Falls Like Lightning

by Shawn Grady

  “Maybe.”

  “I thought you said you wanted a woman to cook you a meal.”

  “Didn’t quite know I was going to find you, now, did I? Seeing as how you’re here now, you can serve it to me.”

  “You going to eat with that shotgun in hand?”

  “Got me a pistol too. Don’t you try nothing. I’d just as soon shoot you as let you hang around long enough to the point of nagging.” He stopped. “There she is.”

  Elle looked down upon a small, aging log cabin with a low-hanging A-frame roof and three well-trod paths leading up to it.

  He motioned with the shotgun. “Take one of those trails.”

  “What happens if we don’t?”

  “Bear traps. Already been attacked once. I don’t take no chances. Get on now. You’ll make a fine hostage for when your gold-hungry friends show up.” He forced out a rumbling wheeze. “Them bandits tried to kill me. I know they’ll be back. I heard them talking about it when they thought I was dead.”

  Elle tried to process all the information he’d revealed. He thought she was in on a plan with some other people to try and . . . steal his gold? Sounded like figments from a disturbed mind. But perhaps his delusions could enable her escape.

  “And what do you plan to do to them when they come back? Bribe them? Hold me ransom?”

  He smacked his lips and grunted as he worked his way along the trail behind her. She guessed he hadn’t really thought the whole thing through.

  Her stomach twisted like a wet towel. The thought of hot soup came as a relief. Perhaps it would relax the old man as well, just enough for her to get the upper hand.

  He poked her in the back. Elle had to stoop to enter the front door. The old man behind her had no such need. He pointed to a wooden chair in a far corner. The cabin was one room, maybe three hundred square feet at most. She sat and observed as many things about the place as she could, anticipating that he’d soon blindfold her.

  A cast-iron stove sat on a brick hearth in the center of the cabin. An active fire within it heated a pot above. Beyond that a small cupboard hung over a wooden counter on the wall. A washbasin lay atop with a pitcher beside it. A narrow single bed with an ancient brass frame sat tucked into a far corner. The man propped the shotgun on his hip, picked up a hot pad, and lifted the pot lid. Elle considered his positioning. It was a small cabin, but she was still a solid five or six steps from him. She crossed her legs and acted as though she were paying little attention to him.

  The herbal scent filled the room. Sage, mint. From the corner of her eye she saw him glance her direction before replacing the lid of the pot.

  “ ’Coon.” He pulled up a wooden chair beside a small table across from the stove. “Caught this one in a trap.” He coughed and rested the gun across his lap. He wiped his ashen brow. His eyes were bloodshot.

  Elle put on a friendly smile. “Smells wonderful.”

  “I pick all my own seasonings. Get ’em wild from the woods.”

  She nodded, acting as interested as if they were on a first date. “How do you know which plants are safe?”

  He waved a hand, playing right into it, letting her stroke his ego. “Living out here, you get to know what’s good, what’s not. You can smell it. Taste it.”

  “Do you trap all the animals you eat?”

  He sniffed. “Just about. Kind of have to.” Something of a grin met his cheeks. “Ain’t much in the way of ammunition stores out here.” He cackled and then hacked in a violent coughing fit. It drew his fist to his face and had him bending over at the side. The gun barrel slid toward the wall.

  If he were only a couple steps closer.

  Elle rose, pointing to the pot. “Shall I serve you some supper?”

  The man gripped the shotgun and trained it on her. The metal shook in his grip, vehemence in his wild eyes. “Git yourself down in that chair, missy.”

  Elle raised her hands, feigning innocence. “Yes. Of course. I was only trying to—”

  “Shut it.” The old man stood, walked to a cupboard beyond the stove, and returned with a pair of handcuffs. He tossed them to Elle. “Chain yourself. I don’t care how pretty a lady you are. Your friends tried to kill me. They’re coming for my gold. And I ain’t taking no chances.”

  Elle caught the handcuffs tossed to her. The old man bared his teeth and trained the shotgun. There was no negotiating this.

