Force of Nature (29 page)

He rubbed his face and tried to think of alternatives to leaving—some kind of action he could take to try to help Nate and protect his family—but there were simply too many unknown variables. He felt impotent, useless, and cowardly.

When Joe tried to figure out how White/Nemecek knew so much about his family, his whereabouts, and the investigation, there were
few people he could rule out. There were dozens of people privy to the proceedings: deputies, dispatchers, reporters, administration, maintenance, visiting state and federal agents, even McLanahan’s coffee group that met every morning at the Burg-O-Pardner. He could rule out only the sheriff himself, because without solving either the murders or the missing-persons cases, the man was circling the drain of his own career. He’d do whatever he could to stop the spiral by making arrests, Joe knew.

He leaned back in his chair and sneaked a long look at Mike Reed in the other room. Reed thumbed through a hunting magazine and sipped the last of his coffee on the couch. The man was affable and good-natured. By all rights, he should be the next sheriff. And although he certainly wanted to win the election, could he possibly be predatory enough to assist a killer so his opponent would go down in flames? Joe couldn’t conceive it.

Who else would know?

Then he thought about the password-protected text thread on Brueggemann’s phone.

WHEN LUCY
entered his office rubbing her face from sleep, she said, “Mom said we’re going on a trip.” She didn’t sound happy about it.

“That’s the plan.”

“What about my play?” she asked. “I can’t let everybody down. I’m the
lead
. This really means a lot to me, and Mom doesn’t even want to talk about it. I mean, I could stay with Heather until you got back.”

Joe didn’t have a good answer. “Maybe we’ll all be back in time.”

“But I’m the
lead
,” she said again. “If I’m not here they’ll give the part to Erin Vonn or somebody else.”

“I’m sure they’ll take you back,” Joe said, not sure about it at all.

“Mom won’t even tell me why we’re leaving.”

“For your safety,” Joe said. Lucy rolled her eyes in response.

“I have a life of my own, you know,” she said, folding her arms in front of her and striking a pose very much like Marybeth had a few minutes before. “You and Mom treat me like your property.”

Joe said with some sympathy, “You’ve got to get a few more years on you before it’s otherwise.”

“You sound just like
her
,” she said, meaning Marybeth.

“We’re a team.”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes flashing. “An
evil
team trying to destroy my life.”

“That’s a little dramatic, isn’t it?” he asked, stifling a smile.

“I’m in
drama
!” she cried. “That’s the
point
!” But her anger was diffusing.

Joe said, “Before you pack, I need your help. I don’t understand how Facebook works, and I know you’re an expert. You spend more time on it than you do sleeping or eating.”

She rolled her eyes again, and said, “
Thanks
, Dad.”

“Everybody around your age is on it, right?”

“Yes. Everybody.”

“Everybody in college, right?”

“Yeah.”

He said, “What I’d like you to do is use your laptop to find the page or the profile or whatever it is for Luke Brueggemann, my trainee. See if there are any comments from his girlfriend, if he has one. See if he’s sharing things about his new assignment.”

She asked him how to spell the name, and he did.

“I may not find much,” she said. “It depends on how much he’s got his profile set up to share. I’m not his friend or anything.”

“Just find whatever you can,” Joe said. “Let me know what you find.”

She sighed, and said, “At least we’re going to Disneyland. I can’t believe it.”

“Neither can I,” Joe said.

IT WAS MIDNIGHT
when the house phone rang. As always, Joe ignored it. He was talking with Mike Reed and waiting for Lucy to come back and tell him what she’d dug up on Brueggemann and his girlfriend.

Marybeth came into the living room holding the handset, and the moment he saw her face he knew something momentous had happened.

She handed him the phone with concern in her eyes. “You’ll want to take this,” she said.

As he reached for it, she said, “In your office.”

She followed him back in and again closed the door behind them. “It’s Nate,” she whispered.

“WHERE ARE YOU?”
Joe asked immediately, careful not to use his name.

“We can’t talk long,” Nate said. The connection was clear, but from the airy tone of it, Joe assumed Nate was speaking from somewhere outdoors. Maybe a pay phone, he thought.

