Gone South (A Butterscotch Jones Mystery Book 3) (11 page)

Our borrowed cabin was like Paradise, only with cold and
mice and a leaky roof
. In spite of the car blanket
and the gentle patter of rain off and on through the night, I was up at da
wn
and ready to be up and doing
. Chuck was still sleeping
, a slumber of profound weariness and terror,
so I left
my cross-body bag
,
which now held the memory stick
and a note
saying that I had gone
to answer the call of nature and to fetch
water
for coffee,
and that he should make up the fire
while I was gone
.

I took the gun
, the pot
,
and the laxative and went to check on our followers.

It meant backtracking for almost an hour and I called myself all kinds of synonyms for idiot when I ca
me
across a mountain lion drinking from the stream
.
It chuffed at me, but offered no challenge. I gave it wide berth.

When you live in a forest you come to know its sounds and silences. A crackle of broken pine needles could mean anything, but you know when it’s moose and when it’s bear. And when it’s human. The smell of fire is almost always the final clue.

The camp surprised and disappointed me. The villains had come prepared with tents and a camp stove. The tents were clawed
in places
but I didn’t see any bodies or pools of blood, so had to assume that the bears had been chased away
before anyone was killed
. Clearly, bears in this part of the woods were slackers.
Bears at
t
he Gulch would have eaten them down to their eyeballs.

I squatted in some kind of dense shrub, being careful of the paper
wasps’ nest on the branch next to me.
Wasp n
ests are abandoned when the weather turns cold, but there hadn’t been any hard frosts yet and the gray ball
of paper
might not be vacant. You’ve heard of being mad as a wasp? So have I.
It was best to assume that the winged
ones were just not early risers.

Indignation grew as I smelled the coffee perking on the camp
stove. It
s
odor was
wonderful and I was aware of being hungry. I could hear two voices down by the stream and someone snoring in the least damaged tent. No one else was around. That meant the party had split up
at the river
.
That was good. It evened up the odds a bit.

Overcome by a mix of rage and insanity, I cracked open the laxative, rushed to the coffee pot
,
and pulled off the lid. My fingers
got
burned and a spurt of water hissed on the stove as I dumped the entire bottle of clear liquid into the tin pot
and then slammed on the lid
.

The snoring stopped
as the lid scraped the pot
and I jumped back into my bush
expecting shouts and disaster
. For a second I couldn’t hear anything above the thudding of my heart, but then the log-sawer started in again.

I exhaled slowly.
Something buzzed in my left ear
, gaining my attention
. It was a lone wasp, moving slowly and sounding cranky at being woken so early. Still under the influence of temporary insanity, I grabbed the nest and then tossed
it
into the more ruined tent
through the hole in its side
. Someone was going to get a nasty surprise
when they went to pack it up
.

Not waiting to see what happened, I raced back into the woods and then worked my way back down to the creek when I was a safe distance away.

About two minutes later I heard shouting. I hoped they weren’t so upset
by the wasps
that they f
ailed
to drink their coffee.

I almost forgot that I was supposed to be getting water, but remembered in time
to collect the
old
pot
that
I’d left by the stream
.

Chuck had a small fire going when I returned.
He looked alert and almost happy. The rest had done him a world of good.

It seemed likely our followers would be busy for a while, perhaps even so discouraged that they
would give
up the hunt, so we took the time to heat the water and use the last of the instant coffee
,
sweetened with the last of the sugar
and some crushed mints
.

While I sipped
the syrupy and surprisingly tasty coffee,
I had an inner debate about telling Chuck what I had done, but decided it was kinder not to
worry him after the fact
. I didn’t want him thinking I was a psycho
and knew that my guerilla raid on the enemy camp was on the borderline
.
Okay, over the line.
But damn it all
—
this
mess
wasn’t Chuck’s fault, and I was damned if I was going to let him get hurt because of my father.
And Anatoli didn’t need any more grief either. If I could get them off our trail before we reached Seven Forks, so much the better
for everyone
.

They say that you should carry rancor to the grave but no further. I hoped that someday I would be able to put my rage aside, but that wasn’t the morning for beating swords into plowshares and turning the other cheek. After Chuck and I were safe and these thugs were dead or arrested, then I would work on forgiving my parent. Until then, I needed my anger to keep me warm.

*  *  *

Chuck kicked dirt over their small fire and then, as had gotten to be a habit, he patted his coat pocket. It was still there, the little velvet box. Not that there was time for it now, and certainly this was an inauspicious place. But later
—
if they lived and as soon as his inconsiderate treatment of his leg muscles allowed him to kneel
—
he would find a candle and a bottle of wine
—
or a pot of tea. Tea and scones would be good. And then he would give her the necklace and tell her, formally, how he felt about her.

Hopefully by then he would have some organized thoughts to express.

