But when I made it back to our derelict shack, she was still abed. Not even a shuffle of stirring or the whisper of breath came around the curtain, and when I pushed it aside, a slant of light from the dying sun spilled through the open door and fell across her face. Her eyes were closed. Her face was gray, and her blue lips were speckled with her own vomit.
I stared at her, willing myself to feel sorrow and empathy for this bitter husk of a woman who never had any love for me. But instead, I felt nothing. Not even the anger that was always bubbling just beneath the surface. It was gone, as certainly as she was.
I rolled my few belongings into a paper sack and then searched the cupboards. One can of beans and a moldy hunk of bread were all that lined the shelves. I scraped the mold off and deposited both in my paper sack. I did not glance behind the curtain as I walked out of the house. And as I strode into the wheat fields, heading toward the highway, I did not look back.
I slept in a ditch that first night, with my spare shirt as my blanket and coyote song as my lullaby. The next day, I began hitchhiking west. Though I was rail thin, I was tall for my age, and no one thought I was anything less than a young man making his way across the country for work.
Until an old, weathered man in an equally old and weathered pickup pulled onto the gravel shoulder near the Montana state line and offered me a ride. When I climbed into the front seat, his eyes narrowed, and he studied my face with a keen gaze.
“Bologna sandwich in the glove box if you want it,” he said.
I had not eaten in days, and my head swam with lightness. I ate the sandwich in three bites.
“Where you headed?” he asked.
I gave him my standard answer. “To a job in California.”
“Bullshit,” he drawled. “You’re not older than twelve.”
Juvenile indignation had me correcting him. “I’m fourteen!”
“Hm,” was all he said in response. Fifty miles of rolling plains passed before he spoke again. “Do you have a place to stay tonight?” When I remained quiet, he continued. “Got a room in my barn no one is using at the moment. Warm and dry, clean. I don’t have a big spread, but it’s more than I can manage now on my own. You help me out on the ranch, and you’ll get three square meals a day.”
I stared at his grizzled face, the glint of white in his whiskers, the deep lines around his eyes and mouth. Though his clothes were worn, he was dressed neatly. His truck was old, but the inside was clean. He was old enough, I figured I could outrun him if need be.
“Okay.”
“Name’s Jed Lewis. What’s yours, kid?” he asked.
The work had been grueling, but it was as he promised. I had plenty to eat. I had a bed to sleep in at night that was not eaten by mice. The long hours day in and day out emptied me of any residual anger and resentment. Jed was a hard man, but he was fair. For the first time in my life, I thought I might be happy.
As I watched the comings and goings on Larson’s ranch, I spotted no children among his hands. But Larson worked side by side with his men. Nothing looked amiss throughout the first day as I studied each man, each paddock, and each barn.
Except for the north barn. None of the ranch hands entered the barn. Had it not been for the numerous cameras on the eaves of the barn, I would have thought the building in disuse.
I studied each face of Larson’s security team but did not recognize anyone. It had been too dark and chaotic during the ambush for me to see any faces in the light of my burning Airstream.
The first day passed without event, and after darkness fell, the ranch hands and security team retreated to separate bunkhouses, each steering well clear of the other. When Larson emerged from one of the barns and entered his home, I folded the tripods, packed the binoculars, camera, and lens away, and retreated to camp.
I did not light a fire. I cooked a can of soup over the gas camp stove and then settled into the sleeping bag in the tent with my rifle close at hand.
The next morning before dawn, I set up my position once more on the mountain’s crest and settled in to surveil. Today, I took photos of each man and each building. The sun crept through the sky steadily, and a wind that smelled of spring snow blew through the valley sprawled before me and raced over my vantage point.
At midday, my vigilance was rewarded. A lone man arrived at the ranch, and Larson met him in the front circular drive. I zoomed in with the camera lens and snapped photos of the newcomer as they crossed the compound. Larson led him directly to the north barn, and the two men paused before a side door. Larson punched a code into a keypad and preceded the other man as they entered. It was over an hour before they reappeared, and before the man left, he shook Larson’s hand.
In the late afternoon, someone else arrived. This newcomer was not alone. Two younger men were with him, and they bore such similarity that I guessed them to be father and sons. I zoomed the camera further in on the father and felt a bolt of recognition. The president’s brother was as notorious for his edgy lifestyle as he was for his ability to sway the opinion of the leader of the free world. Larson led the three men into his home.
I had been lying in the dirt for over an hour with the binoculars trained on the house to see when the men reappeared when the bullet came out of nowhere. It bit into the rocks several feet from where I lay. I flinched back with a curse. Shards of stone stung against my skin, flung like shrapnel from the shot.
The shot had come from my left, angled upward from the north side of the mountain’s crest. I grabbed the binoculars and camera and scrambled backward. My rifle and pack were only a few feet away. Another bullet kicked up rocks and dirt inches from my hand as I reached out and snagged the rifle.
