Stone Cold (30 page)

“So what's the latest problem?” Nate asked.

Templeton shot out his sleeve and looked at his wristwatch. “We have to get back inside—we're keeping everyone waiting. And if we don't eat, they'll drink even more and I'll have to blast them out of here with TNT.”

Templeton opened the door and held it so Nate could join him. The din of conversations coming from inside were even more out of control than before. “I know this isn't your idea of fun.”

“It isn't.”

“Stick it out for me, please. We need to listen to Mr. Biolchini's proposal after the guests clear out and make a decision—without Whip—whether we'll take the assignment based on how much he'll compensate us. I'll do that part of the negotiation—so you'll be free to go.”

His plea was almost childlike, and Nate was taken by it.

As Nate passed through, Templeton threw an arm around his shoulder to guide him back toward the dining room.

“Thank you, Nate.”

“So about the local problem?”

Templeton sighed again. “Nothing momentous. Those idiots Gene Smith and Bill Critchfield got tangled up with a game warden who is new to the area. It's their fault—they think they're above
having to pay attention to the game laws around here and they invite this kind of trouble by being stupid. They are a couple of local thugs I decided to bring inside the operation so they'd work for me instead of against me, but it hasn't really worked out. It was a miscalculation. Thugs are thugs, just like zebras can never be horses.”

“A game warden?” Nate asked, his throat dry.

“Yes. I met him the other day and he didn't seem particularly sharp. Certainly not clever enough to be the kind of danger to me those fools seem to think he is. But the situation escalated, and now they desperately needed to locate him. Unlike what
we
do, it's a clusterfuck out there, with no one knowing who is where or what's going on. This game warden seems to have stymied them. They came and asked for my help finding this man and eliminating the problem. They're pretty sure they know where he is: some remote cabin twenty miles from here.”

Nate felt something cold inside that seemed to spread to his extremities and harden them, like a protective suit of armor.

“So I sent Whip to be there and make sure they didn't screw things up again. One of our trusted locals is with this game warden, but so is his daughter. I don't want the local or his daughter harmed or compromised. Whip said he'd see to it, and he seemed eager for the job, although he hates working with others. Apparently, Whip had an encounter with this game warden that didn't set well with him at all, so he jumped at the opportunity to settle the score. I hate to mix our business with local affairs, but this time I didn't see where I had a choice in the matter.”

Nate didn't respond. The light in the room seemed to have gotten much brighter than it was when he'd left it. The conversations, if possible, seemed even louder.

“Missy overheard some of it and agreed with my decision,” Templeton said. “‘Best to nip this in the bud,' she said.”

Nate sat down to his steak and ignored the imploring look Liv gave him from across the table.

He felt himself being transformed from within. At one point, he looked up to find Liv staring at him. She looked terrified.

Yarak.

•   •   •

I
T TOOK A LONG HOUR
for the locals to finish their steaks and desserts and clear out. Liv had to practically hoist several men and women from their chairs and point them toward the door, where ranch staff held out their coats to reclaim.

Missy had left as well, saying she was still tired from jet lag and that she'd meet Templeton in their room soon. To Nate, she said, “It was wonderful to see you again.”

Nate was grateful when he saw Liv walk away with Missy toward the stairs.

The sheriff, judge, and chief of police remained at the table to Nate's right. Biolchini was directly across the table, lighting a Cuban cigar.

And Templeton sat at the head, glaring at Mead, obviously wishing for the sheriff to go and take the other two with him. Mead didn't get the message, it seemed. Nate guessed that Templeton had to deal with the three law enforcement officials with kid gloves and couldn't simply pry them out of their chairs as Liv had with the other locals.

Judge Bartholomew got the message, though, and said to Mead, “R.C., I think it's time to call it an evening.”

“After I finish my drink,” Mead said. He slurred his words.

Templeton smoldered for a moment, then said to Nate, “I'll go get my notebook for our meeting with Mr. Biolchini.” He said it in a way that it was clear he expected the three locals to be gone when he returned.

•   •   •

A
MOMENT
LATER,
Mead turned to Nate and said, “Hey—quit prodding me with your finger.”

Nate said, “It's not my finger.”

Mead's eyes got wide when he looked down and saw the muzzle of the .500 pressed into his ribs. Nate had retrieved it earlier from the brush outside the lodge. Mead's sudden silence caught the attention of the judge and Miller, who turned to see what was going on.

Nate said, “If I pull this trigger, the slug will go through all three of you. I've dropped two men with one shot before, so this would be a personal best.”

Biolchini couldn't see the handgun under the table on the other side. He said, “What is happening here?”

Nate ignored him. To the three men sitting side by side next to him, he said, “Ease your weapons out and put them on the table in front of you. Then slowly stand up and back against the wall.”

