“Will he …?”
“I can’t sugar-coat this. He’s in very critical condition.”
Sam felt as if she was hearing the pronouncement through a thick pillow. The sound came through but the meaning didn’t seem clear at all.
The nurse rose again. “I’m going back in there and I’ll come back as soon as there’s anything to report. I know it seems like it’s taking forever—just know that there is an expert team with him.” She squeezed Sam’s shoulder before she walked away.
It only made Sam feel marginally better. She could only imagine what was going on behind those closed doors. Her mind shut down when she thought of medical television shows and how the patient was a cloth-draped hunk of meat and organs, with instruments and masses of gauze protruding from his body. She couldn’t go there. Couldn’t think of the specifics of what they might be doing to her beloved Beau.
There was a window at the far end of the waiting area, and Sam focused on the tips of a leafy tree in a wide expanse of blue, unbroken by even a single cloud. The green leaves shimmered in the heat. At least if there had been a cloud or two she could occupy her mind by watching them form familiar shapes.
Movement near the elevators caught her attention and before she knew it Kelly rushed into her arms.
“I’m so glad you’re okay, Mom,” Kelly sobbed against Sam’s neck.
I’m so far from okay … you have no idea.
She looked up. Scott had a somber look on his face. He tried to send her a brave smile, but it didn’t quite work.
“How’s Beau? They said he was in surgery?”
Sam nodded. “It’s taking a long time. The nurse came out—” She glanced at the clock on the wall. Had it actually been two hours ago? Other people who had been sitting in the room had left without her noticing. “It’s critical, they say.”
Kelly stepped back and swabbed at her eyes with a wad of tissues.
“How did it—it was Fitch, wasn’t it?”
Sam could only nod. “He took Beau by surprise. I … I did so many things wrong. Why didn’t I leave the dogs free to attack him? He threatened to kill Ranger and Nellie and I locked them up.”
“Mom, you couldn’t have—”
“I should have just handed over the box. In light of all this, it’s just not that important.” She raked her fingers through her hair. “I can’t believe I called Beau out there. I wanted him to come and capture Fitch, but I’ve led him to his—” She couldn’t think the word death, much less say it.
“No … Mom! Don’t start blaming yourself. It’s just what happened.”
“Sam, a lawman’s life involves danger. We all know that,” Scott said.
A new thought hit Sam hard. Knowing he would be in danger, why hadn’t Beau been wearing his Kevlar vest? Was he lying in that operating room now, his life in the balance, because he’d simply skipped such a crucial step? She realized she might never know the answer.
She sank back onto the uncomfortable chair with her head in her hands.
Her phone lay on an adjacent chair. When it rang, Kelly looked at the screen. “It’s coming from the bakery.”
“Can you …?”
Kelly picked it up and walked toward the big window. “Jen, hey.” The girls had been friends since fifth grade. “We don’t know anything yet. Surgery. Yeah … Okay … I’ll tell her.”
She turned to tell Sam that the bakery crew sent their love and would take care of everything back home; she was not to worry about business. But then she spotted the doctor standing in the doorway, looking toward their little group.
Chapter 47
He tried to take the winding roads at a reasonable speed, but everything in Marcus Fitch’s body told him to hurry. He needed to get to that plane and get as far away from New Mexico as possible before the word got out. As he passed by little mountain towns with colorful names like Angel Fire and Eagle Nest, he forced himself to watch the speedometer and keep an eye on the posted speed limits.
His white sedan with Colorado plates shouldn’t be a particular standout here, but he had no way of knowing what that daughter had witnessed or whether her neighbors might be on the ball enough to write down the number from an unfamiliar car.
He turned on the radio and tuned to a station from Taos. Word of the shooting was out, but the details were being kept minimal. A confrontation, a shooting, a lawman wounded. If the sheriff had died, wouldn’t they be saying so? Maybe not. Maybe they knew he was listening and wanted him to become complacent.
He caught himself. They knew he was listening? Seriously?
But most certainly his description had been sent out to law enforcement in the area by now. He tried to think what to do. There could be roadblocks—almost certainly would be roadblocks or checkpoints at the state border. He picked up his phone but was in a dead spot on a road that ran alongside a creek in the bottom of a deep canyon.
If he could reach his pilot, the plane might be able to come get him at one of these little regional airports—if there was one. Marcus had no idea and no internet signal. Or, what if he could reach the OSM offices? Um. Not good. Under questioning he’d have to admit that he’d not only failed to get the box from Samantha Sweet and the other one from her daughter—feats he’d bragged he could do—but if the board found out he’d become involved in a shooting that brought attention to the organization they would, as the saying went, disavow all knowledge of him.
Okay, so that option was out. The nagging pain in his side worsened.
What was the best thing he could do—right now—to help his situation? He debated for a few more miles until he noticed there were a number of campgrounds and fishing spots along this road. He watched for the next one and pulled into it. A number of vehicles, mostly RVs and trailers, were parked in designated slots for camping. If he could switch the plates on his car, that would throw anyone off the scent who might have his number on their watch list.
Then he got a better idea.
