John Saul (43 page)

He pulled his radio from its holster and flipped it on. This morning, with the blizzard no longer turning the signal into hissing static, he could hear the dispatcher down in Challis as clearly as if they were talking on the telephone.

“Gillie’s been on the phone all night long. If I don’t patch you through, I think she’ll drive up and kill me, even if she has to plow the road herself. Jeez, Rick, do you believe this?”

“It’s almost three feet deep up where I am,” Rick told her. “How soon can you get a helicopter to lift me out?”

“I’ll start working on it right away,” the dispatcher promised. “And we have a possible ID on the man you’re after. Someone named Shane Slater, who’s been a fugitive for almost fifteen years.” Before Rick could reply, Gillie’s voice came through the radio, her relief apparent.

“Rick? My God, are you really all right?”

“As all right as I can expect, considering I didn’t get any dinner, I missed a football game, and I might just be getting too old to sleep on nothing but a pile of branches. But I’m alive, so I guess I can’t complain. How’d you make out?”

“I’m fine,” Gillie replied, “except I haven’t had any sleep at all. But I’m worried about Olivia, and MaryAnne Carpenter. Both their phones are out, and the only thing I’ve been able to find out is that the Stiffles saw Olivia on their way down to town yesterday afternoon. She said she
was going to get MaryAnne and the kids and take them back to her place.”

“Then that’s where they probably are,” Rick told her. “Olivia knows what she’s doing.”

Gillie hesitated, wondering if she should even tell Rick the other detail that was worrying her. Before she could make up her mind, he hit on it himself. “Have you looked out the back window? We can see her chimney from there.”

“I already did,” Gillie replied. “There’s no smoke, and you know Olivia—she won’t heat any other way, if she can help it. If she were there, she’d have kept a fire burning all night.”

Once again Rick scanned the valley, then saw what looked like a wisp of smoke drifting up from the area where the Wilkenson house stood. “I think they must all have holed up at El Monte,” he said into the radio. Then the dispatcher’s voice cut in.

“Rick, it doesn’t look like we can get a chopper up to you for a couple of hours. We’ve got people stranded all over the place, and most of them need medical help. Can you just sit tight for a while?”

“I can do a hell of a lot better than that,” Rick replied, his voice grim. “If I could get myself in here in the middle of a blizzard, I can damned well get myself out again now that it’s over.”

“Rick, you stay right where you are!” Gillie interrupted, her voice rising. “You’re lucky to be alive, and you know it! Just stay where you are until someone can come and pick you up.”

Rick shook his head, despite the fact no one was there to see him. “No way! I’ll be a hell of a lot better off hiking out than dangling from a rope underneath one of those whirlybirds. They’d probably drag me through the trees and wind up killing me themselves. Talk to you later.”

Snapping off the radio before Gillie could argue with, him, he kicked snow onto the already dying fire, then set out. He pushed his way through the drifts until he came to the edge of the forest, where the going got much easier, since most of the snow had been caught by the
dense canopy of branches overhead. Here, for the most part, the ground was still nearly bare, and he started back the way he’d come, threading his way through the underbrush until at last he came back to the spot where he’d left the Jeep.

He circled the snow-covered vehicle, assessing the situation, and finally decided he had a better than even chance of driving himself out the way he’d come in, if he could just get the car turned around. He brushed the tailgate free of snow, then lifted it up. Inside, half buried under the collection of odds and ends that always seemed to gather there, he found the set of chains that he always left there, even when he cleaned the Jeep out, and a shovel he carried for situations such as this one. The hard part, he decided, was going to be digging away enough snow to get the chains onto all four wheels. Once he had them in place, the rest should be easy.

An hour later, after more cursing than he’d done in the past twelve months combined, and with the skin missing from at least half of his knuckles, the chains were secured. After digging as much snow as he could away from the area around the car, he got in and tried the engine.

