Chapter Eighteen
“What’s going on?” Luke asked.
I didn’t answer until I had driven out of the yard and we were on the long drive back to the main road.
“Weird stuff,” I said. “They told me Stephanie never made it there.”
“Maybe she changed her mind,” Luke said.
“Maybe.” Luke had not been there at the doorway to know how strange it had been.
The men had seemed like hunters, eyeing me as if I were a deer in their gunsights.
I thought of the pickup truck inside the barn. “Luke, what would you do with a basket big enough to hold three people?”
“Is this a riddle?”
“No.” I described what I had seen.
“Oh,” he said. “It’s probably from a hot-air balloon. Especially if it’s in the back of a truck.”
“Hot-air balloon?”
“My parents took me for a ride in one as a present on my sixteenth birthday. The guys who pilot the balloon need a way to get the balloon to and from their launch site. They load the basket in the truck. Plus the empty, folded up balloon. Plus the gas burner.”
I was driving slowly because my mind was working on something.
“Burner,” I repeated to myself out loud.
“Yeah, burner,” Luke said, thinking I had asked a question. “They need to heat the air to fill the balloon. That was the cool part, watching the balloon fill until it lifted the basket into the air. If they hadn’t tied it down with ropes, it would have just floated away without us.”
“Ropes.” Sure. There had been ropes tied to the basket. Why was that bugging me?
“What a noise, though,” Luke said. “That burner really roars. The balloon ride is quiet, except when the pilot turns the burner on to lift it some more.”
“Noise,” I said. That was bugging me too.
“Lots of noise. I was watching the burner, thinking it would be great to roast some hot dogs over the flame.”
“Flame.” I must have sounded like an idiot to Luke.
Then I put it together: rope, burner, noise, flame.
Without warning, I swung the truck’s steering wheel hard. We bounced off the road, down through a small ditch and up the other side.
“What are you doing?!” Luke said.
I ignored him. I wrestled the steering wheel and managed to get the truck between the trees. I drove a little farther until we were well off the road.
I put the truck in park, turned off the ignition and shut off the headlights.
“I’m going to ask you again,” Luke said. “What are you doing?”
“Broomsticks,” I told him. I reached across him to the glove box. Ranchers always carried flashlights. I would need mine. “We have to go back to the ranch. On foot.”
“Try making sense,” he said.
I grabbed the flashlight from the glove box and stepped out of the truck. Luke got out too. We stood in the darkness. The truck engine ticked as it cooled.
“Broomsticks,” I repeated. I was about to explain when I heard a sound.
“Listen,” I said. “What’s that?”
Luke listened. “Sounds like a car or truck. It’s coming from the ranch.”
“Maybe it’s Stephanie.” I began to walk among the trees toward the road, using the flashlight to show me a path. Luke followed.
The sound of the vehicle got louder. I shut the flashlight off and stood beside a tree. I didn’t have a good feeling about this. Especially since I didn’t see headlights.
A minute later, I understood why. The truck was traveling without its lights on. As it passed us, I saw the outline of Jim Cowle, the big foreman, behind the steering wheel. He was hunched forward, peering at the road ahead of him.
“Spooky,” Luke said. “Why not use headlights?”
“Maybe because he doesn’t want to be seen.”
“By who?” Luke asked. “The only other people on the road would be us. They know that because we just left.”
“Exactly,” I told him. “Let me ask you something. If you and I were in the truck right now, on that road, would we see him coming up behind us?”
“No.”
“Does that tell you anything?”
“Yes,” Luke said after a couple of seconds. “And I don’t like it. What is going on here?”
“We’re going to find out,” I said, “by going back to the ranch. On foot. Remember?”
Chapter Nineteen
As we got closer, I whispered to Luke that I wanted to go to the barn first. Of all the buildings, it would be the easiest one to get inside. We were looking for Stephanie or her Bronco 4x4. After that, I hoped to find something that would help me figure out more of this puzzle. If Stephanie wasn’t in the barn, we’d go to the house next.
We circled the house, stopping in a stand of trees to listen for any signs that someone knew we were there.
“We’ll have to come up to the barn from behind,” I whispered to Luke. “In front, there’s a security light.”
Luke pointed in the direction of the barn. Our eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and we didn’t need the flashlight, not with the full moon that had risen.
“But there are animals back there,” he whispered.
He was right, of course. There were pens and corrals with cattle. Not only could we see the dark outlines of the animals moving around, but we could smell and hear them.
“Your point?” I asked.
“Big animals,” he said, “with pointy horns—”
“Stay on the right side of the fence and the big animals can’t get you.” I grinned. “Besides, you’ve faced plenty of big animals in hockey.”
“I can’t do it. It’s like some people have a fear of heights. Me, it’s this—” He let his voice trail away. I was already walking toward the pens behind the barn.
“Then wait at the truck,” I said. I was worried enough already. The last thing I needed was to have to babysit him.
I left him behind. Near the back of the barn, I was able to get a sense of the layout of the pens and corrals. There were four big corrals, with dozens of cattle in each one. There were some smaller pens, with only a couple of animals. Ranchers sometimes separated cows with new calves from the rest of the herd.