I brought the Henry to my shoulder, thumbed the hammer down, and fired in the direction from which the shots had come before ducking out of sight behind a rocky outcropping. I disassembled the tripods as quickly as I could, folding them away and tucking the stands, lens, camera, and binoculars into my pack. I shoved sixteen more rounds of ammo into my pockets and shouldered the pack.
Since firing my shot, it had been quiet. I stayed crouched down as I left the summit, walking at an angle so I could keep one eye at my back. I retreated down the mountain to the tree line. Shielded from view from the crest, I waited and watched, and within minutes, a man appeared on the ridge.
He wore tactical gear and carried an AR-15 with a scope on it. He studied the ground where I had set up watch. The sun must have glinted on the lens of the camera or on the eyes of the binoculars, giving away my position. After a moment, the man spoke into a radio.
I left the tent. It could easily be replaced, and I was not going to take the time to dismantle it and pack it away. I set off at a fast clip down the mountain, keeping well within the cover of the trees.
Larson was notorious for not tolerating trespassers on his land. The men he hired to patrol his property acted like they were still in Afghanistan or Iraq or some other hell hole where they shot first and asked questions later. It could be little more than that.
But when I heard the helicopter, I knew it was not so simple a matter as that. I was not going to stick around to confirm my suspicions, though.
I ran.
sixteen
GRANT
The report of a rifle echoed through the valley. Laurence Boudreaux choked on a swallow of Springbank 1919 he had helped himself to as soon as he saw it.
I forced a smile. “Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me for a moment.” I had to fight the urge to take the bottle of whiskey with me as I strode from the study. John Smith met me at the front door. “What the hell is going on?” I asked.
“Antonio thought he saw a reflection off of a rifle scope in the hills and went to investigate. He just radioed in. It looks like someone has been camped out watching the area.”
“Shit.”
“Think it’s him?”
I would put money on it being Hector Lewis. The man was swiftly becoming more th
an just a concern. “Call Jack and get up in the air. When you find him, don’t bother bringing him in.”
“You got it,” he said, and turned on his heel, already calling out orders.
I pulled in a breath that was meant to be calming, but I had to suck in several more before I felt a modicum of calm.
I always suspected this day would come. Since the moment I saw Winona slip away from the paddocks and head toward the north barn, a clock began to count down.
I followed her, keeping out of sight as I watched the careful way she crept around the buildings angling toward the northern end of my compound. I ducked around a corner when she darted a cautious glance over her shoulder.
Don’t do it, Winona, I pleaded with her silently.
But she headed straight for the north barn. She tried the front entrance, but, of course, it was locked. She circled the building, and dread built in my gut as I followed her.
I stayed just out of her line of sight. She tried the back entrance, rattling the doorknob in frustration.
There were no windows on the north barn, no weaknesses in the construction, even though she tested the door’s strength by jamming her shoulder against it.
I did not say anything to alert her to my presence. I simply waited until she stepped back from the door, forehead wrinkled. She turned, studying the façade of the barn. She startled violently when she spotted me, the color draining from her face.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, keeping my voice soft.
“I couldn’t find the bridle Cyrus prefers,” she said, and I had to admire her quick thinking. “I thought one of the hands might have misplaced it.”
She cut a wide berth around me and hurried past. That careful distance she kept between us killed me.
“Winona,” I said. I waited until she turned back to me. “Be careful.”
Now I retreated to the study and went straight to the sideboard. I poured a finger of the Springbank 1919 and tossed it back, not even bothering to enjoy it.
“Well?” Laurence Boudreaux barked.
I hid a grimace. Had it not been for his money and connections, I would not have bothered to extend the invitation to him again. He always made a mess when he came and left it for me to clean up. “Nothing to be concerned about. Just a coyote that has been giving us trouble.”
A moment later the thump of the helicopter’s rotors pulsed through the air.
Boudreaux’s heavy brows arched. “A coyote, you said?”
I smiled and forced my teeth to unclench. “One that has become a fucking nuisance.”
seventeen
HECTOR
I was too old for this shit. I slowed from a run as soon as I heard the helicopter veer to the west. I was no runner, and my heart thundered in my chest.
I kept my ears pricked for the sounds of voices. At one point, I thought I heard the roar of ATVs in the distance, but the sound never drew closer. I crept through the forest at a fast clip. I stayed deep within the shelter of the trees and scrambled downhill, rocks rolling dangerously underfoot.
Between the danger of crossing paths with a grizzly and the danger of crossing paths with Larson’s well-armed men, I thought the prior would be more manageable. I moved swiftly and silently. Every now and then, I thought I caught a flash of white in the corner of my eye.
I needed to see what was inside the north barn, and I contemplated what the security and secrecy around the building meant. It had to be a storehouse or a factory. There was nothing unusual about the building, no excess of ventilation or odd piping going in or out above ground. Drugs could be easily procured without wealthy, powerful, connected men coming all the way to Montana. Women as well.
The only thing I could think of that the west boasted that someone could not easily procure elsewhere was its wildlife.
