The Naked Edge (7 page)

“
Jamie?
” Cavanaugh's ears rang. “
Mrs. Patterson?
”

“We're okay! What was
that
?”

“I think it was the helicopter!”

Cavanaugh tugged William to his feet and pushed him, urging him to run. Cavanaugh's body armor made him feel suffocated. Another hot object struck him, this time on his neck, but all he cared about was the forest looming before him as he and William burst through undergrowth into the trees. He yanked William down with him and waited tensely for Jamie and Mrs. Patterson to crash through bushes and dive behind trees, landing next to him.

Only then did bullets from the opposite side of the canyon wallop into the woods.
Too late
, Cavanaugh thought in triumph.

The shots faltered, ending.

“They know the explosions can probably be heard all the way to Jackson,” Cavanaugh said. “The smoke's above the canyon now. Police and emergency crews will be coming. The shooters need to get out of here.”

He let thirty seconds elapse and decided it was safe to peer between trees. What he saw made him inhale sharply. The exploding propane tank had indeed caused the helicopter to explode. The combined force had flattened the lodge. Burning timbers were everywhere, igniting the grass.

25

“You prick!” the spotter yelled. “You swore you could do this!”

“How was I to know the target would—”

With a look of contempt, the spotter drew a handgun and shot his companion four times in the face. Then he took out his knife and cut off the sniper's fingertips.

“That's what
I
know,” he said.

The act wasn't impulsive. It wasn't motivated by anger. The truth was, he'd been ready to kill the man, whether the attack was successful or not. The sniper had exemplary professional habits before an assignment, first-rate preparation, but afterward, he drank and talked too much. His usefulness had come to an end. In fact, the execution was the only thing about this assignment that felt good.

“
Abort
,” he shouted into his walkie-talkie. “
Abort. Abort. Abort.
”

1

“Those last four shots are too low-pitched to be from a rifle,” Jamie said, puzzled.

Cavanaugh nodded. “Sounds like they came from the ridge where the sniper was. But we're too far away for anybody to expect to hit us with a pistol from there. It doesn't make sense.”

Jamie studied their surroundings. “We need better cover.”

“Right. For all we know, there's still at least one shooter on this side of the canyon. Keep down,” he told William and Mrs. Patterson. “Move back.”

Deeper into the woods, they found a depression circled by trees and squirmed into it.

“Mrs. Patterson, face this way,” Jamie said, watching the elderly woman take her small Ladysmith revolver from her apron. “Aim toward the trees.”

“William, you face
this
way.” Cavanaugh unholstered his pistol and gave it to the attorney. “Keep it pointed away from us. Don't pull the trigger unless I tell you.”

Cavanaugh and Jamie sank low, every quadrant occupied.

“When I get out of this—” Emotion made William's voice thick. “—I'm going to take shooting lessons. Karate lessons. Every damned lesson I can find. I won't feel helpless like this again.”

“I'll be glad to teach you,” Cavanaugh said, trying to distract William from his fear. “Especially about Fairbairn.”

“Fairbairn? Who's
he
?”

“But here's your first lesson. Stop talking. We need to be quiet so we can listen if someone's sneaking up on us.”

“Oh.” William's face turned red with embarrassment. “Yes.”

They waited and watched the forest. Cavanaugh's need to protect helped distract him from his rage. He wanted to get his hands on whoever had ordered the attack, to slam that person's head against a rock until bone cracked and—

No.
Fantasies about revenge were a liability. Anger got in the way of clear thinking.

Concentrate on keeping everybody alive.

A minute passed. Cavanaugh's ears continued to ring because of the explosions and the shots he'd fired. He worked to filter out that sound, to listen beyond it, trying to detect any noise in the forest.

Ten minutes. Fifteen.

Sweat oozed from under his body armor. His back hurt from the force of the bullet that the armor had stopped. As he aimed toward the trees, his heart thumped against the ground.

There! A branch snapped deep in the trees. Cavanaugh steadied his rifle in that direction. Another branch snapped, and now Cavanaugh's finger slid onto the trigger.

