The Nightmare Thief

by Meg Gardiner

  The rain came. Full on, cold, whipped by the wind. She could see nobody, no movement. None at all.

  She bolted from the trees toward the two men.

  The wind blew cold rain into her face. In the distance, the cattle lowed. She reached the big man in cowboy boots. His face was ruddy and weathered. His eyes were open and unseeing. A blast to the chest had cored him.

  She closed his eyes, her hands shaking, and ran to Dustin’s side.

  “No,” she moaned.

  He had a massive blast wound in the center of his back. His sweatshirt was shredded by buckshot and sopping with dark blood. She pressed her fingers to his neck, searching for a carotid pulse.

  He was gone. Death, she knew, had probably been immediate. But the moment of fear beforehand would have been horrific. The blast had torn through him, narrow spread, blown apart his spine and probably most of his lungs and his heart. Shotgun, large bore. Close range. In the back.

  She swallowed the urge to retch, to scream, to cry, to try to help the poor kid.

  She looked around. Where was Kyle?

  She had to presume the shotgun belonged to the dead man. Kyle had gotten it and killed the rancher and Dustin. Where had he gone?

  The rain peppered her back. It chilled her hands and face. Lightning flashed again.

  The rancher’s pockets had been turned inside out. Had Kyle taken his keys? Lying by the man’s hip was his wallet. It was open and had been emptied of cash. A snapshot flicked in the wind. A woman with two young kids.

  More lightning flashed. And in the stark shadows it supplied, she saw tracks: boots and hooves.

  They followed clearly along beaten tire tracks.

  Kyle was headed for the rancher’s home. Maybe for his family. She stood up and ran after him.

  Kyle kicked open the door at John Yarrow’s knotted-pine ranch house. The lights were off. The house was cold.

  He stormed through the place room by room, shotgun raised. He threw open closet doors and peered under beds. Anybody who thought he could stay alive by hiding had another thing coming. But if Yarrow had a wife or kids, they were long gone. There was only one plate in the kitchen sink. One glass drying on the drain board.

  He found a plate of chicken in the fridge and tore into it with his bare hands. He drank a quart of milk and tossed the carton on the floor. He went to Yarrow’s bedroom and found a T-shirt and heavy flannel shirt. They would have fit him when he was young and fat. But they would be warm. In the front closet he found a brown duster. Tonight was going to be a bitch, weather-wise.

  He dumped the Edge Adventures polo shirt. He said good riddance to Kyle Ritter too. Who cared anymore if he was using the alias? Ruben Kyle Ratner, Kyle Ritter, Red Rattler—all the same to him. His driver’s license had worked good enough to pass Edge Adventures’ background check, but then the license he’d given them didn’t match the name on his records in the California prison system.

  Finally, he popped out the colored contact lenses. He checked his eyes in the bathroom mirror. The white ring that circled the blue iris of his left eye was, medically speaking, a defect. Arcus juvenilis. It didn’t mess up his vision, but it had a powerful effect on the weak willed and superstitious. White fire snaked around his blue eye. It intimidated.

  Outside, lightning smeared the clouds and thunder rumbled. Rain chittered against the windows. He rifled through drawers and closets, looking for more weapons, but the shotgun was apparently the only firearm Yarrow owned. In a kitchen drawer he did find a box of shells. He emptied them into the pockets of the duster.

  Then he went looking for the phone.

  His own cell phone still had no signal. So he couldn’t tell if Jo Beckett had taken the hint in his text—to follow him out of the gorge. He hoped she had. Here, kitty, kitty. Come this way, all alone. He scrolled through his phone book and found the number he wanted.

  He picked up Yarrow’s landline and dialed.

  A woman answered. “Yes?”

  “I got Autumn Reiniger and her friends in my sights. You want the money? You deal with me.”

  29

  Sabine lowered the phone. “Dane, you need to hear this.”

  The Volvo droned up the two-lane highway in the lowering dusk, climbing through the pine forest into the mountains. The wipers squelched across the windshield. Haugen flicked a glance at her from behind the wheel.

