Lone Jack Trail

by Owen Laukkanen

  Jess could hear Pruitt groaning somewhere, out of sight. So maybe she’d hit him, or maybe he’d just fallen, same as she had. She supposed it didn’t matter. None of this mattered. She was probably going to die on this mountain, and that didn’t matter either.

  The violence, the unending violence. The only thing she’d ever been good at. Afia. Ty. Scores of nameless Taliban. Kirby Harwood and both Whitmer brothers and their accomplice, Mr. Joy. Shelby Walker and her mother. Charlene Todd and Chris Jordan and Doug Bealing. Logger Fetridge and Dax Pruitt.

  Mason Burke.

  A noise from around the side of the rock face, the tumble of pebbles and baseball-sized rocks, and then Dax Pruitt appeared, sliding on his ass, kicking up a sturdy cloud of dust. Jess looked around for her shotgun, found it lying a few feet away, leaned over and grabbed for it, everything seeming to move in slow motion again, like in some kind of bad dream.

  “Relax,” Pruitt said. He coughed, wet. “I ain’t going to shoot you.”

  Jess gripped the shotgun anyway, lifted it and labored to swing it around in his direction. Pruitt lay on his back where he’d come to rest at the base of the cliff face, propped up slightly on his right arm to look across at her. He was bloody, his face and chest, and he was covered in dirt, and she could see how the buckshot she’d thrown at him had perforated his clothing in multiple places, how he was hurt bad enough to no longer pose a threat, and maybe even worse than that.

  His eyes were wide open, though, and a startling blue she didn’t think she remembered from seeing him before, his hair a tangle of mud and more dirt and matted blood besides, everything about him dirty and injured and worn.

  “I’m sorry,” Pruitt said, every word an effort. “What I did to your dog.”

  She didn’t know what he meant at first. Thought he was referring to some new evil, something he and Logger Fetridge had somehow done while up on this mountain, after she’d left Burke and Lucy in the motel room this morning. She felt her heart clench and her finger tense on the Remington’s trigger, and Pruitt watched her and didn’t say anything.

  Then Jess remembered the ambush at the beach, how he’d shot at Lucy.

  “She survived,” Jess told him. “You didn’t get her.”

  Pruitt blinked, and she could see his mind struggling to compute this.

  “It was a ricochet,” Jess said. “She caught a chip of rock in her paw, but she’s fine.”

  Pruitt nodded. Inhaled, deep, and closed his eyes, and she thought he might die then and there, but he didn’t. “I’m sorry anyway,” he said. “All of this.”

  She believed he was sorry, and she believed it wouldn’t do him, or anyone, a lick of good. She was sorry, too, for a lot of things, and none of her apologies would change the plain facts.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” she told him. “Just hush.”

  Pruitt looked at her like maybe he knew she was right, that his own reckoning was coming and soon. He laid his head back and breathed wetly some more, and she listened as each breath seemed to come tougher and tougher, and he didn’t say anything else.

  And then the mountain was silent again, until gradually it seemed to awaken, the sound of the water and the wind and the birds in the trees, the rainforest coming to life in the aftermath of the violence.

  Jess lay there and listened, and wondered how the forest would sound when she, too, was gone.

  SEVENTY-THREE

  Lucy was barking. Lucy never barked, and that’s how Mason knew they’d followed the right path.

  The dog had led him through the tunnel, narrow and claustrophobic, and out into a cave beneath a rocky outcrop, hidden amid the forest and likely invisible from above. And where Mason could barely see a trail, the dog had found it instantly, dashing away as Mason caught his breath, turning back to stare at him, whining, yawning, stamping her feet, nervous, her collar jangling as she tried to urge him to keep moving.

  He’d never known Lucy to track anything, but it was clear that she and Jess had some kind of connection that trumped anything he could comprehend, and if Lucy was this excited, Mason would trust her without question.

