Smoked Out (David Wolf Book 6)

by Jeff Carson

  “It’s all right.” Wolf blinked away the stars again. “I’ve just gotta lie down.”

  “Let’s go,” Patterson said with determination.

  Wolf suddenly felt light as the two deputies whisked him up the trail, around the barn, and to the front of his house.

  “Kitchen entrance?” Patterson asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Both Patterson and Baine’s phones chimed from their pockets.

  “Shit. You get that,” Patterson said.

  “What? Are you sure?”

  “Do it.”

  Baine let go of Wolf and fished for his phone.

  Patterson leaned to the side, digging her hip into Wolf’s leg.

  He winced when his femur felt like it bent.

  “Sorry. You okay?”

  Wolf nodded.

  Patterson wrestled him through the entrance to his house, through the kitchen, through the family room and into his bedroom.

  Wolf collapsed onto the unmade sheets and rolled to his back. “Thanks.”

  The ceiling spun, but the sustained ringing seemed to diminish.

  “Yeah.” She pulled off his shoes. “What can I get you?”

  Wolf swallowed. “Luke probably can’t talk to us. I bet she’s being watched just as closely as I am right now. Her SAC has probably threatened her to stay away from all this. She’s emotionally attached to me, and he knows it.”

  Patterson grabbed the empty cup of water off Wolf’s nightstand and filled it in the bathroom, came back in and held it out to him.

  Wolf gulped half the cup down and leaned against the headboard. “Thanks.”

  “Yeah. Geez. You are a wreck. What else? What else can I get you?”

  “Patterson?” Baine called from the kitchen entrance.

  “Yeah!” Patterson’s eyes stayed on Wolf’s. “What do you need?”

  “Nothing. Go. Don’t worry about me.”

  “We have to go! MacLean’s calling us in for a meeting.”

  Patterson shook her head and glanced at her Casio digital watch. “Yeah. All right. I’ll be right there.”

  Wolf smiled and nodded.

  “I’ll be back.” Patterson vowed and left the room.

  “Bye, Arnold.”

  “What?” She appeared again at the doorway with a scowl. “Arnold? Are you okay?”She rolled her eyes. “Oh. Yeah, I get it. Bye.”

  Wolf closed his eyes and went to sleep.

  Chapter 3

  “They’re all dead, and it’s your fault!”

  Wolf opened his eyes and rolled to his side. Catching his breath, the accusation seemed to echo, like he was in a deep canyon.

  He sat up and rubbed his eyes, seeing the fictitious fireball once again.

  For over fifteen years, since his days in the Army, he’d battled a recurring nightmare that spawned from one of his worst memories—a recall of one of his worst deeds—a single shot he’d been forced to take in Sri Lanka to save twenty-three lives. It had been a single shot that killed an eight year-old boy running toward a Chinook helicopter with a suicide bomb strapped to his back and a detonator switch in his hand. The boy had been conned into doing it by a group of men who watched from the trees.

  Before the stock had finished it’s recoil against his muscled shoulder, before the boy was through feeling the pain of Wolf’s first bullet, Wolf had already begun to focus his efforts on coming back home—back to his son that had been two years old and thousands of miles away at that instant. Back to his son, who at the time was essentially a fatherless child, impressionable by any bad man who could have walked in off the street while Wolf was around the world fighting against men with putrid values.

  The shot had been a seminal moment of his life, like when Jack had been born, or when he and Sarah had exchanged vows, or when they had divorced, or when Sarah had been shot in the head and taken before she and Jack and Wolf had had a chance to be normal again.

  He sat up and rubbed his temples.

  The dream always returned during times of stress. But now it had morphed into a fiction. The boy reached the Chinook helicopter. He depressed the thumb button. The people were all dead in a searing fireball, and it was all Wolf’s fault because he froze and watched it happen, unable to pull the trigger.

  “What the hell?” Wolf asked the room.

  He got up and went to the bathroom to splash some water on his face.

