Nothing Short of Dying (4 page)

CHAPTER SIX

W
e were back on the interstate, headed east, before Allie said anything.

“You going to tell me what happened to those guys?”

“I gave them free swimming lessons.”

Her eyes widened. She stared at me a moment, probably wondering what condition they were in when they went into the river. “You think Brent will send anyone else?”

“Not for a while. If he does, we'll make ourselves hard to find. What more do you know about Lance?”

She stared out the window, sighing. “I told you what I know. He's ambitious, and from the little of I've seen of him, he doesn't have much of a conscience. He even treats Brent like shit.”

“That doesn't give me a place to start. There must be something else.”

Allie shook her head. “He's private about what he's into. He's not the type who's going to shoot his mouth off in a bar. Brent is the bigmouth in the family.” She paused, seeming to remember something.

“What?”

“One night, Brent was pretty lit up by whatever junk he
was on and talking big to a couple guys in his crew—something about how Lance has a factory-size lab somewhere. ‘Control that lab and you control the meth trade for a thousand miles,' he said.”

For the first time, I wondered if this big honcho I was going up against might be too much to handle. The three years I'd spent in Somalia had taught me how to take on a warlord with his own private army, but Lance sounded smarter than the average tribal bully.
Security expertise. Doesn't shoot off his mouth. An empire builder
. What had Jen said when she'd called me two nights ago?
After I help him get inside a week from now, I'm no use to him
. Inside what?

As the highway mile markers continued to tick by, I kept brooding on the possibilities.

Finally, Allie broke the silence. “Jen mentioned you a couple times.”

“Yeah, what'd she say?”

“That you ran away to Africa—to play guns with the natives. She said you were a mercenary.”

I hated that word. It implied that I fought for money, which I never did—well, not solely. Yeah, I'd put my hunting skills to use over there, but it was usually for a cause.

“Jen doesn't know the real story. None of that matters now anyway. What matters is that I'm sitting in a truck with a girl going . . . come to think of it, I have no
idea
where
we're going. And I have no clue where my sister is.”

“I'm not a
girl
,” Allie said. Her eyes had narrowed to thin slits, and she stared at me as if begging for debate.

“Sure, you're not a girl. Got it.” I'd obviously hit a nerve and I wasn't going to argue
.

“Let's get something straight, Barr. I've been through more in twenty-six years than most women have in a lifetime.”

She looked back out the window, watching the orchards fly by.

I kept driving, waiting for her to say something else.

“My dad died when I was ten,” she said in a quiet voice. “Had a heart attack while he was burning ditches. Left me and my mom on our farm. My mom loved me, but she was sick. Smoked two packs a day and didn't have the energy it took to run a place like that. So I did
every
chore, ran
every
tractor, fixed
every
fence. No one gets to call me a girl.”

I nodded, gripping the steering wheel tightly as I fought the truck around the corners. Minutes passed. I sensed there was more.

“You want to tell me the rest of it?”

Allie ran a hand through her hair and closed her eyes. “I met an older guy, started dating, and well . . . it turned out
really
bad. Then my mom had a stroke. I'm her only kid, and who else was going to take care of her, right? Only thing is, it's really expensive and it takes all of your time. So I let some Mennonites farm our place, and I spent every second either caring for my mom or working at crap bars until it almost killed me.

“Then I started working at the Cellar. Brent said I brought in customers. He told me I doubled his business. He paid me enough to put Mom up in an assisted-living place. Looks like that's going to unravel pretty quickly.”

So there it was again. The pattern of my life was continuing. I'd begun by trying to help Jen, but had already caused a big problem for Allie.
Damn.

WE WERE OUT OF THE
Grand Valley then, rolling through a narrow canyon that the river had carved through brown-and-red
sandstone. We drove into a tunnel and I honked the horn, just to hear the echo. The sound startled Allie and she started talking again. “What are we going to do?” Her eyes were red, but her jaw was set.