“Gotcha,” Joe said. “Where …”

“No,” Nate said. “We can’t go there right now. Our friends might be listening.”

“Right.”

“It’s time to fly,” Nate said. “Take the entire nest. Don’t think about it, and don’t play hero. Just go.”

“I understand,” Joe said, glancing up at Marybeth, who nodded.

“The threat is on top of you right now.”

Joe hoped he didn’t have to respond to Nate in falconry terminology. Instead, he said, “Yup.”

“At least three of the Peregrines are still out there,” Nate said. “One may be a young female.”

“Only three?” Joe asked, wondering how many men Nate had taken out of the game.

“At least,” Nate said. “But there could be more I don’t know about. Leave them to me.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Nate laughed bitterly. “So far, so good. But the cost has been too high and the collateral damage has been heavy.”

Joe thought,
So many questions.
He said, “Is there any way we can talk more?”

“No,” Nate said, no doubt measuring the time of the call and trying to end it quickly. Joe wanted to tell him it didn’t matter:
If the call was being traced, it was already too late.
But he didn’t dare say it.

“Just remember,” Nate said, “these creatures won’t return to the fist no matter how much you’ve done for them. They kill, they eat, and they move on. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“They might be right next to you, but you can’t trust them. Just get away now.”

And he hung up. Joe listened to the dial tone for a moment, then cradled the phone and picked it back up and dialed star sixty-nine. The phone rang on the other end, but no one picked it up.

“He’s gone,” Joe said.

“Is he okay?” Marybeth asked.

“I guess he is.”

“What did he say?”

Joe tried to recall the conversation verbatim, and repeated it.

She frowned. “The only thing I understand is he wants us to go. That I got. What was the rest about?”

Joe said, “He thinks Nemecek has someone inside. And so do I.”

He stood and said, “I’ve got to go out for a while.” Marybeth stepped aside, puzzled. “Where are you going?”

“Out,” he said. “I’ll ask Mike to hang around until I get back.”

HE TOLD HER
his suspicions and her eyes widened and she raised her balled fist up to her mouth.

She said, “I won’t even tell you to be careful,” she said. “Because if you don’t,
I’ll
kill you.”

He handed her the copy of
The Looming Tower
. “You might want to look through this,” he said. “You’re a much faster reader than I am. See if you can find anything that might relate to Nate, or Nemecek. Maybe you can find something about their old unit, or something they might have been involved in.”

She took the book and eyed him warily. “You mean when I take a break from packing and organizing the girls?”

He nodded. “Yup.”

“I’ll see what I can find,” she said.

AS JOE REACHED
for his coat, he noticed Lucy standing in the mudroom, a look of annoyance on her face.

“Did you forget something?” she asked.

He paused as he pulled on his parka, and it came to him. “Oh, Brueggemann on Facebook. I did forget.”

“Just as well,” she said. “He doesn’t have a page. There was nothing to find.”

Joe paused while he took it in.

“It’s weird,” she said. “
Everybody
has a Facebook page. But not him.”

“I don’t,” Joe said, reaching for his shotgun.

“I mean everybody
young
,” Lucy said.

“Oh, thanks.”

SEVEN MILES NORTH
of Crowheart on U.S. 287, past midnight, Nate Romanowski broke the long silence and said to Haley, “There’s an airport in Riverton with a commuter flight to Denver in the morning, where you can connect to wherever you want to go. I’ll give you money for a ticket.”

“Keep your money,” she said. “I don’t need it, and I’m not going anywhere.”

He shook his head and sighed.

“You’re stuck with me, dooley,” she said, her jaw set defiantly.

When he didn’t respond, she turned her head and looked out at the darkness and falling snow. “Where are we?”

“Out of the mountains,” he said. “If you could see anything, you’d see the Wind River Mountains to the west.”

“Okay.”

Nate gestured to the left. “Crowheart Butte is out there. On the other side is Bald Mountain. The road goes between them.”

They’d not encountered a single oncoming car for two hours.

