Falls Like Lightning (22 page)

A scarlet sun flared across Silas’s yellow fire shirt at the right chest—the mirrored side of the gunshot that had gone through Bo’s chest. The muscle beneath felt tender. A quick look revealed a nasty purple bruise but no broken skin.

A wave of grief washed over him. He pushed it from his mind, damming up his feelings. He needed to survive.

To think clearly.

Act decisively.

He’d blend in better with just the dark blue T-shirt he wore beneath his yellow fire shirt. Through the reeds he kept his eyes fixed on Sippi and undid the large buttons. He stripped the shirt off of his shoulders and rolled it into a bundle, holding it in one hand beneath the water’s surface.

Sippi looked behind himself and uphill. Silas heard faint conversation, but nothing discernable. Sippi kept one hand on the pistol and with the other waved. Midslope, on the opposite side of the granite outcropping, Rapunzel appeared, lumbering along and favoring his injured flank, working his way down through the ground cover.

Silas searched his surroundings. He wouldn’t be safe in the water for long. They likely didn’t know if he was shot and floating just beneath the surface or if he had made it to the shore. No doubt they would soon search the banks.

He remembered the animal carcass along the shore. About twenty feet from him now, down the bank in the opposite direction from Sippi lay the rotting deer he’d seen when he and Bo first descended into the lake basin.

Silas lifted his shirt from the water. A plan birthed in his mind. He took another look at Sippi. Rapunzel neared the shore next to him.

The light breeze over the lake proved opportune. Silas could move with stealth and not create a revealing wake. He took a couple minutes to move the short distance, not wanting to chance alerting the duo with the sound of his motion. He came upon the carcass, decomposing and fly infested on the shore. The water there was thicker and greener than near the reed stand, which still served to hide him from Sippi and Rapunzel’s view. Unfortunately, he also could no longer see them.

Silas tried to breathe through his mouth. The stench of the animal hovered thick; the cloud of insects pelted his face. He turned away, drew a deep breath, and firmed his resolve. He unraveled his yellow shirt, tied a sleeve to each of the deer’s front legs, and draped the rest over the animal’s torso. Shooting a glance back down the shore, he exhaled, buried his face in his shoulder, and sucked in another breath. As quietly as he could, he dragged the beast into the water.

At first it began to sink, then, as if equalizing, it found a balance point a couple feet under the surface.

Perfect.

Silas escorted it out deeper, to the edge of the reed blind, and gave it a final shove toward the center of the lake.

He waded low back to the beach, slime coating his neck, flies flitting about his head, landing in his hair and on his ears. At the shoreline he crept low, army style, moving only to a crouch once he was a decent fifty feet into the forest. The ground edged upward, and soon he was half-hiking, half-climbing the basin hillside, working his way with adrenaline-fueled liberation up and away from the lake, from the place of Elle’s crashing and the site of Bo’s sacrifice.

He emerged from the trees and saw the ridgeline within a stone’s throw. Breathing hard, he worked his way up hand over hand along a jagged rock face until he crested the hill. He crouched low beside the rock wall and spotted Sippi on the opposite side of the lake from where he’d set out the deer carcass. Less than fifty feet away Rapunzel lumbered, a hand around the cracked ribs courtesy of Silas last night. He no doubt desired to stay close to the man with the gun. Sippi shouted to him and pointed across the lake. His focus was not high toward Silas’s position but down at the level of the water. Silas followed the direction of Sippi’s pointing. One-third of the way out from the shore nearest to him floated a dark form with a waving yellow shirt.

The ruse had worked—for the moment. It would buy Silas the time to get out of the lake basin. But probably not much more. The thick mud on the lakeside was replete with his prints. They’d no doubt soon recognize that the form in the water was not his.

Fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty.

But the smoke was thickening and he had a jump on them, no matter how slim.

CHAPTER

36

G
it.”

Elle translated the old man’s slang.
Keep moving.
She wove in front of him along a narrow trail that led out of the gully and deeper into the forest. A solid ninety-degree detour from the way she wanted to be going.

All she wanted now was to get back to Maddie.

