Stag Party: A Patrick Flint Novel

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  And if she ran out of gas and money, she’d figure out what to do about it then.

  She looked at the amethyst ring on her finger. She was going to Cody. To find Ben, and to convince him to come home.

  Chapter Thirty-eight: Follow

  North of Clear Creek Resort, Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming

  Saturday, December 31, 1977, 8:00 a.m.

  Patrick

  Patrick batted his eyes open, then shook his head gently to clear the cobwebs. Sun was streaming in the mouth of the cave. Had he overslept? His ribs seemed like they’d kept him up half the short night. He sat up and looked around. Snow was piled three feet high just past the cave’s mouth, where the overhang shed onto the ground. Inside, everyone else still slept. Except for Abraham, who Patrick didn’t see.

  He crawled over to Barry. Despite his goal to rest and rely on the others to care for Barry during their shifts, Patrick had woken repeatedly, worried about his friend and brother-in-law. He hadn’t managed to sustain solid sleep until the wee hours of the morning.

  Barry’s color looked better, and his skin was dry. Those were good signs. Patrick touched his face. It felt on the warm side of good. Not a full-blown fever. Not yet. But something to keep an eye on. He’d feel much better when they could admit Barry to the hospital and give him a full course of antibiotics.

  Barry’s eyes fluttered to slits. He groaned. His eyes widened and dilated then flitted around, taking in the rock walls of the cave. When he spoke, his lips clung together, and his voice was weak and raspy. “I hurt like a son of a gun.” He tried to raise his head. His skin paled and he winced.

  “That’s your body telling you to be still.”

  “I knew you were a quack.” Barry fanned his eyes shut.

  “Rest while I wake the others.”

  Barry didn’t bother to reply.

  Wes and Dr. John had both begun to stir. Patrick glanced at his watch. It was eight a.m. He whipped his head around, looking for Abraham again. The man was supposed to wake them all by seven, so they could prepare to leave and be ready when help arrived. Where was he? Why hadn’t he woken them?

  He jostled Wes’s shoulder. “Time to get up. It’s eight. Have you seen Abraham?”

  “Uh uh.” Wes rubbed his eyes and sat up.

  “Abraham’s gone?” Dr. John said, without opening his eyes or moving a muscle.

  “Yes. And we all overslept. I’m worried about him,” Patrick said.

  If Abraham had gone out to relieve himself or gather wood, could something have happened to him—a predator or moose attack, the weather, falling rocks, a heart attack? But he thought back to Abraham’s odd behaviors and reticence in conversation the night before. Something was off about the man. If Patrick had to guess, Abraham was hiding something.

  Or from something.

  “Barry’s a little warm.” But he was in good hands with Wes and Dr. John. “I’m turning him over to you guys and going to see where Abraham is.”

  Dr. John grunted. He rolled up onto his side. “We need to stay in twos.”

  Patrick began pulling on his boots. “You and Wes will make two. Abraham will be my second when I find him. I won’t go far.”

  “You’re armed?”

  Patrick snorted. “Have been since I moved here.” He had slept in his jacket, but now he zipped it up over the holster he’d never removed.

  Wes’s face was puckered in a frown of consternation. “I don’t like it, Doc. Fire a shot if you need us, okay?”

  Patrick saluted with a gloved hand, then put on the other one and his helmet. “When the cavalry arrives, you do the same, so I’ll know to come back.”

  “Will do.”

  Patrick trudged out toward the snowmobiles. When the going gets tough, the tough get going, he reminded himself. He swam through the deep snow pile, knocking as much out of the way as he could. Someone had left evidence that they’d fought through there earlier—tracks, of a sort—but to Patrick’s eyes the holes looked partially snowed in, with feathery powder softening the edges. Not completely fresh. Abraham had taken shift around four thirty. When Patrick had woken to check on Barry at about that time, the snow had still been falling. And Abraham had been there, just stirring to start his shift.

  That meant Abraham had left the cave after four thirty and before eight. It wasn’t much to go on and left out the essential fact of why.

