It was refreshing that they did not ask anything of me personally, and over the last year, my hands had stopped sweating when I approached people sitting together talking. The hot flush of nerves did not stain my chest and throat as I spoke to my guests. I managed to cobble together a confident approach that did not involve a line of cocaine.
I walked into a bathroom at boarding school the year I was fifteen and stumbled upon a group of girls snorting lines off of the marble edge of the sink. They were all lovely and nubile and confident, and I was miserable and painfully shy and lonely. I had led a sheltered life, but I was not ignorant. I knew drug use when I saw it, even though I was shocked by it.
When one girl turned to me with a smile and said, “Want to try?” it was not out of curiosity that I joined them around the sink. Now, I would not even call it peer pressure. Instead, it was the intense euphoria of being included.
I did not anticipate the rush of confidence. When I held one nostril closed as I leaned over and swiftly inhaled, I did not expect the happiness I felt when the drug hit my system. I felt lovely and invincible. When I went back to the classroom, I did not hesitate when the instructor called my name. For the first time in my life, I strode to the front of the room without pause and recited my assigned portion of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I had dreaded this assignment since it was given to me. But with the drug singing in my veins, I did not even stammer. Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells.
It was an addictive feeling, such a sense of poise and élan when all my life I had been plagued with crippling shyness. It was an addiction I precariously balanced on a razor’s edge for a dozen years. And it was ammunition he could have used against me to take Sam.
When we fled the city, I needed more than social aplomb. I needed tenacity, courage, and a plan. So I quit cold turkey. The withdrawals almost killed me. I still was not certain how many days I lost at the rundown motel in New Jersey in the midst of the hallucinations, sweating, and blind craving. The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels. Eliot’s poem, J. Alfred’s love song, swirled around and around in my head when I was conscious.
I was still haunted by what Sam must have witnessed and gone through locked in the room with me while I was insensible. I did not know how many days he went without eating. His diaper had been so full when I finally came to that the rash he developed took months to heal. He was pale with shadows under his eyes as dark as bruises when I finally had the strength to lift him into my arms. He did not cry. He simply stared at me silently. It turned my stomach and filled me with self-loathing even now.
I blinked and brought myself back to the present, snagging a handful of cookies from the platter and venturing out onto the back deck. I found Evelyn in an Adirondack chair with her feet propped against the railing. I dragged a chair close and offered her several cookies as I propped my feet up beside hers.
We ate in companionable silence and watched the late evening light gild the river. Nothing about Evelyn reminded me of Mary. The woman next to me was reserved, taciturn, and forthright. Every now and then, sorrow etched itself into her features. It made me wonder what had brought her, alone, to such a remote and unfamiliar town. But her expression no longer held the tense brittleness it had when she first showed up on my doorstep.
I left her to her secrets. I knew there were some things a woman could not share, even with a friend.
My cell phone buzzed in my pocket, and when I pulled it free, I recognized the number. I slid my thumb across the screen to accept the call. “Madeline.”
“Hi, Faye. Nothing is wrong, but Sam seems to want to come home.”
“Did something happen?” I asked.
She hesitated. The silence stretched for a brief pause, and her voice held a false brightness when she spoke again. “Not that I’ve been able to gather from the boys. They played for a bit after dinner, but when I just went to put a movie on for them, Sam wrote a note saying he wants to go home. Shall I meet you in Gardiner?”
Sam rarely wrote as a form of communication. Even if her moment of silence had not clued me in that she lied, her claim of Sam writing a note did. “No, you don’t need to load everyone up and come out. I’ll just come to the house. Tell him I’m on my way.”
I hung up as I got to my feet. Evelyn tipped her head back against the chair and smiled at me. “I’ll hold down the fort for you.”
I usually hired help in the spring, summer, and fall months. I had hired housekeeping help, but held off hiring anyone to help with dealing with guests. Evelyn had readily fallen into that role, but now, as I grabbed my purse and headed to my old Ford Explorer parked out front, I wondered if I was taking advantage of her friendship. I would put an ad out in town next week.
A vehicle was parked in a neighboring driveway, but I did not recognize it. I glanced automatically in the rearview mirror as I passed, and the vehicle pulled out after me. It did not get too close when I braked for the stop sign, but it turned onto the state road behind me.
Tension swept through me. My gaze darted between the pavement in front of me and my rearview mirror. I did not realize how tightly my hands were clenched around the steering wheel or how knotted my stomach had become until the vehicle turned off on a side street. I relaxed marginally, taking a deep breath to get my nerves under control. But as I drove the winding canyon road to Gardiner, passed through town, and turned onto the dirt road the Carters lived off of, I kept glancing behind me to see if anyone followed.
The road leading to the Carters’ house was steep and winding, cut into the mountain so that a craggy embankment girded one side while a steep drop-off flanked the other. It was a road typical to the area, with no guardrail for reassurance, and I drove with care as the evening deepened.
