’s gaze.
She nodded. “I know I have the best men in the world right here in this room and I’m lucky enough to call them mine.”
* * *
Lars felt the satellite phone vibrate against his side. They were nearly six hours into their search and he had little to report, but he pulled the cell from his pocket and kept his voice low. A few minutes before they had crossed a land bridge, the edges of which were crumbling and slippery with loose stones, and had entered the lip of a wooded area that was too quiet. Green had gone before them, on foot. They’d caught glimpses of him through the night-vision binoculars, borrowed from BP. And they were getting close.
“Nothing yet,” he spoke into the receiver.
“Coordinates show you’ve made it across T-bone.”
“The dark made it easier.” Lars had a mild aversion to heights. “We’re into Caspian.” Rough terrain, mountain lion haven, thick with poison oak, and he wouldn’t be surprised if an alligator bit him in the ass. “RCMP is closing in from the southeast. About a mile or two distant.”
“You have Green closed in,” she said. He heard relief in her tone.
“We hope so.” Lars thought the man might have the speed and luck of a rabbit. Even with his head start, they should have overtaken him before now.
“Matthew tell you?”
“That Green is a cut above the rest in surviving the great wide open?” Lars returned. “Or that he’s carrying heavy weaponry and has the heart to use it?”
“Both,” she said. “Don’t stand still too long.”
“How’s MacAulay?”
“The doctor says he expects a full recovery.” She considered her next words. “Luke Franks is a crack shot,” she said. “And Sisk passed with close to sniper status.”
“Message received,” he said. “I’m good at picking teams.”
She smiled and heard it in her voice when she said, “That and a whole lot more.”
She signed off, and Lars dropped the phone back into his pocket. His Commando was strapped over his back, and he had his Glock in hand. He was, by far, more accurate with a handgun than a rifle, but still an embarrassment. Center mass, he reminded himself. All he had to do was plug the guy just once, and Green was wide in the chest. That increased Lars’s odds of success. Still, he was going to hit Sisk up for some r
ange time when they got back to civilization.
They were on foot, reins in hand and leading the horses into the gloom. By starlight. They had all felt the stillness, the gathering menace, and had extinguished their head lamps a mile back. Lars had the lead now, with Carly dropping back. He had picked up exactly where Matthew Franks had indicated, and they had followed Green with only a few false starts. But they’d had visual several times over the past half mile. They were closing in, and for that they needed the guys with the target practice up front. Franks flanked his left and Sisk his right.
“He pulled up,” Lars said. “He’s positioned somewhere close.” He felt it, in the silence but also in the energy in the air—a mounting tension that had no other explanation. He was under the trigger, and that made his ears ring and his skin pucker. He took long breaths, which slowed the adrenaline buzz and kept his head clear.
“He’s taken to the trees,” Franks agreed. “Height would give him an advantage and he’d take it.”
They stopped and pulled the night-vision goggles out of their saddlebags. Lars and his deputies were still adjusting to the view, to the opaque, green landscape revealed through the lenses. Four sets of eyes scanned the treetops and the shadowed pockets between trunks, the dry scrub and the boulders, some of which stood as tall as they did.
“Nothing,” Franks said.
“He’s in there,” Lars returned.
“My scalp is crawling,” Sisk said. “I feel him bearing down on us.”
Lars felt that too, the tingling at the base of his skull, an all-systems alert that was ancestral, that kept the quickest alive. It also made his breath thin and quick, and he made a conscious effort to slow that down.
A spray of gunfire rang out, off that bandolier belt Green had been wearing earlier that day. Impossible to tell how many shots were fired, they were so crowded together. A dozen or more. Lars felt the earth at his feet kick up. Dirt sprayed his legs and he stumbled backward, his shoulder falling against the breast of his horse, which neighed and reared its head.
“Easy, girl,” Lars murmured. He stroked her flank, the length of her neck, and felt her quaking nerves subside. Then, his Glock tight in hand, he peered again through the night goggles. “Where the hell is he?”
A flash of movement from his periphery, belly to the ground, caught his attention. “What the hell was that?”
“Mountain lion,” Franks said. “Flushed out by the gunfire.”
The horses caught scent of it and began tapping at the ground with their hooves, rustling together. Lars lay a hand on the flank of his horse, a long calming stroke down her side. “Easy,” he said.
There was an outcropping of rocks and scrub to scuttle behind, and they did that, using it as a shield as they made their way into the tree line and greater safety. They huddled there and took account of the situation.
“We were right about the treetops,” Sisk said. “The bullets came in at an angle.”
“Due west,” Carly said. “Hard to follow trajectory in this murky sky, but I’d say twenty to thirty meters west to northwest.”
Lars turned and faced the given direction, searching the foliage, damning the thick leaves of spring that offered concealment.
“Fluttering in the trees,” Sisk murmured. Lars turned toward him and noticed that the deputy had his Remington snug against his shoulder and his eye at the sight. The nozzle was pointed at a sharp angle upward, at eleven o’clock.
“You have a shot?”
Sisk shook his head. “No visual. Branches swaying. Too heavy for an owl, an unlikely perch for a mountain lion.” His head lifted slightly with the barrel of his gun as he seemed to follow the progress of motion in the treetops. “It’d be shooting blind,” he said.
“You’re not likely to hit an innocent bystander,” Lars said.
