Stag Party: A Patrick Flint Novel

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  So far, they had soldiered on, weapons loaded and accessible, although the last thing they wanted was to involve themselves in a firefight. Patrick had put in extra time at the gun range the previous summer, including working on ambidextrous shooting. He was glad he’d practiced, but he still wasn’t as accurate shooting with his left hand, which is what he would have to do if the snowmobile was in motion. The chase couldn’t go on forever, though. It had already dragged on far longer than Patrick could have expected. One of them could have a wreck or break down. Eventually, they’d run out of fuel. The shooters might even turn on them. Patrick didn’t like any of those scenarios. He hated, too, that Dr. John would be worrying about them, not knowing what was going on. He didn’t want to be the reason the party splintered further or that care for Barry was delayed.

  It was feeling like time to call off whatever this was they were doing.

  He stopped on a rise over-looking Circle Park. His ribs were throbbing. It was hard to draw a breath, and his shoulders ached from holding himself rigid to minimize the jarring to his mid-section. He shut down the engine and climbed off the snowmobile. The inside of his face shield had fogged up. Glad to finally have a chance to see, he lifted it. The mountains rippled with snow, completely white except for rocky spires and frosted forests. The cirque of peaks, with Cloud Peak holding its white head just a fraction higher than the others, looked down on him, as if passing judgment on his and Wes’s efforts. He was sure the judgment was negative.

  “Think George and Jenelle have made it to the cave?” Patrick asked.

  Wes had parked and was standing beside him, helmet off, hair standing up in sweaty, spikey clumps. “Hopefully, and with Search and Rescue, too.”

  “Strength in numbers would be good. I want these shooters to leave our group alone. And, with enough people, they probably will.”

  “I expect you’re right, Doc. And I’d like to be part of those numbers.”

  “Me, too.” Patrick shook his head. “We’re not doing Abraham any good that I can tell.”

  “We can call the sheriff’s department to help him when we get back to the lodge.”

  Patrick nodded. He liked that he could count on Wes. He liked even more that the man was sensible. Or at least that he usually agreed with Patrick. “Good plan. I’ll follow you.”

  Wes grinned. “Sure. Make me break the trail.”

  “It’s just deference to your greater experience and skill.” Patrick wiggled his numb fingers inside his gloves and rolled his shoulders, which pulled on his ribs. Everything protested. Everything hurt. Okay, yeah, I’d love for Wes to spare me the harder job on the way back.

  “Try to keep it out of the ditch.”

  Patrick fully intended to. If he never dug another snowmobile out of a drift, it would be too soon.

  The ever-present whine of engines intensified in the distance. Patrick was used to it now. Because of the way sound carried in the mountains, the machines weren’t always as near as they seemed. The effect was like an auditory mirage. But this time, they were very close. Three snowmobiles flew into view above a roll in the terrain, popping over one after another like red and yellow fireballs out of a Roman candle. They were heading straight for Patrick and Wes at a speed that had the two of them scrambling for the cover of their sleds.

  Abraham’s snowmobile zipped past, headed back in the direction of the cave.

  Patrick leapt onto his machine. The other two snowmobiles were bearing down on him. He pulled the starter. The engine sputtered. He tried again. Another sputter. Every single time. Can’t it just for once start quickly when I need it? He pulled again, feeling desperate. Wes’s engine roared to life, and he blew past Patrick, headed toward the oncoming Ski-Doos. Toward them? What is he doing?

  A shot rang out, and Patrick heard a PFFT as a bullet whizzed past. Another bullet buzzed by on the other side.

  He pulled the starter, his heart pounding sickly fast. Then a shot like a sonic boom went off, so close it felt like the vibrations had come from his own gun.

  BOOM.

  Ahead of him, he saw Wes, with his weapon up.

  BOOM.

  Wes was firing back!

  BOOM. BOOM.

  A metallic ricochet. He’d hit something. Fifty feet away, one of the yellow snowmobiles made a horrible noise. The lucky shot had hit pay dirt. Patrick knew Wes was a good shooter, but a moving snowmobile? It was impressive.

  “Yeah!” Patrick shouted.