“Please,” Mead whispered to Bartholomew and the police chief. “He's not kidding.”

“Slowly,” Nate said.

The semiautomatic service weapons of the sheriff and chief clunked on the white tablecloth, and their hands withdrew from them quickly. Nate was mildly surprised to see the judge surrender a snub-nosed .38 as well.

“Now stand and back up.”

“What the
fuck
!” Biolchini said loudly. “Does everybody here pack heat?”

Nate shushed him without looking over. He kept his weapon leveled at the three men, who were doing what they'd been told. It was oddly silent in the room.

“You too,” Nate said to Biolchini. “Up against the wall with them.”

“But . . .”

“I said,” Nate whispered, “go over there with them.”

When the four of them stood shoulder to shoulder, Nate got up and marched them into the great room.

Judge Bartholomew said, “Mr. Templeton would not approve.”

“No talking,” Nate said. He ordered Mead and Chief Miller to sit on the bottom two steps of the staircase, and Biolchini and the judge to stand on the other side of the thick iron railing.

“Take out your cuffs and give me your keys,” Nate said to the two law enforcement officers.

After collecting the keys, Nate told the men on the stairs to snap one of the handcuffs on their outside wrists and pass their arms through the railing. Biolchini rolled his eyes, as if he weren't going to participate in the game, but Nate cocked the hammer back on his revolver and raised it to fire.

Biolchini and the judge scrambled to lock the open cuffs on their own wrists.

As they did, Templeton entered the room holding a leather notebook. He assessed the situation and said to Nate, “You've completely ruined the evening.”

Nate said, “Clear out your shit and be gone by the time I get back here. I'm giving you this one chance only.”

The reaction on Templeton's face was one of regret.

“Yeah,” Nate said. “Me too.”

He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and wheeled toward the men on the staircase. Miller was clumsily hiking up his pants leg to reach for a small semiautomatic in an ankle holster.

Nate blew his leg off.

Miller screamed and tried to stanch the blood from the stump, and Biolchini simply fainted to the floor.

•   •   •

A
S HE
WALKED
through the great room toward the door with his weapon in his hand, Nate kicked Miller's detached shin and throw-down across the floor. From the level above, he heard Liv scream and Missy call out, “Wolfie, is everything all right down there?
Wolfie!
”

Liv appeared at the top of the stairs. She said, “Nate, what happened?”

He stopped and ejected the empty casing and replaced it with live .500 caliber cartridges. “I ended the dinner party.”

Her hand flew to her mouth. “Is Mr. T. . . . ?”

“He's all right,” Nate said, glancing toward the dining room. Templeton still stood holding his notebook in stunned disbelief. He shook his head slowly to an internal monologue.

Nate said, “He'll be leaving this place soon because everything has just blown up. It's over. You better pack up as well.”

Missy joined her, wearing a purple silk bathrobe. Her face was set in cold rage.

“You son of a bitch,” she seethed. “I should have known this would happen. You're no better than Joe.”

Nate said, “Actually, he's better than me.”

Liv said to Nate, “But what about
us
?”

“There is no us. Every time there's an us, I lose somebody who didn't need to die. I'm toxic, and you deserve better.”

Liv's eyes flashed. “So that's the decision you've made?”

“I'm afraid so.”

“What if I don't agree with it?”

Nate said, “I wish you'd trust me on this. All of this is over, including you and me.”

He forced himself to turn his back on her as he walked to the door.

Behind him, in the saddest voice imaginable, he heard Templeton say, “Somebody get a hacksaw.”

Bearlodge Mountain Cabin

“Hit me again,” Latta said to Joe after spitting blood out of his mouth into the snow, “and this time make it count.”

“You're kidding me, right?” Joe said, feeling nauseated. He'd already used the butt of his shotgun to pop Latta solidly in the nose. The dull crack of bone sickened him. The blow had staggered Latta, but the game warden straightened up and stepped forward and asked for more.

“No,” Latta said. “Lay me out. The only chance Em and I have with them is if they're convinced you jumped me and got away. So it has to look like you
really
jumped me. And damn it, Joe, do it before Emily hears us and looks outside.”

Joe winced and drew the shotgun back, the butt aimed at Latta's bloody face. He hesitated.

“Do it! Pretend I'm somebody else. Somebody you hate.”

Joe searched his memory for anyone who could call up that kind of violent urge. His mother-in-law, Missy, flashed through his mind, but he knew he could never bash an older woman—even her—with a shotgun.

Nevertheless . . .

