Stone Cold (23 page)

Sand Creek Ranch

Late that afternoon, Nate heard another vehicle coming up the mountain toward his line shack. He was installing the final new glass and window frame into the south-side wall—a difficult task because the opening was out of square. He strapped on his shoulder holster before stepping outside to see who it was.

“You again,” he said, as Liv Brannan braked to a stop in the ranch pickup and climbed out. She had a square white envelope in her hand.

She smiled slyly, then it morphed into full beam. She seemed to enjoy antagonizing him, he thought.

“This time I'm here on official business.”

She approached and handed him the envelope. Because the day had warmed, she no longer wore the red down coat she'd covered
herself up with earlier. She looked attractive and businesslike in a crisp white button-down shirt with the collar open and a loose string tie. He wished she'd put the coat back on.

He took the envelope, addressed to simply
Nate R.

“The lady herself—I call her ‘Herself' because I don't know her name yet—is due to arrive tonight on the late flight into Rapid City. Apparently, she's flying in from overseas, so she'll need some rest. But Mr. T. wants to have a big ranch welcome dinner for her tomorrow evening, and he'd like for you to be there.”

“So there's no need opening this, then?” Nate asked.

“You should open it. You can RSVP to me right now in person.”

“What if I'm busy?”

She widened her eyes and blew a puff of air out her mouth as if there had been a bug in it. “Busy doing
what
?”

“Fixing up my place. Or locating pigeons. I think I have a line on some.”

“Pigeons? Aren't they urban birds?”

He shook his head. “Not necessarily. Pigeons hang out in old structures, usually in the rafters. I spotted some old buildings on the far end of the ranch—a couple of barns—that look like pigeon heaven.”

“And you want them why?”

“To train my falcons.”

“So the pigeons are targets,” she said flatly.

“Yes.”

“You'll need a better excuse.”

“What if I don't
want
to go?”

She waved that off as if he hadn't said it. “Remember when he welcomed you here? It's like that. When a new VIP arrives, he wants
everybody there so the VIP can feel like a welcome part of the family.”

Nate grunted.

•   •   •

H
E OPENED
THE ENVELOPE
and looked at the card inside.

“I thought we had a deal,” he said.

“This is special. This is for
Herself
.” She stifled a smile at the word
herself
. Nate wondered if deep down she was jealous. Not sexually, but because a new woman at the compound might threaten her autonomy and access.

“Do I have to wear a tie?”

“No.”

“Jacket?”

She said, “I'll find one for you. You don't have to go out and buy one.”

He shook his head.

Brannan reached out and grasped his arm. “It's important for you to be there. Mr. T. really wants you there. He said so himself.”

“So it's nonnegotiable.”

“I'm afraid so. Can I take that as a yes to the RSVP?”

Nate took a deep breath and sighed. She was persuasive. He could feel the warmth of her fingers on his forearm through the fabric of his shirt. He didn't want her to let go. And that smile . . .

“Oh,” she said, “Mr. T. would like a few minutes of your time after dinner. Not long—he's got
Herself
to entertain, after all. But he specifically asked me to ask you to linger a few minutes after the dinner breaks up.”

“Does he have another assignment for me?” Nate asked.

“I don't get involved in those things,” she said.

“Right, I believe
that
.”

Her nostrils flared at being questioned, and she let go of his arm and thrust her face at him with her hands on her hips. “Okay, mister, I may handle details on the back end. Travel arrangements, cash advances, false IDs—that kind of thing. And I'm damned good at it. But I'm
not
involved with setting up the assignments. Mr. T. handles those all on his own.”

“Okay,” Nate said, holding his palms up. “Back off.”

“You are a frustrating individual,” she said, cooling off. “No one else around here insults me and sticks around very long.”

He almost took her right then. He fought an overwhelming urge to pick her up in his arms and carry her into his line shack. He knew she wouldn't object. The back-and-forth had been subterfuge—both knew what was sparking. But . . .

“One thing,” she said over her shoulder, as she sashayed toward the pickup. “Mr. T. said no weapons.”

