High Lonesome

by Tanya Chris

  He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. The memories and the foreshadowing and Holly’s avid eyes were combining to make him sweat. Holly was a complication he didn’t need.

  “So this is it,” he said, intentionally taking a step back. “Unisex dorm, pit toilets outside. There’s a sort of water closet on the first floor if you just need to pee so you don’t have to boot up. No showers or hot water. No power at the moment, but that’s hopefully back on soon. Did you, uh, have a reservation? I know there’s no one here now but once they open up the gully there’ll be a flood from Ganymede. You didn’t say how long you wanted to stay.”

  “Not long maybe,” she said. “Maybe this place doesn’t have what I want after all.”

  He raised an eyebrow, sorry-not-sorry to disappoint. He hoped Pyotr had done whatever he needed to do with Lars because he’d spent enough time in a bedroom with Holly. He headed downstairs, her now sock-clad feet quieter behind him. Looking back over his shoulder to see if she was following, he found her halfway up the stairs with her phone in her hand and a frown on her face.

  “There’s no reception at Longline,” he told her.

  “Damn.” She frowned at her phone harder. “I was hoping maybe higher on the mountain I could pick up a signal. I’m going crazy without this thing. Being out of touch is so hideous. Anything could be happening and I wouldn’t know it.”

  “You had reception down at Ganymede, didn’t you?” He went long periods of time without reception and wasn’t very sympathetic to these phone-junkies.

  “No.” She tucked her phone into the pocket of her fleece. “They said the storm had taken out a cell tower or something. It’s been forever.”

  He shook his head and continued through the foyer into the great room. Was that the reason she’d been so anxious to sneak up here? Because she’d thought they had reception? And here he’d been imagining it was his manly scruff.

  Lars and Pyotr were still sitting at the table together, not looking very conspiratorial. If they were negotiating espionage, no one would ever guess, but that was probably the point. He collected their empty dishes and took them to the kitchen, then made another sandwich and dished up a bowl of stew for Tanner.

  Holly was back over at the table chatting the two guys up when he carried Tanner’s lunch through the great room with his body angled to hide the dishes. So what if he was carrying food to his room? Maybe he was going to eat his own lunch in private. That wasn’t suspicious, was it?

  He juggled his way into his room and put the dishes on his nightstand, seeing that Tanner was asleep. He sat for a moment on the side of the bed, not wanting to wake him up, but wanting his company, even if he wasn’t conscious.

  Tanner’s mouth was parted slightly, his breath coming audibly through it. His eyes twitched behind his eyelids like he might be in pain. He wished he could take the pain from him or, even better, take what came after the pain—the emptiness, the hopelessness, the endless days stretching on towards an unknown future.

  He brushed a hand over Tanner’s forehead, then leaned down and kissed it. Tanner made a low humming sound in response, as if he were half-awake and aware of his presence but not quite awake enough to do more.

  And he was being selfish, he knew, lingering there in hopes that Tanner would wake up. Let him sleep. Let him have dreams, hopefully pleasant ones, while he could. Sleep didn’t always come easy.

  When he came back out of his bedroom, he found Lars on his feet lingering by the bar.

  “Ah, there you are. How much do I owe you for the lunch?”

  “You don’t have to settle up now.” He fished for the price list next to the cash box. “You can run a tab.”

  “Not sticking around long enough to bother.” Lars pulled some loose bills out of his pocket and handed them over and Joe made change. “Eh, keep it. Glad you were here today. Needed the warm food and some time off my feet.”

  Lars went into the foyer. Through the open doorway, Joe could see him sit down to lace up his boots. He hurried after him.

  “Are you leaving?”

  “No sense sitting.”

  “I’m afraid the gully’s still closed though. I can’t let you go down to Ganymede until the power comes back on.”

  Pyotr had said that Green Tea would leave as soon as they’d transacted business, so if Lars’s leaving meant he was the Russian spy and this whole thing was over, Joe was more than thrilled to have him gone, but Susan had asked him to keep the gully clear.

  “I’m on my way to Muir,” Lars said. “Just stopped in for lunch. Like I said, thanks for being here.” He stood up and offered his hand.