Sam was waiting for me when I pulled up in front of the house ten minutes later. He stood at the front door, and when Madeline opened it for me, he walked into me, pressed his head against my chest, and clung to me.
“I’m sorry,” Madeline said.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said with forced lightness. “He’s been having a hard time sleeping lately. I imagine that is part of the issue.”
He clung to my hand as we walked back to my SUV. The sun had sunk low over the mountains, and the last of the day’s light died as he clambered into the backseat.
“Did anything happen?” I asked as I buckled my seatbelt. “Did someone say anything to you or do something?”
He shook his head, and when I glanced in the rearview mirror, he was staring out the window. I watched him for a moment. I knew his small face so well. Every curve, every quirk of his eyebrows, every rare gap-toothed smile. But his internal landscape was so unfamiliar to me. I knew nothing of his thoughts, and didn’t know how to protect him when I did not know what frightened him.
I put the SUV in gear, flicked on the headlights, and drove slowly down the mountain road. A couple of miles later, headlights pierced the dark behind us. I flinched as the reflection of the bright lights in my mirrors blinded me for an instant. Unease gripped me as the vehicle approached and descended the mountain almost on my bumper.
“Do you have your seatbelt on, Sam?” I asked, careful to keep the tension from my voice. I felt an affirmative bump from his foot in the back of my seat.
Night fell quickly here, and the road was dark. There were no streetlights. Only the glow of my headlights created a sliver of relief against the black. The road felt more treacherous in the dark, and the vehicle only a few feet from my bumper felt like a threat. I sped up as much as I dared on the winding unpaved road. Around the next curve, I lost sight of the other vehicle for an instant.
The road stretched straight before me for twenty-five yards before the next curve, and I hit the gas. My
Explorer was old and cantankerous. It gave a lurch and a groan but then darted forward and raced down the road.
I was always armed, but I could not reach the holster on my ankle without lifting my foot from the gas pedal. I slowed going into the curve. My headlights did not penetrate the yawning expanse of the drop beyond the nonexistent shoulder. Keeping an eye on the road and one hand on the wheel, I leaned over and grappled for the handle on the glove compartment. I had a Glock 43 tucked within.
The headlights of the other vehicle illuminated the inside of the Explorer, and then I heard the roar of the engine before I felt the lurch of impact. I straightened and grappled with the steering wheel as the Explorer swerved dangerously toward the side of the road.
Sam’s foot beat a frightened tattoo against my back through the seat. I could not risk a glance toward him. “It’s okay, honey. We’re okay. We’re going to be fine, Sam.” I chanted the words over and over.
The old SUV coughed, and the engine revved as I floored the accelerator. I took the next curve in the road sharply and, for an instant, lost sight of the other vehicle in the rearview mirror. But then it was back, racing up on my bumper so swiftly and aggressively all I could do was brace myself.
There was no time to cry out. The force of the impact slung me forward before the seatbelt locked and yanked me back. My vision went dark at the edges, and then another jolt shuddered through the vehicle. Metal screamed, and then my own voice joined in when I lost control of the Explorer with a final strike from the other car.
The world spun violently around me and then exploded when my SUV flew off the road.
It was as if I had been thrown into the center of a tornado. My car was tossed end over end. I wrapped my arms around my head to shield my face. Trees snapped, and metal crumpled with shrieking groans.
And then there was an agony that felt as if my body were being wrenched apart.
Everything went black.
Part Two
fourteen
GRANT
“Well?” I asked when he darkened the doorway of my study. I preferred to deal with John Smith in the daylight. He always looked larger and more menacing in the shadows of the night, and I was careful to keep my unease from my voice.
He still heard it, though, if the sardonic curve of his mouth was any testament. He prowled across the room and took one of the chairs across from my desk. “It’s done.”
“You’re certain?”
“I didn’t think you liked to hear the details. You’ve mentioned culpability before.”
“And you fucked up last time. Forgive me for needing a little reassurance,” I said, voice dry.
“When someone does find her vehicle at the bottom of the mountain along Snowshoe Lane, it will look like she lost control and drove right off the road. Single car accident. We cleaned up the scene. Shortly after she went over the edge, her SUV caught fire and exploded.”
I hid a grimace. “Her son?”
John, I noticed, was not the least bit squeamish about the news. He was matter of fact to the point of being disconcertingly cold. Granted, that was why I hired him. “He was with her. We waited until she had the boy in the car before we made our move.”
“Good.” I thought again of how familiar the pair of them seemed to me and pushed aside any hint of guilt. “What are you doing to find Hector Lewis?”
“He’s gone off the grid, but I’m working on it.”
“Work on it faster,” I snapped. “Boudreaux is arriving in two days.”
It was one of Boudreaux’s previous visits years ago that was the beginning of the end with Winona. They passed one another as he left the barn and she entered. I was too far away to hear what he said to her, but I could see her face. The distaste in her expression was clear.
“What did he say to you?” I asked when she reached me.