  Sabine’s face was sober under the dashboard lights. She put the phone on speaker. “Say that again.”

  A staticky voice came through. “I’m in the driver’s seat now.”

  Haugen turned sharply. “Ratner?”

  “Surprise, surprise.”

  “Why are you calling?” With a queasy burst of suspicion, Haugen added, “Where are you?”

  “I’m way ahead of you, is where. I’m ready to dig Autumn Reiniger and her buddies a grave you’ll never find. So whatever it is you’re pulling, you’re now pulling in a new direction. Mine.”

  A blast of rain obscured the view. Haugen said, “What are you talking about?”

  “You didn’t know, did you? I was along on Miss Reiniger’s birthday outing. Seems she has a phobia, so her daddy asked Edge Adventures to add it to the scenario. And Edge outdid theirselves. They tracked down the guy who, what’s the word . . . instigated the phobia. They found the actual Red Rattler for their role-playing shindig.”

  Haugen frowned at Sabine. She shrugged and mouthed, No idea. Never heard anything about that.

  Ratner’s voice took on a nasal whine. “Never thought to include me in your plans, did you? I had to find out about this the hard way. Get carjacked, in a damned limousine, by your gang of candy-ass stooges.”

  “What do you want?” Haugen said.

  “You can guess,” Ratner said.

  In the kitchen at the rancher’s ransacked house, Kyle Ratner—that’s Mr. Ruby Kyle Ratner to you, partner—broke open the breech of the shotgun and began loading shells.

  “This is what it’s all been for, ain’t it?” he said.

  “You have no idea what you’re messing with here,” Haugen said.

  “No, I got a good idea. And it’s getting clearer every minute. This carjacking, scooping Autumn off the street, was the whole point of everything from the beginning, wasn’t it? It’s what’s gonna get you your money and your mojo and that round-rumped redhead, am I right?”

  He smiled in the dim light from the open fridge.

  Haugen said, “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you need to put down the phone, back away from this, and disappear from the scene.”

  Kyle barked a laugh. “Disappear? You made a mistake when your stooges pointed their weapons at me. I am the best operative you had. And you blew it. Now we’re gonna deal. Or the only thing that disappears is all that money you’re planning to take from Peter Reiniger.”

  Over the line, Kyle could hear noise in the background. Sounded like Haugen and Sabine were in a car, headed someplace fast. Headed this way.

  “I want in,” Kyle said. “You’re planning a big score. Well, guess what, partner?”

  “I’m not your partner. I’m your boss.”

  “No. You were my boss. But you fired me,” he said. “I rode that Hummer down to the bottom of a ravine with a bunch of screaming brats. I’d say that constituted a field promotion. So this score now involves both of us.”

  Haugen paused. “I don’t need to talk to you any longer.”

  Kyle’s smile deepened. He knew all about Dane Haugen. “Yes, you do. You don’t know where the birthday gang is. You don’t know how quick I can kill them off. You don’t even know how quick I can expose you as the person behind this—behind this and so much more. Ain’t that right?”

  “You’re in way over your head,” Haugen said.

  “That’s rich. Who threw me in the deep end? Why, I think you did. But now that I’m facedown in the muck, I see everything. I see how much money you didn’t want to tell me about. So what do you say? Fifty-fifty split. That’s fai
r.”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “Right. Sixty-forty for me.”

  “Shut up, Ratner. This is way beyond you. Get involved and you’re going to screw it up for everybody. You’ll get nothing.”

  “Then neither will you.” Kyle’s smile stretched his lips. “I suggest you reconsider your position. We’ll talk again when you find the crash site. I’ll have been there and gone.”

  “Don’t—”

  Kyle hung up. Then he ripped the phone from the wall.

  Haugen would reconsider. He would reconsider while he was driving like a maniac and sweating through his Prada turtleneck and calfskin gloves.

  Treating Ruby Kyle Ratner like an errand boy. Thinking he was stupid. He closed and latched the shotgun’s breech.

  In the rancher’s garage he found a gasoline can. He poured a stinking trail from the front door to the pile of greasy rags he heaped on the kitchen floor. He dragged the propane tank for the barbecue into the house for good measure.