I walked past the pens to the rear entrance of the barn. It was a much smaller door than the one at the front. It was also locked.
I looked upward. On the second floor of the barn, there was an opening. If it was anything like our barn, most of the second floor was a hayloft, a place to store bales of hay. Workers would pitch hay down through the opening above.
I tucked the flashlight into the front of my shirt. I found some hay bales and stacked them on top of each other. The stack wobbled dangerously, but I was finally high enough to reach the opening with my fingers. I hooked on, pulled myself up and wiggled my way into the hayloft.
Once I was on my feet again, I took the flashlight out of my shirt. Without the moonlight, it was almost black. I used the flashlight to find a set of wooden stairs down to the main level.
The front half of the barn was a wide-open work area. I swept my flashlight beam in all directions. I saw the pickup truck with the hot-air balloon basket. Behind it was a workbench with tools. Beside it was the fabric of the balloon. Next to the fabric was a gigantic leather strap. I couldn’t figure out what it was for, so I moved on.
A door led to the back half of the barn. I pushed it open slowly and listened in the darkness. I heard rustling. It was a familiar rustling, the movement of animals in stalls.
I didn’t want to waste time, so I moved inside quickly. There was a slight chance—if indeed they had Stephanie—that she was inside one of the stalls.
My flashlight showed stalls on both sides. The floor between was concrete, with a groove in the middle for water to run to a grate.
I stepped through the door. I shone my light into the first stall. Staring back at me was a monstrous bull. I moved on.
The next stall
showed another bull. And another.
It was at the fourth stall that my heart rate doubled.
My flashlight beam clearly showed the animal inside. It was another bull, all right, which shouldn’t have surprised me. What did surprise me was one simple fact. The bull inside was Big Boy. Our bull. The one that had been chopped into pieces.
I had no doubt it was him. I’d worked with Big Boy for years. I knew every marking on his black hide. Just to be sure, I climbed the stall and shone the flashlight at his side. In the light I could clearly see the Ellroy ranch brand.
I climbed back down.
Big Boy? Here? Alive?
It was so unexpected, I felt like I’d been slammed in the head with another one of Luke’s slap shots.
I stepped toward the next stall and froze. The overhead lights had just been snapped on!
Before I could move, someone kicked the door behind me open.
“Turn around,” came the soft voice with the English accent.
I turned, getting ready to charge him.
Dan Belkie stood in the doorway with a rifle leveled from his shoulder, pointing straight at me.
“Fool,” he said. “Didn’t you wonder why my dog doesn’t bark at strangers? I don’t need warning. Not with all the electronic devices I have—motion detectors and video cameras. As soon as you stepped into the barn, I knew.”
“You’ve got our champion bull,” I said.
“Not for long,” Belkie said, smiling. “Tomorrow all the bulls go by ship to Japan. Cowle radioed back to me. I already know your truck hasn’t left the ranch. We’ll find it and your friend. As for you and the stupid, stupid girl, you’re both going to die in her 4x4.”
I saw his finger tighten on the trigger. I heard a pppffft of air. Something slammed into my shoulder. I looked down at my jean jacket. A dart was stuck in me, just below my collarbone.
I looked back at Dan Belkie. He was still smiling a broad evil smile.
I dropped the flashlight and yanked the dart out.
Dan Belkie kept smiling. His face began to blur. The smile became the nightmare smile of a monster as his face changed shape. Around him it got blacker and blacker. The black began to fill the whole room until, finally, it closed in on me.
There was a bang. My last thought was to dimly realize the bang was my head hitting concrete.
Chapter Twenty
“Josh? Josh?”
I groaned. My tongue felt like a wool sock stuck to the roof of my mouth.
“Josh?”
I managed to crack my eyes open. It took a few moments, but I could finally see that I was inside a Bronco. The windows were steamed.
“Josh?”
It hurt just to turn my head. “Stephanie?”
My voice was a ragged croak.
“Josh! I’m so glad you’re awake.”
My eyes began to focus. Stephanie sat beside me in her Bronco 4x4. Her wrists were taped to the steering wheel.
“My ankles are taped too,” she said, answering my question before I could ask. “We’re in one of the storage sheds at the back of the ranch.”
I reached over for her. I discovered my wrists were taped too. And my ankles. Just like Stephanie, I was bound with strips of wide gray duct tape strong enough to keep furnace pipes together. A short rope tied my wrists to my ankles so that I could barely move my arms. Worse, my fingers had been taped together so I couldn’t pull on the tape.
I swallowed a few times. “What—is— going—on?”
“He shot you with a tranquilizer gun. The same one he used on Champion, Big Boy and the other bloodline bulls. He said you would be out for hours.”
I managed to laugh. “I know how he shot me. I was there. I pulled the dart out.”
It hurt too much to keep laughing. The rest of my words came out in a whisper. “What I meant was, why are you here? What’s with the note? How did you know this was the ranch? And Big Boy, he’s alive—”
She took a deep breath. “Today, I got to thinking. If four of Locomotive’s bloodline had been killed already, wasn’t there a good chance it would continue? Plus, if that Ernest guy had been at our ranch and your ranch, he’d probably show up at the next ranch where the killings would happen.”