She glanced over her shoulder toward the open barn doorway. When she turned back to me, all expression was wiped clean. She shrugged. “Nothing I haven’t heard before.” She hesitated, mouth opening to say more before she closed it with a click of her teeth.
“Go on,” I said. “What were you going to say?”
“The man is a pig. I hope you’re not planning on letting him near any of my horses.”
I hid a smile and refrained from reminding her that these were my horses. “No, he isn’t here for the horses.”
She studied me. “Why is he here? He’s not the only rich prick I’ve seen come through here. None of them have been here for the horses.”
I kept my expression carefully blank. “They’re just here for business.”
And they were, but it was not a business dealing Winona would ever approve of.
I hid a smile at the memory of her impression of Boudreaux. She was right. The man was a pig.
I shook myself and focused on the matter at hand. “I want this situation taken care of yesterday,” I said. “I pay you and your team enough that you shouldn’t need a second chance. Especially not to handle one man.”
John’s expression remained passive. “It will be taken care of. This time, we’ll go in expecting a war.”
fifteen
HECTOR
Maggie dropped me off on the outskirts of Gardiner hours before sunrise. “You’ll be careful?” she asked, holding my rifle as I shouldered my pack.
I grimaced as the shoulder strap scored across the bandage wrapped around my upper arm. The graze from the bullet was a warm pulse I had swallowed a handful of pain relievers to dull. “I won’t get caught.”
She sighed and handed me the Henry. “That wasn’t what I meant.”
I switched on my headlamp and set off into the hills, pressing west and north. There was no trail to follow. The handheld GPS led me deeper into Grant Larson’s land.
The predawn hours were dark, and my headlamp only illuminated a slender swath of forest ahead of me. The wilderness was monochromatic at this hour. The world that fell within the light of my headlamp was shaded in grays. The yawning black beyond my light seemed cavernous and empty. The world dropped away outside of my narrow field of vision.
The early morning air was steeped in the scent of spruce, fir, and pine, and it still held the crisp bite of winter. All was quiet and still until the white wolf crossed between the trees at the ragged edge of my light’s beam. I stumbled to a halt. She paused to glance over her shoulder and, this time, I was certain she smiled at me.
She wove in and out of my light, always just ahead of me, frequently glancing back to check my pace. The trek was a rolling one of mountains and valleys and streams, and the miles passed quickly underfoot.
“Are you following me, or are you leading me?” I called to her.
My light caught in the golden gleam of her eyes as she looked back at me. With a flick of her tail, she disappeared into the night. Though I searched for her as I continued my hike, she never showed herself to me again.
I was a mile from the main compound of Larson’s ranch when the first pale precursors of sunrise lightened the eastern horizon. I climbed a rugged low mountain and set up camp below the ridge well within the tree line, clearing off a section of the ground and using a small shovel in my pack to level the area for my tent. Once that task was completed, I shouldered my pack once more and climbed to the summit.
I was half a mile from the main compound of Grant Larson’s ranch. Any closer and I risked setting off any perimeter alarms he might have in place. I did not need to be closer. From the crest of the low mountain, I could see the first rays of sunlight gleam on the roofs.
I set up the tripod low to the ground and mounted the high-powered binoculars. The field of view was a thousand yards. Close at hand, I set up a second tripod and mounted the Nikon FX with the Sigma 150-600mm Sport lens attached. I had no doubt Larson’s security team patrolled the area immediately surrounding his home and barns. The mountaintop was craggy and treeless. I stayed low and lay flat, settling in on my stomach.
The daily inner workings of a ranch were not unfamiliar to me. As a boy, I awakened one morning, and when I peeked around the curtain that served as the wall to my mother’s bedroom in the ramshackle two-room house we squatted in, I found her still abed. I snuck away for the day, escaping the monotonous confinement of school and the countless fights I had with the boys who jeered about their fathers fucking my mother in the alley behind the bar.
I did not fight for my mother. I was certainly not defending her honor, as she had none for me to care about. My first memory was of cleaning up her vomit when she returned from a bender. I was four at the time, and in all of my memories, I could never recall a kind word or a gentle touch from the woman.
I fought to release some of the rage that simmered inside me constantly. Only when I felt the crack of knuckles against my cheekbone and drove my fist into the tender belly of the other boy did I feel some sense of release from the pressure of being so angry.
But on this day, I simply wanted the peace of sitting alone by the Platte River with my fishing rod. I distinctly remembered not catching any fish that day, but being perfectly content with the hours spent under the endless, harsh Nebraska sky. When the sun began to list in the western sky toward the horizon, I wandered through the rows of wheat toward home. My stomach was gnawing on my backbone in hunger. It was a feeling I was well familiar with.
In my head, I envisioned my mother reprimanding me when I returned home, scolding me severely in a soft, even, caring tone before hugging me and telling me she had been worried sick. I laughed at the fantasy, knowing she would not have even noticed I was gone. She rarely acknowledged my presence even when I was home.
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