One end of the rambling campground seemed to be set aside for long-term camping. Here, he noticed most of the trailers had their curtains drawn, and there was a definite lack of removable items such as folding chairs, grills, and coolers in these camp sites. He remembered a friend from his teen years in Pennsylvania whose parents took their camper to the mountains and left it parked at some campground for the summer, then the family would drive up from the city in their car, camp out for the weekend, drive home Sunday afternoons to be back for the work week.
Hiding out for a week or two ought to give the story time to die down in importance. He circled the car through the rest of the area and back out to the highway. A quarter mile farther along was one of the day-fishing areas. Signs warned that a fee was required even to stop and picnic. Fine. He inserted money into the little machine, got the day permit sticker in return, and placed it as the instructions indicated on his windshield.
Taking up his backpack containing the box Facinor, he hiked back to the long-term campers. He was careful to keep to the woods as much as possible, and he saw no one the whole way. Feeling like a customer on an RV dealer lot, he began shopping until he found the right one. Lots of dust indicated the owners hadn’t been back in a while, and the older-model camper had a lock a four-year-old could bypass.
After dark, he would make his way back to the rental car and find another vehicle to switch license tags with. Meanwhile, he would get familiar with his new hideout.
Chapter 48
The doctor’s expression seemed grave. Sam felt despair welling up inside.
“He came through the surgery alive,” the man, who reminded her of Mark Harmon, said.
Expressions of relief all around.
“His condition, however, is still very critical. The chest wound, of course, being the worst. We repaired the damage as best we could. I’m afraid bullet wounds can be very, very damaging. The shoulder was less serious, but there may be impaired movement in that arm.”
Sam wished he would quit saying ‘very�
�� about everything.
“He’ll be unconscious for a while. In fact, we’ve induced a coma to keep him still.”
“I need to see him,” Sam said. “And this is my daughter and son-in-law. Can they come too?”
“One at a time is best right now. We’ll see about later.”
He showed her to the nurses’ station and then to the glass-fronted room nearby where Beau lay, unmoving, while monitors and machines ticked all around him. A pump-like thing breathed for him through an uncomfortable-looking apparatus taped to his mouth, and strands of tubing ran from IV bags on a tall stand and disappeared beneath the edge of the thin cotton gown.
Sam’s breath caught and tears sprang to her eyes. She’d never considered what her final sight of her husband could be, but she would hate for this to be it. She nodded to the doctor, wanting him to go away.
As soon as they were alone, she took Beau’s free hand and began talking to him, keeping the tears out of her voice. Trying to think of positive things to say was the challenge. There seemed nothing positive at all about this day’s events.
“I wish I could change everything about this morning,” she said. “You need to wake up and get well so I can tell you all the things I left unsaid. Please do it, Beau. Please wake up.”
Her allotted ten minutes vanished in a blur, and the nurse was telling her it was time to go.
“I’m not leaving the hospital.”
“We’ll set up a cot and some blankets for you.” The woman’s eyes were kind. She saw the pain in families all the time, Sam realized. “You’ll be right there in the room with him. Unless you’d prefer a real bed. There’s a family room one floor down.”
“No—here, please.”
Kelly was practically dancing on the balls of her feet when Sam returned to the waiting area. Sam told them about the arrangement for her to stay the night.
“Mom, open your bag. I want you to take this.” She pulled open her own tote-sized purse to reveal that she was carrying the box, Manichee. “Maybe it will help.”
Sam’s heart lifted. “Thanks. You’re so smart, my brilliant daughter.” She slipped the box into her backpack purse.
Scott returned from the vending machines with a bottled water. “There’s not much in the way of food in those things,” he said with a tilt of his head. “But I’d be happy to bring you something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“It’s after ten p.m. and you haven’t eaten anything all day,” he reminded.
“Not now. Not the diet I’d choose, but maybe I’ll lose a few pounds this week,” she said in a feeble attempt at humor.
“I got us a room at a hotel down the road,” he told the women. “Sam, anytime you want a shower, a better bed, real food … just say so.”
She’d given no thought to how she must look or smell, she realized. “I’m fine for now. I’m going back in there.”
She swore Kelly sent her a subtle wink.
Chapter 49
Marcus explored the camper in the last of the fading daylight. There was an old flashlight in the glove compartment, but the batteries barely lit the bulb to a dull glow. He switched it off. The tiny galley revealed plastic bins with a few food items left behind. He devoured a whole pack of cheese crackers before he noticed they were stale, almost to the point of being rancid.
One bin held canned goods—three cans of green beans and two of tomato sauce. A box of Triscuits in an overhead cupboard had been chewed into by mice. He shoved it back in place. A drawer beneath a small clothing locker was jammed full of miscellanea—a pink barrette for a little girl, a screwdriver, a roll of electrical tape, a wrapped packet of fish hooks, two C-cell batteries, four clothespins, and a piece of thin cord about two feet long. He compared the batteries to the flashlight he’d found, but they were the wrong size. It required D-cells. He kept looking.
The clothing consisted of two cheap windbreakers and a pair of ladies rain boots, circa 1970. In fact the entire camper seemed to come from that era, probably owned by some old couple who never aspired to anything nicer. He reminded himself to feel at least a little speck of gratitude; they were, after all, providing him with a temporary hideout.
