Bad Moon On The Rise (32 page)

He threw the binoculars at my head,
but I caught them neatly and fiddled with the dials until I had a
crystal clear view of the compound below. “Okay,” I conceded. “You
have ninety minutes. But remember— I’m watching.”

“
Oh, yeah?” He spit on the
ground. “Watch this.”

And, with that, he was gone. He melted
into the trees and as hard as I tried, I did not spot him again. I
was pretty sure he’d reached the compound because while the minutes
passed as slow as molasses, they did pass. First a half hour went
by as I brooded over the injustice of being sidelined. Then another
half hour passed as I considered the rankling possibility that I
had grown too old, too fat and too far removed from my country days
to be of use to anyone unless I held a gun in my hand. I was no
better than those yuppie bear hunters. I had become a poser,
too.

I picked at that for a while,
contemplating the possibility that I had reached my expiration
date, then decided that at least I still had my intelligence. And
there was a lot to be said for that. I had one of those sneaky
minds that can think of a thousand different possibilities.
Especially when it comes to how and why people behave badly. And I
wasn’t often wrong. While the wheels in my head never seemed to
stop turning, I’d never been called stupid or sought refuge in
stupidity. Age could not take that from me.

I mulled that over for a little while,
wondering if we were actually being intelligent about our
situation. I mean, here we were, two of us against god knows how
many of them, one rifle against a Russian country’s worth of
weapons, and one skilled tracker, Ramsey, taking on what could be
dozens of homegrown boys who’d lived on this mountain their whole
lives.

Plus, I was a wanted escapee and half
the men below were no doubt either prison guards or law
enforcement.

There was only one logical conclusion:
we were being idiots. Ramsey wanted to snatch Trey and run, because
that’s what he had done his whole life: bucked authority,
circumvented the law and gotten away with it. But the chances of
our meeting with success and not being caught, or being apprehended
later without a whole hell of a lot of trouble were chances that I
pegged at slim to none.

“
What is the most
important thing here?” I asked myself. That Ramsey and I go in as
Rambo and Rambette, or that the boy be returned to his grandmother
before she died? I couldn’t stay on the lam forever, and Bobby D.
needed bailing out of jail, and the more I kept avoiding getting
the situation straightened out, all the worse it would
be.

The truth was, we needed help. So
maybe, just maybe, the intelligent thing to do here was to
acknowledge that Ramsey was right: I was too stubborn. I was also
defensive and annoying in my need to do it all myself. I wouldn’t
trust a man as far as I could throw him, and I had my first husband
to thank for that. But here I sat, in stolen clothes, with no food
or weapons, trapped on the side of a mountain, laboring under the
delusion that I could take on the entire world and whip it with one
hand tied behind my back.

The bottomline was simple: I either
trusted Shep or I didn’t. I hadn’t tried to get through to him
since my prison break and he had troubles of his own. But there was
no one else who would begin to know where this compound was, who
would understand the importance of why Trey needed to be reunited
with his grandmother before it was too late and who would believe
me when I told them Tonya Blackburn’s killers lived in the
compound.

Still I hesitated. I waited the fully
ninety minutes I’d promised Ramsey and then I waited thirty more,
counting off each second, it seemed, as I waited for Ramsey to
return so I could run the idea of calling Shep past him and not
take the whole decision on myself.

But Ramsey never returned.

After two and a half hours of watching
the sun drop lower and lower into the sky, I finally did what I
should have done from the start. I pulled out Bobby’s cell phone
and dialed 911, figuring it had to connect me to the sheriff’s
office. There was no other game on the mountain.

When a pleasant female voice answered,
I asked for Shep and was quickly told that he was on a leave of
absence.

“
I know all about that,” I
interrupted. “And I also know he’s checking his voice mail. So,
please, just put me through and then page him and tell him he has
an urgent message that he needs to listen to before all hell breaks
loose on his mountain.”

“
Who is this?” the woman
asked sharply. “Is this is a prank?”