  He’d kept hold of his lighter, back when Mr. Gabe Search-and-Rescue asked everybody to donate survival supplies. Zippo. Clean and reliable, it caught the gasoline with a bright happy flame.

  He was running for the rancher’s truck by the time the inside of the house lit with laughing fire.

  30

  Under the scarlet glow of the dashboard lights, Haugen stared at his phone in astonishment. Ratner. His ulcer burned. The gall.

  The storm outside the Volvo had turned vicious. He seemed to see it through a pulsing, bile-yellow scrim. Ratner was the Edge Adventures employee who had been on the beach at Candlestick Point—the newbie, whom he hadn’t been able to see clearly. Ratner. The unmitigated gall.

  Sabine and Stringer sat like crash-test dummies, dumfounded and unsure of how they should react.

  Haugen shoved the phone at Sabine. “Call Von. Tell him we have a freelance thief attempting to commandeer the mission.”

  She punched the number. “Ratner’s got a head start on us.”

  “Tell Von to eliminate him at the first opportunity.” He put the vehicle in gear and floored it up the highway. “And tell Von to eliminate everybody besides Autumn. Don’t wait for us to arrive. See one, shoot one. He needs to do whatever it takes to get Autumn now.”

  She put the phone to her ear. Haugen pushed the Volvo faster.

  Jo jogged raggedly along the track. It was nearly full dark now. The wind channeled through the pines and the rain came in hard bursts.

  Why had Kyle killed Dustin and the rancher? Again she seemed to hear the eerie voice on the cell phone of the dead lawyer, Wylie, promising punishment.

  She had to presume Kyle had killed Wylie and dumped his body in the abandoned mine. How had Edge Adventures managed to get mixed up with Kyle, beyond hiring him to replay Autumn’s childhood encounter with the Bad Cowboy?

  Who the hell was he?

  And if he was headed to the rancher’s house, what did he want—money, a phone, a vehicle? Kyle had shot the rancher and Dustin without mercy. She thought of the snapshot in the rancher’s wallet: the woman, the smiling children. The image drove her to keep up her pace.

  The rain scoured down on a gust of wind and caught her flat across the face.

  Ahead, an orange glow flickered to life. It rose and pulsed and backlit the trunks of the pines. It was a fire, a big one.

  Behind the wind and spatter of the rain, she heard an engine. She ducked into the trees. The engine sounded loud and heavy—a pickup truck. Headlights picket-fenced through the forest ahead. The truck was coming this way, jangling over the rutted cow path.

  Jo dodged deeper into the trees and flattened herself against the ground. The headlights drew nearer. The crooked lights of an old Chevy truck veered into sight. It was ancient and rusty and its suspension groaned as it ached its way over ruts in the trail. It swerved past her and kept going.

  The orange glow blossomed vividly and the ground shuddered. A moment later the explosion boomed, flat and hard.

  She got up. Sticking to the trees, she ran toward the fire. Soon she saw a ranch house fully engulfed in flames, a jet-black shell screaming orange and red from within, black smoke boiling from the roof.

  Her hopes of finding people and a phone and help were futile. She ran around the burning structure, calling out, hoping that nobody was trapped inside. She got no answer.

  The burning garage was empty. No car, no motorcycle, no bike. And the dirt driveway, it became apparent, meandered deeper into the forest—the house was nowhere near the highway. She was still cut off from civilization.

  She made a full circle of the house and stopped, shoulders heaving, on the verge of tears. The heat became a radiant wall against her body. It felt like life and death all at once. The crackle grew to a roar that overcame all else.

  Until she heard a frightened whinny.

  She found the rancher’s horse in its corral, shying away from the flames, too skittish to run toward the open gate.

  The wind whipped rain against the sides of the Hummer. Lark ran back from the riverbank and shimmied through the smashed-out window to get out of the storm. Gabe walked down to the water’s edge. The river was rushing over the rocks. It looked purple, almost black, in the strange, deepening light.

  He checked his diver’s watch. He looked up the gorge, wondering where Jo had gone.

