by Jeff Carson
With a lightning-quick movement, Young put the rifle on his shoulder, then crouched down, feeling the ground with his hand.
In just a few seconds, Young found Wolf’s tracks and followed them.
Wolf relaxed as Young walked in the opposite direction, following the misdirection Wolf had laid down. His tracks went on for hundreds of yards and would end on a flat granite formation in the distance. Even so, Wolf had continued for another hundred yards, leaving telltale scrapes in lichen and overturned pebbles before doubling back and finally resting in his current spot.
After twenty yards, Young stood straight, turned around, marched back towards his four-wheeler, and fired it up.
Wolf watched for twenty minutes as Young crept up the open expanse, following Wolf’s tracks, leaning off the edge of his seat.
At the summit of the gentle rise, Young paused, scanning in front of him, then disappeared over the hill. The droning engine faded to nothing a few seconds later.
Wolf pulled out his cell phone. It had no service, and the battery was almost dead. He pulled out his Leatherman multi-tool, wrenched off the SIM cardholder, and removed the card.
He pressed the power button, then, with a sharp breath, remembered the attempted audio recording from last night, and switched the phone back on.
Dammit. The drug hangover slowed his mind, and was beginning to get on his nerves.
He opened the voice-memo application and looked at the latest file. It was thirty-seven minutes long, dated the night before. He pushed play.
Wolf stretched his legs, scanned the horizon of where Young had just gone, and listened.
“Gotcha.” It was the whisper in his ear. On his ear. It seemed a lot louder on the recording than he remembered. It was more of a loud declaration by Young than the whisper Wolf remembered. Then there was a full five minutes of shuffling, scraping, grunting, and inaudible noises from Young.
Then five blasts.
And a lot of laughing.
Wolf narrowed his eyes and listened to the phone—another few minutes of shuffling, all the while with the same incessant laughing. Wolf turned up the volume as loud as it would go.
Young’s voice was muffled and sounded distant. “Oh, you’re dead now. You’re dead now. You’re dead now.” Then there was a long pause. “You dead?”
Wolf put the speaker to his ear.
It sounded like Young was hyperventilating. Then came a series of maniacal giggles, each one rising in pitch as if asking a question.
Wolf looked at the phone, a chill snaking up his body.
The guy was a nut-job. He’d seen men in the army who seemed to enjoy killing too much. But this was taking it to a whole new level.
Maybe Young was acting alone.
Wolf put the speaker back to his ear. There was dead silence.
He pressed his finger on the forward button, stopping at a sound. He reversed and played it.
It sounded like Young was making a phone call, with a lot of back-and-forth talking in a calm manner.
The call ended, and there were several minutes of silence again.
Wolf pressed his finger on the forward button, waiting for another sign of sounds.
He stopped and reversed again near the end. It was Young trying to wake him up, throwing water and smacking him.
“Hi, I just heard shots fired at Derek Connell’s place. There were a lot of them. Please come quick … Wake up, you’ve only got a few minutes.”
Then there was the sound of Wolf missing two calls, him slowly snapping out of his unconscious state, and his drunken words with Rachette.
Wolf stopped the recording, shut off the phone completely, and took a deep breath.
There was no reason for Young to have let Wolf go, to have warned him that the cops were coming, unless Young had wanted him to run—to be in the situation he found himself in now.
And right now? Wolf was a dangerous man who had just shot the sheriff five times, and then fled into the woods. He was a hunted man.
Shoot to kill. Wolf knew with a sinking feeling that those would be the orders.
Wolf stood up on legs that ached from a long night’s ride, chock full of uncirculated lactic acid from sitting still for hours on end in the freezing temperature.
He looked again to the horizon and listened to the chirps of marmots scurrying above him, squinted into the warmth of the rising sun, found the rocky formation he was looking for, took two quick breaths, and began jogging.