He looked at the wound, knowing he should tend to it, but he’d uncovered no first aid supplies in the RV. Maybe it would just scab over, on its own.
He took his phone from his pocket and looked at it. Still no signal, and the battery was now down to twenty percent. There was one electrical outlet in the camper, but when he pulled his charger cord from his backpack and plugged it in, there was no response. Probably needed to run a generator or some such thing to use the vehicle’s electrical system, and he didn’t dare make that much noise. He drummed his fingers on the cheap dinette table, deciding what to do.
“Okay,” he said to the empty space. “The plan was to wait until dark—that’s what I’ll do.”
The light inside was nearly gone, so he quickly gathered the few useful items. He placed strips of black electrical tape over the lens of the flashlight so its beam, although not bright, would be directed in a narrow strip toward the ground. The screwdriver would come in very handy.
He peered out the edge of one of the window shades, but a couple was walking a big black dog along the paved lane that separated the campsites. He let the shade fall back in place, hoping he hadn’t left footprints in the dust around the entrance to his lair. But they were talking and gesturing and didn’t even glance in his direction.
An hour later it was fully dark outside. He felt edgy and out of touch without his phone, but he allowed another hour for people to get tired of sitting out in the chilly air, to go inside their RVs and settle in with television or playing cards or whatever people did in these places to avoid being bored to death.
Finally, around ten p.m. he stepped quietly out of the camper, flashlight in hand, screwdriver in a front pocket. The temperature must have dropped twenty degrees since this afternoon. His pistol was tucked into the waistband of his pants and his backpack was securely in place. No way he was going anywhere and leaving it behind. He made his way to another unoccupied RV, four spaces away, and quickly removed the license plate from it. The reflective material glared alarmingly in the dark, and he quickly shoved it into his pack, next to the wooden box.
Backtracking his way through the woods to the pullout where he’d left the rental car was no easy feat, and the stupid flashlight began to flicker shortly into the journey. He switched to his cell phone light, and it, too, was down to a dim glow by the time he spotted the car. Everyone else who’d parked there during the day was gone now, and he realized his would be obvious to any forest ranger or cop who cruised by. Plus, he was chilled to the bone and needed supplies.
He wondered how much farther until he could get out of this canyon and receive a phone signal. Would there be a police roadblock along the way?
Screw it. He quickly switched the car’s license plate for the one he’d taken from the RV, burying the incriminating one under a couple of inches of dirt and pine needles. He tossed his pack on the passenger seat and climbed in, starting the car and turning the heater controls all the way to the hottest setting. How could it be so freaking cold in the middle of the summer, for chrissakes?
His phone charger came with a cigarette plug adapter, which he put to use immediately once the car was running. No doubt he could fully charge the phone and be on his way out of here if he could make it to Colorado Springs, but that was still a good four hours away and he didn’t dare get on the interstate. For sure, there would be cops looking for him along the major highways. His plan to hide out of sight was still a good one. At least a week, he guessed.
So far, only two vehicles had come along—one from each direction—and neither slowed or paid him the slightest attention. He put the car in gear and started rolling, heading in the same direction he’d been going, away from Taos.
Ten miles later he came to a little fork-in-the-road town of sorts, indicated by a reduced-speed sign and the
name of the place: Ute Park, Elevation 7,413. Holy crap—he might as well be in the Alps! No wonder it was cold here. A combination gas station and convenience store sat back from the road, and ahead he caught a glimpse of a reflective sign with the US Postal Service logo.
Two vehicles sat near the log building housing the convenience store. One had two flat tires and both were coated so thickly in dust they obviously hadn’t been driven recently. He pulled off the road, hoping that if anyone was observing they would think he was looking to pump some gas. Dumb city guy who thought things stayed open 24/7 everywhere, right? If they noticed him at all, they certainly wouldn’t make themselves known.
He rolled slowly through the station, saw no activity, and cut his headlights. With a quick glance around, he steered to the back of the building and made sure he was out of sight of the road.
Yes! a phone signal. He quickly tapped the number he’d been given for the charter pilot. Three rings and voicemail. Of course. Had he really thought the guy would wait up until all hours? He left a message: “I’ve been delayed but still coming. Don’t leave without me. I’ll touch base again when I get closer to your location.”
There. Hopefully he could string the guy along several days by saying he was nearly there. If he’d admitted that he didn’t plan to show up for a week, his ride would abandon him. Still might. Marcus’s one regret was that he’d left his large suitcase with all his clothes on the plane. Dammit. He should have been done with Taos forever and back to the plane in under twelve hours. He was already sick of the stink of these bloody clothes.
With a glance toward the back of the convenience store, he sized it up. Okay—one chance to stock up. He got out, picked up the pistol, and locked the car. A wimpy yellow bug bulb near the store’s back door provided the only light.
He tried the door with no luck—even this far out in the sticks, people weren’t that trusting. Beside the door was a window about two feet wide by three feet high. He reached up and whacked it with the butt of his pistol, working quickly to break out enough of the glass to pass through without slicing himself, then did the same to the yellow light bulb.
Sweet Magic Page 18
