by C. J. Box
Marybeth nodded furiously.
“Tell him to bring his gun,” Joe said.
Missy came into the room, said, “What is going on?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Marybeth said, shouldering past her. “I need to use the phone.”
JOE ROARED OUT of the ranch yard with his shotgun on the bench seat, muzzle pointed toward the floor. The sky buckled with a thunder boom that rolled through the meadows, sucking the sound from the world for a moment. He drove fast, nearly overshooting the turn from the ranch onto the highway access road and he fishtailed in the mud, nearly losing control of the truck. He cursed himself, slowed down, and felt the tires bite into the slop. If he got stuck now, he thought, he would never forgive himself.
The ditches had filled even more than when he took the girls to the bus that morning, and the water was spilling over the road. He drove through it, spraying fantails of brown-yellow water.
The highway was in sight, and he made it and didn’t slow down as he turned onto the wet blacktop.
JOE TRIED TO put things together as he drove. He couldn’t. He hoped like hell Marybeth had overreacted to the phone call, but he doubted it. Her intuition was always right on, especially when it came to their girls. The thing about the cell phone, that Sheridan was calling from her cell phone, tipped it.
If that bastard J. W. Keeley had his girls he would kill him, Joe vowed. Simple as that.
God, how sometimes he hated the distances. Everything out here was just so far from the next. Thirty miles to Saddlestring. Twenty-two miles from his old house. Fifteen miles to Nate’s. And thirty miles in the other direction to the first entrance to Thunderhead Ranch. Joe knew enough about Thunderhead and its proximity to the flooding river to realize that there would be only one road still passable, the road to the lower ranch, Arlen’s. The other roads would be flooded. Would Keeley take the girls to Arlen’s place? And if so, why Arlen?
No, Joe thought. He wouldn’t even try to figure out Keeley’s motivation and loyalties. That would come later. Now, he just needed to find the bus.
Even if Marybeth was able to get the sheriff on the first call and the department scrambled, it would be a half hour before they could traverse the length of Bighorn Road in search of the bus. The helicopter was grounded because of the weather.
It was up to him.
NATE STOOD ON the shoulder of the highway wearing a long yellow slicker. His shoulder holster was buckled on over the top, and he stepped out into the road as Joe slowed and stopped.
Nate jumped in and slammed the door. Joe floored it to get back up to speed.
“So we’re looking for a bus,” Nate said.
“Yup.”
“Marybeth said the guy was named Keeley.”
“Yup.”
“Jesus. One of those Keeleys?”
“Yup.”
After a beat, Joe said, “Thanks for coming, Nate.”
“Anytime, partner,” Nate said, sliding his big revolver out of his holster and checking the rounds.
JOE AND NATE passed under the antlered arch with the THUNDERHEAD RANCH sign and plunged down a hill on the slick dirt road.
“There it is,” Nate said, pointing.
The school bus was stalled at the bottom of the hill in the middle of the road. Or what had been the road. Now, though, the river had jumped the dike and water foamed around the bus and into the open bus door.
“It looks empty,” Nate said, straining to see through the wet windshield. The wipers couldn’t work fast enough to keep it clear.
Joe slowed as he approached the bus and stopped short of the water. He jumped out, holding his shotgun. The rear of the bus was twenty feet away, the level of the river halfway up the rear door. The sound of the flooding river was so loud he couldn’t hear himself when he shouted, “There’s nobody on it. They must have gotten out on the other side before the dike blew open!”
Joe visualized a scene in which J. W. Keeley herded the girls through the rising water to the other side, marching them toward the ranch buildings two miles away through the cottonwoods. The vision was so vivid it deadened him for a moment.
He wouldn’t even consider the possibility that they’d all been swept away by the water.
He looked around at the situation. They were helpless.
They couldn’t go around the bus or they’d risk stalling themselves or getting swept away themselves. Joe looked upriver and Nate looked down. There was no place to cross.
