Those Who Wish Me Dead

by Michael Koryta

  “Behind us,” he said. “We lost them.”

  “I doubt that. Are they with Ethan?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jamie’s eyes shifted to Hannah, and she said, “What happened, lady? Who in the hell are you?”

  Hannah didn’t answer. She had turned away from the woman as if the gun didn’t bother her at all. She was staring down at the fire when she said, “You don’t have time to find them. Don’t you realize that?”

  Allison Serbin said, “They’re your brothers? You sent the boy up here to be killed?”

  “It wasn’t anyone’s first choice, Mrs. Serbin. The boy’s parents are very distrustful. Even when they agreed with my plan, they wouldn’t turn him over to me. Insisted on sending him to Montana themselves, and I’ll give them credit, they did a fine job getting him out under cover. Could he have been taken at the airport in Billings? Certainly. But at such great risk. In the mountains, though? So much easier. Had your husband not decided to be such an overachiever, it would have ended for the boy with a bullet from a rifle no one ever saw. That was the idea. It might have been hard on you both, sure, but nobody else would have been harmed. What we have here, though, is a situation that got a little out of hand. Too many people tried too hard to help our friend Jace.”

  Her brothers. Jace stared at her and realized he could see it. Tall and lean and blond and with the same calm. But she wasn’t shooting yet. They wouldn’t have waited, he was pretty sure. That was the difference.

  “You sent him out here so they could find him?” Allison was asking, and Jace hadn’t heard that much anger in anyone’s voice in a long time—he thought she might disregard the gun entirely and try to kill this woman with her hands. “You asked Ethan to keep him safe but all you wanted was to know where he was? You evil bitch. You actually sent him to—”

  “To be fair, Mrs. Serbin, a good deal of this was your husband’s fault. He tried too hard. It wasn’t supposed to take so much work. I feel bad for the rest of you, because all of this didn’t need to happen. Jace here was the only one who…who was required.” She shifted and blinked a few times—she was the only one facing the smoke, and it was blowing hard now, and the fire was louder than before—and said, “Jace, would you like me to let these women go?”

  He nodded. The tears were threatening. He didn’t want to cry in front of this woman, though, in front of this evil bitch. Allison had called her exactly what she was. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of crying his way to the end. It was what she expected from him.

  “Please,” he said. His voice was a whisper. “Yes, please, let them go.”

  Hannah reached for him then, trying to take him in her arms, and the woman fired her gun and Jace ducked back and lifted an arm as if he might protect himself from the bullet. She’d shot high, though, and it was gone, into the smoke.

  “Next one won’t be a warning,” she said. “Now, Jace, these women can go. If you tell me the truth, and you work with me, they can go. That’s your choice.”

  “Yes,” he repeated.

  “All right. How far away are they? Where was the last place you saw them? Or have you not seen them?”

  “They’re behind us,” he said. “That’s all I know.” He waved a hand up the mountain, and that was when he saw the man in black coming down toward them. Jace’s face must have shown something, because the woman turned and saw him too and apparently recognized him, even at a distance. She seemed pleased.

  “Well, would you look at that. We don’t need to go anywhere, Jace. We can all just sit here and wait.”

  “You said they could go.” His voice rose to a shout. “You said they could go!”

  “I’m going to leave that decision up to other people. For now, we’re all going to wait.”

  Hannah’s voice was soft when she said, “Then we’re all going to die. Not just the ones you want. You will too.”

  The woman turned and looked back down the slope to where the trees were burning and said, “I think we’ve got plenty of time.”

  Jace didn’t even look at the fire. He was still staring at the man. It was a single man coming down off the mountain, on their trail. It was one of them, there was no doubt.

  “I told you,” he said to Hannah. “They don’t quit.”

  Allison had been considering a rush at Jamie Bennett, so infuriated by the betrayal that she was hardly afraid of the gun, thought she could take the bullets and still kill this bitch, but now there was another one, and she knew how it would go from here.