  The snow depth lessened away from the mouth of the cave. Patrick’s breaths were already ragged and sweat trickled down his back. Amazing how much effort it took to fight through snow, and how taxing it was at this altitude. He stepped out from the shade of the enormous rock face. Painful sunlight blinded him, and he held a hand over his eyes then pulled down the face shield on his helmet. It helped some. He gave his eyes a few more seconds to adjust. Finally able to see through a tight squint, he scanned the park.

  Nothing but white. On the ground. On the trees. Over rocks. Even the sky looked white. He blinked and tried again, moving his eyes in wide sweeps. Were there shapes, color, movement, or disruptions that didn’t belong?

  Still unsuccessful, he turned back to the line of snowmobiles, trying to decide whether he should take one to look for Abraham. That’s when he noticed the red Ruff wasn’t there. Tracks from the sled wound off through the trees. Son of a buck. Patrick should have looked there first. But who would have expected Abraham to ride away? And a snowmobile was loud. Patrick couldn’t believe he’d slept through one starting up, even though they were parked away from the entrance to the cave and blocked some by boulders. The storm noise must have muffled the engine noise.

  He tried to ignore the sick feeling rising in him. He needed to diagnose the situation. To use logic. There might be a legitimate reason Abraham would be out on a snow machine, and he didn’t want to rush to judgment before he considered all the possibilities. What if Abraham had needed help? Easy answer. There were three able bodied men in the cave. He should have woken one of them. Try as he might, Patrick couldn’t come up with anything else. Nothing that made sense.

  Abraham had left for his own reasons, whatever they were. Running from something, Patrick thought again.

  Snippets of their conversation the night before replayed in his mind, almost as if he was hearing Abraham’s words for the first time. In a way, he was. He’d been so exhausted and worried about Barry. He hadn’t given Abraham his complete attention.

  “I’ve been working as a ranch hand for many months. I don’t require much rest.”

  Why would a doctor be working as a ranch hand?

  “One of my parents was born overseas”

  There was nothing sinister in that statement, but it niggled at Patrick’s brain. And it wasn’t just what Abraham had said or the words he had used. It was his demeanor. In retrospect, his secrecy seemed furtive. Maybe fearful? Patrick cycled back through the facts troubling him. A ranch hand. With dark hair and eyes, olive skin, an accent that didn’t sound Californian, strange diction, and a parent born overseas.

  While overseas included many places, it could mean an Arab country. Like the O Bar M ranch hand from the middle east who had disappeared when his co-workers had been killed. Muhammed, the one wanted for questioning in connection with the murders.

  Patrick grabbed the handlebar of the nearest snowmobile. Could Abraham be Muhammed?

  If so, that might provide a clue about what he was running from and why he was so secretive. He could have been the one who wielded the knife that killed the other two O Bar M hands. The bloody, gruesome scene replayed in Patrick’s mind. Abraham hadn’t seemed like a murderer. That didn’t mean he wasn’t one though. Most people had it in them to kill. Their reasons might vary, but if they had to, they would. Patrick had, to save his daughter. Maybe this Muhammed had been defending himself.

  Or maybe he wasn’t the killer but had witnessed the murders.

  Yet he had somehow ended up with George at Clear Creek Resort. The fact of that connection seemed to shoot a hole in Patrick’s Muhammed theor
y.

  Except that everything else seemed to fit.

  A cold chill ran up his spine. He might have just spent the night sleeping beside a murderer in a cave deep in the wilderness.

  But he was the man who saved your brother-in-law’s life and stayed with him even after help came.

  He brushed the snow off the seat of his snowmobile. Maybe he should go look for him. But then he stopped, thinking better of it. He shouldn’t endanger himself going after a man on the run. A man who didn’t want to be found, most likely. He had a brother-in-law to get off the mountain. A wife and children to return to.

  But Abraham stayed to save Barry.

  The quiet was suddenly shattered by a loud buzzing. Engines. Snowmobiles. Moving fast. Patrick whirled around. Had help arrived? But the noise was coming from the wrong direction. Away from the lodge. And the snowmobile that appeared in the park was a familiar red one.

