by Shawn Grady
“No joke.” Shivner fished keys from his pocket and reached down to a locked drawer in his desk.
He lifted from it two rocks and set them down with a heavy thud on the desktop. Both appeared to be pinecone-sized chunks of unrefined gold.
Perspiration beaded at the bridge of the man’s nose. His breathing became heavy. “It’s the Independence Find, Caleb. Has to be. This was all I could pack out. I’m lucky to have made it.”
“You’re talking legends.” Caleb leaned over the desk and lifted the rock, hastening to bring his other hand under to support the weight. The heaviness for its size was shocking, at least forty pounds in his palms. “The Independence mine isn’t anywhere near where you were hiking.”
“I know. It’s forty-five miles west of there.”
“In ruins. I’ve been there.”
“Fourth-grade field trip?”
“Fifth, actually.”
“And so, like everybody, you heard the legend of the slave-labor conditions imposed on immigrants by the proprietor brothers and the string of accidents and deaths that befell them.”
“The supposed cursed gold.”
“Right. After the death of one brother and the other brother’s wife, the mine was shut down and—”
“A large amount of the mined gold disappeared. It’s an old story. What’s your point?”
“I found a bunker, Caleb. An underground cache lined wall to wall with wooden chests of gold ore—just like these.”
Caleb sat back in his chair and studied the man. “Say I believed you. How long have you known about this?”
“Two years.”
“Two? Why haven’t you—”
“Think about it. It’s Forest Service land. The sheer weight of the cache. The logistics of getting to it and getting it out . . . No one could know I brought it out.”
Caleb sat straight. He glanced back at the closed door and visually swept the room.
“Don’t worry. No bugs. No cameras.”
Caleb swallowed. “What’re you proposing?”
“We may never have another chance like this. Mother Nature’s gone and done us a huge favor. Put on a light show and coughed up a conflagration. The Forest Service has everything with wheels and rotors and wings out on missions to corral this complex, and so far, it’s only been getting bigger, pushing them away. The Command staff is scrambling on their ends and elbows. It all makes out for a perfect—”
“Smoke screen.”
Shivner pulled a bandana from his shirt pocket and wiped the sweat from his nose and cheeks. “Since it has been two years, before I commit anything in the way of resources to extricate it, we’ll need to make sure the cache is still there. I’ll need a tally of how much.”
“Why me?”
“For one, it’s your crew. Pendleton has had a penchant for hiring—what shall I call them?—rehabilitated disreputables.”
“You calling me disreputable?”
“You did leave your last two jobs under less-than-ideal circumstances.”
Pendleton had been instrumental in getting Caleb’s foot in the door with the Forest Service. “Go on.”
“These men, like you, are likely to recognize and seize an opportunity when presented with it. Pendleton, for all his good intentions, is also naïve. If executed correctly, this whole plan can happen without him being aware.”
“You still haven’t answered my question. Why me? Specifically?”
“ ’Cause I know you. I’m a listener, and you’ve never hidden the fact that you hate your father. How many times have you griped about how he loves finances more than you? You want to prove you are the better man. This is your break.”
Caleb considered punching the arrogant slob, but the guy was starting to sound interesting. “I’m listening.”
“Don’t you get it, son? This is your chance. ’Til now, you’ve followed the path of your heart without worry about money. Anybody knows you don’t get into this business for the dough. But here opportunity stands before you—the chance to not only have your cake and eat it, but to shove a fat piece right in your father’s face in the process.”
Caleb huffed. “Shiv, I always figured you to be fat, dumb, and happy. I stand corrected on one account. You are a positively miserable person.” Caleb rose and clunked the gold rock on the desk. “This is the most reckless idea I have ever heard.” He let a grin escape at the corner of his mouth. “Sign me up.”
Blinking his way out of the memory, Caleb pushed away from the table and dumped the rest of his meal in the trash.
Enough reminiscing—he had work to do.