He relaxed as an elk poked its head from the underbrush, its antlers blending with the dead branches of a tree behind it.

Maybe this is going to be all right
, he thought.
The elk wouldn't be wandering in this direction if somebody with a rifle is out there, creeping toward us.

Then another elk appeared, and Cavanaugh became more hopeful.

At once, the animals bolted, their hind legs kicking as they crashed through the forest.
Somebody
is
out there.
Cavanaugh again touched the trigger. But then he realized what had spooked the elk. Not somebody creeping among the trees.

A noise. Far away but getting louder. A high-pitched cluster of sirens. The police and the emergency crews were finally coming.

Cavanaugh studied the forest one more time and murmured to the group, “I think we're going to make it.”

“Whatever pressure you put on me, I can take,” William said.

“What?”

“I went to Harvard law school. Nothing's more brutal than that. I'm holding you to your promise to teach me. And while you're at it, who the hell is Fairbairn?”

“When this is over, I'll tell you.” Taking refuge in his protector's role, Cavanaugh distracted William from present fears by projecting him into the future.

2

They stayed within the forest, moving southward along the edge of the smoldering meadow.

“You think the sniper might still be on that ridge?” William kept glancing in that direction.

“He might have risked staying, in case we get careless when help arrives. It's better if we don't step into the open.”

When the sirens stopped, Cavanaugh turned toward the silence. Through a gap in the trees, he saw scattered, burning timbers: all that remained of the lodge. To subdue another burst of fury, he focused on movement within the smoke, relieved to see that five of his horses had survived. They gathered nervously near the one that had been killed. Sickened, he shifted his gaze toward the countless bullet holes in his car, its windows starred, some of them shattered. Thinking of Angelo's body inside it, he felt his fury intensify.

Immediately, the horses bolted as a highway patrol car, dark chassis, white roof, flashers on, emerged from the lane. Even at a distance, Cavanaugh detected the shock on the face of the uniformed driver when he saw the damage.

Then a forest-service fire truck emerged, and
its
occupants looked stunned, also.

They managed to move the van that was blocking the lane
, Cavanaugh thought. A further idea struck him:
Or maybe some of the gunmen drove it away.

With Jamie watching the trees behind them, he led William and Mrs. Patterson around the southern curve of the forest and only then stepped into the lane, the trees still shielding them from a sniper.

At almost the same time, a highway patrol car came around a curve, the driver slamming on his breaks at the sight of them.

“Set down your weapons,” Jamie warned William and Mrs. Patterson as she and Cavanaugh put down their own.

“Let him see your hands are empty,” Cavanaugh emphasized.

The state trooper, a captain, had his fingers on his holstered pistol as he got out of the car, but then he gave Cavanaugh a closer look. “Aaron?”

Cavanaugh had used his legal name when he'd bought his property. If an enemy who knew him only as Cavanaugh had hoped to track him down by searching through land records, the effort would have been useless.

“Nice to see you, Garth.”

The trooper looked surprised. “My God, with all that soot and dirt on you, I didn't recognize you.”

“We had a little trouble.”

“So I hear. On the radio, the first officer to get here told me your place looks like a war zone.”

Garth had a solid build from weight lifting. He was tall, with strong cheekbones and a dark mustache. He spent so much time outdoors that his face had the grain of weathered wood, his tan emphasized by the green of his uniform and trooper's hat. Like any expert police officer, his eyes were constantly alert, even off duty when he, Cavanaugh, and Jamie sometimes ate dinner together in Jackson.

Those eyes were very alert now. “Jamie, is that blood on your shoulder?”

“Yes, but it isn't mine.”

Cavanaugh thought angrily of the blood spatters inside the Taurus after Angelo was shot.

“Lillian . . .” Garth frowned at Mrs. Patterson. “You're wavering. Come over to the car and sit down.”

With an unsteady hand, she pushed gray hair from her face. Dirt streaked her apron. “Thanks, Garth. It's been a long afternoon.”

“You'll find four dead men in the western edge of the meadow,” Cavanaugh said.