  “I hadn’t expected to see you so soon,” the man in black called to them as he approached, and Allison wasn’t sure whom he was addressing until Jamie responded.

  “I hadn’t expected to be needed. It looks like things got away from you.”

  “It has not gone as planned.”

  He was close enough now to be heard without shouting. His eyes took them in one at a time and lingered on Allison.

  “Mrs. Serbin, I have traveled with you in my mind for a full day and night now. You see what you’ve done to me?” He waved his free hand toward his face, which was a blistered mess. “And, no, you don’t look well yourself, but at least you have received proper medical treatment. I’ve suffered. It has not put me in a good frame of mind.”

  He turned then to the boy and spoke with a softness in his voice that sounded almost sweet, the awe of a new father addressing his child.

  “Jace, Jace, you beautiful lad. My, how you’ve troubled me. You’ve run far enough, don’t you think? If it makes you feel any better, you’ve taken a toll on me, son. You have truly taken a toll.”

  Jamie Bennett said, “Where is Patrick?”

  Allison had been wondering the same thing. One of them was horror enough, but there should have been two.

  Jack Blackwell did not speak for a moment. He was facing away from Jamie, his eyes on Jace Wilson, when he said, “Our brother is dead.”

  Jamie didn’t seem to believe him. Didn’t answer, just gave a little shake of her head.

  “Mrs. Serbin’s husband,” Jack said, “was not the aid I had hoped he would be.” He looked back at Allison and said, “He is dead too, but you understand that is not a fair trade to me.”

  Ethan was dead. He had been in his mountains, and it hadn’t seemed possible that he would die in them.

  Jack Blackwell looked away from them now, stared down into the fire that feasted below. For a time he just stood there, as if he were alone in the world and no troubles weighed on his mind.

  “Look at it go,” he said, almost to himself. “That was Patty’s, you know. That was his idea. And it may yet be effective, though he won’t know it. There are bodies to hide and stories to silence and it might be his fire that will do the trick.”

  He swiveled his head abruptly, faced the woman who’d guided Jace Wilson this far, and said, “Who are you?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I know your role,” he said. “You’re supposed to keep watch. You’re supposed to keep something like that”—he indicated the fire—“from being allowed to spread. But I’d like to know your name. Would you share that much, please, before we proceed?”

  She hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Hannah Faber.”

  Jack Blackwell nodded and mouthed the name once without speaking it aloud. A slow, thoughtful gesture, as if he were striving to commit her to eternal memory.

  Then he lifted his pistol and shot her.

  Allison had never before heard a sound like the one that came from Jace Wilson then. Something between a scream and a howl, and he scrambled toward the woman as she fell, and bright blood cascaded between her fingers while she held the wound, which was centered in her right knee. Jack Blackwell lowered the pistol and said, “Have a minute with her, Jace. Go on and take a minute. We’re pressed for time, but I’ll not rush this. Not after so long a journey.”

  “Hurry,” Jamie Bennett said. “Hurry or we’ll never get out of here.”

  “You’d like to
finish it?”

  “I can.”

  “No.” He shook his head, watching Hannah Faber, whose feet were still moving on the rocks as if she intended to find a way to stand. “No, the work that remains is mine alone. And, Patty, he’ll get them in the end. He lit the match, you know. I’ll let them wait on his work now.”

  He tilted his head to study Hannah’s face. He watched with great interest, and then he said, “Jace, please step aside.”

  Jace Wilson didn’t move, and Jack Blackwell sighed and then lifted the pistol and fired again, and this time it was Allison who screamed.

  He’d fired around the boy, just inches to the side of him, and put another bullet into Hannah Faber, this time in her left foot. Blood ran out of her boot and her head dropped back and her mouth opened but no scream came. She just writhed in silence.

  “I believe she’s good to wait on our brother’s work now,” Jack said. “I think that’s a fine way to bring it all to a close.”

  “Hurry,” Jamie Bennett said again. She was looking down at the oncoming fire and her face was wet with sweat. Jack Blackwell ignored her and turned to Allison and lifted the pistol, then lowered it and shook his head.