  Abraham was back.

  Or was he? Instead of turning in to rejoin Patrick and the others at the cave, the red snowmobile raced by. Two yellow snowmobiles flew out of the trees after him, their belts screaming with strain. Like the Ski-Doos from the fleet at the resort. Maybe this was a different group and not Abraham at all. But in these conditions and this far away from the resort, it was unlikely.

  Running from something.

  A sadness flickered inside him. The yellow sleds could be law enforcement out here to bring Abraham in, borrowing the Clear Creek Resort machines. From this distance, there was no way for Patrick to tell.

  Then one of the Ski-Doo riders pulled out a handgun and started firing at the red snowmobile. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. The shots ripped off so quickly, Patrick recognized it as a semi-automatic. The other Ski-Doo rider followed suit. BOOM. BOOM.

  It felt wrong, and he only had to think about it for a second to identify the reason. Abraham—if it was him—hadn’t fired first. Law enforcement wouldn’t fire into the back of a fleeing suspect. These couldn’t be deputies. Not good ones anyway.

  “Are you okay? I heard gunfire,” Wes shouted from the mouth of the cave.

  “It’s not me. Two riders are chasing Abraham by snowmobile. They fired on him.”

  “What in tarnation? Who would do that?”

  “I have no idea.” Patrick didn’t take the time to explain his suspicion about Abraham. Or that despite his suspicion, his instincts pointed in the opposite direction, to the man’s essential goodness, and that he felt an obligation to help him now. It wouldn’t make sense to Wes. He wasn’t sure it made sense to himself. All he knew was that it felt like the truth, and that he couldn’t live with himself if he stood here and watched these two men hunt Abraham down and kill him.

  He unzipped his coat, removed his revolver from its holster, and spun the cylinder. It was loaded. He returned it to its holster. Then he ran back to his snowmobile and attempted to start it. The engine was cold. Come on, come on. He braced his foot and pulled over and over. It coughed and spit and finally sputtered on with a smelly belch. Patrick gently depressed the throttle. The engine answered with a snarl then a roar.

  Wes appeared right in his face, shouting to be heard over the noise of the machine. “What are you doing?”

  “They were trying to kill him. I have to do something.”

  “Yeah, and if you go after them, they might try to kill you, too.”

  Patrick knew his friend was right. He mounted the snowmobile anyway.

  Wes spat out a few choice words. He shook his head. “If you’re going, Sawbones, I am, too.”

  Patrick nodded. “They’re getting away. Make it fast.” He gunned the sled, and it shot across the powder, defying gravity.

  Chapter Thirty-nine: Fire

  Clear Creek Resort, Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming

  Saturday, December 31, 1977, 8:15 a.m.

  George

  Inside the shed, George poured fuel into snowmobiles. He needed three: his and one each for Jenelle and Mandy. The selection was limited to four machines now. On their way back from the cave the night before, they’d been unable to get Jenelle’s disabled machine to start. They’d left it out on the trail. George planned to repair it or haul it in, but that was a task for later, after Barry was safely on his way to the hospital and all the guests and other sleds were back at the resort.

  “Which ones do you and Mandy want to take?” he asked Jenelle, trying not to look at her. It was impossible, though. His eyes were drawn to her like a hummingbird to sugar water. He let himself sneak a glance. Jeez—when it rains, it pours. Just when he found a nice girl like Lisa, he met the cute cashier at the gas station, and then he became reacquainted with Jenelle of the curves and killer dimples. His father always teased him that good-looking women seemed to come into his life in threes. And they left the same way, each unhappy about him and the other two.

  “Mandy’s going to sit this one out. We’re a little short on machines, anyway. Mom rented some to the day guests early this morning.” She leaned over to adjust the thermoses and bags of food that she’d bungie corded onto the stretcher they’d rigged up from an extra-long toboggan before breakfast.

  Maybe he could pick one girl this time and not end up alone. It would make his mother happy. Sunday dinner would be more relaxing without her asking him about when he’d settle down and give her grandkids, every single time. It was a shame Jenelle lived two hours away in Gillette.

  BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

  Jenelle stood up with a hand to her ear. “Gunfire. In the direction of the cave, it sounded like.”

  George wondered if it was elk hunters. But it hadn’t been the crack of a rifle. The shots were fast, like a semi-auto. And those weren’t hunting guns. “Not hunters.”

  BOOM. BOOM.

  Jenelle nodded. “Definitely not.”

  “Target shooters?”

  She frowned. “That’s way too much trouble to do in the dead of winter out there.”

  “Agree.”

  “Someone in trouble?”

  “Maybe. Hopefully not someone from our group.” George knew it wasn’t safe for him to ride out alone to figure out what was going on, but he didn’t want to drag Jenelle into the middle of a problem involving gunfire. “We should call it in, to be on the safe side.”

  “Good idea.”

  Together, they jogged back to the lodge, where they quickly toed snow off their boots at the door. Inside, Jenelle ducked behind the check-in counter. She stuffed her gloves in her pocket and picked up the phone receiver. She listened, then shook her head. “Still down. But Mom and Dad use a radio to communicate directly with emergency services in Buffalo. It’s in their office. Follow me.”

  She turned down a short corridor behind check-in and led him into a cozy room at the end of the hall. There was a radio on a table behind a desk. George stopped in the doorway.

  Jenelle picked up the mic and keyed it. “This is Clear Creek Resort calling for Johnson County. Come in Johnson County.”

  After she paused, a dispatcher radioed back. It was impossible for George to tell if the gruff voice was male or female, only that it was from someone closer to his grandmother’s age than his own. “This is Johnson County Dispatch, Clear Creek Resort. What’s your emergency?”

  “Multiple shots fired, possibly from more than one gun, in the vicinity of a stranded party. Please send law enforcement.”

  “Confirming shots fired from multiple weapons near Clear Creek Resort. Requesting law enforcement.”

  “As soon as possible.”

  In a softer voice, the dispatcher said, “You know season is still open for elk?”

  “These aren’t hunters. The guns were semi-automatic. They weren’t from rifles.”

  “Gotcha. A distress call?”

  “Possibly. We don’t know.”

  “We’ll get someone up there as fast as we can, roads permitting.”

  “Can you check on the status of medical help for Barry?” George whispered.

  Jenelle nodded. “Also, I need to make sure you’re aw
are we’re waiting on help with a resort guest who is in serious medical condition and was stuck out in the wilderness overnight. That emergency is ongoing.”

  The dispatcher said, “Yes. Search and Rescue is on standby for safe roads.”

  “We’re about to leave to try to bring him back to the lodge ourselves. We’re going to need help getting him down the mountain as fast as possible.”

  “Understood. Medical transport is also on standby.”

  George and Jenelle exchanged a worried glance. He understood the danger of bad roads and didn’t advocate putting lives at risk unnecessarily, but he sure hoped the plows were working on Highway 16.

  Jenelle’s eyes widened. “Oh, and I almost forgot. Our phones are down.”

  “Will someone be manning the radio?”

  “No. We’re over extended. But we’ll check in when we can.”

  “10-4, Clear Creek Resort. Johnson County Dispatch, over and out.”

  “Over and out.” Jenelle looked up at George as she replaced the receiver in the holster. “I don’t mind telling you, the gunfire near our group is making me nervous.”

  “Me, too.” The dimples were in hiding, but her clear gray eyes were just as enticing to George. “I don’t suppose I can talk you into staying here at the lodge?”

  “Not a chance.”

  They hurried out together. When they reached the reception area, they found Mrs. Murray, Ari, and Cyrus.

  Mrs. Murray was standing with her fists on her hips, an apron over her sweater. “We heard semi-automatic gun fire. What’s going on?”

  Jenelle answered her mother. “We don’t know, but I radioed it in.”

  George said, “Jenelle and I have to get going. We’ve got the stretcher to bring Barry in.”

  Cyrus said, “I’m ready. I’ll come with you.”

  Ari didn’t look eager, but his voice was firm. “Me, too.”

  Mrs. Murray shook her head.

  “What?” Cyrus asked.