The Nightmare Thief (40 page)

“Is Autumn secure?” Haugen said.

“Are you going to get me out?” Von said.

“Did Autumn elude you?”

Von hesitated. “No. But she will if you don’t hurry and pull me out of this pit.”

Jo’s relief waned. Von was a terrible liar. Haugen had to realize Autumn had escaped—and that she couldn’t have gotten far.

Haugen’s voice cooled. “Don’t fret. We’ve arranged rescue. The police are sending a helicopter.”

“You better not be goddamned lying, Dane.”

“They’re en route. They think Sabine is that Beckett character, here in dire straits with the missing deputy. You’ll be out of there in no time.”

“And then?”

“Then we fly to Reno in their chopper. And from there, off into the great nowhere. Hold on, my friend.”

“How are we gonna fly away—Alaska Airlines? I have a fucking
branch
in my leg. Am I supposed to ask the stewardess for a cup of ice to control arterial bleeding?”

Sabine came on. “The chopper is medevac search and rescue. And a private jet is waiting for us in Reno. Now get off the radio.”

“They’d better be waiting. If they aren’t, I’ll—” He screamed again. “The fuck is … Oh God, rats—”

His shriek nearly caused feedback from the walkie-talkie. A shot blared, and a second.

Then the walkie-talkie feed went dead. Jo and Autumn gaped at the radio.

Jo said, “I think Von just got hit with a ricochet.”

Autumn eyed her, hard. “I told him rats would get him. Panic is self-sustaining. Fear will kill you.”

Downhill, something moved. Autumn peered toward the mine. Jo ducked and pulled the girl down below the crumbling dirt lip of the gully. She put a finger to her lips.

Was it Haugen? Sabine? They had to be nearby in the forest. She listened and heard rocks slide down the hillside—pebbles, ticking and tumbling—as if kicked loose by a person walking on the slope below them.

She and Autumn needed to move, but not if standing up would expose their position. She got out her phone. She thumbed the controls until she found ringtone options. She selected
Alarm
. She put the phone to the walkie-talkie, pushed the Transmit button, and set off the phone’s alarm.

Smothered in her hand, the sound from the phone was barely audible. But the walkie-talkie sent it out strong. It sounded like a Klaxon.

Beyond the eroded lip of the gully above them, echoing through the pines, amplified and distorted by cheap electronics, the sound blared from another walkie-talkie.

Three feet away.

Jo’s hair stood on end. She looked up. From the top of the gully, Sabine reared up and grabbed for her.

Jo leapt back but Sabine snagged a handful of her hair. They fell together into the gully. They rolled in the dirt, grunting, and as Jo went over and over, she saw the pistol in Sabine’s hand. They slid across wet rocks to the edge of an eroded drop-off and lurched to a stop against a fallen log, with Jo on her back and Sabine on top of her. Sabine brought up the gun.

The pickax came from the side, over Jo’s head, whirling end over end. With a blunt crack it hit Sabine full in the face.

She toppled backward and slid down the drop-off onto mossy rocks six feet below.

Jo spun. Gabe ran past her, grabbed the pickax again, and jumped over the log toward Sabine.

Jo crawled to her knees and looked over the log. “Is she dead?”

He lifted Sabine’s head by the hair. Her eyes were vacant, but she was breathing. He dropped her head, careless of the rock beneath it. Jo had never seen him act so heartless. She thought she’d never loved him more.

He looked for the pistol. “Fell between the rocks. There’s a cleft—damn.”

He knelt to try to retrieve it. Jo and Autumn clambered down to help.

“It’s lodged five feet down there in the cleft,” Jo said. “We’ll never reach it.”

He stood. “Then let’s go.”

Sabine moaned. Jo grabbed the walkie-talkie from her, flipped Sabine onto her stomach, pulled off Sabine’s pack, and unzipped it.

Jackpot. Ropes.

“Gabe, get going. I’m going to tie her up.”