Could things get more bizarre? She always checked her aircraft engines with religious ardor. Yet one burst into flames, forcing her jumpers to bail over a densely forested area and her to set down the Twin Otter in a lake barely the size of a pond. She almost died landing, almost died escaping the sinking craft, and almost died avoiding the ensuing inferno. She had spent a sleepless night surrounded by bears, hiked the next morning, only to come upon her father’s fallen plane and charred remains, and now . . . to add ridiculous insult to injury, a crazy toothless mountain man was kidnapping her at gunpoint.

Her attempts to spark up conversation were not helpful.

“Do you live back here?”

“Git.” Cough and wheeze. “Shut up and git yourself on.”

“Why are you pointing that gun at me? I’m not a threat to you. My plane crashed back—”

“You ain’t getting it.”

Elle had the sense from his inflection that he meant more than a repeating of his order to stop speaking. “Why would I want to get
it
?”

“Don’t play stupid, missy. It’s mine. And ain’t none of you going to get it.”

She could only imagine what he was referring to. The guy was off his nut. Probably a paranoid-schizophrenic. A hoarder. What was
it
? Could be anything that he’d fixed value on. A beaver fur? Some kind of shiny object he found on the ground. She was sure it would have no value to anyone but him.

Whatever it was, he wasn’t about to share. So that led to the next question—where was he leading her? Somewhere to die?

She had to keep him talking. She thought of his bloodstained clothing and the pained limp he shuffled along with. “I’m trained in nursing, you know.” A blatant lie, but he didn’t know that. “I could help you.”

The old man kept silent. Maybe he was considering her offer. Elle risked turning her head to see him. His gaze listed to the side, the shotgun barrel tipped toward the ground. His eyes flicked to her and he pointed the gun. “Eyes front.”

Her few seconds of recon revealed bad news. Dual hammer. One still cocked. Dad often took her bird hunting in the off-season in Idaho. He usually had her use a pump-action shotgun. Before she could fire, she had to ensure the safety was off, unlock the slide action, chamber a round, and then pull the trigger. Those four steps served as a safeguard. Unfortunately, it appeared that the only thing the old man had to do now was pull the trigger to fire a round.

If she tried to make a move, it could be fatal. The old man was injured—that was clear. He was frail, and she knew she could overpower him if he failed to keep her at gunpoint. Therein lay the rub. His evident psychosis made him a relentless watchdog. How long had he been out here alone, staring nightly into the forest, setting booby traps, and shouting threats into the empty woods? Suddenly he discovered another human fallen from the sky. Surely she was out for his
it.
Whatever it was. She decided to keep on the first-aid idea.

“Why don’t you take me to where you live? We can have a look at your wound. I’ll clean and dress it for you and . . . and make you a warm meal. Do you have a pot to boil water?”

He wheezed and hacked. Elle tilted her chin down to catch what she could of him in her peripheral vision. All she could make out was the shiny black barrel of the shotgun pointed at her.

He finished his coughing fit. “Haven’t had me a woman to cook for some time. Cabin ain’t far.”

Elle wondered if he ever had a woman to cook for him. Likely not. But if he had, what happened to her? She shuddered at the thoughts that followed.

“This blood here’s nothing. I been mauled by a bear worse than this.” He coughed again. “I know how to play dead. It’s why I’m still living. So don’t you get no ideas. I ain’t going to let you go and kill me in my sleep. Don’t think I don’t know what you come for.”

CHAPTER

37

C
aleb hiked alongside a limping Cleese, who took well to the role of immortal zombie.

Unfeeling, sociopathic. He kept a good pace even with the through-and-through gunshot wound in his foot. After freeing each other from their ties, Caleb doused the wounds with antiseptic, packed dressings on the entrance and exit, and wrapped the foot with gauze from his pack. Cleese acted more perturbed about the hole in his boot leather than anything.

Trudging along, Caleb couldn’t tell if his mind fog was more from blurry sleep-deprivation or the effects of the expanding smoke cloud around them. The scent of woodsmoke was pervasive, insidiously invading every fabric and nook. He smelled it when he unzipped his fireline pack, when he took off his helmet, when he unscrewed the lid of his canteen.