CHAPTER
21
Elle let herself cry all the way to the hospital. Better to get it out before arriving at the ER. She didn’t want Maddie to see her falling apart.
She flipped down the passenger seat visor in Weathers’s SUV. No mirror. They came to a stop sign and she placed a hand on the rearview. “May I?”
“Of course.”
She turned the mirror toward her and wiped the mascara runs from her cheeks. Red spider webs streaked the corners of her eyes.
Weathers parked the SUV but left the engine running. “I’m sorry I can’t stay.”
She put a hand on his shoulder. “No, it’s okay. Thank you for driving me.”
She opened the car door and strode across the parking lot, the South Tahoe dusk inordinately warm. The sliding double doors at the ambulance entrance opened as a paramedic exited. She slid through and wandered into the emergency room. A doctor and nurse congregated around one room, where Carol Weathers stood with two young children beside her.
Elle hurried over. Carol surprised her with a caring embrace. Elle pulled away with an acknowledging smile and turned into the room.
The doctor stood over Maddie, dictating orders to a nurse who was jotting rapid notes onto a chart. “And have her Dilantin levels checked. Maintain a 100cc’s an hour, TKO drip. If she lapses back into seizure we’ll switch from Valium to Xanax—”
“Her Dilantin levels are fine.” Elle squeezed past the doctor to Maddie’s side. “And go with Versed if you have to control any future seizure activity. The Xanax knocks her out for too long.”
The doctor, a tall, square-jawed man with wavy dark hair graying at the edges, raised his eyebrows. He glanced at the nurse. “Make that Versed, point two milligrams per kilogram to a max of seven. And keep with the Dilantin-level check.”
The nurse noted it, clicked her pen, and held the chart to her bosom while she walked out of the room.
Elle felt the doctor’s eyes on her.
“You’re the mother, I presume?”
“Yes.”
He wheeled up the physician’s chair and sat on its edge. “A pediatric patient’s best care is quite often a mother’s intuition.”
Elle turned a polite smile and looked at Maddie’s cherubic face. Her hair stuck in moist strands to her forehead, eyes closed. She snored quietly. Elle held Maddie’s wrist, her pulse tapping at a rapid rate. “It’s me, baby. Mommy’s here.” She stroked her hair.
“How long is her postictal period, typically?”
“Her recoveries have been taking longer lately. Up to forty-five minutes before she’s fully alert. I’ve been keeping a log. She’s had three times as many seizures in the past two months as she did all last year.”
“Is there ever any warning?”
“Like an aura?”
“Yes.”
Elle kept her hand over Maddie’s and turned. “She’s told me that she’ll feel a storm coming, in her head. If she senses rain in the storm she knows it will be okay, that the feeling will wash over her and leave.”
“And if she doesn’t sense ‘rain’?”
“Then it falls like lightning.”
The doctor clicked his pen and scrawled on his clipboard. “Has she had these since birth?”
“Since she was three.”
“And she’s five now.”
Elle nodded. “I’ve always been there w
hen she wakes. As confused as she’ll be, she always recognizes me. I’m like her anchor.”
He studied Maddie. “Any bouts of status epilepticus?”
“Status what?”
“It’s where a patient will suffer multiple attacks without a returning level of lucidity between them. It can be life-threatening.”
“No. She’s only ever had one at a time.”
“With these lengthening postictal periods, there is an increased risk for her to fall into it. Who’s your neurologist?”
“Mommy?”
Elle drew a breath and turned. Madison’s pupils focused.
“Hi, Mommy.”
Elle lifted her daughter to her chest and held her tight. “Hey, baby. Here I am. Mommy’s here for you.”
CHAPTER
22
Bo wandered down a narrow hall and out into the waning hues of daylight, along the tarmac, past dormant aircraft.
He thought he’d learned to read people better. It saved him plenty of times growing up. Now it wasn’t just himself he was worried about. That made the situation unbearable.