*  *  *

It was cold, the kind of cold you feel in your bones.
Jimmy Nine Toes had just finished his second cup of coffee, but still he could feel the bitter cold digging into his hide like a thousand ice picks.
Jimmy pulled the spare parka he’d borrowed from Tony, his right
-
hand man, more closely around his body.
Still he could not get warm. Fucking wilderness. Fucking wasps. They should chop down every damn tree, shoot every bear
,
and cement it over.

Jimmy choked up a belch that tasted rather chemical.
A massive gurgling ran through his intestines as what had to be the world’s largest gas bubble screamed to be set free.
Lifting a leg, Jimmy squeezed his muscles hard to put some force behind its release.
Though the burning mess that he expelled into his pants was not a gas bubble
,
it could not be termed a solid.
Jimmy’s eyes shot wide in panic.
He tried to cinch down on the unexpected torrent but it was no use.

Jumping to his feet, Jimmy duck walked in a fast hobble several feet into the woods.
There he pulled his pants down and squatted during the remainder of the release.
More was to follow.
Much more.
As he paused, waiting for the next convulsive spasm to pass, he heard the sounds of others around him experiencing the same uncomfortable gastrointestinal anomalies.
He hoped to God they didn’t attract any more bears.

He recognized the taste now. His grandma used to feed him the same crap when he got constipated
as a kid
.
Only it had never done this to him.
And Jimmy
knew who was responsible for this.

“I’m going to kill that bitch!” Jimmy muttered under his breath as he waited to be done with the involuntary spasms. “I’m going to put a bullet in every organ of her body
and then saw her head off
.”

Chapter 10

Danny “the Wings” Jones-McIntyre stood on the tarmac of Winnipeg’s James Armstrong Richardson International Airport with his body half
-
buried under the maintenance hatch of his motley
Beach 18
working on the engine.
He grunted and strained, throwing all his weight behind a lug wrench
,
which eventually gave way on a stripped nut and tore through the fuel line.

“Crap,” Danny exclaimed, blowing on his scraped knuckles as fuel began to leak from the split hose.

The Wings frantically reached into his back pocket to retrieve the roll of duct tape that he always kept there.
The fuel line was almost solid silver from having already been patched multiple times.
Danny deftly ripped off a swath of tape and applied it to the leak in the hose.
The patch held.
He smiled at the fact that he’d saved himself the $53 replacement cost of a new fuel line, but at the same time realized that he would have to replace the line soon before the rubber completely disintegrated and it became nothing but duct tape.
After all, safety had to eventually become a primary concern.

The Wings saw the practical black wingtips come to a halt beside him before he looked up to take in the black suit.
He never even bothered with the face.
It took only an instant for him to determine that he wanted nothing to do with whatever the suit wanted.
So he ignored the face sticking out of the black suit and buried his head back in the engine compartment of his plane.

“Are you Danny ‘the Wings’ Jones-McIntyre?” the suit asked.

“Nope,” Danny replied.

Danny saw that the practical black wingtips didn’t move, but neither did the face speak for some time.

“But that man over there just told me that you are the Wings.”

The Wings pulled his head out of the engine compartment long enough to see where the suit was pointing.
Then he returned to his tinkering.

“That’s Henry over there.
Henry’s an inveterate liar,” Danny informed the man.

“Then you’re not Danny Jones-McIntyre?”

Danny released a sigh of disgust.
Apparently he wasn’t going to get rid of this man as easily as he had hoped.
He pulled his head out of the engine compartment to consider the suit.
He didn’t like what he saw.
He liked even less the fact that there were two more suits standing behind him.

“What do you want?”

“I want to book a flight to McIntyre’s Gulch.”

“Sorry, never heard of the place.”

“But don’t you fly supplies in and out of McIntyre’s Gulch?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Look, this is important police business we’re conducting.”

“Oh?
Can I see your badge?”

Having recognized the man for a cop at first sight, and an American one at that by his accent, Danny assumed there was something queer going on when the man didn’t flash his badge right off the bat.
Assuming the man would now go away, Danny buried his head back in the engine compartment.

“We need to get to the Gulch by tonight.”

“Why?”

“Would you mind stopping what you’re doing long enough for us to have a conversation?”

“I can’t.
I’m late already.”

“For what?”

“Flying supplies into McIntyre’s Gulch,” Danny replied with a wry chuckle.

“But you just said you never heard of the place.”

“You must not have heard me right.”

“Then you can fly us to the Gulch.”

Danny extricated himself from the engine compartment to finish the man off with one last statement of the facts.

“First of all, it’s McIntyre’s Gulch, not the Gulch.
Second, I fly supplies in and out of McIntyre’s Gulch, not people.
Third, I’m late and have to get moving,” he concluded, slamming the engine compartment hatch and latching it shut.

“So, you’ve never flown anyone to McIntyre’s Gulch before?”

“I’ve flown a friend or two.”

“I’ll pay you double.”