I thought the nightmare of the last days had been spurred by Senator Larson remembering me or recognizing Sam. That it had nothing to do with the past was something that never occurred to me. I had been caught up in the remembered cycle of fear and fleeing.
But wanting Hector dead as well did not fit the narrative built in my head. Relief pierced me. Perhaps we had hidden so well for so long that we had been forgotten. Perhaps we were safe from the past, safe from being found by him. Perhaps we could continue to call Raven’s Gap and the inn home. Perhaps everything I worked to build for Sam over the last four years was not crumbling before my eyes.
I took a cautious breath, realizing I had been holding it. Something loosened tentatively in my chest. But the relief was immediately followed by guilt. If Sam had witnessed what Hector thought he did, I was terrified he would be driven further into silence. How much could one little boy see and maintain his grasp on what was good?
“Are you sure?”
“No,” he said. “I’m not. Has Sam ever shown any violent tendencies?”
I recoiled at the suggestion. “No, never. Why do you ask that?”
“I went to see Madeline Carter the other day,” he said. “She told me the reason she called you to come get Sam.”
“He was homesick,” I said quickly, defensiveness already raising its head at the careful way he watched me.
“She said the boys got into it, and she found Sam with his hands wrapped around her oldest son’s throat.”
I started to deny the accusation, anger and denial making my chest hot and tight. Sam’s nature was gentle and kind. He was not capable of violence. But when I glanced across the room and found him watching me, dark eyes wide and narrow face pinched with worry, I had to admit that I did not know what he was capable of.
I had been so afraid of being found that I kept him hidden, cloistered even from other children. Only last year did I put him in public school when guests at the inn started asking why he was not in school. I had never been called into the school to discuss any behavioral issues, but at the parent-teacher conferences, his teachers always expressed concern over the distance he kept from other children, rarely showing any interest in playing with them. The invitation for him to spend the night with the Carters had filled me relief. Though I never attended any in my youth, I thought slumber parties were a normal part of childhood friendships.
But Sam never had a normal childhood. And as he dropped his gaze from mine and focused on the dog lying across his legs, I had to consider the amount of violence he had been witness to and victim of in those first years of his life. Abuse could warp an adult, drive her to desperate measures, imprint the gut-clench of fear as a default emotion.
How much damage would abuse do to a child, to a little boy whose mind and personality were still developing? Bones still held the evidence of spiral fractures for a lifetime after the break healed. The mind must still show the striations of a child seeing his father shove his mother into the wall and wrap his hands around her throat. The psyche must bear the fissures of terror and confusion and pain.
The knowledge broke my heart for Sam all over again, sharper and more bitter than my previous moments of heartache for him. Even now, I could not fully protect him from his father. I had certainly done him damage as well with the secrets he was forced to keep.
Hector cleared his throat, and I dragged my gaze back to him. “I’d like to talk to your boy. He may not have realized what he saw that night. But he could be a witness. One I need to bring Larson down.”
“He’s been through a lot,” I admitted to him. “More than any child should have to go through. And I don’t just mean this.” I dipped my head to indicate the hospital room.
Impatience hardened his face, but then he looked past me and watched Sam play with Frank. His face was a harsh slab of bone and weathered skin, and his silver goatee did nothing to soften his features. But as I watched him study Sam and Frank, I saw the impatience ebb away.
“I can bring in a psychologist,” he said. “The sheriff’s department partners with one, and they loan her to us when there’s a child involved in a case.”
I started to respond, but a nurse walked past us and glanced into the room. She stopped. “Sir, did you bring a dog into the hospital?”
“No.”
She blinked at his clipped denial, and I hid a smile as she squinted at Frank. She arched her eyebrow at Hector. “Ah-huh. Look, I like dogs. But a rule’s a rule. We can’t have dogs in here.”
“By the time you do your next round, we’ll be gone.”
Her mouth tightened, but Hector dismissed her by turning to face me. I could see the moment she realized it was not worth her time arguing with him. It was apparent to anyone observing that he did what he wanted when he wanted without bothering to ask for permission or forgiveness. She walked away, rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the tiles.
“I’ll call the sheriff’s office,” he said.
“Thank you.”
He did not acknowledge my thanks as he moved around me and approached Sam’s bed. I did not move from my position in the doorway.
For such a hard man, his hands were gentle as he lifted Frank and placed him on the floor. Both boy and dog deflated at being separated, though.
“Sam,” Hector said, and it was the softest I had heard his rough voice. “I hope you feel better. Take care of yourself. I’ll be back soon to ask you some questions.”
Sam’s gaze darted to me, and I forced a reassuring smile to my lips.
“Would you like for me to bring Frank back when I come?” Hector asked.
Sam nodded vigorously and leaned over the bed to rub Frank’s head one last time before Hector turned away and the poodle followed him.
“Any word on when you’ll be released?” he asked as he stopped at my side.
“Not yet,” I said.
“I’ll be in touch.”