  They followed the trail down a ways across the slope of the mountain, Mason carrying the sheriff’s rifle and hoping he wouldn’t have to use it. He’d never really been trained in shooting—beyond a few hurried practice rounds with Jess before they’d taken on Kirby Harwood and his friends—and he’d come to see pretty quick how he was useless with anything other than a shotgun or pistol at close range. A rifle, a distance shot, he’d be a liability. But at the least, Mason hoped he could scare Logger Fetridge and Dax Pruitt a little bit.

  Through the trees, Mason could see the stubby forest thin out and the slope of the mountain steepen, could see how the trail led to the base of a bowl beneath high rocky palisades, where the mountain seemed to drain into the rainforest and drop toward tidewater. He had a suspicion this was the start of the Iron Creek Jess had descended a few days before, and he hoped she’d come up the same way and they’d run into each other, hoped that’s what had Lucy so excited.

  And then the dog began to bark, and Mason’s heart rate quickened. He knew they’d find Jess somewhere down that slide path. What he couldn’t know was what shape she’d be in.

  * * *

  Somewhere a dog was barking.

  Jess opened her eyes and struggled to sit up, blinking in the light that seemed to aim down from above, directly onto her position. From the angle of the light, she could tell it was midafternoon and getting later, the sun beginning its descent toward the west but bathing the slope of the mountain in gold, in the meantime.

  Beside the crumbling rock face, out toward the river path, Logger Fetridge lay dead, and Dax Pruitt beside him, still breathing, but faint. Jess’s body was sore, but she was alive. And a dog was barking, somewhere.

  She’d rarely heard Lucy bark. The dog was mostly quiet, save the odd whimper or whine, but she might join in the chorus if she heard other dogs letting loose. Her bark was distinct, deeper than Jess would have imagined to look at her, to know her; it was a sound of authority that belied her mostly diva personality.

  But the bark she was hearing now sounded suspiciously familiar. It came from somewhere above the cliff face, high up the mountain.

  Jess lay against the rock, sharp and uncomfortable at her back. She closed her eyes and tried to block out the sound. She’d begun to accept the fact that she might die up here, come to believe it might even make better sense to the world if she did, if she just disappeared and let the man and the dog and the county she loved just evolve to go on without her.

  She could die up here, and it would be easy; she would never have to worry about dragging Burke and Lucy into violence again. Wouldn’t have to worry that she would hurt Burke someday, that she would let him down and lose him the way she’d lost Ty and Afia.

  She wouldn’t have to worry. She wouldn’t have to work. She could just lie here and wait and just…cease to be.

  But Lucy was still barking, and that meant Burke was up there too. And as much as Jess wished that things could just be easy for a change, she knew if there was anything worth working for, it was Burke, and Lucy, and the family they’d become.

  Jess tried to push herself to her feet, and couldn’t. She hurt too bad, her chest where the bullet had found her, and her right leg, which was probably broken. Instead, she made herself crawl, over the dirt and the rock toward the base of the rock face and beyond, past where Logger Fetridge lay dead and Dax Pruitt lay dying.

  She crawled, though it hurt, and Lucy kept barking. She crawled and hoped that the dog and the man she loved would find her.

  * * *

  He rushed to her. He rushed down the mountain and followed the river chute and followed Lucy to where Jess lay collapsed on the ground. When he reached her he rolled her onto her back and tried to help her, though he didn’t know how. He saw she’d been shot and tried to pack the wound with dirt and a strip he’d torn from his T-shirt, and all the whil
e the dog milled about in a panic around them. Jess was breathing, but barely. She’d lost so much blood, and try as Mason might, he couldn’t get her to focus her eyes on his own.

  He wrapped her up as best he could, feeling helpless and useless and utterly to blame, like she was slipping away and he was letting her go. He tried to prop her up, and she whimpered when he moved her, so he left her with the dog, picked up his rifle and the dead man’s rifle and Jess’s shotgun, and he went and climbed to the top of the rocky prominence above them and fired the guns, one after the other until they were empty, into the sky, and when they were empty he went down to the men who were dead or dying and dug in their pockets for more shells. And he reloaded the rifles and fired again, over and over, until he heard the roar of the state police helicopter buzzing over the mountainside, until he was sure the men in the machine above had seen them, until he was sure they were coming to help.