  “For you and me, things should be a bit more intimate, don’t you think?” he said, and then he flipped the gun in a smooth twirl so that he was holding it by the barrel, like a club, and advanced on her.

  “I’m glad he killed your brother,” Allison said. Her voice was shaking.

  “Are you, though?” he said. “Is that pleasing to you?” The soft, musical tone was gone. “I’m going to—”

  The rest of his words and most of his face left him then. His head burst in a red cloud and he dropped sideways and didn’t even roll when he hit the rocks.

  For a few seconds, Ethan had no idea what had gone wrong. His skull was ringing and blood was pouring out of his face, soaking his cheeks and coating his lips in coppery warmth and dripping into the rocks where the rifle lay.

  Was I pointing the son of a bitch backward? he thought, and then he lifted his right hand to his forehead and brought back a palmful of blood and thought, You are one dumb bastard.

  He’d had his eye pressed to the scope. Right up against the metal ring of it, of a scope with high eye relief that allowed the shooter to keep his face away, because guess what, boy, there was some serious kick when you shot a bullet the size of your index finger a thousand yards.

  But he’d shot it. And where had it gone?

  The QuikClot bandages were dark with blood, and he knew how bad that was, but right then, right there, sitting on top of the world, Montana and Wyoming spreading out for miles in all directions around him, he couldn’t bring himself to care. He just needed to know what his shot had done.

  He sat against the rocks where it had all started, where the fall had begun, and he got his breath back as sweat ran salty into his open, gasping mouth, and then he turned and looked down to the place from which he’d come, and he started to laugh.

  It was not so far. From up here, it did not look so far. A man with a strong arm would probably believe he could hit it with a baseball, and maybe he wouldn’t be wrong.

  But that man wouldn’t have climbed from there to here, bleeding and broken. You didn’t know the distance until you’d done that.

  He rolled onto his stomach and found the rifle where it had fallen, and he brought it up again. Put his eye to the scope—same dumb mistake, but he wasn’t shooting this time—and realized he couldn’t focus. He had to pull back and wipe at the blood in his eye; he was awash in it. When he looked again, all he saw was smoke and fire. The forest was burning hot now, the wind carrying the fire up toward him, but it would never reach him, not across all of that stone. Then he moved the scope a touch and he was looking at his wife again.

  The first time he’d seen her through the scope, he hadn’t believed it. He’d heard enough stories of the things men thought they saw when death was near, and this one fit, a mirage of his wife, but then the rest of them had taken shape, his wife and Connor Reynolds and Jamie Bennett and another woman, one he didn’t know. The fire lookout, he supposed. All alive. All with Jack Blackwell.

  He hadn’t had time to wonder over it, the way they’d all met there, the paths they’d taken. Not when Jack Blackwell started shooting. Ethan had wanted to fire fast then but knew that he couldn’t, because, just as Jack had warned his now-dead brother, a miss at this distance would be costly. This was no AR-15; he wasn’t going to be able to fire a burst of shots and adjust along the way. Shoot once, and shoot true. He’d forced himself to aim and think, trying to remember the basics of shooting at a target that was so far downhill. He’d been taught these things once and all that stood out was something that seemed counterintuitive but was the reality: Whether you were shooting uphill or downhill, the bullets would always pull high. Slightly higher on a downhill shot, for the simple reason that gravity was less of an enemy to the bullet’s path when it was already headed down.

  He’d aimed at Jack Blackwell’s waist first and then decided that wasn’t low enough. It was a damned steep slope and the bullet would be climbing above his aiming point, and it would be better to hit him in the hip than not at all. He lowered his aiming point to the knees, moved his finger to the trigger, and let out a long, slow breath. Tried to let everything within him go loose and liquid. A tense shot was a missed shot. His father had taught him that. Tense muscles jerked on the trigger. Jerked triggers produced wild bullets.

