Burning Bright

by Nick Petrie

  “Why is June’s picture on your computer? Why do you have a Stanford ID in your office? Who set you up in that house?”

  Boyle’s face was bright red now. “Ow, dude, that hurts.”

  Peter backhanded him again. “It can get a lot worse, Leo. Who set you up in that house?”

  “What are you talking about, it’s my house.”

  But his eyes slid to one side as he said it and if Peter had any uncertainty, it was gone now. He pinched the kid’s nose between the knuckles of his first and second fingers and squeezed. Boyle’s eyes filled with tears. Peter worked the nose back and forth. It would hurt like hell but wouldn’t do any real damage. “Tell me the truth, Leo. Who set this up?”

  Boyle began to cry and the words tumbled out. “This dude, man, I took some money from his bank account. I bought his password online, I thought it was just this random thing. But somehow he tracked me back to my home computer and threatened me with the cops. I didn’t want to go to jail, man. Dude bought this house, told me to pretend it was mine.”

  Pretend it was mine came out sounding like Preted it was mide. Boyle’s chest heaved under Peter’s weight.

  “She’s his daughter, okay? I made him prove it, he sent me a picture of her when she was like fifteen.” He looked at June. “You were on snowshoes and you wore a long red-and-white-striped stocking cap.”

  June flinched visibly. She knew the picture. And where it had come from.

  Boyle kept talking, eyes flicking from June to Peter and back. “He said he couldn’t visit you, he was disabled and couldn’t leave the house, he was worried about you, okay? He said I was doing a good thing.”

  “What about the picture on your desktop?”

  “He sent me that one, too, so I’d know what she looks like now. I never even met the guy. I don’t even know his fucking name.”

  Peter let go of Boyle’s nose and looked at June. Tears were running down her face, too.

  “I trusted you,” she said fiercely. “I thought you were my friend.”

  “I am your friend,” Boyle sobbed. “I was looking out for you. He’s your dad.”

  “Some fucking friend,” said June. “You were like my little brother.”

  “Do you think that was what I wanted? To be your little brother?” Leo Boyle looked at her then with a terrible longing, his face red, eyes streaming. “Don’t you get it? I’m in love with you, June. Ever since I saw your picture.”

  “Jesus Christ,” she said, turning away. “All you fucking men. What do you think, I’m your fucking property?”

  Peter hoped he wasn’t included in that group.

  He put his head up and looked around to see how much attention they’d attracted. A pair of cops with their backs to the BMW talked idly to each other as they watched the smoldering ruins, but a few of the people standing on their lawns outside the perimeter were staring openly at Peter now. When he stared back, they hurriedly averted their eyes and stepped away like they’d forgotten an appointment. Maybe they saw something in his face.

  He was running out of time. One of the neighbors might make a call, and there were two police cars on the block. Not to mention whoever Chip Dawes had sent, still out there.

  He gave Boyle’s nose another yank. “Tell me about the Stanford ID.”

  “Ow, okay, shit. Her dad set me up with a job at this grad lab down there.” He talked even faster now. “At least he said it was him, it was the same email account, but he sounded different, you know? Maybe someone else using your dad’s email?”

  Leo looked at June, snot seeping now from his swollen nose.

  “Your dad or whoever it was sent me a flash drive to plug into their system. I didn’t want to do it, I told him I wouldn’t. But he said he’d sell the house, empty my bank account, infect all my computers. Anyway I got caught and they fired me. I only worked there a couple weeks.”

  “How long ago?” asked Peter.

  “I don’t know. A few months? I’m not real good with time, you know?”

  Peter thought he was telling the truth. After all those pot lollipops, he was surprised Leo could still walk and talk.

  “What about my old laptop?” said June. “Somebody hacked it. Was that you?”

  Leo closed his eyes and sucked in a breath. “Yes. He asked me to. Whoever he was.”

  “My new laptop?”

  “No. I was supposed to do it last night, but I got home late and the house was on fire.”

  Peter looked at June. “We need to go. Anything else?”