  “You won’t make it to Muir by dark.”

  “Figure this leg should go faster than the last. I noticed the trail was broken that way.”

  “Yeah, I did a little reconnaissance the other day, but not all the way to Muir. The trail only goes about a third of the way.”

  “What’d you turn around at the lookout? That’ll do me. Beautiful spot, that. I did this trail fifteen years ago and I still remember it. If I get going now, I’ll catch the sunset there.”

  That was feasible.

  “But you won’t get to Muir before dark,” he reiterated. He didn’t know why he was worrying about this guy’s well-being so much. If Lars was Green Tea, he could walk right off a cliff for all he really cared, but there was something nagging at him. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but the thought of Lars heading for Muir had him panicked.

  “Won’t be the first time I’ve finished a trek by dark. This storm has put me off schedule far enough. You take care now.” He grabbed a pair of trekking poles—Tanner’s poles, the one pole with the red tape—and let himself out the door.

  So, OK. Pyotr had sold Lars the plans and Lars was taking them, just like Pyotr had planned. Pyotr’s team would pick Lars up at Ganymede—no, not Ganymede, because of the gully being closed, but Muir. Pyotr would have to go over to the lookout and warn someone that Green Tea was headed for Muir.

  With a flash, he realized that Lars wasn’t heading for Muir at all.

  “That’ll do me,” Lars had said about the trail being broken only as far as the lookout. Lars was rendezvousing with a helicopter. Green Tea was about to escape.

  Chapter 18

  Pyotr

  “So,” Holly said when Joe and Lars left the room. She sat down in the seat Lars had vacated and flipped her hair back over her shoulder. “Been here long?”

  “I got up here just before the 26th,” he said, intentionally dropping the date that Tanner and Green Tea had planned to meet.

  “Yeah? On your way to somewhere?”

  “Originally I was only expecting to be up here a day or so. Take care of business, head back down. The snowstorm interrupted me.”

  “Oh, I totally hear that.” Holly leaned forward sympathetically. “In fact, I’d meant to get up here on the 26th myself. But that snowstorm …”

  “Plans change.”

  “They sometimes do. It pays to be flexible. I—”

  “Pete?” Joe’s voice interrupted whatever Holly had been about to say.

  He bit back a sigh of frustration. At least Joe had remembered to call him Pete. Now that Green Tea had actually shown up, he was well aware that he’d had no business outing himself to two civilians, putting them and his mission in jeopardy. He looked over his shoulder to acknowledge Joe and found him in the doorway, beckoning furiously. Not cool. Joe was a hut caretaker and he was a guest and there was no need for Joe to summon him hysterically.

  “Sorry, did I leave a mess in the dorm?” he asked by way of deflection as he rose.

  He glanced back at Holly with a little eyeroll and she whispered. “He’s kind of anal, isn’t he?” He grinned a patiently-suffering grin at her, as if to say ‘you don’t even know,’ and went into the foyer where Joe was still beckoning like a mad man.

  “He’s on his way to the landing zone,” Joe hissed, grabbing his arm and steering him away from the great room.
/>   “Who?”

  “Lars. Green Tea.”

  “Lars isn’t—”

  “He said he’s going to Muir, but he’ll never get there before dark and I don’t think he has any intention of it.” Joe paced over to the door, opened it, then shut it again.

  “OK.”

  “OK? He’s going to get on a helicopter, Pyotr. How do you think you’re going to get the plans back then? We have to go after him.” Joe darted over to the window to point out at it, then darted back to him.

  “Wait, wait. Joe, shh.” He grabbed Joe by the upper arms to stop his circling. “Lars doesn’t have the plans. He’s not—”

  “You didn’t sell them to him?”

  “No.”

  He and Lars had had an inconsequential conversation while Joe had been out of the room with Holly. He now knew that Lars had been everywhere—and hiked to the top of it—but Lars hadn’t felt him out or responded to any of his attempts at feeling him out. When Lars had left immediately after lunch, it’d confirmed what he’d already been ninety-five percent sure of: Lars wasn’t Green Tea.

