High Desert Barbecue (27 page)

“
Crap.” Jason reached for his shorts and scrambled into them without rising from the ground.

“
You’re so modest,” Samantha giggled. She ran her fingers through her hair, dislodging twigs and other bits of vegetation. Then she shook her head, flipping her curls around her face and setting other parts of her anatomy into motion.

J
ason looked on in awe. Then he shook his own head.

“
I’m not that modest,” he whispered. “Terry just creeps me out a little.”

“
That’s cold,” Terry answered. His head popped into view through the brush. “And it’s uncalled for.”

S
amantha paused in mid-groom.

“
Have you been there all night?”

T
erry’s mouth hung open, and then snapped shut abruptly.

“
Not
all
night.”

“
That’s what I’m talking about, Terry,” Jason said. “That’s just not right.”

T
erry’s face seemed to sag.

“
I was just a little …” his voice trailed off.

W
ithout turning her back, Samantha wriggled into her shorts. The view set off a biological response in Jason that had him happy he was already dressed. Well, half-dressed.

“
Hey,” Samantha said. “I think somebody
is
crying.”

W
ith the topic of conversation mercifully changed, the trio set off down the canyon. It wasn’t hard to follow the sound since it meant little more than retracing their steps of the evening before. With daylight creeping into the canyon, they easily made their way back to the clearing in which Ray had been left to spend the night.

T
here, they found Bob and Rena struggling to free the wounded Park Ranger, who was bound hand and foot. A scrap of filthy fabric lay crumpled by the man’s head. Bob fumbled at the restraints with just his uninjured arm and made slow progress as a result.

“
What the fuck?” Jason said. “What happened here?”

“
I don’t know,” Rena answered. She glanced briefly toward the team leader but wouldn’t meet his eyes. “He was like this when we found him. He started crying as soon as we got the gag out of his mouth.”

“
Didn’t anybody guard him?”

B
ob shrugged.

“
You kind of suggested that we all leave him alone.” He glanced at Rena who kept here eyes firmly fixed on a stubborn knot. “I guess we all thought he’d be safe enough by himself.”

“
Crap.”

T
erry and Samantha joined the effort to free Ray while Jason looked around the clearing for clues as to the night’s events. The clearing was small and bare except for Ray’s backpack, so he soon gave up the effort and returned to his wounded comrade.

“
Ray, buddy.”

T
he man continued weeping.

“
Ray, I need to know what happened.”

T
he man stopped crying.

“
Jason, it was fucking horrible.”

T
he team leader caught a flash of motion from the corner of his eye. He turned to see Rena staring straight down at the ground. What little of her face was visible was bright red. Confused, Jason turned back to Ray.

“
What was horrible?”

“
I was tortured.”

R
ena looked up.

“
Tortured?”

“
Well, sort of tortured.”

“
What do you mean?” Jason asked.

“
The big guy sat on me until I talked.”

“
Sat on you? Wait. What big guy?”

R
ay met his gaze. His face looked blank, worn out.

“
The people we’re chasing. Two of them. I don’t know if there are any more. Anyway, they came down during the night, found me and questioned me. Then they tied me up. It was horrible.” He grabbed Jason’s arm and pulled him closer. “I held out on the most important information. I never told them about Tim.”

R
ena gently brushed Ray’s forehead.

“
Oh, you poor thing.”

R
ay shuddered, but said nothing.

J
ason opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it. He looked around the clearing again and spotted Ray’s backpack. By itself.

“
Ray, where’s your rifle.”

“
What? It should be over there.” He pointed.

“
It’s not there. Shit.”

T
hey all ducked as the first gunshot of the morning sounded—directly overhead.

Chapter 60

W
ith a snarl, Champ raced forward before Lani had fully digested the situation. The ragged ranger yelled, and Lani opened her mouth to call off the dog—why was her big, friendly pooch attacking a ranger?—when an important fact registered in her mind: the battered, odd-looking ranger had a rather nasty-looking firearm in his hand.

“
Oh.
I guess Rollo was right. What are the chances of that?”

T
he ranger hopped in place on one foot, having dropped the branch that served as his crutch, and raised the pistol away from the holster on his hip.

T
he dog closed the gap, paws a blur against the ground, muscles rippling beneath his dirty fur. Dust exploded in spurts from the contact of his claws on the ground and rose in a haze that hung in the air.

L
ani grabbed for her own pistol. Unpracticed, she fumbled at the holster’s thumb break, losing a precious second before the snap parted and her hand slid down over the grip, grating against checkered wood panels and reaching for the trigger.

T
he ranger’s gun came up toward Lani, its bore tracing a line up her torso. She felt—she
imagined
she felt—a fiery dot move across her flesh, as if a powerful laser beam projected from the gun’s muzzle. She braced for the impact of the expected bullet.

