Those Who Wish Me Dead (26 page)

T
he wind swung around
after sunrise, started blowing out of the northwest and regaining the momentum it had sacrificed for the lightning storm.

The fire shifted with it, and Hannah knew then that it was going to be far closer than she’d wanted to imagine. In her mind, she’d always kept them half a mile from it, at least, a wide swing over the top of the fire ground and down to the creek, the two of them staying well away from the dangerous heat of it and from the ghosts that waited for her within the flames.

They weren’t going to have half a mile. Maybe a quarter of a mile. Maybe less, if that wind kept blowing.

Don’t show it,
she told herself.
Don’t show him that you’re scared.

They had taken too long getting down the mountain. They were about half a mile from the creek and she couldn’t see the crew that should be there, and that was more trouble, because it meant they’d camped farther north than she’d realized, and this was even worse news, thanks to the wind. It would push the fire up the gulch, which the team on the ground would regard as a fine thing, because that was exactly the direction they wanted the blaze to move, away from forest and fresh fuel and on toward the rock. Rock always did a better job of fighting fire than humans did. The mountains took care of themselves in the end; all you did was help.

This was turning into a beautiful morning for the fire crew, then, because the wind was helping them, and they’d stay north and appreciate their good fortune since there wasn’t anything up the gulch worth fighting for. Maybe three acres of fir and a ridge of grass and then the rock.

And Hannah and Connor.

“It’s high,” Connor said.

She understood that he meant the fire itself. They were close enough to see the flames clearly now, see how they climbed the pines and still weren’t satisfied, kept flapping higher, tasting the air to see if there was anything edible up above. She remembered being struck by the same thing in her first fire season, remembered swinging a Pulaski and trying to keep calm and pretend that flames so high above did not unnerve her.

The sound of it was powerful now too. As the wind provided reinforcement, the fire took on a sound like soft thunder, but steadier, the echo of distant trains.

“It’s going to be a problem,” she said.

“What is?”

“That fucking wind,” she said, and then looked at him and said, “Sorry.”

“Call it what you want,” he said.

She nodded and wiped sweat from her face and saw that her palm came away smeared with ash. Her eyes were stinging from the smoke and tearing constantly.

Hotter the fire, cooler the head; hotter the fire, cooler the head,
she told herself, one of the mantras that Nick chanted at them as they worked, and it meant two things: Keep yourself hydrated and as cool as possible against the fire heat, and, more important, keep your thoughts clear. Keep your mind working, and keep calm.

“Here’s what the fire wants to do,” she told Connor. “Jump that creek and find the forest. Why? Because it’s on a quest, just like us. We want to find help; it wants to stay fed. But here’s what the wind is instructing it to do: push up the gulch. The problem for the fire is that it doesn’t know what we know, and it won’t realize that going up the gulch is a mistake. It will know that only when it finds the rock shelves.”

He was staring at her. “Why are you talking like that? Like it has thoughts.”

“Because it does.” She ran her tongue over her teeth, trying to draw up some saliva, wishing for water. They were both out now. “It has needs, at least, and it knows how to meet them and what to do if something gets in its way. And right now…we are very close to doing just that, Connor.”

“It’s still pretty far off.”

It seemed to be, anyway. Looked as if it were taking its time chewing through the timber, and they had elevation on it and some distance, and the creek loomed, shimmering in the sunrise.

“You said we just need to get across the creek. Right?”

“Right.”

“The creek isn’t that far. We can make it. We can run.”

God bless him, he still thought he could run. How long had he been on his feet; how long had he been awake?

“Hannah?” he said. “We can make it if we run.”

“There’s one problem,” she said. “It can run too, buddy. You haven’t seen that yet, but trust me, it can run.”

The temperature of the main fire was maybe twelve hundred degrees, maybe fifteen hundred, and it was finding plenty of fuel, and the wind was pushing oxygen in, so that temperature was rising. When it got hotter, it would get excited, and it would be ready to run.

Hotter the fire, cooler the head.

She had cost them both dearly by keeping them high, and it was fine to acknowledge that but imperative to know that continuing to climb would no longer be a mistake. The creek was tempting but she wasn’t sure that they could make it, not even running, and if climbing again might save them, then they had to do it. The very idea of climbing made her feel defeated.

“We’re going to backtrack a bit,” she said. “I’m sorry. But it’s the right thing. We need to go back up the drainage and get up on that ridgeline, you see it?”

He followed her pointing finger and nodded.