  His reflection was the skinniest version of Wolf he could remember. His skin was almost blue it was so pale, his eyes were ringed with dark circles bordered with yellow, his lips thin and dry, the crow’s feet next to his eyes deep.

  There was definitely a new streak of gray in his otherwise dark hair coming in above his ear. A matching splash of silver painted his inch-long beard.

  He looked like a prisoner, he thought. He’d never had the misfortune of being captured in war, but he’d rescued plenty of people who had, and this is what they looked like.

  For twenty minutes he bathed and shaved, and in the end looked a little better, but not much.

  His phone chimed on his nightstand and he went out and picked it up.

  Nate Watson. He got excited, knowing exactly why he was calling.

  “What’s up?” Wolf answered.

  “Hey, I’ve got him here. We’re going to the river.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll park at the Westfield Oxbow lot. I’ll bring him and Brian south.”

  Wolf picked up his watch and then checked out his window. The rear of the house was in shadow and the tops of the trees were blazing in bright light. Four pm? He’d slept all day.

  “Okay. I’ll leave right now.”

  “See you there.”

  Wolf slipped on the same clothes from the morning, grabbed his keys, got in his old Toyota truck and drove.

  He sped down the dirt driveway, through the head gate and took a right to follow the river north.

  A mile up he mashed the accelerator and passed the unmarked Crown Victoria, contemplating whether to stay close or give it a wide berth on the way by. He swung the wheel and passed with plenty of space to spare, no sense endangering the innocent agents inside the vehicle. They were only acting on orders.

  He was satisfied watching the rearview as the FBI vehicle disappeared in a storm of dust.

  He reached the highway and continued north. As he slowed and made his way along Main Street in town, he saw that the FBI unmarked had finally caught up, now tailing him ten car lengths back.

  Wolf passed through town and kept going north. Highway 734 meandered along the right side of the Chautauqua, whose sliding waters bisected the town of Rocky Points flowing north and then west, ultimately pouring into the Colorado River a hundred miles away.

  Once out of town Wolf cruised at sixty. Slowing at the Westfield Oxbow sign, he pulled into the dirt parking lot and parked next to Nate’s SUV.

  Wolf and Nate had become best friends growing up by playing together in the same offensive backfield on the same football team each and every year from elementary school until college.

  Where Wolf had gone off to Colorado State on a full ride scholarship as quarterback, Nate had gone on to Golden and attended the Colorado School of Mines. Nate followed his strengths, abandoning his post at running back and honing his sharp mind instead, and eventually he became the owner of one of the premier geological services companies in the western United States.

  Nate’s large, top of the line American SUV, coupled with his sprawling house in the woods, told of the continued success of his company.

  Wolf got out and the FBI unmarked rolled into the lot. A car sped past and leaned on the horn, narrowly missing colliding with it.

  Wolf pointed at the two young-looking men in the car.

  The two men dressed in suits squinted behind the windshield.

  Wolf held his finger at them a second longer and then pointed at the ground.

  They both smirked and the driver dismissed him, rolling to a stop on the other side of the parki
ng lot.

  They shut off the car and got out. One of them grabbed a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one, and the other leaned against the trunk. Both gazed lazily at him.

  Wolf gave them another look and walked toward the river.

  The Westfield Oxbow, a wide looping bend in the Chautauqua River a few miles north of town, was a cattail and low bush-blanketed spot on the valley floor popular with local and out-of-town fishermen alike.

  Wolf walked to a clearing. Nate was to the north with his son, Brian, a dog, and another young man.

  Jack.

  Wolf’s pulse quickened.

  Brian, Nate’s son, was fourteen years old like Jack, but he’d yet to enter a growth spurt like Wolf’s son had. Built like a running back, Nate was average height and his son Brian was a few inches beneath him.

  On the other hand, Jack had reached Wolf’s height of six foot three and surpassed it by an inch as of this summer. So Sarah’s mother had told Wolf last time they’d spoken on the phone.

  Jack looked as awkward as ever, stooping a little as if ashamed of his height with his shorter companions. His hair was shaggy and blew in the late afternoon breeze.