“
I wish. But it would take
too long to explain. Please, just put me through, then find
him.”

She put me through and once I heard
the beep of Shep’s voice mail, it all poured out: the compound in
the hills and where I thought it was, finding Trey, the boy’s story
about the four men who came to visit his mother and how they took
him away and he never saw her again. I voiced my suspicion that a
few of Shep’s own deputies might be involved. And I told him we
were going in to take Trey, no matter what, but we were outgunned
and outmanned, so he could choose to help us or not. It all poured
out of me like one of the waterfalls tumbling over the rocks at the
top of Silver Mountain, ending with my ace-in-the-hole, a most
unromantic, and perhaps vaguely threatening, “You owe
me.”

If there was even a chance Shep would
ever hear my message, I could not say. I could not say if he’d
believe me once he did. Or if someone else would hear the message
and simply come out to arrest me and take me back to prison and
call it a day. But I can say that I hung up the phone believing I’d
made the intelligent choice, under the circumstances.

And then I went in search of
Ramsey.

I crept down the mountain, binoculars
in hand, stopping every few yards to confirm that the way ahead was
clear. Ramsey had chosen our hiding spot well. It didn’t take me
long to reach the compound. It was a no-nonsense, no-frills
collection of one-story clapboard buildings, each built for a
specific purpose. The men slept in small bunkhouses, maybe eight to
ten beds to a cabin. There were eight of those, all clustered
around larger common buildings that I figured to be a dining hall
and some sort of recreation center. I didn’t see Ramsey and I
didn’t see anyone through the windows of the cabins. But it was
dinnertime and I figured they were all in the dining hall eating. I
did see isolated men regularly patrolling the edge of the compound
and twice had to dash back into the woods and wait, heart pounding,
until they strolled past.

These men did not waste electricity.
Most of the buildings were empty and they had left no lights
burning. But the dining hall was well lit and I also spotted lights
on in a series of three buildings built along the far edge of the
compound. They were too big to be storage sheds, but not big enough
to be bunk houses. I waited until the closest guard passed me, then
followed him around the perimeter, darting from tree to tree,
figuring if I had him in my sight, chances were good he had no idea
about me. The guard I was following looked like all the others,
trim and generically white, but this one also had a rifle slung
over one shoulder. He slowed when he drew near the clearing that
linked the three outer buildings and called out into the shadows on
the edge.

“
He talking yet?” he asked
someone in the darkness.

“
Nope. Probably just some
peckerwood wandered onto the property hunting. Grubb says he’ll let
him go if he can prove it. But he’s not to be allowed to see
anything on the way out. Says his truck is back on the highway. The
guy seems kind of slow, if you know what I mean.”

“
Yup, I know what you
mean. Human sheep.” The perimeter guard kept moving, but I stayed
put in the woods: they had Ramsey in one of those buildings. I was
shocked he had been caught—I’d always thought of him as invincible,
and I prayed his “aw shucks, I’m just a dumb ass hunter” act would
hold up. I doubted these men took kindly to strangers.

It had grown dark so I took a big
chance. I had to know that Ramsey was okay and, if he wasn’t okay,
I was prepared to go to his aid. He had come to mine.

Once the guard ambled on, I crept up
to the back of the buildings and risked peering into the windows.
The first was someone’s home, and it looked like a pretty nice one.
One room, sure, but one big room with a nice bed in one corner,
topped with a beautiful wedding ring quilt. The room also had a
huge stone fireplace, a kitchenette along one wall, a door leading
to a bathroom, and a big table right in the center of the room with
eight chairs neatly arrayed around it. Everything was spotlessly
clean. It was headquarters for the head honcho, I guessed; the Big
Kabuna, whoever he might be, lived here.

The second building was scarier: it
was filled with tables littered with weapons in various stages of
disassembly or repair, while organized sections of various rifles,
shotguns and even automatic weapons leaned against the surrounding
walls in a truly awesome display of Second Amendment rights. There
were plenty of cabinets, too, and I figured they held handguns. But
geeze, if they had this many weapons I fully expected the third
building to be filled floor to ceiling with bullets.