  EPILOGUE

  It was never going to be easy.

  She’d imagined, as a little girl, that her life would follow a tidy path. She would marry her high school sweetheart, follow her dad’s example and join the Marines, fight and prove herself in service to her country, and come home to Deception Cove to start a family in the place she grew up.

  Jess had married Ty Winslow. She’d joined the Marines and fought well in Afghanistan. Then she’d come home broken, and widowed, with no sense of a future.

  She’d imagined that life would get easier, after she and Lucy and Mason Burke survived Kirby Harwood and escaped from Dixie Island. She’d dared to believe that though Ty wasn’t the man of her dreams, maybe Mason Burke was, and that after all she’d been through, they’d build a nice, tidy life together.

  But she’d been silly to believe it would happen that way.

  Jess was on crutches, waiting while Lucy nosed around a patch of grass. Burke pulled into the motel lot in the Blazer, now riding on a set of fresh tires.

  Lucy looked up from the weeds long enough to wag her tail, then continued her sniffing, secure enough in the relative peace of recent days to treat Burke’s arrival as a happy occasion but not an international incident.

  There had been no shooting for two weeks, and Lucy, at least, seemed to be adapting just fine.

  Burke circled around the front of the Blazer and gave Jess a quick hug around the crutches, taking care not to touch her chest where the wound from Logger Fetridge’s rifle was still sore but healing. Burke kissed her on the cheek and then turned and opened the passenger door for her, held her crutches as she climbed into the truck. Then he snapped his fingers and called to Lucy, and the dog, reluctantly, gave up on the weeds and followed him around to the driver’s side and jumped into the back seat.

  Burke readjusted his seat and climbed behind the wheel, closed his door and turned the key and shifted the truck into gear. It was another beautiful day, warm and sunny, and he had the window rolled down and the radio on, and as they pulled out of the lot, Jess could see how any bystander might see them and feel envious, might imagine that the life they’d built together must be simple and tidy and easy.

  But of course it wasn’t easy. Burke was still living on Joe Clifford’s boat while he and Jess—and the county as a whole—tried to figure out what came next. Tyner Gillies had survived the load of buckshot that Dougie Bealing had put into him, and Dax Pruitt had survived too, despite what Jess had done to him on the mountain. Mitch Derry would keep his foot after all, and the doctors expected both he and Paul Monk would make full recoveries, in time. But there were statements to be made and investigations to complete, endless reams of paperwork, and hours of interviews. Men and women were dead, outlaws and civilians and the law alike.

  Burke had been well and truly exonerated, at least. Jana Marsh sat in prison for Boyd, and Dax Pruitt would join her when he’d healed up some, and sooner or later they both would stand trial. Burke seemed to have made his peace with this, all of it; he held no grudge against Sheriff Hart, or seemingly anyone else in this town. As far as Jess could tell, it was Charlene Todd’s murder that had hit him hardest, though they hadn’t talked of it much. They hadn’t talked of anything.

  Burke had saved her life on the mountain, and she’d saved his life on Dixie Island. Maybe they were even now and the accounting was clean. Maybe that was enough.

  Burke drove east on the highway for a couple of miles, and then he slowed and signaled and turned north down a road that Jess knew well. He turned again at a sign marking a dead end beyond, and followed that road to about a quarter mile from its end, where on the left-hand side and tucked into the trees was the house Joe Clifford was building for her with Burke’s assistance, framed up and walled in now, and waiting for siding.

  Burke parked the truck and pulled his seat forward for Lucy to jump out; he was around and holding out Jess’s crutches for her by the time she had the door open. Jess took the crutches and stepped down gingerly to the grass below, wincing slightly from the pain in her bullet wound but following Burke up the path to the house nonetheless.

  The doctors had wanted her in a wheelchair, but to hell with that.