Chapter 29
Young drove slowly over the gentle rise, and then accelerated hard downhill for fifty yards. He slammed the brakes, skidding the ATV to a ninety-degree stop, and killed the engine at the same time. Before it came to rest, he jumped off on the downhill side and landed, his feet already moving as fast as they could.
Young sprinted downhill, reaching the tree line, then hopped over a fallen tree at breakneck speed, landed on the knife-edge of a boulder, stepped onto a flat rock, and jumped.
Thirty feet later he landed on a steep dirt chute in a feet-first baseball slide. Just before careening into a car-sized rock, he dug in his boots and jumped, hand-slap-vaulting over it with ease. He ran to his left and jumped onto a steep scree pile.
The wind rushed through his closely cropped hair as he took giant, bouncing strides straight down the loose rock. He gained even more speed, covering huge distances with each step, until he turned at just the right moment, executing a long hockey stop.
In a fluid move, he stepped onto a narrow dirt trail, and looked up with a lazy expression. He’d covered the hundreds of vertical feet in seconds. Maybe he’d take up extreme skiing this upcoming winter.
He squinted and saw the gleam of the red four-wheeler on the slope above. If someone saw it, they saw it. It didn’t matter. He’d left no trace of himself on it. He never did.
He began jogging.
His lips curled into a small smile as he thought about Wolf, sitting on the side of the hill, then he frowned. Wolf’s mistake was almost disappointing. But the whole interaction had made it interesting at least.
Does he see me? Is he gonna shoot?
He allowed a small laugh, then blanked his face and upped the pace.
Chapter 30
Wolf pushed hard up the side of the mountain, cursing the cigarettes he’d allowed himself the past two weeks as a searing pain developed in the center of his lungs. His legs weren’t in the kind of shape he would have liked either—his calves were knots, his thighs sluggish, and a strain had opened up in the right side of his groin. His mind, however, pushed him forward without mercy.
He didn’t know whether he was being paranoid, but the more Wolf had thought about Young, staring at him through the rifle scope, the faster Wolf had run, until finally Wolf had been in an all-out sprint for ten minutes—fighting for the high ground he scaled towards now.
When he reached the top of the rise, he stopped, keeping a rock outcropping to the west, towards the way he’d just come from. He huffed through his teeth for a minute, then finally closed his mouth, fighting the coughing reflex the best he could. Damn cigarettes.
Wolf’s thumping heart was loud in his ears as he leaned against the rock and peered over the side.
Not thirty seconds later he heard a noise.
Young came into view from behind a rock outcropping far below and to the left. His feet pounded on the dusty trail in a fast perfect rhythm. His huge strides propelled his body forward with the ferocity of a charging grizzly bear. His face, however, was dead calm, as if watching a boring TV show.
He covered fifty yards with the speed of a NFL wide receiver, then slowed to a dead stop just below Wolf with an agility that didn’t seem natural for such a large man.
He looked up the slope opposite Wolf and pumped his lungs with big heaves of his chest. After a full minute of standing still and catching his breath, he turned in a slow circle. Listening.
Wolf’s lungs itched and rattled, demanding he expel the cigarette tar with a violent cough. He sm
othered his face in his sleeve and breathed slow.
Young did a full circle and then looked down. He was scanning the dusty trail for prints.
Wolf had crossed the trail no more than fifty feet beyond where Young was. If it came down to it, and Young came up after him, Wolf would be able to sit tight and pick him off from his higher ground. Of course, Young would know that. Picking Young off now would take out any uncertainty, but he was too far to hit with his Glock.
Finally, it looked like Young had come to a decision, snapping his head up the slope to the west.
Wolf watched the big man climb with ease, gaining altitude fast, all the while following parallel with Wolf’s tracks.
Thankfully Young kept meandering his way left, away from the tracks, and finally climbed out of view, undoubtedly to ambush Wolf where he had sat fifteen minutes ago.