He sat on a bench outside of the airport wall. A bird’s nest perched at a corner alcove of the building, small chicks stretching their sinewy necks up on occasion, squeaking for their mother.
Images of violence from the night before shot through his mind. He looked away and swallowed.
Lightning burst. A new sheet of evening draped over the sky, mauve with fading blues. Distant thunder rumbled. A cloud-to-cloud burst of white shot out and vanished. Bo started walking again, and soon he stood outside the metal door to Jumper 41’s hangar. His stomach tightened like a wrung-out towel.
He didn’t like the sound of Sippi and Rapunzel’s conversation. It wouldn’t hurt to inspect and double check the equipment and the aircraft and—
Muted voices carried through the door.
Bo held his breath and inclined his ear. He stared at the steel door handle, waiting for it to move. The voices rose, then hushed, then continued again. He pressed his earlobe against the dusty metal door.
He heard the buzzing sound of the ceiling-hung halogen lights. A fan blew. And then the voices again, the words recognizable, the inflections distinct—Caleb and Cleese.
“And I’m telling you that he ain’t the kind of spotter to stay on the plane—no matter what.” Caleb’s voice.
“How can you know?”
“Because, he jumps with Adams. The Warren Adams. Besides, they’ve got an incident spotter now.”
“A what?”
“I know. What timing, huh?”
“So he gets taken out too.”
“You act like it’s nothing.” There was a pause. Bo looked over the empty tarmac. Caleb’s voice picked up. “Folks are buying the burnover. We’re not being investigated. Conditions are extreme, and everyone knows accidental death goes with the territory. But we show up again without our spotter, saying some ‘accidental’ tree knocked him off a cliff or some bull like that, you think anybody’s going to believe us? We’ll go to prison, Cleese. For a long, long time.”
“I can handle the joint.”
“You’re not getting it.”
“You’re saying we buy him off?”
“I don’t think he’ll be game.”
“Everybody can be bought.”
“Can’t take that chance. An accident is still the only way. But it has to look like an impartial accident, one that could’ve killed us all.”
“I’m already ahead of you on that, Cay. I had Sippi wire up a couple special surprises.”
“Can Sippi work with the kind of precision we need?”
“Guess we’ll find out.”
Caleb cursed. Bo heard footsteps, like pacing.
Cleese said, “We’ll need it to coincide with the drop point we’re aiming for. When our new spotter’s in the cockpit, navigating, I’ll slice his chutes.
“If everything goes well, we should have the following forty-eight hours of impassable fire weather to serve as smoke screen. They shouldn’t even be able to get a rescue helicopter close until after we’ve liberated the gold.”
The footsteps grew louder. Bo tiptoed back along the shadowed building wall and ducked behind a fifty-five-gallon drum. The door opened and the two stepped out.
“What about the others?” Cleese said.
“I’ve got them. Bo’s the only one we need to keep an eye on. But some things motivate stronger than money.”
CHAPTER
23
Elle opened her eyes. Her forehead rested square on the glass front of the vending machine she’d been staring into when she dozed off, on her feet. She leaned back, rubbed her brow, and glanced to either side. Nobody around. Except for that black security camera pointed right at her. She simpered, sure she’d given a security guy a good laugh.
What was she getting? Right. A Skor bar. The last one too. A-5. The metal corkscrew spun, and the candy bar tilted, then stopped. Halted from its fall by the spiral endpiece. She tapped the glass, then pushed on the metallic front. Before she knew it, she was rocking the entire vending machine back and forth. She stopped, stood back, and stared at the one thing she wanted in that stupid seven-foot box.
What are we doing here?
Elle filled a paper cup with water and shuffled back toward Maddie’s room. Only twenty feet away, with the door chocked open. She wanted to be sure she could hear her if she woke. The doctor had admitted Maddie for observation, although her Dilantin levels came back fine, just like Elle told them they would, and even though Maddie became more coherent, though physically exhausted. The lone floor nurse filled out a chart behind the counters of the center work area farther down the wide hallway. Elle caught a glimpse of the clock. Two thirty-seven AM. What was she doing? Staying up was not going to help Maddie get better. Even though it was irrational, she felt that by being there she could somehow keep her child from lapsing into another seizure. Like when a sports fan is certain his team will lose if he doesn’t cheer them on.
