Lone Jack Trail

by Owen Laukkanen

  She hated to run. She wanted to stay and confront Pruitt, bash his head in for what he’d done to Lucy, but staying here was a death wish, and she wasn’t ready to die yet, not at least until she was sure she could take Dax Pruitt with her.

  She crashed into the forest beside the Silverado, leading with her shoulder and tucking her head down, trying to avoid the thin, tangled branches that raked at her skin and tugged through her hair. She was making noise, and lots of it, but that didn’t matter; Pruitt and his buddy were making noise too, and right now all that was important was putting in distance.

  The slope of the mountain was steep and her balance precarious. She didn’t dare follow the road, for fear they’d see her running and be on top of her quickly. She was banking on a few minutes of confusion back at the Silverado, hoping the men would scour the little clearing before they started their descent.

  Anyway, if she stayed in the woods, there was no way they would find her. The forest was thick and it was vast and the men were bound to be impatient; they would stick to the trails, at least at first. The highway lay somewhere below her, stretched out like a ribbon along the coastline, and Jess knew if she could just keep dropping altitude, she would find it in time. Assuming she didn’t break her neck.

  Jess bulled her way down the slope. Crashing, careening into tree trunks, losing her balance, and slipping in the mud. The angle was severe and if she fell wrong she’d topple into a minefield of stumps and root systems and rock, all waiting to arrest her fall at the expense of her bones, or her life.

  She tried to switchback down the grade as best she could, leaning upslope and scrambling behind her with her bound wrists for handholds, anything she could find to slow down the drop. She couldn’t hear motors up above her anymore, but she was breathing too hard and making too much noise to hear anything anyway.

  She couldn’t worry about the men. What mattered was that she keep moving. Keep dropping in altitude.

  And then she did fall.

  She’d glanced back, upslope—that was her mistake. There was no point to looking back, but she’d done it anyway, and she’d stepped forward without planning that step and touched down on a thick, wizened root, gnarled and slippery. The sole of her shoe skidded and her ass flew out from under her, and she landed hard on her back and those wrists bound behind her, and then she was sliding down a steep, muddy wall and there was no way she could stop herself.

  It might have been fifty feet or it might have been more. God knows how fast she was going when she hit. But she saw the tree coming and she knew it would hurt, and reflexively she shifted her balance and tumbled onto her side, and then she was racing past the tree and continuing to fall.

  It would have been smarter, she realized instantly, to have let the tree stop her. Because beyond the tree was more open ground, a slope of mountainside too steep and too slippery to permit any growth, and beyond that was a shallow gulch and a riverbed, and Jess could sense water, but she could see only rock, a low, jagged line of boulders, immovable and unforgiving, lying in her path as she careened downward at speed.

  Jess tried to dig her heels into the dirt. Clawed with her fingers at the mud underneath them. She succeeded not at all; she continued to plummet. There was nothing to do but close her eyes and brace for impact, try to shield her head and hope against hope she survived.

  The impact seemed to steal her consciousness before her mind could process the pain.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  The dog was okay. Mason had found a tiny shard of bloody stone lodged in her foreleg, which must have been painful for Lucy, but it wasn’t going to kill her. So that was a good thing at least.

  The shard looked like it matched the gravel in the Shipwreck Point parking lot, like it had chipped off of something and gone ricocheting up into Lucy’s leg. Like someone had been jackhammering in the middle of the lot. But Mason found a bullet casing, up toward where the parking lot narrowed for the exit to the highway. It gleamed in the intermittent sunlight peeking down through the clouds, and he spied it from about twenty paces, shiny and pristine amid the dusty lot.

  Someone had been shooting, and Lucy had been close.

  There was only the one casing, though. There might have been blood on the ground, but Mason couldn’t see it. Mason hoped that meant that whoever’d slashed Jess’s tires hadn’t shot her, that she was still alive somewhere.

  But he knew the clock was ticking.

  “This is not good, Burke; I know you love that woman, but this is really not good.”