Nate's eyebrows arched.

“Mr. Whip will be there,” she said. “I told him the same thing.”

Nate cringed. Then: “How did he take it?”

“He was much more gracious than you,” she said. Then, with a flip of her hair, “Mr. Whip will do anything I ask.”

So that was it,
Nate thought. He smiled cruelly at her.

“It's not like that,” she said. “He's not my type. Too preppy. As far as I'm concerned, he's just a very important colleague. He'd like it to be more, but that would be unprofessional. Mr. T. would frown on it.”

“One question,” Nate said. “Does Mr. T. know you come up here sometimes? Not on official business?”

Brannan got in and shut the door. Before starting the motor, she
said, “No, and I'd appreciate you not mentioning it. He'd frown on that, also.”

“I guess I'll see you tomorrow night,” Nate said.

“Try to be nicer and more pleasant to
Herself
than you are to me,” she called out, spinning gravel as she backed out.

Wedell/The Black Forest Inn

It was late afternoon when Joe pulled off the highway and bounced down an untrammeled grassy lane that wound through an old apple orchard two miles from Wedell. As he stopped, hundreds of fat birds lifted from where they'd been feeding on dropped fruit. It was obvious it had been years since anyone tended to the trees or pruned them, and a third of the orchard was gnarled black skeletons. An ancient farmhouse had smashed-in windows and the open front door looked like a ghoul face saying
Boo
, he thought. But there was no one around.

Joe set up the ramps and backed the four-wheeler out of his pickup onto the grass. The fat tires crushed apples and made the air tangy. He hid the ATV even deeper in an impenetrable tangle of Russian olive bushes on the side of the abandoned house. Joe transferred his shotgun into the ATV's saddle scabbard and filled the saddlebags
with extra ammunition, a few bottles of water, binoculars, spotting scope, tool bag, Maglite, camera, evidence kit, handheld radio, a roll of topo maps of the county, and his Filson vest.

Then he climbed back into his pickup.

•   •   •

A
NNA
B
.'S
FACE
appeared at her office window as he drove into the parking area and stopped in front of cabin number eight. When he got out and looked over his shoulder, she was gone.

Again, he tried not to look up at the light fixture as he yawned and stretched theatrically and shuffled into the darkened bedroom. The bed was out of view from the light fixture, if indeed there was a camera in it. Joe fell back onto the bed, making the bedsprings creak.

He waited an hour, then checked his watch: five-thirty. Rolling silently off the bed, he opened the hasp on the rear window and tried to open it, but it wouldn't give. Apparently, they'd painted the window shut when it was refurbished. Joe wondered if it had been intentional or a careless mistake.

He wedged the long blade of his Leatherman tool between the window and the wood frame and carefully sawed down the seam. He had to do it on the sides as well.

Finally, using his legs to give him more momentum, he pressed the palms of his hands against the bottom of the upper window frame and shoved. There was a wooden-sounding
pop
as it opened. Had it been too loud?

Nevertheless, he swung one leg across the sill and bent forward so he could squeeze his shoulders and head through the opening, and he dropped to the ground. His knees barked in pain as he landed, and he paused to let it recede. It did, somewhat. He thought to
himself that he wasn't yet used to aches and pains where they didn't used to be. And, he thought grimly, it would only get worse.

When he looked up, he saw Daisy staring sadly down at him, her front paws on the sill.

“Stay,” he whispered. She moaned and dropped back into the cabin. He hoped she wouldn't start whining. He hated to leave her.

Joe gathered himself and stood on his tiptoes to close the window behind him as quietly as he could. He left it open an inch in case he'd have to reenter his cabin the same way he'd left.

Then he turned and entered the copse of pine trees. His boots crunched on the carpet of dried needles. He had the key to the four-wheeler in his front pocket. His phone was muted, but he was aware of it in his right breast pocket in case he received a text or call from Marybeth or the FBI.

Or Sheridan.

•   •   •

T
HERE WERE
HUNDREDS
of old logging roads through the spruce and ponderosa pine forest. He wasn't even sure he'd need to consult his topo maps to find his way to where he wanted to go.