It was not. And I didn’t want to even
think about what the purpose of that third building was, because
that was where they were keeping Ramsey. He was sitting in a
straight back chair and his arms had been bound behind his back.
His feet were lashed to the legs of the chair and two men stood on
either side of him, pointing rifles at him in the illuminated glare
of a single overhead bulb dangled harshly just above his head. It
was the perfect interrogation room—or, more likely, interrogation
survival training room—and Ramsey was their prisoner. But who was
doing the interrogating? The guards never spoke and Ramsey’s back
was to me, so I could not see his face. Then I noticed a Japanese
room divider arranged in front of Ramsey, blocking one corner of
the room. Thin plumes of smoke snaked up in the air from behind it.
There was someone else in the room with Ramsey, someone who was
smoking a cigarette behind the room divider, someone who clearly
did not want Ramsey to see his face.

None of it was reassuring.

I stood there, assessing the layout,
counting the guards and weapons in the room, trying in vain to
think of a way to rescue Ramsey. I could start a fire, maybe, in
one of the other buildings, and hope he escaped in the confusion.
If he saw his chance, I knew he’d take it. Or maybe I could break
into the second building and steal some guns and then I
could…  my plans evaporated as a hand clamped down on my
shoulder, digging into my flesh. A mocking voice whispered in my
ear: “Well, now, sweetheart, are you a lost hunter, too? Because it
looks like you’ve been found.”

I brought my right leg up hard behind
me, hoping to hit his groin with the back of my foot, but he was
expecting it and stepped to one side. I twisted from his grip,
elbowing him hard in the gut while stomping on his right foot. But
his gut was harder than his grip, he was wearing steel-reinforced
boots and he knew more moves than I had ever imagined, even in my
wildest Crouching Tiger daydreams. Within seconds I was face down
on the dirt, one of his knees pinning me to the ground. His mocking
tone had given way to fury.

“
You just pissed me off,”
he hissed. “And I haven’t been pissed off by a woman since I left
my whore of an ex-wife.” He grabbed my shirt and dragged me
upright, staring me in the face. “You look a little worse for the
wear and I don’t know what you’re up to, but...” he leaned closer
and whispered in my ear, “You better hope Grubb doesn’t assign me
to escort you out of here.”

I knew I was truly up a creek without
a paddle now. The guy had some serious issues with
women.

He brought me to the same cabin where
Ramsey was being held, and I don’t know who felt more stupid:
Ramsey or me. He averted his eyes, pretending not to know me, but I
knew that ruse would not last long. What were the chances two
unrelated people had been skulking around the edges of the compound
on the very same night?

The cabin was warm and, as angry and
useless as I felt, I was grateful for that comfort. The guard who
had thrown me to the ground pulled a chair up to within a few yards
of Ramsey’s and shoved me into it. He didn’t bother to tie me down.
I guess they figured, with two riflemen standing by, I wasn’t much
of a threat.

They were right.

No one said a word so I just sat
there, looking like the captured dumb ass I was. I dared not look
at Ramsey, but I could feel his anger just the same. He was hoppin’
mad at having been caught. I was mad he’d been caught, too. But at
least he hadn’t talked, that much I knew, or else Trey Blackburn
would be in the room with us.

I looked around. None of the guards
would look back at me. Then I noticed a small surveillance camera
installed on top of the Japanese room divider that screened the
head honcho from view. I grinned at the camera—stress tends to turn
me into a smart ass.

“
Who are you, the Elephant
Man?” I asked. “Are you that hideous to look at?”

His laugh sounded like a dump truck in
low gear struggling up an incline: deep and rumbling. “I guess
that’s a matter of opinion,” he said from the other side of the
screen. It was an intriguing voice, low and gravelly like his
laugh. “You look a little the worse for wear yourself,” he
continued. “How long have you been living on the
mountain?”