  The old man pointed and shook the shotgun toward the entrance. “Go. To the door handle. Slide it through.”

  She moved as deliberate and slow as she could without provoking him. Should she rush at him now? If she shackled herself there was no way she could overcome him. She stopped at the door with her back to the old man and pushed the half-moon bracelets through with their ratcheting sounds.

  “You so much as take a step to run and I’ll shoot you, woman. I done it before and I’ll do it again.”

  So that’s what happened to the last lady. Elle exhaled a quick breath. She stared at the S-shaped iron door handle, cinched the first handcuff around her wrist, and held it up for the man to see. She glanced back. His jaw quivered. His eyes looked angry, nervous, and half glazed.

  He shook the gun at her. “Finish it up now.”

  She kept her eyes on him and ran the handcuff chain between her and the front of the door handle. It gave the sound of passing through the loop. She placed her other hand in front of her and squeezed down the cuff without her wrist inside of it.

  “There,” Elle said, standing with her body facing the door. “Now, do you want me to stay like this the whole time, or can I at least have a chair to sit in?”

  The old man squinted at her for a moment, then relaxed his finger from the trigger and angled the shotgun toward the ceiling. “Ain’t you ever learned you no manners, woman? You want something, you better ask for it proper.”

  Elle would play along. Just move that gun into one hand and come closer. “May I please have a chair to sit in, sir?”

  His chest shook and a grin met his mouth. “Now, that’s better.” He moved the shotgun into one hand, walked over to the dining table, and grabbed another chair by the top rail. He dragged it on two legs across the floor. His demeanor relaxed, and he took on a jocular and cocky tone. “You know, you keep speaking with respect like that, and maybe I’ll let you cook us a meal one of these nights.”

  Elle watched him, waiting. Closer. Closer. Three more steps.

  One. His grin waned.

  Two. Something flicked in his eyes.

  Three. Realization set upon him.

  Too late.

  Elle grabbed the barrel and spun. She cracked her fist hard on his cheekbone, and the shotgun fired.

  CHAPTER

  38

  Caleb set his foot down in a boot print someone had made the night everything had spun out of control. Cleese shadowed him to his right. He lifted his head and focused on the earth-covered entrance they’d been journeying toward.

  He licked his lips, eager to claim the stash, his appetite whetted by the endgame. A glance back at Cleese revealed the same set of emotions. Even a wolf grins at the sight of supper.

  He cracked his neck and checked his watch. They had to get moving. He started down the small hill. “Let’s get as much as we can out to the clearing before—” He bunched up his nose and turned his head. A putrid smell filled his nostrils. “What is that—”

  “The bodies. Already decomposing.”

  Caleb hid his nose in the crook of his elbow. Inside the bunker he lit a wall lantern. Shadows flickered over the bodies in the back corner. They’d piled Pendleton and the old man back there in a hurry. Cleese descended the iron ladder with some difficulty. Caleb followed him into the dank repository, thankful that the stench lessened somewhat. They clicked on their helmet lights and scanned dozens of chests lining the walls. Caleb glanced up the dumbwaiter and reached for the handle on the side of one of the chests. He grunted without moving it. He took a second look at the chest and tried the handle with two ha
nds. The box barely shifted on the dirt floor.

  Caleb exhaled and flipped the latch. Cleese opened the top of the chest. Inside lay piles of gold ore. Caleb lifted a palm-sized gold nugget.

  Cleese two-handed a larger chunk. “That bird able to handle all this?”

  Caleb scanned the room. He’d done the math. “Hueys are made to carry a dozen guys without a problem. We got us four, so that’s about eight hundred pounds. That means it should be able to carry around twice our weight in gold with no worries.”

  A grin curled Cleese’s cheek. “How much you think four hundred pounds of gold is worth?”

  “About sixteen thousand per pound, brother.” Caleb loaded two nuggets on the dumbwaiter. “It ain’t all gold, so it needs to be refined before we know how much we actually have, but there’ll be plenty for all.”

  Cleese whistled. “I’m liking this.”