  She made a sour face and shook her head.

  Peter took his knee off the kid’s chest and stood. “Leo, there are some bad people using you for their dirty work. If I were you, I’d get back in that car and get as far away from here as you can.”

  Leo opened and closed his mouth like a fish on a pier. Peter touched June’s arm and they walked away.

  He didn’t see the watchers until near the end of the block, a man on each corner. They were looking toward the fire, but if they were really interested, they’d have been closer. And they wouldn’t have been watching the faces of the people walking toward them.

  “Turn around,” murmured Peter, and he pivoted his body to face the smoking ruin even as he kept walking backward away from it.

  June turned with him. “What did you see?” she asked.

  “Two men at least,” Peter said, angling off the sidewalk and into somebody’s front yard. “They’re going to notice us any minute. When they do, I’ll take care of them. You run like hell for Lewis.”

  June’s eyes got wide. “Where’s Lewis? I don’t see him.”

  “You’ll see him, he’ll be there. You just run when I say so, as fast as you can.”

  In his peripheral vision, Peter saw the nearest man slanting to intercept them. He wore a green oilcloth coat with metal buttons. He was thick in the neck and shoulders and held a phone to his ear. Peter allowed him to get within twelve feet. “Go,” he told June, and pivoted on the medical boot.

  June broke into a sprint and Peter limped after her as if trying to get around the guy.

  June pulled ahead and the guy angled to cut Peter off as he slid his phone into a pocket with one hand and stuck the other inside his half-buttoned jacket.

  The guy was one step away when Peter planted the medical boot in the grass and pivoted again, swinging his elbow up and around, using the added rotation to drive it hard into the side of the guy’s head. If he’d punched the guy that hard he’d have broken his hand, but his elbow barely felt it.

  The guy staggered, his bell ringing nicely, but he was strong and it was definitely not his first time being hit in the head and he kept digging under his jacket. Peter grabbed the thick wrist and held it inside the fabric so the guy couldn’t pull the pistol from his shoulder rig. The guy had a lot of gym muscle but it wasn’t the same as muscle made by working hard all day, and he was still off-balance, blinking from the blow to the head and stepping back trying to get away from Peter so he could pull his weapon. Peter gave him a short chopping punch to the throat with his free hand. When the guy let go of his gun and put both hands to his neck, his mouth open, Peter knew he’d crushed the guy’s larynx. It was done.

  He put his hand on the gun butt in the guy’s armpit and put his good foot behind the other man’s heel and pushed him over backward, pistol coming free when the man went down. He looked for the second man and saw him on the other side of the intersection, sprinting after June with a gun in his hand.

  Peter raised the pistol he’d taken but the angle was bad and it was a compact little automatic with maybe a two-inch barrel and he was as likely to hit June or the Pacific Ocean as the man chasing her. She had her knees up and her arms pumping fast, but Peter thought the lean young guy in running shoes might be gaining. Peter ran after them as best he could, hoping for an angle, knowing he’d never catch th
em with his fractured leg in its medical boot.

  The silver Escalade roared backward out of a driveway, turned in a crisp reverse arc, and slammed into the running man going at least twenty-five. The man was sprinting full out, so with their combined speed it would have been like hitting a steel and glass wall at forty-five miles an hour. His forehead cracked the rear window and he bounced off the rear end and fell slack to the pavement like a rag doll thrown by an angry child.

  The Escalade roared over the crumpled man, who passed neatly between the tires, and came to a chirping stop at the intersection, where Peter popped the passenger door and climbed in. Lewis threw it into drive and hit the gas again, this time veering slightly to drive over one of the crumpled man’s legs. There was a slight bump, and a crunching noise that Peter hoped he’d only imagined.

  “Asshole not gonna chase after her again,” said Lewis. He eased up beside June, who stood breathing hard with her hands on her knees between two parked cars, her face pale as she surveyed the carnage left behind. The Escalade windows were down.

  “You okay?” asked Peter.

  “Jesus Christ.” She looked at him and Lewis. “What the fuck is wrong with you people?”