  Smoke rose from the machine’s engine, and it whined to a stop, but the other one bore down on them without slowing. The rider raised his pistol. Wes gunned his engine, cutting to the left and out of the way. Patrick dove to the ground behind his machine for cover.

  Bullets peppered the snow around Patrick’s snowmobile, sounding muffled like they were being fired into a homemade pillow silencer. One made impact with the Ski-Doo.

  The shooter barreled past in a wake of exhaust.

  Patrick scrambled up. He leapt onto his machine and pulled the starter—the engine caught, finally—as he scanned the area. One of the shooters was still chasing Abraham. Clearly, Wes and Patrick were only secondary targets. They were after Abraham and just trying to get the men out of the way.

  In the other direction, the disabled snow machine was smoking. Its rider had vanished. Nearer to Patrick, another yellow snowmobile stood out from the white landscape, nose down in a drift and tail up, with Wes still clinging to the seat and handlebars. The belt was rotating against air.

  Wes rolled off. He stood and waved at Patrick.

  Patrick zoomed over to him. “I’ve got to head them off from Dr. John and Barry.”

  “Do you have your gun?” Wes yelled.

  “Yes. You?”

  “Lost it.” Wes made a “go, go” motion with his arm and hand. “I’ll follow as fast as I can.”

  Patrick nodded. He pushed the throttle partway in, bracing himself for the rib pain. He stood on the runners for a better view over the windshield and made a wide turn, keeping his speed up and aiming for the highest terrain. When he was pointed in the right direction, he took a deep breath and depressed the throttle all the way. He couldn’t believe the situation he was in. He was conservative by nature. Had never aspired to race on anything faster than his own two feet. Rocketing across uneven ground in and out of trees chasing an armed man, gritting his teeth so hard his jaw bulged, straining to see through a frosted face shield and flying snow, holding onto the hand grips as if it would be the death of everyone he loved if he eased up. All of it would have seemed unthinkable the day before, yet here he was.

  A rise in the trail took him by surprise, and his sled went airborne. Another thing he hadn’t aspired to do—jump snow machines, especially at top speed. The belt squealed. His balance was slightly off, and he felt the whole machine tilting to the side. No. No. No. He was afraid to overcorrect, but he straightened his upper body. The runners made contact with the snow, first the left, then the right. The landing was so painful that for a moment he thought he would black out.

  Time hung, suspended. The world spun on its axis. The machine screeched its way forward. Ahead of him, the shooter seemed to dip from side to side.

  Then Patrick’s view of the trail in front of him went to zero as one of Perry’s snownados spun from the ground to the sky. Come on, come on. Move. He was driving blind. After long seconds that felt like hours, it vanished into the sky. The path was revealed. Dead ahead of him, the straightaway ended at a standing boulder.

  Patrick released the throttle and mashed the brake. Every bit of speed he could rob from the snowmobile counted toward preventing a rollover or a head-on collision with the rock. He had only fractions of a second until he had to start the turn. He didn’t think he could make it but knew he had to try.

  Now.

  He stood on the runners, using all his strength and the leverage of his body weight, turning the handlebars inch by inch and leaning to the left. If his ribs hurt, he was too terrified to notice. The
skis resisted. The machine propelled itself like a torpedo at the rock. He leaned further, all but lying sideways on the ground.

  Should I ditch? If he gave up, the sled would crash into the rock. He’d be stranded. Abraham and the shooter would be headed unimpeded for Barry and Dr. John. No. He pulled harder. Bounced on the runners. Looked away from the unforgiving granite. Willed the snowmobile to turn. Whispered a prayer. Dear God, take care of my family.

  And somehow, by fractions of an inch, with his right ski scraping, scraping, scraping, he kept the sled off the rock.

  There was no time to celebrate. The trail plunged downward, dipping and rising, dipping and rising. No time to recover. To congratulate himself. He stayed on his feet, knees flexed, fighting the weight of the machine as it resisted the winding forest path. Tree branches whipped across his shield. Puffs of snow exploded from under the skis up and into his line of vision.