I watched him leave. The night he had gone with me to find Sam at the Broken Arrow, I told him I did not think law and order were high on his list of priorities. He was a man who served himself, and I could understand that.
I told him I thought justice was his priority. But I also knew that justice meant different things to different people. His would be a brutal brand of justice.
And I could appreciate that as well.
twenty-two
HECTOR
I had never cared for hunting. As a boy, hunting, fishing, or theft were the only way to put food in my stomach, but I had never grown immune to ending an animal’s life with my own hands. The first time my slingshot made a rabbit scream in pain, I was seven years old. I was desperately hungry, but my vision blurred and my face was damp as I gently lifted the rabbit in my hands and silenced its cries with a quick twist of its neck. There was no thrill in it, and it was not sport.
But even though I now purchased game meat already butchered for me, I still remembered what was required to hunt. It was more than patience, more than stealth, more than aim. A successful hunt hinged on knowing the patterns of your prey, anticipating their move before it was made.
“How do you bring down a poaching organization?” Maggie asked me.
“You don’t,” I said. “But you can bring down the head of the operation.” The psychopaths who enjoyed killing, who stopped a beating heart for sport, would always find an outlet. Even if an operation like Larson’s was shut down, his clients would just find someone else to pay to lure prized game into rifle range. It was the way of things.
But Larson was different. He could be held accountable and exposed. The world would judge him all the more harshly because of his political status and his lip service to the protection of public lands and the Endangered Species Act.
And he did exactly as I thought he would. I anticipated being followed. I had counted on it, and watched for the vehicle to appear behind me as soon as I left Raven’s Gap. If you wanted to catch a rabbit, you sprayed apple cider inside
your trap. If you wanted to bring down a powerful man with vast connections, you used yourself or the other two people he was desperate to silence as bait.
The vehicle followed me at a distance all the way to the hospital in Livingston, and now as I returned to my truck, I spied the black SUV in the far corner of the lot. I had parked in the loading zone at the front entrance, knowing I would not be questioned with the police decal on the vehicle and banking on the fact that with the security guard desk just inside the door, my truck would not be tampered with. Bombs did not seem to be Larson’s style, but the men he hired were private contractors, and those motherfuckers tended to prefer armor-piercing rounds and explosions.
I made Frank wait inside the hospital’s entrance, and held my breath as I turned the key in the ignition. The truck cranked to life and I shifted it into gear without erupting in a fireball. I called to Frank, and he rushed through the automatic doors and leapt over me into the passenger’s seat.
The SUV at the corner of the lot remained dark and still as I drove across the street and parked behind the neighboring gas station.
I left the truck running and turned the heater on low for Frank before I exited the cab and moved to stand in the shadows at the side of the gas station. I had a clear view of the main entrance to the hospital and of the black SUV that followed me from Raven’s Gap.
Ten minutes later, a man exited the hospital and crossed the lot. He spoke into a phone, and I knew from the way he moved he was ex-military. He moved straight to the SUV but did not drive off.
I drew the phone I purchased from the store earlier from my pocket and dialed William’s number.
“Silva,” he answered on the second ring.
“It’s me,” I said. “He’s a poacher.”
William let out a low whistle. “That’s awkward given he’s the chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.”
“Exactly. I hate to ask you…”
“I’m already on my way,” he said. “I’ll be in Raven’s Gap tomorrow morning.”
“Come to the hospital in Livingston instead.”
Ten hours later, the SUV in the corner of the hospital’s lot was still sitting there when William Silva parked beside my truck.
He was not an overly tall man. He stood several inches under six feet, and he shared his mother’s wiry frame. He did not look like a formidable man. In fact, he looked like he would be more apt to do your taxes than take down men easily twice his weight. But he was retired Special Forces, and he had a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. If I had to choose a man to watch my back in dangerous circumstances, William would be my first choice every time.
His head was shaved as close as a cue ball, and he was dressed neatly in pressed khakis and a polo shirt. The sharp crease was still present even after having driven all night. Even when he was a boy, he always looked completely unruffled. As the only kid in town with a Brazilian father and a black mother, he stood apart from other boys his age. But William was like Maggie, and like his father had been before he died. He would not stand for being judged for anything but his own strength of character, and he had never resorted to using his fists to demand respect.
He thrust his chin toward the SUV in the hospital lot. “I called a buddy of mine. The security company Larson uses is known to be rough and ready. Lots of excessive force. Lots of hires who were dishonorable discharges.”
“Doesn’t surprise me, given they lit my home on fire and tried to shoot my dog when we were escaping.”
“Fill me in on everything you’ve found out,” he said.
I did so as the sun lightened the eastern sky with a gilding of gold. I gave him a description of Faye and Sam. “I need you to keep an eye on them. Now that Larson knows they’re still alive, he’s bound to make another play.”
“What about you?” he asked. “Ma won’t be pleased if you get yourself killed.”