“Is there another road in?” Nate asked, shouting at Joe from just a few feet away.
Joe shook his head. All the roads would be flooded, and even worse than this.
He thought about getting to the ranch from the other direction; driving back the way they had come, going through Saddlestring, taking the state highway into the next county and coming back the opposite way. But that highway paralleled the river as well at one point. It would likely be flooded, and it would take hours to get around that way even if it wasn’t.
Joe waded into the water, testing the strength of the current to see if there was any way they could cross. Maybe by shinnying along the side of the bus, using the force of the current to hold him upright against the side of the vehicle, he could get to the other side. He was in it to his knees when something struck him under the surface, a submerged branch or length of wood, and knocked his legs out from under him. He plunged into the icy water on his back, his shotgun flying. The current pulled him quickly under, and gritty water filled his nose and mouth. He could feel swift movement as he was carried downstream. When he opened his eyes he could see only foamy brown, and he didn’t know if he was facing up or down.
Something solid thumped his arm and he reached out for it and grasped it and it stopped him. He pulled hard, and it held—a root—with his other hand. The surface was slick but knotty, and he crawled up it hand over hand, water still in his mouth, trying not to swallow, until his head broke the surface where he spit it out and coughed.
He turned his head to see Nate upstream, fifty feet away, running along the bank in his direction.
Joe righted himself until he could get his feet underneath him. He shinnied up the root until he was out of the water. He hugged the trunk of the old cottonwood like a lover, and stood there gasping for breath.
“That wasn’t a very good idea,” Nate said when he got there.
JOE WAS SHIVERING as they backed the ranch truck out and ground back up the hill.
“There is only one way to get to the ranch,” Joe said, his teeth chattering.
“The river?” Nate said.
“Yup.”
“We’ll die.”
“We might. You want me to drop you off at your house?”
Nate looked over with a face contorted by pure contempt.
“I’ll row,” Joe said. “You bail.”
JOE BACKED THE ranch truck on the side of the garage of his old house and Nate leaped out. It took less than five minutes to hook up the trailer for the fifteen-foot drift boat with the leaky bottom. The boat was filled with standing rainwater, and the motor of the truck strained to tow it onto the highway. Despite losing minutes, Joe stopped so Nate could run and pull the plug on the rear of the boat. They got back on the highway and drove with a stream of rainwater shooting out of the stern of the vessel. Joe wished he had finished patching up the leaks.
“Have you ever taken a boat like this on a river like that?” Nate asked as they backed the trailer up toward the river at the launch site.
“No.”
“This is technical whitewater,” Nate said, looking out at the foamy white rooster-tails that burst angrily on the surface. Downstream was a series of massive rollers.
“Where are your life vests?”
Joe said, “Back in the garage.”
29
IT WAS A ROCKET RIDE.
Nate was in the bow of the boat, holding the sides with both hands to steady himself. His job was to warn Joe, who was manning the oars, of oncoming rocks and d
ebris—full-grown trees, cattle, a horse, an old wooden privy—by shouting and pointing. Joe missed most of them, rowing furiously backwards and turning while pointing the bow at the hazard and pulling away from it. They hit a drowned cow so hard that the impact knocked Nate to the side and Joe lost his grip on the oars.
Without Joe steering, the boat spun tightly to the right. Joe scrambled on his hands and knees on the floor of the boat through twelve inches of icy, sloshing water, trying to get back on the oars, when they hit the privy.
The shock sent both Nate and Joe falling to the side, which tipped the boat and allowed gallons of water to flow in.
They were sinking.
Luckily, the river calmed and Joe was able to man the oars again. Straining against both the current and hundreds of pounds of water inside the boat, he kept the oar blades stiff and fully in the water and managed to take the boat to shore. They hit a sandy bank and stopped suddenly.
Joe moaned and sat back on his seat. “This isn’t going well.”