“I'm going to drop you off, next town,” I said, trying to keep the truck between the lines. The wheels weren't cooperating.

Allie kept staring out the window. “I'm staying.”

“I'll give you money. You can get a bus, start over somewhere else.”

“That's not good enough.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I help you, maybe you help
me
?”

“How?” I wasn't sure where she was going with this.

“I've got a feeling you're a guy who gets what he wants. And not just a piece, either—you take the whole thing.”

“And why do I need
you
?”

She smiled. “To pull back on the leash? The best solution isn't always going to be to put five people in the hospital or toss three guys in a river.”

I pretended I wasn't amused, but I was. “I could just stop the truck right now, throw you out, drive off.”

“Doubt it,” she said confidently, tossing her ponytail as she turned to look out the window. “You aren't that kind of guy. Not to women. But if you tried . . .”

“What?” I asked.

“I'd punch you in the dick.”

The truck wandered from the white line, across the yellow, and almost onto the opposite shoulder before I got it back under control. Allie looked across, repeated her question. “So what are we going to do?”

Score one for her.

I shook my head, thinking. “Maybe . . . maybe we look for the middle man who sells to Brent. He might have a lead on Lance.”

“You mean the Little Dick? That's what Brent calls him. I have no idea where he is. Or what he looks like.”

“Spike must have mentioned
something
about him. Anything you can remember will help.”

She bit her lip slightly, seemed to be sorting through her mental archives. “All Brent ever said was that ‘the Little Dick is in Rifle.' The guys Brent would send to him were supposed to meet him by King's Crown. I guess
they
knew what it was, but I don't have any idea.”

“You ever see the guy?”

“Hell no. I haven't been to Rifle since I was a kid. And the Little Dick never goes to Junction. Brent always has to send someone. This guy probably has his own crew and has some pull if he's the one who never has to drive, right?”

“Right. We need to find the Crown.”

“It must be a place. Give me a second.” She pulled out her phone, swiped her finger against the screen for ten seconds and said, “Got it. Trailer park on the north side of town.”

“How'd you do that?” I asked, amazed. I'd been in the backwoods for too long; technology had obviously advanced while I was overseas and in prison.

She explained the Google Maps thing, showed me a picture of the map, and yawned. Then she told me to wake her when we hit Rifle, that she'd had a long night.

After that I stopped only once, in a two-horse town called De Beque to gas up and grab burgers and drinks. My mood was definitely improving. It felt good to have a destination. Maybe when we got to Rife I could pressure this Little Dick guy and learn where Jen was being held. I was actually hum
ming to myself when I checked my rearview mirror and noticed two black SUVs that I'd seen following us prior to our stop in De Beque. No way it was just a coincidence that they were behind us again. The vehicles were close enough to ID them as Tahoes, but they were keeping a set distance. Whoever was driving them seemed content to trail behind us and see where we took them.

I wondered where that would be.

CHAPTER SEVEN

S
andy escarpments rose up on the left and forested mesas hugged the right until we dropped off a hill and headed into the Rifle valley. The river was wider here, with waves shimmering white in the sun. What were once hay fields in the flat floodplains were now natural gas pads, pipe yards, compressor stations, and gas plants. One of the latter spewed a flame sixty feet into the air. Closer to town, the cattle pastures I'd known as a kid were buried forever under asphalt and pavement, with houses and apartment complexes built on top.

I jerked the truck off I-70 and into west Rifle. The Tahoes followed.

“Who are they?” Allie asked. She was awake now and looking in the side mirror. Her question was clinical, her face deadpan.

“Don't know,” I said, reaching for the binoculars under my seat. I handed them to Allie. “What's on the license plate?”

She turned and steadied her elbows on the back of the bench. “US government. J dash four two seven.”

“Great,” I said. “It's not just the dealers who're looking for Lance. Only J plates I've seen have been DEA, ATF, or FBI.”

Allie's eyes widened as she turned back in her seat and buckled in. “How do you know that?”