“Little harder to get away with killing a man with a badge on his chest than it is to kill a woman and child who don’t exist in the system.”
His eyes narrowed on the SUV still parked in the lot. “You think something will go down soon?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him. I think he’s desperate.” I turned away.
“Where are you going?”
“To work,” I said. “I have to actually do my job if I want to keep the badge. They don’t like me enough to keep me around otherwise.”
William chuckled. “Find that hard to believe, that they don’t like you.”
I extended a crude gesture his way as I climbed into my truck, but I paused before I closed the door. “Thank you for coming up to help.”
“When the stakes are high, desperate men tend to get reckless.”
His words resonated in my mind as I drove the winding two-lane highway back to Raven’s Gap. I glanced in the rearview mirror, but the road behind me remained empty.
When we arrived at the inn, Frank trotted at my heels down the hallway to our rented room. I had decided to take him to the hospital with me because children always responded more easily to animals. I did not know what had silenced Sam Anders, but I needed him to talk.
Thirty minutes later, showered and shaved, I headed to the police department to begin my shift. I joined the police department thirty years ago for a lack of anything better to do. At thirty years of age, I had a wife I was not entirely certain I wanted anymore who was keen to move back to her hometown as soon as my career on the circuit was over. I had a new knee, hip, and shoulder, and was fresh from rehab with a piss-poor attitude and a bitterness wedged deep inside my gut at the turn life had taken.
At thirty, I was young and angry and stupid. And when I saw the ad in the newspaper, I thought, Why the hell not? I had nothing better to do. And I was mad enough at the world that I liked the idea of having a gun strapped to my hip and the authority to use it. I thought myself a real Wyatt Fucking Earp.
At thirty, I was naive enough to expect a brotherhood. I was met with a boys’ club. Like me, had the other officers not had a badge pinned to their chests, they would have likely been on the other side of the law. The idea of fraternity was a flimsy thing when you could not be entirely certain the fucker next to you would not shoot you in the back.
Raven’s Gap Police Department never had more than fifteen officers, including the chief, commander, detective, and three sergeants. I had seen a number of faces come and go in the last three decades. Men and women joined the force and then moved up and on. I never sought promotions or special assignments. I did not care enough about the job to spend more time at it than necessary. I did not want the extra assignments, extra responsibility, or extra paperwork.
I had spent half my life as a police officer. Now at the ripe age of sixty, I just wanted to get through the damn day without needing an antacid or having to put in overtime. The idea of heroism attached to the job made me snort. An overblown sense of power was more accurate. Most cops were young, dumb kids with twitchy trigger fingers and a point to prove.
But here in this outpost of civilization, the majority of calls to dispatch were comprised of cows loose on the road, tourists stuck in a ditch, drunk drivers, or domestic disputes.
Most claimed they were police officers as a matter of pride and honor, but for me it was simply a means of paying the bills. Later, it kept people’s anger in check when Winona and Emma disappeared. Rumor could not ruin a man who was above the law, and the police had always held that privilege. The badge had served as the thin line between harassment and routine patrol when Jeff Roosevelt complained to the chief that I was stalking him.
As I sat at my desk going through the routine of paperwork, I thought about retiring. My knee ached from running through the woods and from standing all night long. My eyes were gritty from lack of sleep.
I squinted at the witness statement for the case I had been assigned to follow up on. I did not give a flying fuck that Agatha Thompson left her car unlocked in her dri
veway last night and she suspected her neighbor’s teenage son had taken it out for a joy ride and then returned it with a full tank of gas and cleaner than it had been when she left it. I was of half a mind to tell the old witch she should be thanking the kid next door rather than filing a police report about him.
But I could not. I had promises to keep. When Winona and I were married, I repeated the words of the officiant without giving them any thought. The vows meant nothing to me. They were empty words. All I had been thinking about as I said them was getting Winona out of the dress she wore. It was the first time I had seen her in a dress. It was yellow, molded to her breasts and the deep curve of her waist. The hem flirted around her knees and was edged in lace. All I could think about as I repeated the words was how easy it would be to flip the skirt of her dress up and have her. When she met my gaze and grinned, I knew she could tell exactly what I was thinking.
To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part. I had been poor and worse. I was young, so I thought myself invincible to sickness, imagined I would always be in good health, and had no inkling that a few years later my luck would run out in the dirt beneath hooves and horns. I did not know anything about love, nor did I know how to cherish someone. I had little in the world I could claim as my own, and I intended to hold on to what I did have.
Now, the idea of till death do us part made me bitter. I had no clue when I said those words that death parting us would have been easy. I had no notion that there were more gut-wrenching things than death that could separate a man and woman.
In the end, I was not certain I wanted Winona and Emma as my own any longer. I was not built to be a husband and had been apathetic about fatherhood. Now, it seemed ludicrous that my girls once felt like a ball and chain around my neck. I would have given anything to have a second chance, but all I could do was hope they had not suffered.
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