Joe mounted the four-wheeler and started it up and raced through the gears on an overgrown logging road in the general direction of the Black Forest Inn.

The terrain was steeper and more heavily wooded than he had anticipated. Deadfall blocked the old road in several places, and he found himself picking through brush around hazards on the ATV. The temperature dropped twenty quick degrees as the sun nosed over the western hills and the light choked off the dappling on the tops of the trees.

It took thirty-five minutes to navigate the wooded hills to the northeast. Twice, he emerged from the timber to note the distant ribbon of the state highway. He encountered no hunters or other ATVs on the old logging road, although as he neared the Black Forest Inn he saw day-old tire tracks on the trail.

As he wound down the trail through a thick stand of aspen, he sensed heavy forms within the trees to his right that weren't trunks. A small band of elk—a bull, a spike, three cows, and a calf—stood like statues in the trees as he passed. He wondered how many other elk hunters had been down the trail that day who simply hadn't seen them. He'd heard of some elk learning to freeze instead of run when being hunted, although he'd never encountered it before. To reward them for their adaptability, he didn't slow down and gawk but kept his eyes forward until he could no longer see them in his peripheral vision.

•   •   •

A
T DUSK,
the trees thinned and he slowed his ATV to a crawl. On a massive grassy bench below him were the winking lights of the Black Forest Inn. The turrets on top looked oddly medieval against the burnt-orange sunset as he descended from the hills. It was almost dark enough for headlights, but he didn't want to turn them on and draw any more attention to his arrival than necessary.

The parking area was filled with four-wheel-drive vehicles with license plates from states as far away as California and New York, as well as a kind of unofficial corral of muddy ATVs in the crushed grass on the north side of the inn. In the parking lot, a few scruffy hunters leaned against their vehicles, drinking beer. A bearded man raised his bottle in salute.

On the south side of the inn, three pickups waited their turn on the roundabout that served the meat-processing facility dock. Joe looked over as he passed. Two hunters in camo and blaze orange had backed their truck with Michigan plates to the loading dock. Meatcutters in bloody white aprons helped the successful hunters jam meat hooks through the back hocks of two big buck deer and swing the carcasses inside. The game had been gutted but not skinned, and Joe instinctively checked for white paper license tags on the bodies. They were there—wired to the tines of the antlers. Because he wasn't in uniform and not on official duty, he was glad he didn't have the dilemma of illegal deer being received right in front of his eyes.

Joe parked his ATV among twenty others on the north lot and climbed off. His inner thighs and palms tingled from the vibration of the two-stroke engine and he'd picked up enough road dust, pine dust, and mud on his clothing to appear as he hoped to appear—as just another hunter.

The air smelled of fall in a Rocky Mountain hunting camp: cool air, pine, mulch from the forest floor, gasoline and diesel fumes from the vehicles, and the metallic bite of spilled blood, wet hides, and raw meat.

Bathed in yellow neon light from a Coors beer sign in the window, he paused at the entrance to the saloon and breathed it all in and settled into its familiarity.

•   •   •

T
HE SALOON
WAS DARK,
smoky, and raucous. Old dusty mounts of mule deer, elk, bighorn sheep, mountain lions, and pronghorn antelope covered the walls. Strings of tiny white Christmas lights were looped through the tines and curls of the horns and antlers, and gave
the room the feel of being roped in by a twinkling lariat. Hunters still in their hunting clothes crowded the bar or stood together in knots throughout the tables. A few still wore holstered sidearms on their belts, and most had sheathed knives and saws. A harried waitress waded through them with a full tray of beaded beer cans and shots. Joe smelled cigar and cigarette smoke and fried hamburgers from a small grill behind the bar manned by a dour gnome-like man with three missing fingers on each hand. With the exception of the harried waitress, there were no women in the saloon.

His first concern on entering was the possibility of being recognized by locals he had met who could identify him, but he confirmed quickly the hunters in the saloon were from out of state. These men were on
vacation
, or, as he'd heard the term once in Saddlestring, on a “red holiday.”