  But he could still hear the other machine in front of him, and he didn’t give up. He was drawing closer to it. He gave his sled more gas. His muscles were screaming in protest. He could feel his long underwear top clinging to his sweaty back. His arms and shoulders quivered with strain.

  Then he broke from the trees, back into an open park. Snow pellets wacked his face shield. There, only one hundred feet ahead of him, was the other rider.

  “Yes!” he shouted, the sound trapped inside his helmet and shield.

  Far on the other side of the park, ahead of the shooter, Patrick caught a glimpse of red. Abraham’s snowmobile. Abraham was still heading roughly toward the cave. He turned left down a slope toward a forested area. But when the shooter reached the spot where Abraham had turned, he veered right.

  Had he lost sight of Abraham in his efforts to ditch Patrick? Patrick didn’t care what had happened. He was just grateful. It worked. I did it.

  BOOM.

  A bullet went wide of Patrick. He hadn’t seen the man raise his arm before. But he saw it now.

  Patrick weaved to the left and then swooped back to the right. Don’t get stuck. He kept his thumb firmly on the throttle.

  BOOM.

  The man turned forward again, lowering his gun. The path he was taking had been steadily rising. A tall, steep slope loomed in front of him. Patrick expected him to steer away from the pitch, but instead he pointed the snowmobile straight up it.

  Patrick just thought the earlier terrain had made him nervous. This horrified him, and he wasn’t afraid to admit it to himself. Did he dare follow? Did he even need to? He’d herded the man away from his friends. But if Patrick quit harassing him, the shooter might double back and re-engage with Abraham. He could be down to the cave in minutes. In dangerous situations past, when Patrick had been threatened, he’d known the reasons why. This time, with these men, he had zero idea of their motivation. What did they stand to gain? Or lose? How far were they willing to go to get Abraham?

  At a minimum, they’d showed they were willing to kill Wes and Patrick if they got in their way. Patrick couldn’t give up the chase.

  He steered his sled uphill, full throttle. He blocked every thought out of his mind, except getting his machine safely to the top.

  The whine of the other snowmobile’s engine grew shriller as it neared the summit. Higher. Higher. And higher still. Patrick leaned his weight all the way forward, feeling the force of gravity pulling him backward. His hand began to slide from his glove, and he dug his nails into the lining.

  The other Ski-Doo was nearly to the top. From Patrick’s vantage point, it looked like the shooter’s skis had lost contact with the ground. His stomach lurched, knowing he and his machine were next. The shooter’s Ski-Doo shot into the air above the ridge, flying at a crazy angle, nearly vertical. Then it landed. Patrick couldn’t hear it over the whine of his own engine, but he didn’t need to. He saw it disappear on the other side of the hill. Not crest and descend along a ridgetop but disappear.

  Terror closed his throat. He released his throttle, and his machine stopped immediately. Then it started to slide backward. He jumped off, rolling to the side, and watching as it started its downhill journey without him, gaining speed.

  When it had come to a stop where the slope flattened out, he drew in a few ragged breaths, which reacquainted him with the pain in his side. He tried to get up. Emphasis on tried. The snow was too deep. The effort winded him again. After a few moments to recover, he pointed himself uphill and crawled on his hands and knees the last twenty feet to the summit. His breathing was so raw and labored when he reached it that it felt like his lungs were bleeding. He had snow inside his face shield. Agonizing pain made him wonder if he’d broken more ribs.

  But he made it. He paused until he was able to rise to his feet for a view over the top.

  What he saw made him sink back to his knees. He pushed his hands into the snow, searching until he found solid ground. The earth seemed to tip, and he felt a tug on the center of his body that was almost impossible to resist, pulling him toward . . . nothing. A void. Empty space.

  Because the top of the hill was nothing more than the edge of a cliff.

  He rocked backward, panting, his vision blurry. “Calm down. Calm down. You’re fine.” He counted to ten, timing his breaths, looking upward. Did it again. And again. And again. Until he’d mastered the physical symptoms of his panic and could trust himself.

  He peered back over the edge. At the foot of the rocks far below was a snow-covered pond, with water lapping against the rocks at its edges.