  “I figured you weren’t along just for the fun of it.”

  “Oh, I’m still hoping I get to stab somebody.”

  A gunshot fired in the distance.

  Cleese cocked his head toward the ceiling. His dark eyes met Caleb’s. He hobbled to the ladder and climbed up.

  Boots shuffled over the floor above. “Caleb?”

  “Yeah?”

  “There’s only one body up here.”

  Caleb’s gut twisted. He moved to the foot of the ladder. “Pendleton’s gone?”

  Cleese returned to the top of it and shook his head. “The old man.”

  Unbelievable. Caleb had seen Cleese shoot him. “Shotgun too?”

  He nodded.

  Caleb pounded his fist on a ladder rung. “He can’t be far. Our Huey’s going to be here in less than two hours.”

  “You keep moving the gold and don’t worry about it.” Cleese unsheathed his bowie knife and tilted it in the lamplight. “Looks like I’ll get to have my cake and eat it too.”

  ———

  Silas shivered with the waning adrenaline. His head felt light. The aching gravity of so much loss threatened to anchor him in place. He’d have to grieve Bo later.

  He’d grieve Elle forever.

  He pushed the thoughts from his mind. He had to channel his anger, focus his grief. His disbelief. His legs moved in the direction that Bo had pointed out for the bunker. He stayed the urge in his muscles to stop, to rest.

  What was his plan? He, unarmed, exhausted, against four guys. So many people had died in their quest. Pendleton, a hermit, Monte, Elle, Bo.

  For gold—the love of money.

  The winds picked up, swaying and rustling the trees. Fire crackled nearby. Silas stripped off his soaked T-shirt and wrung it. The skin across his torso tightened with the breeze. His efforts with the fabric only produced a few drops. He shook it loose and pulled it back over his head.

  The forest closed in, thick with choking smoke, heavy with familiar scents. Fire was part of the life and death and cyclical rebirth of the land. It had never been an enemy. Only a force. Something set in motion. As a smokejumper, he corralled it more than extinguished it.

  He had never found a home until the first day he wandered out into the vast granite plateaus and forested peaks and canyons of the Sierra Nevada. A place of peace. Where the bland linear geometry of cities and streets and indifferent people played no role. It existed by the hand of God alone. Independent, wild, and free.

  It had beckoned him. Apart from it he’d never known rest. He thought he had found his true love.

  Now, as he trudged forward, trying to forget the pain both physical and visceral, the percolating truth he’d been fighting and ignoring set in.

  A forest won’t love you back.

  Trees, boulders, landscape—it all turned an indifferent eye to man. It was no different than the cold drab walls of the San Mateo Home for Boys, no different than the pale concrete streets and repetitive tract homes with family after family carting him around in their four-door sedans, providing a room and collecting a check.

  Hot tears welled, surprising him. He just wanted to see Elle—even if it could only be one more time, for only a moment. He needed to tell her that he was wrong, that he had been scared. That he had somehow felt disqualified from having the right to have a family. He didn’t have a clue how to have one. His only security and peace had ever come by running and escaping on his own.

  With her he’d felt things he’d only dreamed about but never owned the sensation of. The thought of spending his life with her exhilarated and frightened him at the same time.

  Ever since that summer when he never showed up for their date, for their sunset picnic, he’d worn an albatross around his neck. He’d known their relationship was at a point of turning. And the thought of that date, that simple blanket-spread late-summer supper, felt more like family than anything Silas had ever known.

  Then word came of “Grandma” Jo’s illness.

  And he bailed. Set off across the mountains, thinking that there he would find himself again, find a sense of stable ground and an understanding of his place in it all.

  But he never found a sense of elation or illumination. There wasn’t an epiphany or a peace. It was he, scared like a child, running from real love like he’d never known before.

  He poured himself into work, into jumping from aircraft and fighting fire. He took every assignment offered and volunteered for more. Jumping didn’t fulfill him. It fueled him. It stoked a self-destructive flame inside him. He deserved to be cast toward the earth, among serpents and scorpions, wheat and tares. He garnered experience faster than most his age, and he achieved his promotion, the youngest jumper ever to make it to spotter. What good was it now?