He hesitated until she said, “No. I don’t trust this bitch as far as you can throw her.”

He nodded and darted back up the hill for Lark and Noah.

Jo pulled out a thin length of rope and a roll of electrical tape. She tossed the tape to Autumn. “Gag her.”

Autumn wound the tape around Sabine’s head five times, tore it with her teeth, and slapped her palm against the woman’s mouth to seal the adhesive. Jo whipped the rope around Sabine’s hands and feet. They left her roped like a steer and climbed the hill after Gabe.

In the cold air and golden sunlight, Jo saw clearly. The next few minutes would go very right or very wrong. They had choices to make.

“Autumn, I want you to listen to me. We may have to separate.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I have to help Gabe get Noah across the catwalk. Then we have to get Peyton. That’ll take time. If I get caught, if Haugen gets me and Gabe, you have to get away. You’ll have to take the long way out of here.”

“Alone—leave you guys?”

“You’d have to. If Haugen sees you, you’re toast.” Jo grabbed her arm and pointed back down the hillside, past the Jeffrey pines and crimson dogwoods. “Below the mine there’s a trail. It winds through the ravine and eventually ends at the clearing by the logging road where we ran into you yesterday.”

“That’s where we’re going, right?” Autumn said.

“Yes. The trail is longer—it’ll take you a couple hours. I know you’re spent. But if things go bad, you have to go for it. You’ll get there, and the cops will too.”

Autumn froze, her face a welter of fear and remorse and longing. “No.”

Jo’s eyes welled. Was Autumn serious? “You can escape. That’s what we’ve been aiming for this whole time.”

“I won’t leave without my friends,” she said.

Jo knew something Autumn might not be considering: Autumn was her only bargaining chip. Should she herself be captured by Haugen, the only way she could possibly buy her own freedom was by turning Autumn over to him.

“You sure?” she said.

“Completely.”

Jo squeezed her shoulders. Autumn did look like Tina. She saw it now.

“We only have a couple of minutes,” she said. “Whatever you have left in the tank, we’re going to spend it.”

They crept uphill again. Through the trees Jo glimpsed Gabe and Lark. They were at the base of the south power pylon. The pylon was still considerably above Jo and Autumn, a few minutes’ hike away. Gabe was preparing to cross the bridge.

The power-pylon shortcut was a scanty catwalk almost a hundred yards long. It crossed high above the ravine. Gabe climbed the rickety stairs to the bridge and hoisted himself around a locked chain-link gate designed to keep unauthorized people out. He had a couple of ropes, Jo saw. He began tying them to the bridge. He didn’t think Lark could get across safely, and he didn’t want to risk losing his balance while carrying Noah. It was sound procedure but was costing him time.

Jo and Autumn fought their way farther uphill, breathing hard, cold and frightened. The trees closed in and blocked their view. The scent of pine and clean air seemed, all at once, cloying. Jo kept going until the trees thinned and she got another clear view of the bridge.

Lark had climbed around the chain-link gate and was on the catwalk. Gabe was preparing to follow. He had rigged a piggyback sling from a piece of the tarp they’d found in the mine. Noah was strapped to Gabe’s back, holding on with what nominal strength he had. Gabe was going to climb around the gate, carrying him. Jo’s head went incurably dizzy. If Gabe lost his grip, the drop from the bridge into the ravine would kill them both.

Then she saw that he wasn’t free-soloing. He had roped up: one end tied to his belt, the other secured to the railing of the catwalk. Holding tight, his face grim, muscles straining, he climbed around the gate.

Noah looked like a rag doll. But once they’d swung around the gate and set foot on the bridge, the group got going. Lark led the way, gripping the rails like death. Gabe untied the rope and followed slowly, his legs working hard under the strain.

Jo and Autumn continued to climb. They ducked through the trees and once more lost sight of the bridge. Then Jo rounded a boulder, got a clear view, and felt a moment of jubilation. The threesome on the bridge was halfway to the gate at the far end.