“We can walk along that. It’s not too steep. And it gives us plenty of space if the fire makes a jailbreak and decides to run. It won’t like the rock, and there will be plenty of rock between us and the last of the trees. Slower going, but safer. We’ll just make our way along that ridgeline and then deal with the creek.”

He didn’t say anything, but his face told her that he didn’t agree, and she knew the look well, had worn it herself on the day she convinced Nick that there was enough time to get down and save the family and make it back up.

“It may not get that high,” she said, “but we’ve come too far to risk it. So it’s just a little more time, and then…”

The rest of the explanation faded into silence and inconsequence when a horse with two riders appeared out of the smoke ahead of them.

The sun had risen above the fire in a war of red heat, but the light had shown them nothing and Allison was unwilling to push Tango any longer. It was too vertical here and they were too close to the fire, and if Jamie’s son had made it down the back side of Republic Peak, they should have seen him by now. She had been prepared to announce all of this for the past fifteen minutes but hadn’t managed to get the words out, because how did you tell a mother that it was time to give up the search for her son? So she rode just a bit longer, slowing Tango to a walk. He was uneasy with the fire, trying to pull them farther away from it, but farther away was steeper and more treacherous ground and so she made him hold the ridgeline. When he stopped entirely, her first instinct was to look at his leg again. Jamie’s first instinct was to look forward, and so Allison had her head down when Jamie said, “Who is that?”

Allison looked up and saw them then, two figures, and because it was two and they were some distance away, her immediate reaction was a cold chill of fear—she had ridden right back into their arms.

But the heights were wrong. It was not the brothers—she would know them even in distant silhouettes, no question. The two figures were on the other side of a steep drainage lined with deadfall, and they weren’t moving, just staring ahead.

“Who is that?” Jamie repeated. Her voice was measured, as if she was fighting for calm, and so Allison tried to match it when she said, “Let’s go find out.”

She urged Tango forward—
Just a little more, please, buddy, just give us a little more
—and watched the silhouettes take clearer shapes. The fear was transforming into triumph, because it looked to be a woman and a boy.

“Is it him?” she said.

“I don’t know. Get over there and see.”

“I can’t take the horse through that.” The drainage fell off sharply, a drop of at least eight feet, and the deadfall offered a base filled with gaps and holes, leg-breakers in wait.

“Then let me down. Please stop and let me down.”

Allison brought Tango to a stop and Jamie tried an awkward dismount and nearly fell off the horse’s back. Allison caught her arm and said, “Easy,” and then Jamie found the stirrup and swung down and nearly fell again trying to pull her gun from its holster before she even had her legs under her.

“Relax,” Allison said. “It’s not them. It’s not the ones you need to be worried about.”

“Then who is it?”

That was a fair question. One of them was a woman, Allison could see that from here, but who? Jamie kept the gun in her hand and started toward them on foot without waiting for Allison.

“Hang on,” Allison called, but what was the point in slowing her? One of the two was Jamie’s son, it had to be. She dismounted too, and she didn’t think of tying Tango because Tango wouldn’t run from her, never had. She put one grateful palm on his snout and it came away slick with sweat.

“Be right back, buddy,” she said. “Then we’re getting the hell out of here.” But already she was troubled by the logistics of that—she wasn’t sure how much longer he could go with one rider, let alone two, and four would be simply impossible.

It wasn’t the rescue Hannah had imagined. She’d marched them across the mountains and back down toward the fire with the expectation of reaching men and women with hoses and axes, pump trucks and ATVs, and maybe a helicopter.

Instead, she had two women on horseback.

“Do you know them?” she said. “Connor? Do you know who these people are?”

“I’m not sure.” He hesitated and then took a few steps forward, closer to the drainage, and Hannah followed, feeling a powerful need to be between him and any strangers, even if they meant no harm.

“Hello!” Connor shouted. “Hello!”

The women had dismounted and were approaching, one bandaged up, the other well ahead, and Hannah realized there was a gun in that one’s hand. She reached out and caught Connor by the arm, jerked him back.

“Stop. We don’t know—”

“It’s Allison!” he said.

“Who?”

“Ethan’s wife! That’s Ethan’s wife!”

“Your instructor?”

“Yes, it’s his wife.” He waved an arm at them and shouted, “Allison! Allison! It’s me.”

“Who’s with her?” Hannah asked.

“I have no idea,” Connor said. “But at least she’s got a gun.”

Allison was struggling to catch up to Jamie Bennett—riding had been painful, but running was worse—when the boy began to shout at them. At first she couldn’t make out the words, because the wind was carrying the sound of the fire up the gulch, but then she heard her own name.

It was him. It was Connor, Jamie’s son. They’d actually found him.