  Rengo was starting to panic. They’d been out in the daylight too long, too visible, and sooner or later some state patrolman or a sheriff’s deputy was going to recognize the truck and light them both up, and then the game would be over.

  But Mason wasn’t so focused on that right now.

  “Who’d come for Jess?” he asked as Rengo pulled out onto the highway and drove slow toward Deception. “Who stands to gain from snatching up a sheriff’s deputy?”

  Rengo glanced at him. “She killed Chris Jordan,” he said. “And Dougie Bealing. Those guys both had people; maybe they’re pissed.”

  “Who?” Mason said.

  “I don’t know, Burke,” the kid replied. “Jordan’s kin to Logger Fetridge, so it might have been him. But it could well be anyone.”

  “Take me to Fetridge,” Mason said. “Wherever he lives. Take me now.”

  Rengo sighed, frustrated. “That’s all the way back in Neah Bay. We don’t have time for this. We need to get out of this county.”

  “Just take me,” Mason told him, thinking he might have to push Rengo out the driver’s door and scour the county himself.

  But Rengo set his jaw and slowed the truck. Glanced quick in the rearview and pulled a U-turn on the narrow highway.

  “You’re thinking we’ll just run up on Logger Fetridge and his people unarmed?” he asked. “Sounds like a pretty smart way to get dead, Burke, you ask me.”

  Mason didn’t know what he was thinking, except there’d been shooting and Jess was involved, and this Fetridge might know something about it. It was better than nothing, but just barely.

  Probably it was all they had.

  * * *

  Jess came to, and kept running.

  Her head throbbed, and there was blood all over, and it felt like knives when she shifted position, but Jess forced herself to her feet, forced herself to keep moving until the adrenaline and the old training kicked back in and she couldn’t feel the pain anymore. Wasn’t sure how long she’d been out, but it couldn’t have been too long; the sky was still blue behind the clouds up above, the forest not yet that encompassing blackness of twilight.

  She found a jagged, sharp piece of rock, sheared off from something much larger and left here, in the path of the gully in which water flowed steadily toward the ocean. She leaned her back against the rock’s edge and rubbed the rope against it as hard as she could, the exertion straining her muscles and her dwindling energy, the movement so painful it made her want to cry out.

  She didn’t cry out and she didn’t slow, not until she’d cut through the rope with the knife-edge of the rock and her wrists were unbound. Then she clambered down into the narrow gully and ducked her head into the stream of water at the bottom, cleaned the blood from her face and drank, greedily, until she felt sick.

  She was tired and she was weak and she was sore. She couldn’t hear the sound of the men and their machines over the rush of the water. They might have been close or they might have given up; Jess had no way of knowing.

  She drank one more time and then stood and climbed atop a large rock and looked down the river’s path through the forest, trying to pick out a trail along the side of the gully. The descent was steep and the rocks were slippery and loose and uneven. Jess knew one wrong step could trigger another fall, break her ankle or worse. But the river was the surest way she knew to find tidewater; she couldn’t risk going back and looking for the road.

  So she began to climb down the roc
ks, the work maddeningly slow, sweat on her brow and streaming down her back, collecting with the blood and the dirt she’d accumulated already.

  Above her, the day’s light was already on the wane.

  * * *

  “We’ve got to bring this to the sheriff,” Mason said as Rengo drove the little Toyota back toward Neah Bay. “We can’t just hope to find Jess on our own.”

  Rengo didn’t reply right away. He glanced at Mason. “They’ll lock us up,” he said. “Both of us.”

  “Better than we let anyone hurt Jess,” Mason said. “Give me your phone.”

  Rengo didn’t move. Between them, Lucy lifted her head as though to cast the deciding vote. She tilted back and studied Mason, licked at his face and then looked across the cab, solemn, at Rengo.

  “Shit,” Rengo said. “Even the dog’s on board, huh?”

  He steered with his left hand and dug in his pocket with his right, pulled out his cell phone and held it across the cab to Mason. “You know what they do to guys like me in prison, right?” he said.

  Mason took the phone. “I’ll watch your back. Best as I can.”