Wolf inhaled and muffled a hard cough into his sleeve, clearing his lungs in one push. There was no telling how long it would take Young to realize that Wolf was gone, and then to figure out just where to. Wolf was counting on Young thinking he’d gone north and west, towards the two peaks—towards the backside of Connell’s ranch.
If Young was an experienced tracker, however, he might see what little ground sign Wolf had left, leading him back down the way he’d come, and hot on Wolf’s trail to the east.
He’d bought some time. But how much?
He turned to the northeast and picked out the dark-brown cone of rock. It was miles away on the other side of the vast forested valley floor. The journey would provide good cover, the prize at the end hopefully being help. Maybe even a rifle.
But it had been a long time. Would the old guy recognize him? Was he even alive? Would he shoot Wolf?
There was no better option.
Chapter 31
Rachette crunched his way over the dried pine needles and stepped over a log, scratching his ankle on a jagged branch. “Shit.”
Vickers stopped, shooting him a glare over his shoulder. He’d been watching Rachette like a hawk since they left Wolf’s property at first light. Vickers was obviously certain that Rachette was going to be in touch with Wolf at some point, and Vickers was determined to catch him in the act.
It was getting old.
“Not talking to Wolf.” Rachette raised his hands.
Vickers stared at him a beat, then turned around and kept walking.
After a few minutes, a deputy led by a hulking German shepherd came scrambling into view straight ahead of them. “It’s another scent decoy.” The K-9 unit deputy from Summit County held up a dirty sock stuffed with rocks towards Vickers.
Rachette suppressed a smile.
“This is getting ridiculous. Do we even have the general direction he went in?” Vickers took off his cowboy hat, wiped his forehead, and looked into the distance.
They had been moving north with the dogs, which had been following Wolf’s scent for the past hour. Before that, they’d headed southeast for an hour and a half. The net effect on their location was somewhere straight east of Wolf’s ranch, on the sunbaked side of a thinly treed mountain.
It was hot, Rachette’s body was aching, and he was desperate for sleep. Then Rachette thought of Wolf. With the misdirection the search teams were encountering, he doubted Wolf had had any sleep the night before.
Rachette pulled his phone from his pocket and gave it a quick look again. There was no sign of a message from Wolf.
Vickers saw him do it, and Rachette didn’t care.
The helicopter thumped over the ridge into view again, drowning out any sounds.
Vickers watched the helicopter leave and fade into the distance as he walked over. He took off his backpack and set it on the ground, took a sip of his water, and held it out to Rachette.
Rachette shook his head.
“What do you think?” Vickers wafted his shirt. The smell of cologne and sweat billowed out in an invisible noxious cloud.
“What do you mean?”
Vickers looked at Rachette. “You know Wolf. Tell me what you’re thinking. You keep checking that phone.”
Rachette narrowed his eyes. It was the first time Vickers had given him a sincere look in the eye since they had met. Like they were suddenly equals. “I think he didn’t do any of this.”
Vickers gave a high-pitched laugh, closing his eyes to the sky. “Come on. Seriously?”
Rachette said nothing.
Vickers held up a hand. “Okay, fine. But you’ve gotta convince me here. You think your man didn’t do this. Why? Tell me.”
Rachette held the man’s gaze. “Who the hell are you?”
Vickers blinked. “What do you mean?”
“You heard me. You come waltzing in here, and take Wolf’s position while Connell takes sheriff?”
“I was hired by Sluice County, just like you.”
Rachette shook his head and gave a laugh of his own. “Nah. Not just like me. You had a straight line into the Sheriff’s Department through the Connells. I came in here and interviewed for the job with the sheriff, just like everyone else in this department. I never saw you set foot in the station until the day you started. How’d you pull that off?”
Vickers glared. “I was recruited by Mr. Connell, hired by the county council.” His voice turned icy. “And that’s that.”
Rachette shook his head and looked down the slope.
Vickers took another sip of water. “Look, I’m serious here. I want to know how you think Wolf could not be responsible for murder. If not him, then who?”