•   •   •

I
T HAD
BEEN
Latta's idea they fake an assault so Joe could escape alone. Better that, he thought, than the three of them fleeing down the mountain on the only access road and running into Templeton's men on their way up. Latta told Joe that Sheriff Mead's office was probably already on the radio getting a team together to raid the cabin. Joe was astonished to hear that law enforcement in Medicine Wheel County operated in the open when it came to dealing with threats to Templeton and that Latta was just a cog in a much larger machine. Knowing this, Joe agreed to the strategy although it meant he had to trust Latta—as well as get off the mountain on his own.

Joe insisted on an addition to the plan: that Latta tell Templeton's men that Joe was headed for the Black Forest Inn to gather his belongings and regroup. Latta agreed with the strategy. Joe didn't tell Latta the reason for the wrinkle.

•   •   •

“
W
HAT ABOUT
E
MILY?”
Joe had asked earlier in the evening. They were at the dinner table with the open bottle of Evan Williams between them. Daisy was curled up on a rug in front of the fireplace
and Emily was sleeping in the bedroom. “Can she lie well enough to pull it off? She seems like a bad liar to me.”

Latta assured Joe that Emily
was
a bad liar.

“So are my girls,” Joe said. “Two of 'em, anyway.”

“She can do it if I explain to her what's going on. If she knows that if she gives up the game, they might kill me and hurt her. I'll be honest with her.”

Joe was skeptical.

Latta said, “She's gonna find out about what her father did one way or another. I'd rather it be from me, so she at least knows why I did it. She needs to know I made mistakes but now I'm making it right.”

Joe reluctantly agreed because he couldn't see a better option. He didn't want to try and make a stand at the cabin. Templeton's men could fill it full of holes or burn them out. And it would put Emily in harm's way. Also, if the three of them tried to get down the mountain and encountered the thugs, there could be a bloodbath. He jotted down the cell phone number for Chuck Coon on a napkin and slid it over to Latta.

“Call him and let him know what's going on. Tell him where I'll be, because I doubt I'll have any cell service on the way down.”

Latta agreed.

Latta had located an ancient snow machine—a 1989 Polaris Indy Sport 340cc—in a shed next to the cabin. It was in bad shape, but they were able to get it started by spraying fuel directly into the carburetor. It was now fueled up and ready to go. Joe found a moth-eaten snowmobile suit and a pair of bulky boots that fit him hanging inside the shed.

“Let's go outside,” Latta said with resignation, after taking a long pull of the bottle.

•   •   •

J
OE SAID,
“I can't do it. You're already bleeding like a stuck pig. You're hurt bad enough to convince them, I think.”

Latta rolled his eyes and said with contempt, “Good. Don't do it, Joe. Get me killed and Emily, too.”

Joe grunted and hit Latta hard in the chin with the butt of the shotgun. Latta went down to his knees holding his face in his hands. Streams of blood pulsed between his fingers and darkened the snow in front of him. He said something garbled that Joe translated as, “You busted my jaw.”

“Sorry, Jim,” Joe said through clenched teeth.

He heard Latta clearly when the man wailed, “Now
go
!”

•   •   •

T
HE OLD MACHINE
started again with a cloud of blue smoke and sounded like an angry electric shaver. Joe roared out of the shed and didn't look back. He found out a mile away from the cabin that the gauges and electronics were shot and the single headlamp flickered on and off. It was a clunky, wedge-shaped machine, and the brakes were bad and the windscreen was cracked down the middle. Mice had eaten away most of the seat down to bare metal.

It ran, though, and he picked his way through spruce trees parallel to the road. He didn't want the distinctive snowmobile tracks to be seen easily by occupants of a vehicle coming up the mountain. Joe and Latta had decided that the assault scenario would also include
Joe stealing the snow machine. Eventually, Templeton's thugs would be in pursuit. If they didn't see him on their way up, Joe could buy an hour or two of time.

That was the plan, anyway.

The suit was warm, but the cold air stung his face. His shotgun was secured to the front of the machine by bungee cords and the ATV saddlebags were strapped to the back. Daisy sprawled on her belly across what once had been the seat. He could see her hind end under his left arm and her head under his right. She looked out at the passing trees with a kind of stoic dumbness unique to Labradors, and he was grateful he owned a dog not bright enough to be frightened. Fine powdered snow covered her snout.

The snow was deep and soft in the trees, and he was scared to stop moving, in fear the machine would sink and he'd be stuck. Like a shark, he kept moving—even when he couldn't see a clear path ahead and when the headlight flickered off. Eventually, he found the switch to the light and flipped it off—better to navigate by the light of the stars and moon than by the unreliable lamp.