  Burke paused for her at the front stairs, just plywood now and waiting on concrete. This house was much bigger than the one it’d replaced; Joe Clifford had found a way to add a second floor to the equation, a second bedroom and a half bath.

  “A place to raise a family,” he’d said, winking at Burke, and Jess could still remember how she’d blushed.

  There was a door on the house, and a padlock, and Burke unlocked the padlock and swung the door open so that Jess could limp inside. Lucy slipped in ahead of her, tail wagging, looking for Joe and Rengo. Inside, the house smelled of sawdust and men at work, but the air was still and silent.

  “Over here’s where the kitchen’s going to be,” Burke told her, leading her toward the back of the house, walls studded in but not yet drywalled, no cabinets or fixtures but a window overlooking the backyard. “Joe says he can get you a deal on some good appliances, whatever you need. Says they give a pretty decent military discount in Port Angeles.”

  Jess could feel Burke watching her, waiting for a response, so she forced a smile and met his eyes. “It’s nice, Burke,” she said. “It’s really nice.”

  Burke smiled back at her. He squinted a little when he did, and there were crow’s-feet starting to show around his eyes, and she caught herself wondering what he would look like when he was older, wondering if that was something she would ever get to know.

  He walked over to stand beside her, and they stared in together at the empty space that would one day be her kitchen. Then he reached down and found her hand with his, twined his fingers between hers and nudged her back toward the front of the house.

  “Come on,” he said. “There’s something I want to show you.”

  They took the stairs slowly, Jess leaning on the railing and Burke right beside her, her crutches under his one arm and the other arm held out to catch her.

  “Upstairs, see, dead ahead, that’s the bathroom,” he told her as they climbed. “Joe has the plumbing roughed in, but you still need to figure out how you want it decorated.”

  She could see the little room at the top of the stairs, facing the rear of the house and the backyard. A doorway on either side.

  “Now, to the left, here,” Burke said, guiding her at the top of the stairs and holding out her crutches, “we’re thinking this will be the second bedroom. You can use it as an office, or if you have guests come to visit. Heck, give Lucy her own bedroom. But this—”

  He led her into the opposite bedroom, and it wasn’t finished or drywalled yet either, but Jess could see the makings of a walk-in closet, big bright windows overlooking the road out front. “This,” Burke said, “is your master bedroom.”

  He helped her walk into the middle of the room and stood back as she surveyed it, and she could see how it might be nice when it was finished, but it didn’t really look like much now.

  “Joe says another couple of months,” Bu
rke told her. “Then you can move in.”

  He stepped closer, took her shoulders in his hands. “I’m going to build this house for you, Jess,” he said. “Whether it’s me you choose to build your life with or somebody else. I’ll keep working on this until I’m sure it’s a good home, until I’m sure you’re going to be okay.”

  She closed her eyes. “I don’t want somebody else.”

  “Well, good,” he replied. “Me either. But as far as I can see, we’ve got a couple of months yet to try and figure it out.”

  She opened her eyes and stared up into his, and she could see in his gaze the possibilities he imagined, the way the house would look finished and the two of them in it, and Lucy there too. And she could see, too, an acknowledgment of the work that lay ahead, the kitchen and the bathrooms and the walls, the painting and the furnishing and the landscaping. And the work they would have to do too, the both of them, to build out from the foundation they’d poured together on Dixie Island and the frame of something bigger that they’d pieced together since. She could see how Burke knew it would take time and effort, real effort, to create something together they both would be proud of, something that would last. And she could see in his eyes how he was willing to work for it, how there was nothing else in the world he wanted more.

  Jess knew, suddenly and plainly, that she wanted it too.

  She leaned up and kissed him and closed her eyes tight, and as he held her and their lips met she could feel the house come alive around her, feel the breeze through the window rustle the curtains they’d pick out, smell Memorial Day hot dogs grilling in the backyard. She could see the years age Burke’s face and how he’d still remain handsome, and how the look in his eyes would never change when he saw her, no matter how the time passed around them.