  The FBI agents watched with interest, but stayed put. One of them looked away as if respectfully giving Wolf his space. Must have kids. The other smiled as he blew out a drag. Must not.

  Wolf pushed through the weeds and grasses, the image of Jack, Brian, and Nate flitting in and out behind the swaying branches.

  He reached the shoreline and bee-lined it up the game trail toward them.

  “Hey, Dave.” Brian spotted Wolf first and called out to him, giving Jack a glance in the process.

  Jack twisted around and glared at Wolf, then at Nate.

  Nate froze as he took the dagger stare from Jack, and then Jack dropped his fishing pole and walked into the bushes to Wolf’s right toward the parking lot.

  “Jack.” Wolf followed.

  No answer. Jack picked up his pace, his head bobbing and weaving between the bushes at breakneck speed.

  Wolf struggled to keep up, his right femur throbbing, his hip tightening with each step. “Jack, please. Stop.”

  Jack slowed for an instant and leaned his head back as if pleading at the sky, as if finally resigned to talking to Wolf.

  Wolf couldn’t believe his luck. It had been over three months of Jack ignoring his calls, screening them, avoiding him at all costs, pretending like he didn’t exist. Wolf finally had a chance to speak to his son. To plead his case.

  Jack marched forward again, this time at a faster pace.

  “Please!” Wolf said. “I need to talk to you!”

  Wolf clenched his teeth and jogged after him, swerving around a bush and then another. His legs ripped through the weeds, and a branch swayed in the wind and hit him in the face.

  His eyelids wide open, the leaves slapped against and sliced one of his eyeballs and he wrenched his head back at the sudden pain. The movement sent a lightning bolt from his previously broken vertebrae up his spine and he fell over onto a pile of rocks.

  He lay still on the cool ground panting and gritting his teeth. Blood pounded in his neck as he rolled over and gazed at the bushes swaying above.

  “Shit.” With ginger movements he got to his knees.

  “Are you all right?”

  Jack was there with a lanky hand extended.

  Wolf paused and looked up at his son’s face.

  Jack’s forest-green eyes showed little concern.

  “Yeah.” Wolf grabbed his hand, and Jack yanked him to his feet. “Easy.”

  Jack turned and walked away again.

  “Why won’t you talk to me, Jack?”

  Jack stopped and turned his profile to Wolf, then faced him. “Are you serious? You’re pretending you don’t know?”

  Wolf lifted his chin. “I’m gonna have to hear it from you. Why the hell are you so mad at me?”

  “Because mom is dead because of you. That’s why, Dad. Because you should have been there with her that night instead of screwing some slut at your house.”

  Wolf straightened, the words lashing him harder than any branch could. “I was knocked out that night. I … I don’t remember a thing. That woman brought me home, and then the next thing I knew I woke up.”

  “I guess you shouldn’t have gone out drinking with her then. Should have answered mom’s calls. She was in trouble, and she called you for help, and you ignored her to go out partying with your slut friend.”

  “Jack, listen—”

  “And now she’s dead.” He raised his hands and dropped them. His breath started and his eyes welled. “Buried in the ground. So, what the hell do you want to talk about?”

  Wolf swallowed. “I just want us to talk. I want to be your father again. I want us to help each other through this.”

  Jack turned around and started walking again.

  “Jack. We have to talk about all this.” You can’t blame me. I can’t take it.

  Jack turned around and continued walking backwards. “Tell Nate I’m walking back to town.”

  With that, Jack jogged away toward the river and then disappeared into the brush.

  Wolf stared and let the tears flow from his eyes, not sure if it was because of the new lacerations from the bush or he was just letting some pent up emotions out. It was hard to tell. He was a changed man.

  “Hey.”

  Wolf turned.

  “You all right?” Nate asked. Brian was close behind him, looking afraid to speak.

  Wolf nodded. “Jack’s walking back into town.”

  “Yeah. I heard.”

  Wolf nodded again, and then wiped his eyes.