Nate crawled back on his bench and wrung the water out of his ponytail. Joe watched as Nate patted his slicker down, making sure he still had his weapon.
“We need a big rubber raft for this,” Nate said.
“We don’t have one.”
They got out and pushed the side of the boat with as much strength as they had, finally tipping it enough so most of the water flowed back out to the river. With the loss of the weight, the boat bobbed and started to race downstream again. Joe held on to the side, splashing through the water, the boat propelling him downstream, then finally launching himself back in. Nate pulled himself in and fell clumsily to the floor.
Joe pointed the bow downriver, and their speed increased. He could hear a roar ahead, a roar much bigger than what they had just gone through.
“Get ready!” Joe shouted.
Nate reached out for the rope that ran the length of the gunwales and wrapped his wrists through it with two twists.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Joe asked. “If the boat flips, you may not be able to get out of that rope.”
“Then don’t flip the boat,” Nate called over his shoulder.
Joe could feel their speed pick up. The air filled with spray from the rollers and rapids ahead. They were going so fast now that he doubted he could take the boat to the bank for safety if he wanted to. Which he did.
THE RIVER NARROWED into a foaming chute. What had two days ago been gentle riffles on the surface of the lazy river were now five- and six-foot rollers. On the sides of the river, trees reached out with branches that would skewer them if they got too close.
They had to go straight down the middle.
Joe knew the trick would be to keep the bow pointed straight downriver. If he let the bow get thrown right or left, the current would spin them and they’d hit a wall of water sideways, either swamping the boat or flipping it.
“Here we go!” Nate shouted, then threw back his head and howled like a wolf.
The bow started to drift to the left, and Joe pulled back hard on the right oar. It would be tough to keep the oars in the water as they hit the rollers, but he would have to. If he rowed back and whiffed—the oar blade skimming the surface or catching air—he would lose control.
“Keep it straight!” Nate hollered.
Suddenly, they were pointing up and Joe could see clouds. A second later they crested, the front half of the boat momentarily out of the water, and the boat tipped and plunged straight down. He locked the oar grips with his fists, keeping them parallel to his chin, keeping the blades in the water.
They made it. Only a little splash came into the boat.
But before he could breathe again, they were climbing another roller, dropping again so swiftly he thought he’d left his stomach upriver, then climbing again, aiming straight at the clouds.
Joe kept the boat straight through seven massive rollers.
When the river finally spit them out onto a flat that moved swiftly but was much more calm, Joe closed his eyes for a moment and breathed deeply.
“Damn,” Nate said with admiration. “That was perfect.”
Joe relaxed his hands and arms and gave in to the terrible pain that now pulsed from exertion in his shoulders, back, and thighs.
“JOE,” NATE SAID, turning around on his bench and facing Joe at the oars, “about Marybeth last year.”
“Not now,” Joe said sharply.
“Nothing happened,” Nate said. “I never should have behaved that way. I let us both down.”
“It’s okay,” Joe said. “I mean it.”
“I wish I could find a woman like that,” Nate said. He started to say more, then looked at Joe’s face, which was set in a mask.
“We’ve got to get square on everything,” Nate said. “It’s vital.”
“Okay, we’re square,” Joe said, feeling the shroud that he’d been loath to admit had still been there lift from him. “Now please turn around and look for rocks. Finding my girls is the only thing I care about right now.”
THE RIVER ROARED around to the right and Nate pointed at something on the bank. Joe followed Nate’s arm and saw the roof of a building through the brush. A moment later, corrals came into view. The corrals were underwater, the railing sticking out of the water. Two panicked horses stood in the corner of the corral, water up to their bellies.
“It’s Hank’s place,” Joe said, pulling hard on the oars to work the boat over to the corrals.
They glided across the surface of the water until the railing was within reach and Nate grabbed it and the boat shuddered to a stop. Joe jumped out with the bow rope and pulled the boat to shore. They tugged until the boat was completely out of the water, so that in case the river continued to rise the boat wouldn’t float downriver without them.