  “But he has them,” Joe said. “He took them.” Joe gestured at the pile of poles near the door. It took him a moment, but then he understood.

  “Wait, you’re saying Lars walked out of here with Tanner’s poles?”

  “Yes! I thought you sold them to him. He’s taking those plans to the landing zone. We’ve got to go after him.”

  Shit, OK. How could he have been so wrong? Having Joe and Tanner around was definitely fucking with his brain. He had to admit that he’d been a little distracted during Lars’s monotonous narrative by wondering what Joe and Holly were up to in the dorm. Maybe he’d missed something.

  Joe wrenched himself out of his slackened grasp and half-ran through the doorway back into the great room.

  “Joe, wait.” Where the fuck was Joe going? He followed Joe into his room where he flicked on the light, startling Tanner awake.

  “What?” Tanner said, rolling over to look at them.

  “I don’t know. Joe, what are you doing? Let me deal with this.”

  “I’ve got snowshoes.” Joe flung shoes out of his closet until he unearthed a pair snowshoes.

  “OK.” He didn’t know how to use them, but how hard could it be? Strap them on and go.

  Joe sat down on the bed—his butt landing on Tanner’s legs who yelped and squirmed out from under him—and started putting on his boots.

  “Joe,” he warned.

  “I can move a lot faster than you.”

  “I don’t want you chasing Lars.”

  Joe stood up and grabbed the snowshoes he’d dumped on his floor and headed out of the room for the front door.

  “Joe, I said don’t.”

  “You’re slow, you don’t know how to use snowshoes, and you don’t even have boots on. I can catch up to him.”

  Shit. Joe wasn’t wrong about who could make tracks faster in the snow, but Lars would have a gun. What was Joe going to do if he caught him? Pyotr could put a call in to his team, have them track the copter.

  “Stay out of range,” he warned Joe, who’d already put on his coat. “I mean it. A couple hundred feet back. Don’t engage with him. Just follow him and wait.” He shouted the last word out the door at Joe’s back.

  Fuck. He’d really lost control of this situation. He turned from the door and bumped into Tanner.

  “What are you doing out here?”

  “What’s wrong?” Tanner asked. “Is it Green Tea?”

  “Go back to Joe’s room and stay there.” He pushed past Tanner to grab his boots from the drying rack. Damn things took forever to lace up.

  “Is Joe going to be OK?”

  “I don’t know. I need to get out there, OK? And I need to not be worried about you. Please go back to bed.”

  He pushed Tanner out of his way again as he stood up and clomped over to the coat rack. He grabbed a set of poles—stupid fucking poles. He’d seen Holly carry the one with the plans into the foyer. He should’ve gone after it immediately. He shouldn’t have left it in the great room to begin with. Ten years with a near-perfect record and the minute he had something more important than his own ego on the line, he screwed the whole thing up. If he was going to have Tanner and Joe in his life, he’d definitely have to retire from undercover work.

  That was if Joe lived, of course. He’d told Joe to stay a few hundred feet back but a bullet could travel farther than that. The accuracy would be shit without a sight and something to stabilize on, but Lars could get lucky. Fire enough bullets and something was bound to hit. Besides, he had no faith in Joe listening to him anyway. Joe would be out there trying to wrestle the poles away from Lars if he knew Joe.

  “Gotta go.” He grabbed Tanner, who hadn’t gone back to the bedroom—neither one of his men could take orders for shit—and gave him a quick kiss, just in case he didn’t come back. Then he pushed through the door out into the fresh air.

  The sun hit him first, bouncing off the snow, nearly blinding him. He had sunglasses in his pack, but he didn’t have time to go back for them, so he squinted his eyes, trying to find a trace of either Lars or Joe.

  Their tracks weren’t hard to make out. They led across the chute to Ganymede, then slightly uphill before turning to the right towards Muir. He could see Joe’s safety-yellow coat moving quickly. Near the horizon, not moving as quickly, was Lars in blue.

  Pyotr took off after them, trying to run and totally failing at it. After a few stumbling steps that nearly had him face-planting, he gave up on running and settled for a brisk walk. His breath shortened almost immediately. Altitude, he told himself, rather than being out of shape. But in the future he was incorporating more cardio into his workout routine.