“Zebras don't like spots,” I said, navigating the narrow two-lane through an industrial section of town.

“What?”

“Never mind. They've been following us for a while.”

She continued looking at the Tahoes in the side mirror, then dug into the bag of burgers I'd picked up earlier. “You want yours now?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I'll have mine later. Right now I want to see if we can shake these government boys. You pack a coat in that bag?”

She gave me a quizzical look. “Barr, does that backpack look like it could fit a heavy coat?”

“A sweatshirt, then? Something warm?”

“Yeah, but—”

“I'll explain later,” I said, steering the truck north through downtown Rifle. It wasn't more than a few blocks long, but contained all of the elements of civilization: library, fast food joints, car washes, bars, pawnshops, and yes, even marijuana dispensaries. When had pot become a staple of modern life?

Allie looked at the Feds again through the side mirror. “Are you going to let them pull you over so you can beat them up?” she asked. I couldn't tell whether she was serious or not.

“Not a good strategy,” I said.

She smiled. “So there
are
other skills in your repertoire. Good to know.”

As we turned right onto another two-lane road marked “Forest Access,” both Tahoes followed conspicuously behind. Allie looked over at me, slurping a soda. “Have you actually done this before, or do you just watch a lot of movies?”

“There haven't been a lot of movies where I've been the past few years. I read a lot of books, though.”

“So you learned how to shake a tail from a book?”

“Books. And experience, unfortunately. I've been chased a few times.”

Soon we were clear of houses, passing a reservoir, a fish hatchery, and a campground. The Tahoes were still the only vehicles behind us. “You're not very good at this,” Allie said.

“I know what I'm doing, trust me. The pavement ends soon and we'll lose them.”

“How do you know?” she asked, swallowing the last of her burger.

“That mountain ahead?” I pointed to the large mesa in front of us. “I've camped there a couple times.”

Her face remained blank but in her eyes I could see the wheels turning.
What have I signed up for?
they seemed to say.

As the canyon narrowed even further, with cliffs on both sides, a creek meandered back and forth. We crossed it several times, splashing and bobbing, bursting out to dry land, then splashing back again. There were very few trees down along the creek—there wasn't enough light—but the few that grew there grabbed at the sides of the truck, branches screeching along the paint, occasionally smacking the side mirrors. I pushed the reluctant truck up to fifty. We leaped over every bump and bottomed out in every little dip.

For a few seconds it looked like we were going to be boxed in. There were cliffs on both sides of the road, and the bulk of the mountain loomed in front of us. “Barr, are we lost?” Allie asked.

“No. Look up. There's a cut in the hillside, up in those trees. This road climbs out.” And it
would
eventually, but it switchbacked the whole way. It was a south-facing slope, in
the spring, so it would be muddy and icy, and in the shadows snow-packed.

I slowed, then ground the transfer case into four-wheel drive, turning left and pointing the nose of the truck seemingly straight up. As we slopped and slewed our way up the first pitch, mud spun off the front tires and plastered the side windows.

“They still behind us?” I asked. I kept my focus on the road, both hands tight on the wheel, forearms popping, trying to stay straight and moving.

“I think so. They're headed up the first part of the hill. No . . . now they're not. One of them is sideways in the road, blocking it. Four guys are getting out and walking around. I think they're stuck.”

“Gonna get their suits dirty,” I said.

It was a fight for both the machine and me to make it up the next couple of turns. The road alternated between mud, ice, and snow, but finally we roared over the top and leveled out in a small clearing surrounded by tall green pines. The grass was short, barely visible between the mounds of pine needles. There were small patches of snow in the shade and large icy drifts against some of the trees.

I pulled to the side of the road and got out. I grabbed the binoculars from the seat and walked to the edge. The Feds had a towrope out, the Tahoe in the rear trying to wrestle the other back down the road.
Welcome to the mountains, boys.
I walked back to the truck and climbed in.

“Jesus,” Allie said.

“Yeah.” We drove on, further into the forest.