And, fifty meters above Jo on the hillside, Dane Haugen rode the horse out of the trees.

He kicked its sides and urged it up the slope to the power pylon. He dismounted and climbed the steps to the bridge. He stopped at the chain-link gate. He was smiling. He had a gun, and it was smiling too in the morning sun.

The gun was aimed at Gabe’s back. Haugen cocked the hammer, sighted down the barrel through the gate, and fired.

T
he shot from Haugen’s revolver boomed in the mountain air.

On the bridge, Gabe reflexively ducked. Lark dropped to her knees.

Haugen continued to aim his revolver through the gate. “Stop right there.”

From their vantage point in the trees fifty yards back, Jo and Autumn held painfully still. Jo’s eyes were stinging. A wail, inhuman and demanding, began in her head.
Do something.

Gabe urged Lark forward. Jo barely heard him say, “Keep going.”

Lark regained her footing and they struggled onward, toward the far gate at the north end of the bridge. Noah, clinging to Gabe’s back, turned and looked at Haugen. His eyes were ghostly. He seemed almost gone, nearly on the other side already, as though he were only looking back to see what was behind him.

Everything.

Haugen held his aim through the gate and fired again.

The shot ricocheted off the railing of the bridge. Lark cried out but kept pacing along the rickety metal surface. Gabe was right behind her. Haugen fired a third time.

“Stop,” he shouted.

They ignored him. Gabe knew he had to get to the far side of the ravine. They had no options.

Haugen shoved the gun in his back pocket, clawed his fingers into the chain link of the gate, climbed on the rail, and swung around. He dropped onto the catwalk and stalked toward the trio.

“I have an idea,” Jo said. “Quick.”

She pulled Autumn behind the boulder and took off her jacket. “You too.”

Thirty seconds later she and Autumn crept back around the boulder. Lark and Gabe were closing the distance to the north gate, but Haugen was gaining on them.

“Stop, right there,” he shouted. “This time I can’t miss.”

He was close. He couldn’t miss. Gabe and Lark stopped.

Haugen inched forward, his gun arm extended, sighting on Noah and from him straight through to Gabe. His revolver was huge, blue steel, shining in the morning sun.

He kept back, taking care to stay out of Gabe’s reach on the swaying catwalk. He looked around, scanned the mountainside, and called out, “Turn Autumn over, right now, or they die.”

Crouched by Jo’s side beside the boulder, Autumn moaned.

A breath of wind brushed Jo’s face and whispered past.
When you can’t change a situation, and can’t get out of it, you have to go forward.

Jo didn’t look at Autumn. There was no time, nothing more to be said. She cupped her hands to her face. “All right.”

Autumn said, “No.”

Haugen kept the gun aimed at Gabe but turned his head. “Now. Get out here.”

“Okay,” Jo yelled.

Autumn shook her head. “Don’t. Jo, no.”

Jo looked at her. “Yes.” She called again to Haugen: “Let them go.”

She swept an arm around Autumn’s waist. Holding her tight, she walked into the open.

They walked to the foot of the stairs. Autumn tried to pull Jo back. Quietly, desperately, Autumn said, “Don’t do this. There must be another way.”

Gabe and Lark and Noah had no other way.

Haugen continued to hold the revolver on Gabe. When he saw Jo and Autumn, his chest swelled.

“On the bridge, right now, both of you. Or I’ll shoot your friends,” he called.

Jo clung to Autumn’s hand. Together they climbed the stairs.

Autumn murmured, “I can’t believe you’re doing this.”

“Shh.”

Whispering, viciously, Jo said, “Don’t fight. Do not.”

Haugen shouted: “Get out here. Both of you. Move it.”

He wanted them contained, with nowhere to run. Jo got to the gate. She saw Gabe’s carabiner there, tied to the rope he’d fixed.

Autumn looked at her, beyond desperate. Pleading.

“This is it,” Jo said.

Autumn shut her eyes tight. She nodded. Jo clipped the carabiner to the girl’s belt.