“How do you know?” she asked. “I can’t see a thing anywhere.”

“I can feel it,” he said.

She snorted. “And how does one acquire this skill?”

He shrugged. “It comes from experience. Climbing trees, burrowing into the dirt, watching clouds go over. You’ve just got to open yourself up and not clutter your mind with thinking. Have you ever skied with your eyes closed?”

“Of course not.”

“Try it,” he said. “All of your senses open up. You can feel the terrain through your feet, and smell how close you are to the trees. You don’t have to go fast. Just try it sometime. The contours of the slope and the surroundings become clear even though you can’t see them with your eyes. It’s like being in a dark room. As you walk around it, you discover how big it is, where the tables are, how thick the carpet is. Sometimes, you can hear your own breath and your beating heart.”

“You sound kind of nuts,” she said.

“My friend Joe Pickett says the same thing.”

“Maybe we’re right,” she said.

“Maybe. But test it out,” he said softly. “Close your eyes. Crowheart Butte will come to you. You’ll know where it is….”

After a few minutes, she opened her eyes. “I’ve got nothing,” she confessed.

“Practice,” he whispered.

THE HIGHWAY
cut through a vast carpet of foot-high sagebrush that gathered clumps of snow in the palms of its upturned, clawlike branches. But it wasn’t yet cold enough on the valley floor for the road to ice up.

“You said you wanted to ride this out until we found the guys who killed Cohen and the others,” he said. “We found them and put them down. Now you can go home and spend some time with your dad.”

“I already did that,” she said. “I said goodbye. Now I’m committed to riding this out.”

“You’re sure?” he asked.

“You don’t sound that disappointed,” she said.

“Remember the rules,” he said. “I can’t guarantee your safety. And I can’t promise you won’t see something much worse than what you saw back there.”

She hesitated, and for a moment he thought she might reconsider. Instead, she said, “Just drive. You said you know where this Nemecek is located, right?”

“Yes.” He nodded. “Unless that guy back there was lying or somehow tipped off Nemecek. But I don’t think so, given the circumstances.”

She cringed at the word
circumstances
and said, “You made that poor man back there make a call on his cell. What was that about?”

“I told him to call his team leader and tell him they’d lost Oscar and you. That you broke out of the cabin sometime during the night and they didn’t know where you went. That you were on the loose and they were coming back to reconnoiter.”

Haley looked over, puzzled. “Why?”

“So it would throw a huge kink in Nemecek’s operation. The idea was to eliminate all the operators in Camp Oscar so they wouldn’t be able to help me. But if two of you got away, Nemecek would need to figure out how to track you down before you went to the cops or the media. It throws his timetable off and threatens the entire operation.”

“Did Nemecek buy it?”

Nate said, “It appears so. He got real quiet and told our operators to meet him at his command post.”

“Is it possible Trucker Cap told him something in code? That Nemecek will be expecting you?”

Nate shrugged, “Unlikely, but possible. I was right there with him,
and I could hear both sides of the conversation. Nemecek got very calm and cold. That’s how he reacts to pressure. He doesn’t scream or threaten, he just goes dead. That’s when he’s the most dangerous.”

“So why tip him off that his plan went screwy?” she asked. “Why not just let him think everything is sailing along?”

Said Nate, “It’s a diversion. I want him to coil up for a while and stew in his own juices. If he’s trying to figure out what his next move will be, that family in Saddlestring might have a chance to get out of there before he turns on them. And it could give me the opportunity to get close enough to him to do some damage.”

“Then let’s go get him.”

Nate snorted.

“What?”

“If only it was that easy.”

“What do you mean?”

Nate took a few moments, then turned to her.

“He’s got me right where he wants me, but he doesn’t know it yet. He doesn’t need to send operators to flush me out or set up traps. I’m delivering myself straight to
him
.”

She gestured that she didn’t quite understand. “If we surprise him, won’t you have the advantage?”

“Yes,” Nate said.

“But what?” she prompted.

“I’m very good at this,” he said. “But John Nemecek is better. He’s my master falconer, and I’m his apprentice. I don’t expect to get out of this alive.”