A few hunters saw him enter and nodded hello, and he nodded back and went to the bar. He knew a lone hunter was odd but not unusual, although he glanced expectantly at the door several times to pretend he might be waiting for a buddy to join him. Behind him, he heard loud but good-natured ribbing about missed shots, getting stuck, and poor Ritchie from Indiana who had literally been caught with his pants down and his rifle out of reach when two large bucks broke from the timber right in front of him and continued on.

“Bob Pulochova,” the bartender said in greeting. “Everyone calls me Pulo.”

“Coors Light, please,” Joe said. Pulo was gaunt and toothless, and had a white inverted horseshoe of hair beneath his shiny bald head.

“Get your deer yet?” Pulochova asked as a greeting while reaching down into an ice-covered bucket and placing the unopened bottle on the bar.

“I'm an elk hunter,” Joe said. It wasn't a lie.

“I don't see blood on your hands,” the man said with a wry smile.

“Good reason for that,” Joe sighed, leaving it vague. “Say, are there any rooms in this place? It looks pretty full.”

“There might be, but you'd have to check up front with Alice. I think a couple of guys from Pennsylvania got their elk and cleared out today, but don't quote me on that. This place fills up fast with hunters.”

Joe nodded to his beer. “I might leave this here while I go check.”

“You can take it with you. Want another one? Or a shot to go with it?”

“I haven't even opened this yet,” Joe said.

“It's happy hour,” the bartender said. “Two for one for the next twenty minutes until seven.”

“That's okay,” Joe said.

“Suit yourself,” Pulochova said, rolling his eyes. “Want to know the menu?”

“Sure.”

“Hamburger or cheeseburger, single or double,” the bartender said, chinning toward the gnome. “That's the menu, unless you want to go into the restaurant down the hall. They got everything in the damn world to eat down there, as long as it's beef.”

Joe smiled and said he wanted a double cheeseburger.

“Double cheeseburger coming up!” Pulo shouted out without looking over his shoulder.

•   •   •

T
HE REGISTRATION
DESK
was no more than an ancient knotty pine lectern in the main lobby. The lobby had high, tin-lined ceilings
and smelled of hundred-year-old woodsmoke. A flinty woman with bleached yellow hair stood behind the lectern, sucking on a cigarette and squinting through the smoke. She wore a name tag that read
ALICE PULOCHOVA
.

“Do you have any single rooms available?” Joe asked, nodding toward the open ledger in front of her.

“Did my better half send you here?” Alice asked, meaning the saloon. Apparently, the bartender was her husband.

“Yup.”

“Well, we got a room on the top floor that just opened up, but it ain't cleaned out yet, so I can't rent it to you.”

“I'll take it,” Joe said.

She looked put-out. “My housekeeping folks have left for the night.”

“I'll still take it,” Joe said, reaching for his wallet. He could tell by the set of her mouth that she was about to turn him away. “Do you take cash?”

Her eyebrows arched conspiratorially, and she said, “Yes, that would be fine.” Meaning: she could keep him off the books and pocket the cash and not enter the rental in her ledger, and there wouldn't be a credit card trail to tie either one to the transaction.

“It'll be a hundred,” Alice said.

Joe counted out five twenties, leaving only thirty dollars in his wallet.

“This means I'm gonna have to go up there myself when I get a break and take care of it. So the room won't be available for a few hours.”

“That's fine.”

She gave him a registration card. He filled it out and handed it back.

“Here's the key,” she said, reading the card. He wondered if she'd ball it up and toss it in a garbage can the second his back was turned. “Welcome to the Black Forest Inn, Mr. . . .” She struggled with the pronunciation of the last name.

“Romanowski,” Joe said. “Nate Romanowski.”

“Like I said, give me a few hours to get up there. Unless you want to wallow in the empty beer cans and assorted filth from the last guests.”

“No thanks.”

“How long are you staying, Mr.
Roma-nooski
?”

Joe shrugged. “Maybe just tonight.”

She cackled at his answer. “You must be pretty sure you'll kill something tomorrow, then.”