If he were to bet on it, Joe thought, he'd wager the Polaris wouldn't last the trip down the mountain and back to his pickup in the orchard. The engine seemed to be running especially hot, he thought, and who knew the last time it had been overhauled? Snowmobiles of that vintage, Joe knew, used to be equipped with extra fan belts, spark plugs, and tools for fixing the engine in the field when it stopped performing. Present-day over-the-snow machines were much more reliable. But the old Polaris was all he had, and it didn't have any extra parts in the compartment beneath the seat where they should have been.

Joe prepared to simply leave it when it stopped and hike the rest of the way. Every mile it ran, though, was a mile he wouldn't have to walk in deep snow.

He found himself praying and thinking of his daughters and Marybeth.

Joe would never forgive himself, he thought, if he got himself killed in such an inhospitable place.

•   •   •

H
E'D BEEN
GONE NEARLY AN HOUR
when he noticed a splash of gold in the trees to his right where the road wound through the forest. Because he'd been running dark, his eyesight was especially tuned to any glimpse of artificial light, and he immediately reached down and killed the engine. He didn't dare let himself be seen or heard from the road.

Once he stopped, the snow machine listed to the left and sank into the snow. He was grateful it wasn't as deep as it had been at higher elevation, and hoped that if he could get the engine started again—a big if—he'd be able to continue.

Joe swung his leg over the seat and the dog and crouched behind the machine in the dark.

Daisy stared at him, confused.

“You too,” he whispered, and she clambered down next to him and sat on her haunches. The engine ticked manically in the cold. Joe rubbed the snow from her eyes.

There was another splash of yellow on the trunks of the trees near the road, then the sound of a pickup engine. Joe hugged Daisy to him so she wouldn't bound toward the road to greet new friends. He hoped there wouldn't be a turn in the road that would hit him with
the headlights and whoever was at the wheel didn't have a spotlight at the ready.

His muscles ached from the vibration of the machine, and his ears hummed from the high-pitched drone of the engine. The legs of his snowmobile suit were spattered with hot oil from somewhere beneath the faded plastic cowl.

Bill Critchfield's pickup crawled up the road in four-wheel drive and was soon in plain sight through the trees. Joe could make out two people inside—Smith, too—as well as the barrels of two long rifles sticking up between them. They were looking ahead and not to the side, and they continued on. Joe waited until the taillights faded to pink and eventually blinked out. When he stood up, he could barely hear the pickup in the distance.

“Whew,” he said aloud.

But he was frightened for Latta and Emily when the pickup arrived at the cabin. Would Critchfield and Smith believe Latta's story? Had Latta followed through making the call to Agent Coon? Thank God, he thought, the landline worked despite the fact that the rest of the power was out.

Joe mounted the machine and reached down for the key when he heard another low rumble from the road and looked over.

The light was amber this time, and low to the ground. It belonged to a Range Rover that crawled up the mountain minutes behind Critchfield's pickup. The driver kept the headlights out and used only the running lights—probably so he wouldn't be detected by the men up ahead.

Joe squinted and the profile behind the wheel was unmistakable as belonging to Whip, Robert Whipple, the snooty man with the bamboo fly rod he'd rousted on Sand Creek. Unlike Critchfield and
Smith, though, Whip proceeded up the two-track as a hunter would. He drove slowly with his windows open so he could listen. It took a full minute for Whip to pass by. Joe's heart was beating so hard he wouldn't have been surprised if Whip suddenly stopped and turned in his direction. But he didn't.

So now, he thought, there were
three
of them after him. Two mouth-breathing thugs and another one much more sinister.

He waited ten minutes—he didn't want Whip to hear the snowmobile—before holding his breath and turning the key.

The engine caught.

“Let's go, Daisy,” he said against the whine of the snow machine.

•   •   •

T
HE MACHINE
LURCHED TO A STOP
three miles from the orchard, and Joe climbed off and shed his oil-soaked suit. There was a burnt smell in the air from beneath the cowl of the machine and he didn't even bother to look at what had caused it.

As he trudged in the snow with Daisy at his heels, he shot out his arm and checked his watch. He should make it to his pickup an hour or so before dawn, he guessed. He
had
to.

Once the sun was up, he could no longer elude the men who were after him. His tracks—first the tread from the machine on the snow and then his boot tracks—would expose his whereabouts the same way the elk and deer would be revealed to the hunters out there.

He drew out his cell phone. There was a faint signal and two text messages appeared that had been sent during the night.

One was from Chuck Coon and it simply read:
It's on. Is there room to land choppers at BFI?

Latta had come through. Joe paused and texted back:
Hurry. Yes.

The second was from Sheridan. It said: S
aw EY in the elevator. He's creeping me out and I need your advice.

When he called, her phone was off—of course—and he left a message for her to call him back immediately.

Then he picked up his pace.

•   •   •

H
E'D NEVER
BEEN SO HAPPY
to see his battered green Game and Fish pickup where he'd left it in the orchard.