  “Listen, you wanna go for some food? Get a beer? I can drop Brian off at home and we’ll go.”

  Wolf smiled. “No thanks. I’ve gotta get back home.”

  Nate nodded.

  Wolf looked south, unable to see any sign of Jack through the bushes. Dark clouds, pulsing with flashes of lightning, were building in the distance behind the green slopes of Rocky Points Ski Resort.

  “Can you make sure he gets back all right?” Wolf asked.

  “Of course. We’ll go pick him up at the next turnoff.”

  Wolf wiped his cheeks and started walking back to the parking lot, ignoring the pain in his hip and leg.

  He embraced the pain. He welcomed it.

  He deserved it. More than any other man on the planet.

  Check that, there was at least one other person out there as deserving, and bad health or not, it was about time Wolf figured out who they were and started giving them their share.

  Chapter 4

  Clayton Pope stared at the sniveling woman and chewed his stale piece of peppermint gum. He looked at the clock on the wall of the palatial Park Hill house living room and then at the woman again.

  There was a chuff of an engine expelling air outside and a squeak, and then the sound of boisterous kids off-loading a school bus.

  “Oh God, oh God, oh God.” The woman sobbed uncontrollably, her hands shaking. Her face turned white, almost as pale as Pope’s skin, but not quite. Not many people had the lack of pigment to reach Pope’s normal milky shade of ivory, no matter how freaked out they happened to be.

  “Hey.”

  She ignored him, staring at her front door.

  “Hey.” Pope stood from the silk covered chair, stepped to the woman on the couch and pressed the suppressor against her temple.

  She sucked in a breath and froze. “Please. Don’t hurt them.”

  “If you make a noise when that door opens, tell your kids to do anything other than come in and sit down, I plaster your brains on that disgusting thing you call a couch, in front of your kids, and then I do the same to your kids. Got that?”

  “Oh God, oh God, oh…”

  There was the patter of footsteps coming up to the front door and then it flew open.

  “Mom!” A boy, no more than ten years old, elbowed his way in front of his little sister, d
ropped his backpack against the wall and then froze.

  Pope stood straight with a gentle smile, his pistol held out of sight against his leg. “You must be Gabriel?”

  “Gabe,” the kid corrected him. “Who’s this?”

  Pope’s smile wavered and his leather glove shuddered as he squeezed the handle of the pistol.

  “Honey, that’s not how we treat guests. This is Mister…” the woman faltered.

  “Johnson,” Pope said, his smile returning. “I’m Bob Johnson. I’m a good friend of your dad’s.”

  Eyes narrowing with suspicion, Gabe stood rooted to the spot in the entryway looking between Pope and his mother, like a spoiled little shit who didn’t like his routine being messed with. Mom was probably supposed to be making his mac and cheese right now, or whatever it was that mothers did for their sons.

  The kid’s little sister walked to her mother on the couch, all the while keeping her wide eyes on Pope.

  Pope blushed at the little girl’s stare and felt his upper lip skin prickle with sweat under the silicone based stage glue. She saw right through his gentle façade of a facial expression, and she looked at his glove and then seemed to be studying his facial features, as if she knew he was wearing a disguise.

  Damn it.

  The woman had to have seen it, too. But she had been placating him, doing a fine job of acting like she’d seen nothing out of the ordinary, like she hadn’t known his mustache was fake, his skin slathered in makeup, and hadn’t seen the colored contact lenses in his eyes.

  Pope cursed his choice of makeup. It was too dark and didn’t match his true snow-white complexion. And the mustache itched fiercely, something to do with the way he’d shaved before he’d stuck it on.

  The disguise was still doing its job, he assured himself. He looked like a completely different man, with stuffed clothing to give him a heavier build, and with long sleeves to hide his most distinguishing mark. There would be no need to kill innocent people today.

  He felt a surge of confidence and smiled anew.

  “What’s your name?” Pope’s voice cracked.

  “Emma.”

  He nodded. “That’s a pretty name.”

  One eyelid twitching uncontrollably, the woman stared at him as she pulled her child close.