  “Yeah,” Rengo said. “Okay.”

  Mason flipped the phone open and studied the screen, looking for bars and not seeing any. No service, not here, way out between Deception and Neah Bay, a cellular dead zone that would extend all the way to the town limits.

  Shit.

  “Drive faster,” Mason told Rengo, hoping that Jess had it in her to survive, to fend off whichever asshole had thought to threaten her. Hoping she could buy them some time.

  She’s a combat-decorated Marine. She’s more than these bumpkins can handle, you bet.

  Beside Mason, Rengo pressed the gas pedal down farther and the little truck surged forward—and then, suddenly, Rengo yanked the wheel over, jerking Mason from his thoughts, and before he knew what was happening, the truck was dropping off the highway, down some uneven path at a speed beyond sane, the dog bouncing beside him and up into his lap, cowering and whimpering as the violent action of the truck brought fresh pain to her paw.

  “The hell are you doing?” Mason asked just as Rengo slammed the truck to a stop, hitting the brakes so hard the dog would have crashed into the glove box had Mason not been holding on to her tight. They’d followed a fishing trail down to where a river passed under the highway; on the other side of the bridge, Mason saw, the water widened into an abbreviated delta, and beyond that the ocean.

  Rengo gestured out the truck to the river, gestured inland, to where the water came spilling down the slope of the land, its banks wide and tall and ringed by boulders and scree. “Thought I saw something moving,” he said, leaning forward to peer out through the windshield. “Up there—you see it?”

  Mason squinted up the line of the river, following Rengo’s gaze. Wondering what the kid had seen, knowing it must have been nothing, and precious time was wasting—but something made him want to be sure, anyway.

  He stared and saw nothing, and then he did see it, small and dark in the growing shadows of the late afternoon. It was descending the bank of the river, following the water toward them, moving cautious, deliberate. He thought it might be a bear, but it didn’t move like he believed a bear would.

  Rengo craned his neck, a smile slowly spreading on his face. “Tell me that isn’t her,” he said. “Just try and tell me, Burke.”

  Mason didn’t answer. Didn’t want to jinx it, not even when he knew. Not even when he saw that it was human, a woman. That she was wearing Jess’s jacket.

  The woman moved slowly and didn’t seem to see them, focused only on her feet and where they landed on the rocks. Her coat was torn and her face was dirty, and she carried her left arm as though it had been hurt.

  Mason waited. He waited until the woman stepped off the last rock at the edge of their little clearing, came up from the water’s edge to where he stood by the truck, and stared at him, her eyes empty and her expression numb.

  “Burke,” Jess said, her voice hollowed by fatigue and something else besides. “How the hell’d you find me?”

  Mason laughed, sharp and outright, a great wave of relief crashing over him, immersing him, pounding him senseless.

  “Well, shit, Jess,” he replied. “I didn’t find you. Rengo did.”

  FORTY-NINE

  Jess climbed up from the riverbank toward Burke, drenched with sweat and blood and grime, exhausted and in pain. She didn’t know how Burke had come to be waiting at the bottom of the mountain for her, but she doubted she had the capacity to ask right now, or the energy to process how he answered.

  It didn’t matter anyway.

  Lucy was alive.

  Behind Burke was a truck, a little rusty Toyota, and there was Rengo standing beside the open driver’s-side door, and Jess was glad to see him and the truck, but they didn’t matter either.

  Lucy was alive.

  Climbing down from that driver’s seat, tentative but alive, was Lucy. The dog dropped to the ground, favoring her right forepaw, and Jess could see blood on the white patch of fur she’d always thought of as Lucy’s socks, but there wasn’t much blood, and the paw was still there, so Dax Pruitt hadn’t shot her, or if he had he’d just glanced her.

  Lucy’s tail wagged helicopter-strong. She ducked her head and came trotting over toward Jess, happy but cautious and still residually scared, and Jess knelt down as best she could and let the dog come to her, wash her face with kisses, and leap at her and turn and wriggle her body against her, that tail whipping back and forth, but Jess barely felt it.