“Dead? How?”

“Shot.”

“Who pulled the trigger?”

At this point, Cavanaugh would normally have requested a lawyer to make sure that he didn't say something that became misinterpreted. But he had one of the best attorneys in the country standing next to him.

“
I
did,” Cavanaugh said. “You'll find a fifth body in my car, or what's left of my car. One of the other guys pulled
that
trigger.”

3

Mrs. Patterson's late husband, Ben, had been a Wyoming state trooper who died in a shootout with a gang trying to hijack a truck filled with pharmaceuticals. Known as Lillian to every officer assigned to Teton County, she was interviewed first, then escorted back to the waiting room at the highway-patrol barracks ten miles south of Jackson.

“I phoned your son-in-law to let him know you can leave now,” Garth said. “He'll soon be here to drive you to your daughter's place. Your family's eager to see you.”

“I'll wait with you in the front hallway,” Jamie told her.

William was the next person taken to the interview room. Twenty minutes later, he came back, the satisfied look on his face indicating that, while he might not know anything about guns, he knew how to conduct himself with law officers. Now that he was in lawyer mode again, his torn, filthy suit somehow looked dignified.

Jamie went next. Cavanaugh had taught her to answer police questions directly but never to provide more than what was asked and never to attempt to deceive.

Then it was Cavanaugh's turn. The room had harsh lights, plain walls, two chairs, and a small desk. Focusing on minutiae helped keep his emotions in check.

“Want some coffee?” Garth pointed toward a carafe and some Styrofoam cups on the desk. A tape recorder was there, also.

“I could use the caffeine,” Cavanaugh said, pouring a cup. His watch showed that it was half past ten. But now that his adrenaline had dissipated, he felt as if it were four in the morning.

“Ready?” Garth asked.

“When you are.” The stench of smoke radiated from Cavanaugh's jeans and shirt. His neck and arm hurt. His back felt bruised where the bullet had struck his armor. But at least his legs and chest felt lighter, relieved of the heavy vest.

Garth pressed buttons on the recorder. “This is Captain Garth Braddock. The interview is with Aaron Stoddard.” He gave the place, time, and date. “Tell me what happened.”

While waiting, Cavanaugh had taken the opportunity to get his narrative in order. Only after concluding his description, did he allow his emotions to show. “I haven't the faintest fucking idea what's going on.”

“We found your sniper.”

Cavanaugh leaned forward. “Is he answering questions?”

“It's a hard to get answers from a corpse. Somebody shot him four times in the face.”

Cavanaugh took a moment to adjust to that, finally saying, “That explains the four pistol shots we heard.”

“Fragmentation-type ammunition. Mutilated his features enough that even people who knew him would have trouble identifying him. His teeth were so damaged that comparing them to dental records will be useless. The question is, who did that to him?”

Cavanaugh thought about it. “The only available candidate is someone on the assault team. But that doesn't make sense. Did he have ID?”

“No.”

“Did you send his fingerprints to the FBI?”

“Couldn't. The tips of his fingers were cut off.”

Cavanaugh took a longer time to adjust to that.

“The four men you killed,” Garth said.

“Was
forced
to kill.”

“
Their
fingerprints got a really quick response. Those men were fresh out of prison. Within the past six weeks.”

“Six weeks?”

“I can't imagine how they came to be together. They served time in four different penitentiaries. Pennsylvania. Alabama. Colorado. Oregon.” Garth slid a sheet of paper across the table. “Recognize any of these names?”

Cavanaugh studied them, hoping, but finally had to say, “No.” He grasped at a thought. “Four different prisons? They must have known each other
before
they went to those prisons.”

“Not according to their criminal records. There's no indication they ever crossed paths before. But they did have
one
thing in common. Armed robbery. Gang shootings. Rape. These were really violent guys.”

“Before everything started, I think I saw them and the rest of their friends at the Moose Junction gas station.” Cavanaugh said. “They didn't handle themselves like street criminals. They weren't wired and jittery and unfocused. These guys had stillness and control. They looked like operators.”