  It had been fifteen years since Jo had climbed on a horse. In the hierarchy of dangerous rides, she figured they ranked as less powerful than motorcycles but ten times as unpredictable. But Kyle had the rancher’s truck and a head start. The horse might be surefooted, fast, and able to climb through terrain the rancher’s truck couldn’t.

  She put up her hands. “Easy, boy. Easy.”

  The horse tossed its head and danced away from her. It was saddled and had on its bridle. The reins hung free, draped in the dirt. She approached slowly, keeping her voice low.

  “Whoa, boy. Whoa.”

  The horse stopped and lowered its head. In the reflected firelight, its eyes were liquid. She walked toward it, her hand trembling.

  “That’s it. Whoa.” It was the only thing she could think to say, and apparently it actually, really worked with horses.

  “Whoa, boy. It’s okay.” She stroked the horse’s flank, felt its muscles twitch. It smelled of sweat and dust and leather of the saddle. She took the reins.

  “Make you a deal. Let me up, and I’ll get you out of here.”

  Carefully she put a foot in the stirrup. She grabbed the saddle horn, pulled herself up, swung her leg over, and settled into the creaking saddle.

  She checked her balance. The stirrups were too long for her; she could barely keep her feet in them. But she had no time to figure it out. She jammed her hiking boots as far in the stirrups as she could get them.

  She saw the empty scabbard. She didn’t need to be told that it was designed to hold a long gun.

  Gripping the reins and twisting her fingers into the horse’s mane, she said, “Okay, let’s go.”

  She kicked the horse in the ribs. It took off like a stone thrown from a slingshot and raced out of the corral.

  “Dammit.”

  She gripped its mane, pitching crazily backward, as it galloped through firelight up the trail. She pulled herself forward. The animal bunched and rolled beneath her. In the gusting rain, she could barely see.

  She had to get back to the Hummer. If Kyle got there first, God knows what he would do. And nobody knew he was coming.

  Two minutes later, she approached the wide spot where the bodies of Dustin and the rancher lay on the path. The horse was going at a hard canter, and she was squeezing the reins and its mane, the saddle horn, everything she could. She had barely gotten into the rhythm of its gait, beginning to feel that she wasn’t going to fly off, when it veered away from the track.

  “Whoa,” she called.

  The horse dug its back legs into the dirt and stopped sharply. Jo’s inertia carried her forward. She slid up the horse
’s neck like it was a Slip ’N Slide. She tackled it, held on, bumped back down half out of the saddle.

  The horse tossed its head. It sidestepped and tried to wheel. Jo pulled on the reins.

  “Whoa, boy. Whoa.”

  It didn’t want to approach the bodies in the path. She pulled on the reins and kicked her heels into its sides and managed to get it to dance half sideways toward the site. As she did, lightning scored the clouds. Her skin wriggled. The rancher’s body lay in a different position than she’d seen earlier.

  Kyle had driven straight over him. The force of the blow had flipped him over. He lay side-on to poor Dustin, hand draped over his back.

  It looked as though the rancher had tried to pat Dustin on the shoulder, to say, Ain’t this a low blow. Thunder warbled, hard and close. Behind it, above the wind, another sound twisted in the air. It was a keening, broken sobbing.

  Jo blinked, her skin prickling, and tried to hold the horse still. The night had gone dark again, the bodies indistinguishable from the ground, even with the clouds blowing past, the moonlight cutting through the rain in piebald patches.

  The horse threw its head up and down and whinnied.

  The keening increased. And a swatch of moonlight passed over the bodies. Out of the trees, hands gripping her head, staggered Autumn.

  31

  The cop who showed up at Jo’s house was an Asian American detective with vivid eyes and a hard glare, dressed in black from head to toe. She greeted Tina and shook Evan’s hand.

  “Amy Tang, Homicide Detail.”

  Tang was the size of a mongoose and looked as likely to stand her ground against cobras and all other threats. She knew her way to Jo’s kitchen.

  “Still no word,” Evan said. “Her number is out of service, she hasn’t checked in at the Lodge in Yosemite, and she never made it to the sheriff’s office in Sonora.”