It ground for a few seconds, coughed, then caught, and he babied it along, giving it small spurts of gas to digest as it slowly warmed up, its uneven chugs slowly settling into a steady purr. He turned the heater on full blast, then held his hands in front of the dash vents until he felt them begin to thaw out once again. Finally he checked the transfer box, then put the transmission in reverse. The Jeep began to move, and he heard the crackling of snapping twigs as the rear end left the road and plunged into the dense underbrush. When the car would go no farther, he shifted into forward, spun the wheel around, then nosed into the brush on the other side of the narrow track.

After three back and forths, the Jeep was finally turned around, and Rick shifted it once more into its lowest forward gear. As the engine labored, the vehicle began pushing its way through the snow.

Thirty minutes later he was back in the campground, and twenty minutes after that he finally gave up, for the road had left the protection of the forest, and the snow blowing across the valley the day before had drifted nearly six feet deep. Turning the car around once more, Rick went back up the road until he judged he was as close as he could get to the ranch house. Switching off the engine, he abandoned the car once more, but knew it didn’t matter. He was back in totally familiar territory, and only a quarter of a mile from El Monte. He switched the radio on, reported his position, and asked the dispatcher to call Gillie for him. “I’d talk to her myself, but I doubt she’s speaking to me right now. Talk to you when I know what the situation is up here.”

He made his way down the gentle incline toward Coyote Creek, moving quickly through the forest, finding a place to cross the stream only a hundred yards out of his way, then emerged from the forest and gazed at the house some forty yards away.

The Range Rover, covered in snow, was still parked in the yard, and a grayish plume of smoke rose from the chimney.

Only when his eyes fell on the blanket hanging inside the smashed window did Rick realize that, though the house seemed peaceful now, something had gone very wrong.

Wading through the snow, he finally made it to the front porch and banged loudly on the door.

Hearing nothing but silence, he pounded again, and was about to leave the porch to go around to the kitchen door on the side when he heard MaryAnne Carpenter’s voice, its trembling clearly audible, despite the muffling of the heavy wooden door. “Wh-Who is it?”

“It’s Rick Martin, Mrs. Carpenter!” the deputy called. “Are you all right?”

The door opened the slightest crack, and MaryAnne peered suspiciously out at him for a second, then pulled the door wide as she recognized him. As the door swung open, Rick could see by her ashen complexion and the look of pure terror in her eyes that something had, indeed, gone very wrong.

“They’re dead,” MaryAnne said, her voice numb, tears beginning to run down her pale face as she realized that, at last, it was safe to give in to the shock. “They’re all dead. Logan—Olivia—Slater—all dead. All dead …”

Rick stepped into the house, guiding MaryAnne gently back to the kitchen, his radio in his hand once again.

“I’m at El Monte,” he said. “And we’re going to need help. A lot of help. Get a plow up here, now! We may have three people dead!” As they came into the kitchen, he saw Alison, her face as pale as her mother’s, sitting at the table, an untouched glass of orange juice in front of her. He glanced around once more, then turned to MaryAnne. “Where’s Joey?” he asked.

MaryAnne’s eyes fixed on Rick’s face for a moment, then drifted toward the window, and the soaring mountain peaks that loomed high above the narrow valley. “Gone,” she whispered. “That man—his name was Shane Slater, and he was Joey’s father. And now Joey’s gone.” Her voice turned hollow as her eyes fixed on the towering peaks. “Like his father,” she murmured. “He’s gone up into the mountains, just like his father did.”

Joey’s eyes snapped open, his senses instantly alert. He was in the cabin—his father’s cabin—and once more he’d slept in his father’s bed, curled beneath a mound of animal skins.

He was no longer alone.

He could sense a presence somewhere close to the cabin, though he could neither hear any sound nor see anything moving through the empty windows or open door.

Yet he was certain that something was there. He crept out from under the heavy furs, still dressed in the clothes he’d found in the tack room yesterday afternoon. His bare feet made no sound as he moved to the door. Finally, he stepped out on the porch.

The snow was deep, and even the tracks he’d made as he climbed up to the cabin had long since disappeared. The air was still, and the morning was silent, all sound muffled by the layer of snow that had fallen during the night. And yet Joey could still sense that invisible presence lurking somewhere nearby.

He whistled, a single soft, low note. A moment later he heard a faint sound, a barely audible whimpering, and then there was a movement in the brush at the edge of the clearing.