  Smoke moved through the trees in long waving banners.

  A gunshot echoed.

  His attention snapped to a ridge up ahead. He listened. No other shots followed.

  Silas ran his hands over his face. Bo was dead. Elle was dead. There was no chance of redemption with her. The most he could do was bring justice to her killers.

  He had no means. No plan. No advantage.

  And no qualms.

  Lord, give me strength.

  He steeled his resolve and quickened his pace.

  CHAPTER

  39

  Wood shattered. Elle’s hearing deafened. She grabbed the stock of the gun and drove her shoulder against the man’s chest. He fought to keep it, circling toward the wall. Elle shoved him against the splintered logs, head-butted him, and pried free the weapon.

  She stumbled back, found her balance, and pointed the gun at him. Trembling, he raised his hands. Elle kept her finger pointed straight along the trigger housing, just like Dad taught her. She had no desire to kill anybody. But he didn’t have to know that.

  “Hands on your head and turn around. Get on your knees.”

  The man shuffled around and lowered himself with effort to the floor. An empty handcuff dangled from Elle’s wrist, swinging like a pendulum.

  Her heartbeat drummed. “Where’s the key?”

  The old man mumbled.

  She fought to keep her voice level. “Speak up. Where’s the key?”

  “I said . . .” He stopped to catch his breath. “In the pantry. Top shelf.”

  She sidestepped to the kitchen, catching a glimpse of the swelling and contused cheek where she’d struck him. She threw open the pantry doors one-handed. Not tall enough to see the top shelf, she eyed the old man for a moment, then stretched and searched with her fingers. She felt two handcuff keys linked by a beaded chain. Several shotgun cartridges rolled off the shelf. Elle made quick work of unlocking the wrist bracelet and pocketed the keys. She snagged a shell from the floor, broke open the shotgun action, and replaced the spent round. The old man turned from his kneeling position.

  She clicked the weapon closed and aimed. “Eyes front.” She slid the handcuffs across the floor beside him. “Role reversal. You know what you need to do.”

  He glanced sideways at the cuffs.

  She wedged the stock against her sho
ulder. “Door handle. And let me see it go through.”

  He shifted to his hip, picked up the cuffs, and pushed himself to his feet.

  She wished she had a pump-action shotgun. The sound of the slide action communicated volumes. She cocked a hammer.

  He stared at her and locked one cuff around a wrist.

  “Good.” Elle motioned with the barrel. “Now through the handle.”

  The old man shuffled to the door, threaded the bracelet behind the iron grip, and locked it around his other wrist.

  She looked him over, making sure there weren’t any tricks he could pull, nothing she’d missed. She directed him with the gun barrel to open the door all the way inward, wide open.

  Elle sidestepped toward the exit, never lowering the shotgun, never taking her eyes off of the man. “Back against the wall. Legs forward and toes up.”

  The old man sneered and leaned back against the wall. He straightened his legs in front of him and rested on his heels.

  She paused at the threshold. “I never wanted your gold. If there even is any. My plane crashed, and my jumper crew may have injured members out in the forest.” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “Authorities will be back here, if the fire doesn’t come this way first. Don’t think you’ve gotten away with anything. You’ll be held accountable for your actions.”

  An insolent grin grew across the old man’s bruised face. He cackled. “Lady, it don’t matter.”

  Her eyebrows tightened. This man was disturbed.

  He laughed again. “It don’t matter. ’Cause I’m going to be dead, and so are you.”

  A sharp edge pressed against her windpipe. Hot rancid breath met the angle of her jawline. Beneath her chin, an upturned fist with tattooed fingers held a glinting steel blade.

  A raspy voice wafted tobacco, “Evening, Pilot. Turns out you’re just as hard to kill as our spotter.”

  CHAPTER

  40

  Cleese tugged Elle backward from the cabin entrance. Her heart sped. Her breathing shallowed. She lowered the shotgun.