I hiked into Gardiner early in the evening as the sun was sinking toward the horizon. I skirted town and stuck to the shoulder of the narrow, curving road to Raven’s Gap. I had been walking along the side of the road for a mere ten minutes when I heard the rumble of an approaching engine. I moved off the road to let the vehicle pass. I carried my rifle over my shoulder, but I lowered it now and held it loosely at my side. The car drove past without incident, and I continued on my trek. My arm ached, and a glance at my sleeve showed a stain from where I had bled through the bandage.
When I reached the turnoff for my land, I detoured from the state road and followed the rough path I had worn into a lane over the last thirty years. I purchased fifty acres of land in the rugged northern reaches of the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone when Winona and I first moved here from Cody, Wyoming. She had dreams of horses and alpacas, and my dreams had been crushed on the dirt floor of the arena beneath a bull’s horns and hooves. I let my bitterness over my own loss delay fulfilling the promise to her until it was too late to give her horses, alpacas, or the house on the hill.
There was no hint of what transpired over the course of the two-mile walk to the meadow where I had parked the Airstream, but yellow caution tape was tied between two trees at the end of the drive and the clearing looked as if a bomb had been detonated in it. Trees were snapped and splintered. Dirt and debris were flung like shrapnel in the explosions. And at the center of the meadow sat the burned, warped carcass of my home.
I tugged the caution tape free and moved across the expanse of the wounded meadow toward the scorched earth and destruction. It had been little more than a tin can, but I bought it in place of a ring for Winona. I was seventeen when Jed died and had no desire to spend my years toiling day in and day out in backbreaking labor. I found homes for his horses on neighboring ranches and sold off his two hundred head of cattle before I took to the road.
I was in Wyoming a year later at the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo when I saw the prize money and decided to take my chances. I paid the entry fee and stole a bull rope from another contestant. I did not have a leather riding glove and had not known I needed one until my hand was scored and shredded after that first ride. I watched the bull I was slated, a cantankerous bastard named Nero, paying attention to the way he spun to the right as soon as he left the chute.
When it was my turn, I held onto the rope like my life depended on it, kept my hips square and my weight down, and squeezed Nero’s sides with my thighs and knees. When the crossbred Charbray flew out of the gate, it felt as if I had been thrown from the top of a skyscraper with a fifteen-hundred-pound weight tied to my arm. It was all light and sound and a down-force that felt as if it were going to yank my arm out of socket.
The eight seconds felt as if they crept by at the pace of centuries, and when the buzzer finally screeched, I hit the dirt with a broken thumb, a score of eighty, and, in the end, thirty-five hundred dollars in cash.
I applied for membership with the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. I kept riding, and I kept winning. Within a few years, I was able to apply for membership to the Professional Bull Riders. I raked in the buckles and the prizes, but I was still sleeping in my truck seven years later when I met Winona.
She was a barrel racer, and the dark banner of her hair, the wide, white gleam of her smile, and the bounce of her tits caught my eye the first time I saw her in the saddle. I did not know anything about love, but I knew about lust. In the ensuing year, I never tired of fucking her, and when she began talking about marriage, the idea of having her in my bed every night appealed to me.
First, though, I had to buy a proper bed. I bought the Airstream trailer brand new, the exterior gleaming, the interior so clean I took my boots off before I entered. Winona had known what my purchase meant the instant she saw it, and she had always jokingly called it her aluminum engagement ring.
It was now reduced to ash and rubble, and a lump was hard in my throat as I took in the ruins. The only thing that remained intact and recognizable was the trailer hitch, charred and warped. That and the cinder block that once served as my front step.
My eyes burne
d as I crossed the pockmarked, scorched expanse of earth. Stepping within the ring of ash lifted the smell of the fire sharply into the air. I brushed the soot and debris off of the cinder block and lifted it.
The white wolf was there when I turned around. I was not even surprised to see her. I was beginning to expect her presence.
“She never told me she was unhappy,” I said to the wolf. “But she didn’t need to.” I pointed toward the ridge to the north of where we stood. “That’s the spot she picked out for a house. She wanted to have a view of the entire valley.” The breeze smelled of spruce and melted metal.
I dropped my gaze. The white wolf moved closer, and I held myself still. She passed so close I could have reached out and touched her. She padded to the edge of the scorched earth and sniffed the air before lowering her nose to the ground.
“It would have been the first real house I ever lived in,” I admitted to her. She lifted her head and looked at me, ears pricked. “What’s the opposite of claustrophobia? I think that’s how I’d feel in a real house. Too much space.”
She shook her head, and I could almost imagine the gesture was aimed at me instead of the result of something tickling her ear.
“Does she know I’m trying?” I asked, voice dropping. “Does she know I haven’t given up, and I’m doing my damnedest to bring her and Emma home?”
The wolf stared at me. There was intelligence and wisdom in those golden eyes. Winona’s eyes had been a deep, rich brown, so dark they were almost black.
The wolf did not reassure me. Instead, she turned, skirted the stretch of ash, and moved toward the woods. At the tree line, she stopped and looked back at me before disappearing into the shadows. She was, I realized, headed north toward the ridge I pointed out to her.
HIDING PLACE by Meghan Holloway Page 9