As he watched, the wolf emerged from the dense bushes, her head low, her tail curled between her legs, the mangled carcass of a rabbit dangling from her jaws. She gazed steadily at Joey, her eyes glittering in the sunlight. After a few seconds Joey dropped to a crouch, holding his hand out toward her. “Come on, girl,” he said. “It’s okay—come on.”

The wolf hesitated for a moment but then moved forward, limping on three legs, her right hindpaw held off the ground. When she was still six feet from Joey, she stopped short, whimpering again, then dropped down into the snow, stretching herself out, except for the right hindleg, which stayed curled against her chest.

“What’s wrong?” Joey asked, leaning toward the wolf. “Did they hurt you? It’s okay, though. You’re safe now, and I’ll take care of you.” Talking steadily, keeping his voice low, he moved closer, finally dropping down into a crouch again when he was next to the animal. He held out his hand, letting her sniff at his fingers, then reached out to stroke her head. She trembled under his touch, but made no move to shy away, then Joey stroked her sinewy body. When the wolf made no move either to snap at him or to run away, Joey spoke to her once more, eventually standing up again and starting toward the cabin. As he urged her along, the animal struggled back to her feet and limped after him, dropping to the floor as soon as she was inside the cabin.

As she rolled over onto her left side, Joey saw the mat of bloody hair around the wound Tony Moleno’s bullet had torn in her flank.

He went to the stove and added some wood to the fire he’d banked the night before, then took a battered pan outside and filled it with snow. As the snow melted in the pan on the stove, he talked steadily to the wolf, sitting next to her, stroking her fur gently. When the water was finally warm enough, he found a rag and began cleaning the wound.

The wolf, trembling under his touch, seemed to understand that he was helping her, and made no move to pull away, uttered no snarls of warning.

At last the wound was clean, and Joey discovered that the bullet had gone completely through her leg, leaving a wound on each side. He found more rags, and tore them into thin strips, then began binding up the wound. When he was finished, the wolf sat up, favoring her right side, and licked his hand.

“Good girl,” he said. Realizing he was hungry, Joey glanced around the cabin, looking for something to eat. Then remembered the rabbit the wolf had been carrying when she’d crept out of the brush a few minutes ago. Leaving the cabin, he went outside and, at the far side of the clearing, perched on the carcass of the rabbit, saw a hawk pecking out the little creature’s eyes. Joey ran toward it, shouting and waving his arms, and the bird screamed with sudden fury, its wings flapping in a gesture of defiance. As Joey came closer, though, it launched itself into the air, its talons still clutching the body of the rabbit. Only when Joey was a few feet away did the hawk, its instinct for self-preservation overcoming its desire to guard its prey, finally drop the rabbit and soar into the sky, out of the boy’s reach. Snatching the rabbit up out of the snow, Joey trotted back to the cabin.

He found a knife and began clumsily skinning the rabbit, finally abandoning the knife altogether and using his fingers to strip the skin away from the meat below. Twisting one of the legs to snap the joint, he tore the tendons loose from the bone, then began ripping at the raw meat with his teeth. Only when his own appetite was sated did he throw the remains of the little creature to the wolf, who instantly snatched it up, swallowing the rabbit’s guts in great gulps without bothering to chew.

While the wolf finished eating, Joey took the bloody skin outside to bury it in the snow, and for the first time became aware of an ominous sound echoing off the rocky cliffs above. Dropping the rabbit’s hide, he scanned the valley below.

A moment later he found the source of the sound.

A helicopter was moving up the valley. As Joey watched, it hovered in place for a moment, then began dropping down.

Down into the field at El Monte Ranch.

Joey’s mind began to race. They would start looking for him soon, and he already knew where they would look first.

Here, in the cabin to which he had led Rick Martin yesterday.

His eyes went to the chimney, and he saw the plume of smoke rising from it.

Smoke that would be clearly visible from the valley, since there was no wind to disperse it.

He darted back into the cabin, already searching for things he could take with him, things he might be able to use while he hunted for a place to live.

He found a knife, some rope, and a trap.

But there were other things, things he could use but knew he couldn’t carry with him.