That was all the push Sisk needed to pull the trigger. The bullet ripped through the foliage, stopping when it slammed into the bark of a fir tree. Through the night goggles, Lars watched a few leaves drift from the branches, and in the silence that followed, they heard pinecones drop to the ground, the scraping of limbs against bark, the low grunt of a man.
They’d found Green. It could be no other.
“Missed the son of a bitch,” Sisk said. His voice was thick with disappointment.
“Green,” Lars called into the darkness. “Drop your weapons and come down from there, hands up when your feet touch ground.”
There was no response.
Through his earpiece, Lars listened as RCMP hailed them. They were still a half mile out but had heard the shots and wanted confirmation on origin. They wanted their position, but Lars didn’t have time to consult his GPS compass. He pressed the com button on his bi-way radio and said, “Stand by.”
He turned to Sisk and nodded toward the grouping of trees in question, a mix of oak and fir crowding each other, with branches intermingled and a sure possibility of traversing between them.
“You get a fix on him?” Lars kept his voice low.
Sisk nodded. “He’s moving, though. It’s not going to be one and done.”
“It’d be good enough to flush him out.”
Sisk nodded, moved around his horse and Lars, and took up position close to Franks.
To Green, Lars shouted, “You’re surrounded! RCMP has the northern rim locked down. You’re not going anywhere.”
“That includes jail, Solberg,” Green shouted. “My only way out is on fire,” he continued, panting between words. “And I want a little company.”
Green preferred death to incarceration. A hero’s fall as opposed to shame. Not uncommon with law enforcement turned bad. But it made Lars wince, from the inside out. Green was thirsty for bloodshed, and he would use every last bullet he had to get it.
“You sound tired, Green,” Lars said. “And a little out of breath.”
“Save your psychobabble bullshit, Solberg. I speak the language.”
“Okay.” Lars was agreeable. “How ’bout this: get your sorry ass down here before we shoot you out of the trees.”
“That’s what I’m hoping for.”
Lars spoke into his radio then, updating RCMP. “Suspect engaged.” He gave their coordinates and their plans to flush Green out of the trees, then turned to Sisk, who was locked and loaded. “Now,” he said.
Sisk adjusted the stock of his gun, resting his cheek against cold metal. He bore down again on the scope but didn’t have time to get a round off before Green was firing. Lars took position behind the trunk of a fir. The others scattered for cover. The horses took refuge in each other, huddling together.
“Pin him while I frame a shot,” Sisk said.
Lars and Franks took the lead, stepping out from behind their cover to take aim at the canopy above them. The bushy arms of the firs absorbed their bullets with a low thumping, but they tore through the new leaves of the oaks. They heard a scrabbling, and Lars realized too late, that Green was sliding down the trunk of a fir not twenty feet forward. The strap of his Deuce hung from his neck, the stock jammed in his armpit. He hit the ground running.
He’d made them his own personal firing squad.
Green pulled the trigger, and the bolero jerked and fed the Deuce.
Lars, Sisk, and Franks stood their ground and returned fire.
The horses reared and scattered.
Green’s shoulders and torso shuddered with the impact of what turned out to be seven bullets, one of which lodged in his aorta. He fell to the ground midrun. Lars stood in the billowing smoke of discharge and counted the heads of his people. All accounted for.
Epilogue
The night air arrived early, a chill in the cloudless sky. The sun was reduced to shards of gold. Only a few guests remained, mingling in small groups. Nicole had just said good-bye to Matthew and Adelai Franks. Lois Embry worked fast. She had a razor on the end of her whip and had not only received a portfolio of Adelai’s life documents but pushed through their petition for marriage. Three days ago the couple
, holding their infant son, had married quietly at the courthouse with Nicole and Luke Franks standing up for them. They were leaving tomorrow too, for a long weekend in Colorado Springs. That was all the time they could spare, as Matthew was due at the police training academy in Billings on Monday. He’d accepted her job offer.
The day she buried her brother, Faris Amari, Adelai handed Nicole a USB drive he’d given her. It was in the shape of a charm—a sleeping cat—and Adelai had worn it around her neck as a piece of jewelry for five long months. “He died a hero, and now the world will know.”
Monte had sent a gift with his regrets. Though cleared by BP and the attorney general’s office, he had decided it was time to retire. He had claimed his unused vacation and sick leave and taken off for some unknown part of the world. He wasn’t looking for himself, he’d said, but for a soft landing. She hoped he found it.
The breeze picked up again, and Nicole rubbed her arms, left bare by a languidly flowing wedding dress that was surprisingly all her. Poor Jordan, he had trooped along beside her from shop to shop, shaking his head at most of her selections. Until this one. The hem fell at the knee, the strappy sleeves cupped her shoulders, and the silk was a creamy ivory that suited her. MacAulay had been surprised too. He had watched her walk up the path with Jordan, his eyes wide and fluid.
She turned and watched him now, moving with his usual grace. He was lighting the lanterns and the BTU warmers on the deck. Tomorrow she would wake up here, watching the sun from the master suite as it rose above the lake.
Lars approached her. “So how’s married life?” he asked.
Nicole laughed and pretended to check her watch. “Well, the first four hours have been perfect.”
“It’ll get better,” he promised.
“Ellie and the girls look lovely,” Nicole said.
“Yes, they do,” he agreed.
“Thanks for taking Jordan,” she said. “I could still ask Mrs. Neal—”