  Then Jack advanced toward Allison, and Ethan kept those black knees in the center of the crosshairs and let his index finger graze the trigger and pull it home and the world exploded on him.

  Now, scope to his eye again, he had the world back, if in a bloody haze, and he could see his wife and the boy and…he could see Jack Blackwell.

  Jack Blackwell was down.

  Ethan started to laugh, and then he realized it sounded more like sobbing, and he tried to stop but couldn’t.

  Got him, got him, got him. Got them.

  But beyond the survivors was a rising scarlet cloud. The fire was pushing hard and fast. They needed to move.

  For a few seconds, no one made a sound. Then Jamie Bennett let out a low moan and fell to her knees and stretched her hands out to her brother as if she could put the pieces back together. She dropped her gun when she reached for him and Allison had the slow, stupid thought Someone should get that, but she didn’t move. Jace was still sitting on the ground, and though he’d registered that Jack Blackwell was dead, he seemed catatonic. His focus on the woman Jack had shot was total. He was whispering to her, and Allison couldn’t hear the words. The woman had her eyes closed and was breathing through her teeth.

  “Who shot him?” Jamie Bennett said. “Who took that shot?”

  There was no one in sight. The mountain was empty.

  Jack Blackwell was gone, but the fire was not, and the sound of it was louder now, a roar beneath the black smoke that boiled out of the tree-lined ridge below them. The heat was intensifying every minute. Jamie Bennett got to her feet and looked at Allison and then the other woman.

  “It wasn’t supposed to go this way,” she said. “This one was supposed to be easy.”

  Nobody answered. She began to walk away with a weaving, unsteady stride. She almost went down once, caught a tree, held herself up. Nobody moved or spoke or attempted to stop her. The kill shot from nowhere had stunned them all. Jamie steadied herself and continued walking toward Tango. The horse turned to meet her.

  Allison finally moved, crawled over the ground for the two guns that lay there in the blood, got her hand around the pistol, and then looked back at Jamie when Tango let out a whinny. Jamie was trying to mount him. It took her three tries but she got into the saddle, and then she began to kick him. Trying to drive him downhill.

  He was already uneasy from the fire; the only reason he was still there at all was Allison, and he did not want to carry another rider. Now he was trying to rid himself of Jamie Bennett; i
t was as if he understood what Allison had not been able to. Jamie stayed on the horse maybe fifty yards before he succeeded in throwing her. She landed in the rocks and her leg snapped beneath her and when she tried to rise, she let out a cry. The horse hesitated, as if he felt guilty despite himself—Tango was nothing if not a good horse—but then he began to gallop, into the trees and out of sight.

  Jamie Bennett tried again to rise, and this time her scream was louder and she went down faster and then she was silent and they couldn’t see her anymore and it was just the three of them left there as Jack Blackwell’s blood poured down the slope and dripped toward the fire.

  Allison looked at what remained of his skull and then up into the mountains and said, “Ethan is alive.”

  42

  There were ghosts on the mountain now.

  Hannah could see her old crew, all of them, but it was better this time, better than it had been. There were no screams and no one was running, and even Brandon was on his feet again—he hadn’t given up, was standing tall and strong.

  And watching her.

  They all were.

  Nick came down close and looked at her patiently and said, “Hannah? Deploy or die.”

  He’d screamed it the last time she’d heard the command, but this morning he was calm. They all were. It reassured her. They were the best, after all. Hotshots. If they were not panicking, then she shouldn’t. They were the best.

  Nick said it again, his blue eyes earnest, imploring: “Hannah? Hannah?”

  He left her then, and the spoken name remained, but the voice was different and the face was different. The boy. Hannah looked at him and thought, Thank you, God, he made it across the creek. I didn’t think that he would. I didn’t think he had a chance.

  “Hannah?”

  Wrong boy. Wrong mountain, wrong day. Hannah blinked and looked into a tear-streaked face and said, “Yeah.” It came out as a croak and she wet her lips and tried again and this time it was easier. “Yes, Connor. I’m fine.”