The doctor had said it was especially crucial in the first few hours that Maddie didn’t fall back into a series of seizures. They were past that point now. And the Versed seemed to have worked. But since no one could tell her exactly what was truly causing the seizures, who was to say it would work next time?
They’d been through this so many times. Treating the symptoms. Discharging. Then another seizure and they ended right back in the hospital. Symptoms treated. Discharged. No closer to a cure than they’d been.
Elle stepped into the room, carefully tapping the doorstop aside with her toe. She set down the water cup, found the convertible sleeping chair beside Maddie’s bed and sank into it. Parking-lot light shot through the edge of the window blinds across Elle’s face. She adjusted to an uncomfortable position to avoid it. Maddie lay in peaceful repose. Softly snoring with Rose, brought earlier by Carol Weathers.
Elle wanted to take Maddie someplace safe. A place where five-year-old girls didn’t suffer unexplained seizures. Where picturesque mountainsides didn’t swallow up loved ones. Someplace where the world wasn’t on fire.
An early encounter with Silas drifted into her thoughts.
She’d been riding her bicycle on base, back from an errand and simple picnic on her own. Guys at McCall thought of her mostly as a thick-skinned pilot who knew puddle-jumping aircraft like nobody else. That was her father coming out in her. And she was those things. But she also relished the opportunity to simply be a girl. And that had almost always required getting away from the base. Even if it was for something as simple as a bike ride to the bookstore and a reading picnic on the sandy banks of Payette Lake.
There was nothing manly about her bike, and she loved that about it. Basket on the front, big curvy handlebars, and only one gear. It was made for cruising.
Funny, really, how she’d made the trip on that bicycle in a skirt so many times before without catching it in the bike chain. It figured then that, just as she attempted to dismount her bi
ke at the top of the wooden steps leading to her favorite pine-tree-shaded strip of beach, the hem of her white skirt would wind inextricably into the bike chain and gear teeth.
She found herself balancing on one toe, grasping the wooden railing to keep from tumbling down the steps, stuck in that position in quite the predicament when a voice startled her.
“Can I lend you a hand?”
It was the guy from the Wing Stop the night before—the one with the cheesy line that almost won her over. Her gut instinct was to refuse. To wave him off. Nah, thanks. I got it. But she knew it would be ridiculous to do so, and being thankful for this stranger, this handsome friendly stranger and his timely intervention, she angled her eyebrows and with a pitiful smile responded, “Please.”
He knelt by the gear linkage and inspected the entanglement, sandy blond hair dangling. He wore a navy blue T-shirt with the standard Forest Service–issue dark green pants.
“Thank you,” she said. “I can’t believe this happened.”
He looked up. “Don’t remember my name, do you?”
Elle racked her memory, but all she could think of was Surfer Boy.
“I used my best line on you, and you can’t even remember my name the next day.” He grinned and pulled a Leatherman multi-tool from a pouch on his belt. “I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that riding a bike in a long skirt is inherently dangerous.”
“No. I’m well abreast of that fact now.”
He loosened the nuts on the linkage, and she felt the tension on her skirt alleviate a bit as he adjusted the wheel and lifted the chain off the gear teeth. A shark-tooth grease pattern unveiled on her dress as he unwrapped it.
He handed her the hem. “Look at that. Not even torn.”
Elle cocked her head in semi-amazement. “I was getting ready to take a knife to the darn thing.”
He eyed her. “You carry a knife?”
“Maybe.”
He stood, wiped his hand off, and offered it. “Silas Kent.”
She shook and cleared her throat. “Elle Westmore.” She gave a coy smile. “But you knew that.”