  “Please,” said Peter gently. “Get in? We need to go.”

  She shook her head and opened the door and climbed inside.

  Lewis hit the gas as soon as her legs were clear. The acceleration slammed the door as if on its own.

  Peter turned in his seat to look at her. His cracked ribs didn’t like it, but he wanted to see her face. He needed to be careful with her, he knew.

  “June? We need to talk about your dad. What kinds of things he was doing when you saw him last. Where you think he might be.”

  She stared back at him, her freckles standing out like a red spray on her pale skin. What he first thought was shock was actually a cold white anger.

  It made him a little afraid.

  “I’ll give you directions,” she said. “If we go straight there, the valley’s about a four-hour drive.”

  “We need a car,” said Lewis.

  “We need more than that,” said Peter.

  He peered out the windshield at the sky. The clouds had lifted and he could see a faint shape just below the gray, circling slowly. If the light caught it just right, he’d see a glint of gold. It would follow them, he was sure now.

  He dug his phone out of his pocket and put in the number he’d memorized the day before.

  A calm voice answered. “Semper Fi Roofing, this is Manny.”

  “Manny, it’s Peter. Got a minute?”

  45

  PETER

  They stopped at a car wash near the airport to get the blood off the Escalade’s cracked rear window. They were seven or eight miles south of June’s burned apartment, but the golden shadow still circled overhead, barely visible just below the high clouds, its outline fading in and out of view as the cloud bottoms roiled and shifted. Peter felt the static fizz and pop with the sight of it, and found himself hoping for rain. Maybe it would be less claustrophobic.

  After the car wash they found a waterlogged parking lot and smeared mud on the back gate and the floor mats and seats to make sure the rental company cleaned the hell out of the Escalade. It was better than setting it on fire, Peter figured, and less likely to get anyone’s attention.

  They left the SUV at the rental drop inside the Seattle airport parking structure, then walked over the pedestrian bridge to the rental desks by the luggage carousels, where Lewis arranged for a white Dodge Caravan using a driver’s license and credit card in another name, as if he’d just stepped off a plane with the rest of the tourists. They walked back over the bridge to the structure, picked up the van, transferred their gear from the Escalade, then joined the long stream of anonymous cars flowing down the spiral exit ramps to the highway.

  Peter watched out the wide rear window as the golden shadow in the sky became smaller and smaller behind them, finally disappearing into the distance.

  At a sporting goods store past Tacoma, June pored over the USGS topographical maps. Peter pushed down the static as he and Lewis filled a shopping cart with a backpack, a sleeping bag, and other critical gear for a night out in the woods. Lewis picked up two pairs of long-distance walkie-talkies, a Winchester 760 deer rifle with nice bright optics, five extra magazines and a hundred 30-06 rounds. When the clerk asked if he needed a Washington gun permit, Lewis said no, he already had one, and produced the paperwork. The permit was in a different name altogether.

  They stopped for lunch at a diner outside Longview, sitting by a big front window with Mount St. Helens peeking through the overcast while they ate omelets and French fries and drank dishwater coffee. When the waitress took the plates, Peter unrolled one of the topo maps June had selected and put it in front of her. “Mark it up,” he said, handing her a pencil. “Draw the valley as you remember it.”

  “I don’t remember much,” she said. “And what I do remember will be fifteen years out of date.”

  “We’ll talk you through it,” said Lewis. “You’ll be surprised how much it’ll help.”

  The map showed an elongated teardrop shape with a wandering creek or river down the middle. The elevation lines were far apart at the bottom, indicating nearly flat terrain. Around the edges of the valley, the lines were so close together they were hard to distinguish. Steep ridges or cliffs.

  “The waterfall is up here at the point,” she said, making a circle, then added two squares at the top. “My dad’s house, and the lab. Maybe that’s bigger now.” More squares scattered down one side of the river. “Sally Sanchez, the ag researcher, she helped raise me after my mom left. This was the cottage where she stayed. The big house was where the researchers stayed, the people who came to work with my dad. The farm foreman’s cabin was here by the equipment barn.”