L
ike the anchor of a boat, Lani’s gun weighed down her hand as she dragged it from her holster and raised it into position. Remembering lessons taught by Scott, her fingers wrapped around the grip and depressed the safety, her left hand rose to support her right hand. In her mind was the certain knowledge that she was losing the race with the homicidal ranger.

W
ithin feet of the stranger, Champ hunched his muscles to cross the final gap with the interloper. The ranger’s eyes flickered, recognizing the new threat. The muzzle of his gun wavered.

L
ani wrestled to bring her gun into position, fighting gravity and feeling every ounce of steel in the pistol’s composition. She wasn’t moving fast enough.

C
hamp leaped.

T
he ranger fired.

T
he dog struck with a dull sound, like a mallet hitting meat. The ranger’s mouth opened wide in surprise. He grunted. Two bodies fell in a tangle of fur and flesh.

C
hamp lay still and broken like a discarded toy. His body stretched out, half on the ground, his lower half resting on the ranger’s chest. The dog’s blood puddled on the hard-packed dirt of the trail.

“
Nooo!
” Lani screamed.

C
ursing, the ranger pushed the dead dog aside, and rose to a sitting position. His gun remained clenched in his hand.

L
ani brought her pistol into position. The front sight lined up in the notch of the rear sight, against the ranger’s chest. She fired.

O
nce.

T
wice.

T
he gun bucked hard after each shot, defying gravity and her strength to rise toward the sky.

T
he ranger sprawled backward, his gun tumbling from his hand to rest in the dirt.

S
obbing, Lani ran to the dog. She had to step over the body of the man to reach the animal, and saw his eyes, wide and staring up at the sky. He had already done all the harm he would ever do. She dropped her gun to the ground and grabbed hold of the remains of her pet.

C
hamp’s body lay warm and dusty as she cradled his head in her lap. She sat in place, crying and holding the dog as the sun rose higher in the sky.

E
ventually—how much later, she didn’t know—she rose from the ground and slapped sensation back into her legs, which had cramped during her period of mourning. She dropped her backpack to the ground. With great effort, she dragged the dog’s body into the brush. Using only her hands, she dug a shallow grave into which she placed Champ. Dirt caked under her fingernails and blood oozed from small cuts as she pushed aside thorns and sharp stones. Finally, she piled rocks over the body to protect it as best she could from scavengers.

R
ising once again, she returned to the trail where the ranger lay staring sightlessly at the sky, his mouth still open in a wide “O.” Without a word, she retrieved her pistol from the ground and returned it to the holster. Then she leaned forward over the prone figure and spat. The glob made a star pattern on the dead man’s forehead.

P
ermitting herself one final sob, Lani donned her pack and continued along the trail.

Chapter 61

A
whiff of smoke hung in the air. The whir of the fan in the window suddenly changed in tone. The blade visibly turned slower, and then slower still.

V
an Kamp sighed.

“
Power’s out,” the Park Service man said. “Again.”

“
That’s the least of it,” Van Kamp said. “People in Flagstaff are used to losing power during the monsoon. But riots are new. Those draw attention we don’t need.”

“
Especially when it turns downtown into a smoking war zone,” The Park Service man muttered.

“
True,” Van Kamp allowed. “The news cameras love that.”

“
Cops are all over the place,” The BLM man said. He peered through the motel room window above the now-dead fan at Route 66 outside. “So are some of your trucks.” He glanced at his pint-sized colleague perched on a chair near the dark television.

“
I loaned personnel to the Flagstaff police—the ones who aren’t heroically fighting the forest fire.” Van Kamp said. He chuckled—an abrupt, nervous sound. “It was the least we could do to help a sister agency suppress the hoodlum element.”

“
S-m-a-a-a-r-t,” the BLM official said. “Great way to distance yourself from Greenfield’s people. I’ll send some of mine, too.”

“
Even better,” the Park Service man muttered,” if your guys
shoot
some of Greenfield’s people. That’ll give you plenty of distance.”

V
an Kamp giggled again.

“
So you’ve had it with Greenfield?”

“
Haven’t you? Isn’t that why we’re meeting in this roach motel?”

T
he BLM official stepped away from the window.

“
Damned straight it is. We’ve got rednecks from Williams hunting college kids through the streets of Flagstaff. Tree-huggers are pounding on animal lovers when they’re not dodging the cowboys. And a perfectly good downtown Chinese restaurant is a smoldering ruin because, depending on who you ask, they murdered animals or slaughtered plants.”

“
I think it was torched just because it was there,” Van Kamp said. He sighed again. “I’ll miss their potstickers. Pork and vegetable both.”