  Her dog was alive.

  Jess was aware, suddenly, of the magnitude of her fatigue. Lucy was safe, and she, too, was safe, and there was nothing left, no rocks to climb or men to run from; she was allowed to feel things again, and she did. She felt sore and she felt tired. She sensed her vision start to cloud, narrow in on the dog and the rough ground of the clearing, and she swayed a little and would have toppled over had Burke not been watching and right there to hold her.

  “All right,” he said, gripping her, strong. “All right, Jess. Let’s find somewhere and get you fixed up.”

  She let him pull her upright and guide her to the truck, Lucy swirling around her legs, looking up at her, worried, as though she might run off again.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Luce,” she told the dog as Burke piled her into the passenger seat and helped the dog up into the footwell in front of her. “I’m right here.”

  * * *

  Hank Moss was a friend of both Jess’s and Mason’s; he’d treated Mason with kindness and courtesy when he’d arrived in Deception Cove, stood protective of Jess throughout the entire Harwood ordeal, and, in the end, played his own role in ridding the county of the corrupt deputy. Aside from Chris Rengo, Moss was about the only man Mason figured he fully trusted in all of Makah County. He drove Rengo’s truck to Moss’s motel.

  Rengo sat squished in between Mason and Jess, the dog at Jess’s feet, and it was a tight squeeze in the little truck, but nobody complained, and they made good time back into Deception. Moss’s motel was laid out in a single level of maybe ten units, all of them facing the highway, but Moss kept his own apartment in the back.

  Mason drove the truck around to the rear of the motel and parked outside Moss’s door. It was just about dark when he killed the engine, climbed out, and told Rengo to wait with Jess. A couple of minutes later, he was coming back with Hank in tow, the motelkeeper fumbling with his keys for the front door to the apartment, walking quickly, seeing the truck parked nearby but not breaking stride.

  Moss was about in his fifties, a member of the Makah tribe who’d fought with the 41st Infantry in Desert Storm. He was a good man, and Mason knew he would house them as long as they needed.

  They bustled Jess and Lucy out of the truck and into the apartment, a modest sitting area and a kitchen, a bedroom hidden somewhere down a hallway.

  “Got a first-aid kit in the bathroom,” Moss told Mason. “Looks like they both could
use a little touching up.”

  Mason and Moss installed Jess on the couch, sat her down nice and comfortable, and set to examining her wounds. She’d been hit in the side of the head, and there was dried blood where it had happened. Mason saw the blood and went rigid, felt his muscles tense and his hands clench into fists, wanted to hit something or someone and felt helpless that he couldn’t.

  “Fetridge?” he asked Jess.

  “Pruitt,” she replied, wincing with the effort. “But he was doing it on Fetridge’s say-so.”

  Mason still wasn’t sure he understood the politics of the situation, how Jess had come to be embroiled with both men in the first place, but Jess told him the story, how she’d heard Pruitt shoot the dog and how she’d thought Lucy was dead, how she’d run, her wrists tied, down the side of the mountain.

  There were scratches and scrapes on her face, and bruises. Holes in her clothes where branches had torn at her and sharp rocks had cut. She was mostly lucid now, though; she’d eaten, ravenously, a candy bar and some cold cuts liberated from Moss’s kitchen, as Mason dabbed at her wounds with hydrogen peroxide.

  “Gonna have to get these clothes off of you,” Mason told her once he’d done all he could to clean the cuts on her face. “Get the rest of you tidied up as well.”

  Behind him, Rengo coughed, awkward, and Mason turned to see the kid blushing.

  Meanwhile, Hank Moss was pushing himself to his feet. “I’d best get back out front,” he told them. “Keep an eye on things. You all can manage without me?”

  Mason nodded. “I think so.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Rengo said quickly. “Sure this dog could use a quick pee, or maybe you need some company?”

  Moss grinned. “I got HBO on the TV in the lobby,” he told Rengo. “And you look like you could use a cold beer.”

  * * *