Rachette wondered just what angle Vickers was taking. Was he reporting back to Gary?
“Fine. Keep quiet.” Vickers put his bottle in his backpack, shouldered it, and walked away. After a few feet, he came to a halt. “I keep hearing about how great this guy Wolf is. The truth is, I’d sure like to believe the great stories, and I’d sure like to work with a guy like that if I’m going to live out my career in the Sluice County Sheriff’s Department, which I plan on doing. I, for one, like it here. Just like I know you do.” He kept walking.
“Sergeant Vickers.”
Vickers stopped and turned his head halfway.
Rachette took a sip of his water and decided it couldn’t hurt to talk. “Tuesday night at the Beer Goggles Bar, Wolf was sure he saw a needle mark on Jerry Blackman’s neck. Was there? Were there drugs in his system?”
Vickers turned around and nodded. “We found some sedatives in his system.”
“Why would Wolf do that to the guy? Secondly, Wolf pointed that out to me. Why would he point out the needle mark on Blackman’s neck? And Wolf also found some large footprints and tire tread marks that led to the back of the bar. It looked like someone, a very large someone, had backed a truck up and unloaded Mark Wilson’s body.”
“Why didn’t Wolf mention any of this to us?” Vickers asked.
“I don’t know, maybe because earlier that day his house had exploded. Almost killing his son in the process. And he had all the reason in the world to believe Connell was behind that. He saw a flash inside the door, and he was suspecting arson, which was confirmed by the fire investigators, by the way. So why would he go telling his theories to Connell? And who’s to say you didn’t know about the explosion, too?”
Vickers stared for a few long seconds and raised his eyebrows. “Did you know that Gary was going to raise the rent on Wolf’s property?”
Rachette frowned at the sudden shift in topics. And, no, he hadn’t known about that.
Vickers softened his expression. “From what I’ve gathered from Gary, Wolf was pretty furious about not getting the sheriff job and threatened Gary after he tried to offer Wolf a job. Gary reacted a little harshly, telling him he was going to have to raise the rent, which he says he had no intention of doing.” Vickers shrugged. “So, the question is, what if Wolf rigged the house to blow? Out of revenge or spite.” Vickers stepped closer and cocked his head. “Didn’t Wolf’s father build that house? And now he was getting run out by Gary?”
Vickers dropped his gaze and scraped the dirt with his boot. He looked up and shrugged. “Who’s Young?”
Rachette looked away as he felt his face flush. Rachette realized he’d never actually seen the ex-navy SEAL in question.
Vickers nodded. “I know it must be hard to see your mentor unraveling in front of your eyes.” He held up his hands quickly. “Or maybe he just didn’t do any of this, like you said. But let’s look at what the facts are telling us. He just came back from a harrowing experience, bringing his dead brother back from overseas. His ex-wife just gets out of rehab, and she’s dating some other guy instead of him. And to top it off, he doesn’t get appointed to sheriff, a job he wanted more than anything in the world. A job his father used to have before he was killed in the line of duty. Hell,” Vickers ripped off his hat, slapped it on his leg, and squinted into the sun, “I’d snap if I was him, too. Sure as shit I’d snap.”
Rachette’s mind swirled as he looked into the trees below. Connell. He’d seen the murderous intent in Connell’s eyes as he’d strangled Rachette against the garage wall.
Rachette nodded and stepped forward. “All right. We’ll see.”
Vickers put a firm hand on his shoulder. “We’ll shoot first, and then we’ll see.” His eyebrows were raised high. “I’m in charge now, and that’s an order. I’m not going to jeopardize more lives on your defiant hunch. You got that, Deputy Rachette?”
Rachette ducked his shoulder and walked away.
Chapter 32
Sweat slid down the side of Wolf’s cheek as he walked on the fine rocky soil of the valley floor. He stopped in the trees near the edge of a clearing, wiped his forehead with his bare forearm and pulled his wet camo tee shirt away from his skin.