  And in the center was a mostly submerged snowmobile, nothing visible of its rider but his feet sticking out of the water.

  Chapter Forty-three: Converge

  Clear Creek Resort, Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming

  Saturday, December 31, 1977, 10:45 a.m.

  Trish

  Trish chewed what was left of her thumbnail, staring out the window at nothing. Well, snow, and trees of course, but, other than that, nothing. She’d been stuck in this lodge for over an hour, waiting, waiting, waiting. Coming out of her skin with worry.

  When Ronnie had dragged her up to the resort, the lodge owner—a woman named Mrs. Murray who looked as frazzled as Trish felt—had given them a quick rundown of everything that had happened. All of it was bad. Uncle Barry, seriously injured in a wreck, had overnighted in a cave during the blizzard. Her dad had stayed with him, to try to keep him alive. Who knew whether he’d succeeded, because no one had talked to them since.

  There had been gun shots all over the place in the last hour. Trish had heard them herself, each one making her jump and steel herself to the possibility that someone was shooting at her dad. Loud, whining snowmobile engines sounded far away, then close, then far off again. George and Mrs. Murray’s daughter had taken a stretcher for Uncle Barry, and they were out in the thick of the gunfire. And now Mrs. Murray suspected Perry had snuck out after George, who’d told Perry he couldn’t go with them on the rescue mission. Trish could confirm Perry was nowhere to be found, because she’d searched for him herself, in the room he’d slept in, the lodge, outside, in the outbuildings, everywhere.

  Perry was gone. And she couldn’t do anything about it.

  That was the story of her life. Not able to do anything about Ben, who was driving away from her, maybe forever. Not able to do anything about her uncle who might be dying or her dad who might be on the wrong side of a gunfight or just freezing to death. It sucked. She hated it. She was tired of the drama, tired of being scared, and tired of crying. Tired of not being able to do anything.

  And she was mad at her mother for siccing Ronnie on her. She hadn’t broken any laws. She wasn’t running away forever. What right did they have to kidnap her? Meanwhile, Ben was driving west, then north, further away every minute.

  So, Ronnie had ridden off on a snowmobile, loaded up with weapons and ammo, ready to save the day, and ordered Trish to stay put, cooling her heels in the lodge. Out of sheer boredom and frustration, Trish had scavenged from the breakfast buffet until Mrs. Murray came in to cle
ar it away.

  The woman was wiping down the buffet tables with a cleaning spray that smelled like bleach. She stopped and spoke to Trish. “You look worried. I’m sure your brother will be just fine.”

  Trish turned toward the lodge owner, a little confused, but then she realized Mrs. Murray thought she was upset that Perry had run off. Maybe she was. A little. She knew Perry would be fine. He was always getting himself into scrapes and then back out of them. But mostly whatever was written across her face was about Ben. Some about her dad and Uncle Barry, too. She decided not to explain it all to the woman. It wasn’t like she was heartless and didn’t care about her brother. She just had a lot on her mind.

  Trish said, “Perry is pretty tough. But he doesn’t know his way around here, and the snow is bad. So being out there by himself isn’t great.”

  Mrs. Murray repacked her cleaning materials in a bucket. “He’s definitely resourceful. I was in our equipment shed a minute ago. It appears he borrowed a pair of cross-country skis. Does he know how to use them?”

  “Um, I don’t know. But he’s good at regular skiing. Downhill, I mean.”

  Mrs. Murray shook her head. “Not the same thing. He’s going to have a fair amount of trouble mastering them. I have an idea, though.”

  Trish cocked her head, listening.

  “We can go out and get him in my big Sno-Cat. I think he’ll appreciate a ride back after trying to teach himself to cross country ski in deep powder.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he just followed everyone’s snowmobile tracks. Would you like to come with me?”

  Trish felt some of the knot of tension loosen in her stomach. It would be good to do something. Anything. Bringing Perry in off the trail would be a distraction from thinking about Ben, too. Five more minutes alone with her thoughts in this lodge, and she was going to go out of her mind. And she did want to make sure the little squirt was okay. He was annoying, but he also made her laugh like crazy.