“Makes sense,” I said. The clock on the dash showed 12:01. I’d been out for about four hours.
“So I went back to the list of ranchers with a bull sired by Locomotive,” she said. “I called them one by one. I first asked them if someone who looked like Ernest had ever showed up to ask for work. I also explained why I thought their bulls were in danger and told them to guard the animals.”
“Still makes sense,” I said. “But how did you get here, to the Belkie ranch?”
“Simple.” She wriggled her fingers against the steering wheel and winced in pain. I understood. My own fingers were numb from the tight tape.
“Most of the other ranchers didn’t sound like they believed me. But when I called here, Dan Belkie listened to my whole story. Then he said he might know something interesting that would help me. We set up a time to meet. I had a ton of errands to do in town, so I couldn’t wait for you. You must have gotten both of my notes, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
I bent forward and tried to lift my hands to my mouth. Maybe I could bite through the tape. It didn’t work. My head pressed against the dash, and my hands stopped just short of my teeth.
“Let me guess,” I said as I sat back. “Belkie wanted to get you out here because he was worried you knew too much. You couldn’t know, of course, that he was the one behind all this.”
“He reeled me in like a fish,” she said. “When I got here, I made the mistake of telling him you were the only person who knew where I had gone. So he and the other man moved the truck in here and tied me to the steering wheel. Then Belkie told me the rest.”
“Hot-air balloon,” I said. The gigantic leather harness that I’d seen in the barn now made sense. “They were rustling prize bulls using a hot-air balloon.”
“He told you?”
“Nope.” If it was the only thing I’d done right all day, I could at least feel good about figuring it out. “Remember you told me that one of the ranch workers heard a roar and saw a glow in the sky as if a UFO had landed?”
“In Montana,” she said.
“Right, the roar must have been the burner they used to put hot air into the balloon. The glow came from the flame. And remember the steel rod I accidentally kicked at my ranch? They must have used it to tie a rope to the balloon so it wouldn’t float away while they were killing the cattle. I’m guessing they used a few steel rods. The one we found was too hard to pull out, so they left it behind.”
Stephanie smiled. “I admit, I’m impressed. And here I thought you were just a handsome face.”
I didn’t know if she was serious or not. So I kept speaking as if I hadn’t heard.
“They would lift out the prize bulls with the balloon, wouldn’t they?”
“You saw the harness. I think they’re getting ready to do some more rustling.”
“It’s a great idea,” I said. “No helicopter, no airplane, no trucks. Almost like swooping in on a broomstick.”
Stephanie nodded and told me what she’d learned from Dan Belkie. Ernest would find work at the ranch with the prize bull. He’d wait until he knew a good time to steal the bull. Belkie and the big guy would drive as close as possible with the truck, making sure to find a place where the wind would cause them to drift toward the cattle. Ernest would signal them with a flashlight, guiding them to the exact spot.
They used the balloon to carry in a bull about the same size and color as the prize bull. When they landed, they would tranquilize all the cattle they planned to kill. Once the prize bull was tranquilized and harnessed, they would kill all the other cattle, chopping them up so it looked like a cult killing. Their main goal, though, was to chop up the bull they had brought in, so no one could tell they’d made a switch. That way, if it looked like the prize bull
was dead, no one would ever go searching for it.
“Hang on,” I said, stopping her. “Big Boy is worth a lot of money. But only if he can be used for stud services. If a rancher doesn’t know he’s Big Boy, the rancher won’t pay expensive stud fees.”
“That’s what I said too. If you can’t advertise the bloodline, you can’t charge stud fees.”
“And?” I asked.
“Belkie had one of his own bulls sired by Locomotive. With Big Boy, Champion, and the two bulls from Montana and Alberta, he now has five of the bloodline. He wants to make money in two ways. First of all, with the other bulls off the market it makes his worth more. He can raise his stud fees if people don’t have the other bulls to go to.”
She was right, which made me angrier.
“He’ll sell the others,” she said, “far away from here, where it’s unlikely any rancher will ever recognize them. Someone in Japan wants to start a new herd using the other four bulls.”
“It sounds like he’s got it all figured out.”
She didn’t say anything for a few minutes. The dashboard clock moved to 12:14. Then 12:15.
“Steph?” Why had she stopped talking? “He’s got it figured out, Josh. Including how you and I are going to die.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Tell me,” I said as softly as I could. “How are they going to kill us?”
“Carbon monoxide. They’re going to take my truck to the end of some road. Then they’re going to rig a hose from the exhaust pipe into the window and let the motor run. When we’re dead, they’ll pull the hose out and untape us. It’ll look like a couple of teenagers who wanted to be alone accidentally died while sitting in a parked truck with the motor running.”
“Great,” I said.
“You’re not scared?”
“Of course I am,” I said. “But I’m not going to give up. Maybe I can lean over and pull the tape off your hands with my teeth.”
I tilted in her direction.
“Josh?”
Blazer Drive Page 6