“We’ve got him,” she said to Jamie. “He’s safe, he did just what he was supposed to do and took that escape route, even though it led into the fire.” She didn’t have any idea who he was with, but he didn’t appear to feel threatened, he seemed healthy and unharmed, was calling out for her, and Allison was flushed with relief and triumph, saying, “We found your son,” when the disconnect that should have been obvious finally hit her.

Allison! Allison!

He was calling to her. Why wasn’t he calling to his mother?

“Doesn’t he see you?” she said, but she already knew the answer to the question, and her mind was slowly catching up to what this meant when Jamie Bennett turned back to face her.

“He doesn’t know who you are,” Allison said. “Why didn’t you tell me that? He doesn’t know that you’re his mother.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d go on ahead now. You’ll need to be in front of me.” The gun was in Jamie’s hand, and it was pointed at Allison, who looked at it as if she weren’t clear on its purpose.

“What are you doing?”

“Get in front of me. Please.”

Allison looked from her to Jace and said, “That’s not your son.”

“I’m afraid not. Now, walk over there to him. He’s come a long way, and he deserves to see you, don’t you think? We’ll all figure it out from there.”

Allison stared at her, not moving. The boy and the woman were moving, though; they were approaching fast, were within pistol range.
I can shoot it well,
Jamie Bennett had said.

“What’s happening?” Allison said. “What in the hell is really happening here?”

Jamie gave her a pained expression and a small shrug and said, “Not everything I told you was a lie. I truly came to get some people out of the mountains, Mrs. Serbin. Just not my son. I’ve come for my brothers.”

F
or the first time
since Ethan had woken him in the night, Jace was actually convinced that he was going to get out of the woods. Not just that it was possible. It was
happening
. Ethan had sent Allison for him, somehow, and she’d come with someone who’d protect him.

“We can take the horse,” he was saying as he fought his way through a downed pine, feeling his ankle twist in the branches. It was a dry, dead tree, and when the fire made it up here, it was going to burn fast. But that didn’t matter anymore, none of it did, because they’d be gone by the time the fire got here. The journey was done.

Behind him, Hannah said, “Connor, slow down.”

He kept going, though; he didn’t need to slow down, not anymore, because it was
over,
they were getting out of this place. Hannah hadn’t lied—he was going to see his parents again. It was actually going to happen.

“Connor. Jace!
Jace!
”

When she finally used his real name, the first time she had, he turned to look at her. She was standing in the base of the drainage herself now and her expression didn’t look right. The joy that should have been there wasn’t. It was darkness. As if she saw something she didn’t like.

“Come back down here,” she said.

“What?” He was halfway up the slope, on his hands and knees, holding on to a tree root. All he had to do was pull himself up and he would be on the other side, standing with his rescuers.

“Come back down here,” Hannah repeated, and right then Allison Serbin spoke as well. Didn’t just speak, actually, but shouted.

“Jace, run. Get away from her!”

Get away from Hannah? Why didn’t Allison trust Hannah? If Hannah had meant to harm him, she’d have done it by now. There was something Allison didn’t understand, and Hannah didn’t either, and Jace knew he could set them all straight—everyone was just confused. He pulled up on the tree root and got over the lip of the ditch and then stood up on the other side. The woman he didn’t know was only a few feet away, and she was looking at him calmly. She was the only one besides him who wasn’t showing any fear.

She was also pointing the gun at him. She knew how to hold it too, a two-handed shooter’s grip. But why was it pointed
at
him?

“Who are you?” Jace asked.

She ignored him, taking two slow steps back, into a position where she could see Hannah and Allison clearly.

“Allison,” she said, “do not tell him to run. That’s not good advice. What Jace needs to do is sit down.”

Jace looked back at Hannah. She was still standing at the bottom of the drainage, and she looked defeated. She didn’t take her eyes away from the woman with the gun as she said, “Jace, sit down. Please. Do what she says.”

He sat. The woman said, “Thank you. And if you ladies could join him, we’ll all be able to relax a little bit.” There was a pause, and then she said, “Understand that we don’t have to relax. You get to pick how it goes.”

Allison sat down. She was about ten feet away from Jace, and he could see now how badly hurt she was, with bandages all over and dark stitches around her lips. Behind her, the horse paced and watched them all. He seemed as confused as Jace felt, and he was facing the fire. Jace could see that he was afraid of it.

“Two out of three,” the strange woman said. “Let’s get everybody up here.”

She was talking to Hannah, who slowly climbed out of the drainage the way Jace had. When she sat, she sat very close to him. The woman said, “Don’t get in between us. That’s very brave, but I think you understand that I need to see everyone clearly.”