  The short slog uphill nearly killed him, but when he made it onto the break right to Muir, the going got easier. With both Lars and Joe breaking trail ahead of him, he had it easiest. He wasn’t catching up to Joe, but Joe was catching up to Lars, the distance between them shortening visibly, and he wasn’t losing ground to Joe.

  Lars, meanwhile, trudged slowly and relentlessly along. As far as Pyotr could tell, he hadn’t noticed he was being followed. Or he didn’t care. He hadn’t once turned his head to check behind himself, nor were his movements hurried.

  This wasn’t a man who’d just run off with sensitive information without paying for it. And why would he have done that anyway?

  The more Pyotr thought about it, the less likely it seemed that Lars had stolen the plans and run. There was no way he’d have known the plans were in that trekking pole, for one thing. Even if he’d had reason to believe they were in a pole at all, only Tanner and Joe could’ve told him which one.

  And there was no reason for him to steal the plans even if he had known. Russian agents might be sneaky, underhanded, willing to kill, and not above stealing, but they weren’t cheap. Green Tea would’ve come prepared to pay the agreed-upon amount, and that was what he’d have done—review the merchandise, pay for it, and maintain the relationship in case it bore further fruit. He wouldn’t gamble on grabbing the right pole and take off.

  No, Lars wasn’t Green Tea. Which meant his initial conclusion had been the right one. Fuck.

  “Joe,” he yelled, no longer caring if he alerted Lars to their presence. Joe had almost caught up to Lars—he was closer than Pyotr had told him to get already—and Pyotr’s voice, perhaps combined with the sounds of Joe’s rushed approach, prompted Lars to turn his head. Even from the distance Pytor was still at, he could see that Lars greeted Joe with surprise, not concern.

  “Joe,” he yelled again. “Just wait for me.”

  But Joe didn’t.

  Instead he charged. The fact that Lars hadn’t pulled a gun yet was all the proof he needed that Lars wasn’t Green Tea, but he pulled his own gun just in case. Lars’s attention was distracted from the man running at him by the man pointing a gun at him, which allowed Joe to body slam him down to the ground, rather destroying the e
ffectiveness of Pyotr’s gun.

  The two men wrestled, their bodies churning up the snow around them. Lars might not have reacted to Joe as an enemy at first, but being tackled changed his attitude, and he was a far bigger man than Joe. He got Joe smashed down into the snow and although he at first didn’t seem to be doing more than trying to contain him, Joe’s continued swings had Lars striking back fast enough.

  Pyotr gritted his teeth in frustration. The real threat was back at the hut where he’d left Holly alone with Tanner, but this was the situation he needed to deal with first because it was the one in front of him. He pointed his gun overhead and to the right and fired a shot.

  The two men locked in what they now saw as mortal combat were too focused to notice, but the second shot, which he aimed a little closer, got through to Lars. He froze, which only prompted Joe to launch a new attack. Now Lars was trying to suppress Joe one-handed while keeping an eye on the man advancing at him with a gun.

  “Joe.” He was close enough that he didn’t have to yell and the lower tone got through. Joe stopped thrashing under Lars’s restraining forearm and met his eyes. “If you’re ever going to listen to me in your life, listen to me now. Let go of Lars.”

  When Joe listened, putting some separation between himself and the bigger man, Pyotr was finally able to train the gun on Lars without threatening Joe just as seriously. He told Lars to stand up, keeping the gun pointed at him while he did because Lars was angry and ready to fight, not because he believed Lars was Green Tea.

  There was blood seeping from Joe’s nose, dripping into the slush at his feet, and his hair was wild. He swiped an arm across his lower face, transferring some of the blood to his coat sleeve and smearing the rest. His chest heaved with his breaths.

  That was one riled-up dude, and if Pyotr could’ve fucked him right then, he would’ve—bent him over and given it to him good and hard, fucked all that fierce testosterone right out of him. As reward, as punishment, as acknowledgement of how they were the same and how they were different. But that would have to wait.