  “Who was the foreman?”

  “Mr. Monroe. He came after Sally did. He ran the big equipment, the tractor and all that stuff. My dad didn’t like him, but Sally said we needed him. I think my dad would have used horses if he could.” She drew some lines with squiggles on top around the buildings. “Apple and cherry orchards, most of this side of the river. This is the bunkhouse for farm help.”

  “What kind of help?” asked Peter.

  “Fruit pickers, mostly. Every few years some carpenters would stay there when they were putting up a new building. By the time I left Mr. Monroe had two full-time workers who lived in the bunkhouse. There might be more now.” She drew big rectangles on the other side of the river. “Farm fields here.” Then triangles on sticks for evergreen trees, which she scattered around the perimeter. “Woods around the edges, where it gets too steep for agriculture.”

  “What about a high place,” said Lewis. “With a view of the whole valley.” He reached across the table and ran his finger across the orchards. “Something in this neighborhood?”

  “Actually,” said June, and circled an area where the elevation lines diverged from the high surrounding ridges. “There’s a flat spot on this little rocky outcrop, maybe a hundred feet up.” She put in a dark zigzag on one side, then a dot. “The trail is here. My dad built a wildlife blind there, just a few posts and a tin roof for shade. He used to bring his birding scope and watch the raptors.” She smiled shyly. “I used to go there by myself and watch the men work.”

  Lewis tapped the outcrop with one manicured fingernail. “That’s my spot.”

  Peter looked at him. “You might not be the only guy with that idea.”

  Lewis smiled his tilted smile. “And I feel real bad about that. I surely do.”

  • • •

  THEY DROPPED LEWIS at a narrow trailhead ten miles past White Salmon. In his camouflage jacket and pack, he was almost invisible. He’d already sighted in the rifle. It was mid-afternoon.

  “See you on the other side,” said Peter.

 
“You won’t see me,” said Lewis, “but I’ll be there. Don’t use the radio ’less you have to.”

  They backtracked to White Salmon to cross the wide Columbia River into Oregon at the green steel Hood River Bridge, where the winds howled down the gorge and kite surfers in wetsuits were catching big air despite the cool spring day. Then east to a mini-storage place outside Portland, where Lewis had parked Peter’s truck. It was a dark green 1968 Chevy C20 pickup, a barn find that he had restored in his time between deployments. The tall mahogany cargo box on the back contained most of his worldly possessions. Leaving the lot, it felt good to be back on the big bench seat where he’d logged so many miles, feeling the rumble of the engine like his own heartbeat.

  They abandoned the vanilla van on the street a mile away, the keys under the floor mat, then called the rental company to pick it up. Peter’s leg no longer ached and seemed to be improving, but the truck’s heavy clutch was stiff under the medical boot, so June took the first turn at the wheel. Peter tried not to show his concern about how she’d handle the old pickup, but June shifted through the gears like she was born to it.

  Palming the wheel through the turns, she told him how she’d taught herself to drive stick at thirteen. Shredding the clutch of an ancient one-ton Dodge with dual rear wheels and a dump bed. Wooden blocks strapped to the pedals with old bicycle tubes too shredded to patch. “But it got me down the highway to the ski hill,” she said. “My first escape from my dad’s. After that, I could drive pretty much anything.”

  Her comment hung there between them for a moment. Peter finally said, “You want to tell me about it, growing up there?”

  “It wasn’t awful.” She was working her way back toward the freeway, trying to get across Portland and out of town. She shrugged. “In some ways it was great. I had free run of this beautiful little valley, maybe five square miles of half-developed farm and orchard and river. Steep ridges like walls around us, with cedars and hemlocks rising on the slopes until the dirt stopped sticking to the stone. My mom homeschooled me because the Yeti didn’t want us to go anywhere, so mostly I climbed trees and rocks, played in the river, chased frogs, taught myself to ski. Pretty much anything I wanted. Sometimes on Sunday I’d get to go for a hike with the Yeti.”