Hannah moved away, but not far. She said, “You’re going to die too if you keep us here. You realize this is not someplace we can just sit and wait?”

The woman ignored her. She was looking right at Jace. “Where are they?” she asked.

“Who?”

“The men who came to kill you. Have you seen them?”

She was partners with them, he realized. Not here to help him at all; here to help
them
. He looked at Hannah, then at Allison Serbin, searching for an explanation, for something, but the woman snapped at him again. “Jace, you need to tell the truth about this, and do it now. Where are they?”

“Behind us,” he said. “We lost them.”

“I doubt that. Are they with Ethan?”

“I don’t know.”

Jamie’s eyes shifted to Hannah, and she said, “What happened, lady? Who in the hell are you?”

Hannah didn’t answer. She had turned away from the woman as if the gun didn’t bother her at all. She was staring down at the fire when she said, “You don’t have time to find them. Don’t you realize that?”

Allison Serbin said, “They’re your
brothers?
You sent the boy up here to be killed?”

“It wasn’t anyone’s first choice, Mrs. Serbin. The boy’s parents are very distrustful. Even when they agreed with my plan, they wouldn’t turn him over to me. Insisted on sending him to Montana themselves, and I’ll give them credit, they did a fine job getting him out under cover. Could he have been taken at the airport in Billings? Certainly. But at such great risk. In the mountains, though? So much easier. Had your husband not decided to be such an overachiever, it would have ended for the boy with a bullet from a rifle no one ever saw. That was the idea. It might have been hard on you both, sure, but nobody else would have been harmed. What we have here, though, is a situation that got a little out of hand. Too many people tried too hard to help our friend Jace.”

Her brothers. Jace stared at her and realized he could see it. Tall and lean and blond and with the same calm. But she wasn’t shooting yet. They wouldn’t have waited, he was pretty sure. That was the difference.

“You sent him out here so they could find him?” Allison was asking, and Jace hadn’t heard that much anger in anyone’s voice in a long time—he thought she might disregard the gun entirely and try to kill this woman with her hands. “You asked Ethan to keep him safe but all you wanted was to know where he was? You evil bitch. You actually sent him to—”

“To be fair, Mrs. Serbin, a good deal of this was your husband’s fault. He tried too hard. It wasn’t supposed to take so much work. I feel bad for the rest of you, because all of this didn’t need to happen. Jace here was the only one who…who was required.” She shifted and blinked a few times—she was the only one facing the smoke, and it was blowing hard now, and the fire was louder than before—and said, “Jace, would you like me to let these women go?”

He nodded. The tears were threatening. He didn’t want to cry in front of this woman, though, in front of this evil bitch. Allison had called her exactly what she was. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of crying his way to the end. It was what she expected from him.

“Please,” he said. His voice was a whisper. “Yes, please, let them go.”

Hannah reached for him then, trying to take him in her arms, and the woman fired her gun and Jace ducked back and lifted an arm as if he might protect himself from the bullet. She’d shot high, though, and it was gone, into the smoke.

“Next one won’t be a warning,” she said. “Now, Jace, these women can go. If you tell me the truth, and you work with me, they can go. That’s your choice.”

“Yes,” he repeated.

“All right. How far away are they? Where was the last place you saw them? Or have you not seen them?”

“They’re behind us,” he said. “That’s all I know.” He waved a hand up the mountain, and that was when he saw the man in black coming down toward them. Jace’s face must have shown something, because the woman turned and saw him too and apparently recognized him, even at a distance. She seemed pleased.

“Well, would you look at that. We don’t need to go anywhere, Jace. We can all just sit here and wait.”

“You said they could go.” His voice rose to a shout.
“You said they could go!”

“I’m going to leave that decision up to other people. For now, we’re all going to wait.”

Hannah’s voice was soft when she said, “Then we’re all going to die. Not just the ones you want. You will too.”

The woman turned and looked back down the slope to where the trees were burning and said, “I think we’ve got plenty of time.”

Jace didn’t even look at the fire. He was still staring at the man. It was a single man coming down off the mountain, on their trail. It was one of them, there was no doubt.

“I told you,” he said to Hannah. “They don’t quit.”

Allison had been considering a rush at Jamie Bennett, so infuriated by the betrayal that she was hardly afraid of the gun, thought she could take the bullets and still kill this bitch, but now there was another one, and she knew how it would go from here.

“I hadn’t expected to see you so soon,” the man in black called to them as he approached, and Allison wasn’t sure whom he was addressing until Jamie responded.