AFTER FREEING THE horses, they slogged through the mud toward the lodge. Nate had his .454 Casull drawn and in front of him in a shooter’s grip. Joe wished he still had his shotgun because he was such a poor shot with his handgun.
As he followed Nate through the dripping trees toward Hank’s lodge, Joe drew his .40 Glock. The gun was wet and gritty. He checked the muzzle to make sure there was no dirt packed into it. He tried to dry it on his clothing as he walked, but his shirt and pants were soaked. He wiped it down the best he could, then racked the slide to seat a round.
Hank’s lodge was handsome, a huge log home with a green metal roof. It looked like a structure that would suit an Austrian prince who entertained his hunting friends in the Alps.
Nate began to jog toward it, and Joe followed. The front door was open. Joe could see no signs of life, and no lights on inside. He wondered if the storm had knocked out the electricity.
Nate bounded through the front door and moved swiftly to his left, looking around the room over the sights on his revolver. He had such a practiced way about his movements, Joe noted, that there was no doubt he had entered buildings filled with hostiles before in his other life.
Joe mimicked Nate’s movements, except he flared off to the right.
It was dark and quiet in the house. It felt empty.
The floor was wet and covered with leaves from the open door. Dozens of mounted game animals looked down on them from the walls. Elk, moose, caribou, antelope, mule and whitetail deer. A full-mount wolverine, an endangered species, looked poised to charge them. A golden eagle, wings spread as if to land, hovered above them.
“That son-of-a-bitch,” Nate said, referring to Hank but looking at the eagle. Nate liked eagles.
Arlen was right, Joe thought. The lodge was filled with illegally taken and poached species. The mounts were expertly done. He knew the work of all the local taxidermists, and whoever had done the mounts was unfamiliar to him. But that was part of his old job, Joe thought. It no longer concerned him.
Nate moved through the living room into a massive dining hall. Joe followed.
Dirty plates covered the table, and a raven that must have flown in from the open front door walke
d among the plates. The bird stopped and looked at them, head cocked to the side, a piece of meat in its beak. The raven waddled the length of the table until it got to the head of it. Then it turned and cawed, the sound sharp and unpleasant. Nate shot it and the bird exploded in a burst of black feathers.
“I hate ravens,” Nate said.
Joe’s ears rang from the shot in the closed room, and he glowered at Nate.
“Uh-oh,” Nate said. “Look.”
The chair at the head of the table was knocked over. Nate approached it and picked up a red-stained steak knife from the floor next to it.
Joe began to walk around the table when he felt the soles of his boots stick to the floor. He looked down and recognized blood. There was a lot of it, and it hadn’t dried yet.
“I wonder who it was?” Nate asked.
Now Joe could smell it. The whole room smelled of blood.
But there was no body.
They quickly searched all the rooms of the house. It was empty.
As they slogged back to the boat, Joe felt a mounting sense of dread that made it hard to swallow. The river would take them to Arlen’s place next.
“Let’s go get my girls,” Joe said.
30
THE NEXT SET OF RAPIDS WAS NOT AS SEVERE AS THE big rollers they had been through, and although his arms were aching, Joe kept the boat straight and true and they shot through them without incident. The rain receded to a steady drizzle, although there was no break in the clouds. Because the sky was so dark, Joe couldn’t tell the time. He glanced quickly at his wristwatch as he rowed but it was filled with water and stuck at 8:34 A.M., the exact time the river had sucked him in.
Joe and Nate didn’t talk, each surrounded by his own thoughts. Joe contemplated what they would find at the lower ranch. If he let his mind wander off the oars to the fate of his girls he found it difficult to remain calm. Inside, his heart was racing and something black and cold lodged in his chest. As hard as he tried, though, the faces of Sheridan and Lucy at breakfast kept coming back to him.