Cleese’s sheltered eye sockets darkened his expression, lending him an animal-like air. It was like hiking with a wounded wolf, a sinewy sharp-toothed hunter operating on instinct alone.

Caleb understood men like Cleese. No need to befriend him any more than one would a bear or a cougar. If Caleb got bit, or mauled, or killed, it was his own fault. He had to understand the animal, not tame him. By understanding, he was able to enlist him for a purpose.

Cleese appeared strangely at ease. Caleb got the sense Cleese felt freed up after the attacks by Bo and Silas. Their actions unleashed any remaining bonds that might have held him back otherwise. The gloves were off, and the man seemed to relish the fact.

Caleb checked their direction and shifted course to his eleven o’clock. They emerged from the trees and started up a sandy, shale-covered hillside. The sky glowed the colors of rust and sulfur. A fiery thin line snaked across the hillsides less than two miles away.

He picked up his pace, glancing at Cleese to make sure he was keeping up.

His thoughts turned to Silas, a man more similar to himself. As such, he was more difficult. Complex. Principled. Devoted. Unlike Cleese, he and Silas weren’t devoid of a moral compass, of an ethical watch. Silas just chose to wind his a bit tighter.

He unscrewed the cap to his water bottle and drank. Even the water tasted like soot. He forced himself to swallow. The smoke cover was good, but it could get too effective. If his Huey pilot couldn’t land to escort the cargo, all their efforts, all the violence, would be fruitless. They wouldn’t get another chance.

They made the hilltop, and he slid the GPS unit out of his radio chest pouch. He toggled the buttons and watched the murky green graphics shift polygons on the screen. Small concentric circles cycled—their location. Still several miles off, according to the device, a black dot bounced—their destination. Caleb did the math. Three miles an hour for another two hours . . ..

He glanced at his stoic companion. So nice to be beyond earshot of the effusive Sippi and Rapunzel. If all went well, those guys would overtake Silas and the slower, injured Bo Mansfield. They might have the gun, but Sippi and Rapunzel had the advantage of surprise. Of being the hunters. He’d told them to not bother coming back until they knew those two men were dead and had found a way to hide the bodies so no one would find them. With luck, they’d do the deed, and be back in time to help move the booty.

———

Elle smelled the chimney smoke before seeing the cabin. It wafted differently than the pervasive plume of the forest fire. Pungent. Herbal.

To break up her silent march, she once again tried her hand at conversation with her captor. Any information could be useful.

“Are you already cooking something?”

“Maybe.”

“I thought you said you wanted a woman to cook you a meal.”

“Didn’t quite know I was going to find you, now, did I? Seeing as how you’re here now, you can serve it to me.”

“You going to eat with that shotgun in hand?”

“Got me a pistol too. Don’t you try nothing. I’d just as soon shoot you as let you hang around long enough to the point of nagging.” He stopped. “There she is.”

Elle looked down upon a small, aging log cabin with a low-hanging A-frame roof and three well-trod paths leading up to it.

He motioned with the shotgun. “Take one of those trails.”

“What happens if we don’t?”

“Bear traps. Already been attacked once. I don’t take no chances. Get on now. You’ll make a fine hostage for when your gold-hungry friends show up.” He forced out a rumbling wheeze. “Them bandits tried to kill me. I know they’ll be back. I heard them talking about it when they thought I was dead.”

Elle tried to process all the information he’d revealed. He thought she was in on a plan with some other people to try and . . . steal his gold? Sounded like figments from a disturbed mind. But perhaps his delusions could enable her escape.

“And what do you plan to do to them when they come back? Bribe them? Hold me ransom?”

He smacked his lips and grunted as he worked his way along the trail behind her. She guessed he hadn’t really thought the whole thing through.

Her stomach twisted like a wet towel. The thought of hot soup came as a relief. Perhaps it would relax the old man as well, just enough for her to get the upper hand.

He poked her in the back. Elle had to stoop to enter the front door. The old man behind her had no such need. He pointed to a wooden chair in a far corner. The cabin was one room, maybe three hundred square feet at most. She sat and observed as many things about the place as she could, anticipating that he’d soon blindfold her.