“I hadn’t expected to be needed. It looks like things got away from you.”

“It has not gone as planned.”

He was close enough now to be heard without shouting. His eyes took them in one at a time and lingered on Allison.

“Mrs. Serbin, I have traveled with you in my mind for a full day and night now. You see what you’ve done to me?” He waved his free hand toward his face, which was a blistered mess. “And, no, you don’t look well yourself, but at least you have received proper medical treatment. I’ve suffered. It has not put me in a good frame of mind.”

He turned then to the boy and spoke with a softness in his voice that sounded almost sweet, the awe of a new father addressing his child.

“Jace, Jace, you beautiful lad. My, how you’ve troubled me. You’ve run far enough, don’t you think? If it makes you feel any better, you’ve taken a toll on me, son. You have truly taken a toll.”

Jamie Bennett said, “Where is Patrick?”

Allison had been wondering the same thing. One of them was horror enough, but there should have been two.

Jack Blackwell did not speak for a moment. He was facing away from Jamie, his eyes on Jace Wilson, when he said, “Our brother is dead.”

Jamie didn’t seem to believe him. Didn’t answer, just gave a little shake of her head.

“Mrs. Serbin’s husband,” Jack said, “was not the aid I had hoped he would be.” He looked back at Allison and said, “He is dead too, but you understand that is not a fair trade to me.”

Ethan was dead. He had been in his mountains, and it hadn’t seemed possible that he would die in them.

Jack Blackwell looked away from them now, stared down into the fire that feasted below. For a time he just stood there, as if he were alone in the world and no troubles weighed on his mind.

“Look at it go,” he said, almost to himself. “That was Patty’s, you know. That was his idea. And it may yet be effective, though he won’t know it. There are bodies to hide and stories to silence and it might be his fire that will do the trick.”

He swiveled his head abruptly, faced the woman who’d guided Jace Wilson this far, and said, “Who are you?”

She didn’t answer.

“I know your
role,
” he said. “You’re supposed to keep watch. You’re supposed to keep something like that”—he indicated the fire—“from being allowed to spread. But I’d like to know your name. Would you share that much, please, before we proceed?”

She hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Hannah Faber.”

Jack Blackwell nodded and mouthed the name once without speaking it aloud. A slow, thoughtful gesture, as if he were striving to commit her to eternal memory.

Then he lifted his pistol and shot her.

Allison had never before heard a sound like the one that came from Jace Wilson then. Something between a scream and a howl, and he scrambled toward the woman as she fell, and bright blood cascaded between her fingers while she held the wound, which was centered in her right knee. Jack Blackwell lowered the pistol and said, “Have a minute with her, Jace. Go on and take a minute. We’re pressed for time, but I’ll not rush this. Not after so long a journey.”

“Hurry,” Jamie Bennett said. “Hurry or we’ll never get out of here.”

“You’d like to finish it?”

“I can.”

“No.” He shook his head, watching Hannah Faber, whose feet were still moving on the rocks as if she intended to find a way to stand. “No, the work that remains is mine alone. And, Patty, he’ll get them in the end. He lit the match, you know. I’ll let them wait on his work now.”

He tilted his head to study Hannah’s face. He watched with great interest, and then he said, “Jace, please step aside.”

Jace Wilson didn’t move, and Jack Blackwell sighed and then lifted the pistol and fired again, and this time it was Allison who screamed.

He’d fired around the boy, just inches to the side of him, and put another bullet into Hannah Faber, this time in her left foot. Blood ran out of her boot and her head dropped back and her mouth opened but no scream came. She just writhed in silence.

“I believe she’s good to wait on our brother’s work now,” Jack said. “I think that’s a fine way to bring it all to a close.”

“Hurry,” Jamie Bennett said again. She was looking down at the oncoming fire and her face was wet with sweat. Jack Blackwell ignored her and turned to Allison and lifted the pistol, then lowered it and shook his head.

“For you and me, things should be a bit more intimate, don’t you think?” he said, and then he flipped the gun in a smooth twirl so that he was holding it by the barrel, like a club, and advanced on her.

“I’m glad he killed your brother,” Allison said. Her voice was shaking.

“Are you, though?” he said. “Is that pleasing to you?” The soft, musical tone was gone. “I’m going to—”

The rest of his words and most of his face left him then. His head burst in a red cloud and he dropped sideways and didn’t even roll when he hit the rocks.

For a few seconds, Ethan had no idea what had gone wrong. His skull was ringing and blood was pouring out of his face, soaking his cheeks and coating his lips in coppery warmth and dripping into the rocks where the rifle lay.