The Nightmare Thief (19 page)

“I’m sure I saw the light over there. To the west,” he said.

The shadows were gone, flattened by the dusk and the lowering clouds. Rain speckled his face.

They were headed southwest, on the downslope about a mile past the crest of the gorge. The pines were thinning out. As the first fat drops of rain pinged to earth, the smell of dust sharpened in the air.

Dustin began to jog. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s it. That’s west, right?”

Kyle kept walking, eyes on the horizon. He took off his baseball cap. “That’s where the sun went down. So, yes.”

Dustin gained speed on the downslope. He broke out of the trees into an open meadow. Ahead he saw something better. A barbed-wire fence.

He ran toward it. “Private property. Somebody lives here.”

Kyle called out from behind him. “Slow down. This could be the Ponderosa. We might still be ten miles from somebody’s house.”

“What-a-rosa?”

“
Bonanza,
for God’s sake.”

Reaching the fence, Dustin ducked and climbed through. A barb caught and tore his sweatshirt, but he didn’t care. He ran across the meadow. He knew he’d seen a light someplace on the far side, farther down the hill.

Halfway to a copse of yellow cottonwood trees, he heard the cows. Mooing.

“Hey,” he called, though he knew hollering at cows was stupid. Cows wouldn’t help him. Behind him Kyle laughed, like he was a dope.

But cows didn’t stay out all night, did they? Didn’t they have to go back in the barn? And they didn’t have cattle GPS. Somebody had to … to … round them up.

“Hey,” he repeated.

Behind him, Kyle whistled, like he’d put two fingers to his teeth. Dustin glanced back. Kyle was pointing south.

A man on a horse was riding across the meadow.

Dustin’s heart kicked. “Over here.” He waved wildly and sprinted toward the stranger.

The man on the horse wore a tan cowboy hat and black down vest over a denim shirt. He came toward Dustin at a trot. When Dustin got within a hundred yards, he saw that the man had on rawhide gloves and a scowl. And that he had a shotgun slung next to his saddle.

Dustin raised his hands. “Man, we need your help.”

The horseman pulled back on the reins and turned his mount sideways to Dustin. “Is that right?”

“We’ve been in an accident.”

The man hauled out the shotgun. “First, tell me what you’re doing on my land.”

 

 

Jo was blowing hard when she reached the top of the ridge. Through the pines, the wind gusted and rain spit cold against her face.

She looked downhill for any sign of Dustin and Kyle. The forest was too thick. She looked at her phone. Still no signal.

Her skin was creeping. Kyle Ritter was without doubt Ruby Ratner. Ratner was the Bad Cowboy. Kyle had lied about his identity.

Evan’s text warned that he was a dangerous ex-con. Jo could read between the lines: He had been involved in the death of Phelps Wylie. His phone number—there on Jo’s display, with his text message to her—matched the number in Phelps Wylie’s Recent Calls list.

Stop, Jo. Think.
Why had Kyle texted her? Did he want to draw her away from the safety of the group? Maybe. But Dustin was in imminent danger. She had to find him and get him away from Kyle.

And she had to warn the rest of the group and get them to safety too.

But without a phone signal, all she could do was queue up text messages, and hope she would pass through a zone where a cell tower might pick up her signal and shoot them off.

Hands shaking, she punched the buttons on the phone.

To Gabe:

Though she hadn’t found his phone, maybe he had in the time since she’d left.

She had no mobile phone contacts for the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office, and she couldn’t text 9-1-1 for local emergency response. She frantically texted the best cop she knew.

She addressed it to Lt. Amy Tang of the SFPD.

Message failed.
She told the phone to keep trying. Send the damned thing. Take wing, whenever, soon.

She put the phone in her pocket and ran down the slope, toward a thinning in the line of trees.

 

 

Dustin stopped in the field, chest heaving, hands raised. The man on the horse sat in the saddle, one hand on the reins, trying to keep his horse from wheeling. He continued to aim his shotgun at Dustin.

“What are you doing on my property?”

What was this, a scene out of some old Western? “We were in a crash, a couple miles from here, into this river. People are hurt. We need the cops and an ambulance.”

“How’d you get here? Didn’t you see the fence?”

“Man, that’s exactly
why
we’re here, because we saw your fence. It’s civilization. Sorry I’m tromping on your cow pasture, but my friend’s been shot.”

The rancher’s horse sidestepped and tossed its head. “Shot?”

Kyle stepped forward. “Sir, I apologize for Dustin here. He’s been through a real trauma.” He pointed at the Edge Adventures logo on his hat. “I work for an outfit that takes people on adventure outings in the backcountry. Bunch of college kids with me today, and basically we got carjacked. The vehicle’s wrecked in a gorge over those hills to the east, and people are hurt. We need law enforcement in significant strength and rescue evac.”

Kyle’s eyes were bright and intense. With his hands in the air, he looked like a supplicant. Dustin nodded in agreement with him.

“So frog march us to your property line if you want. Have your horse there kick our asses halfway back to San Francisco. Hell, invoice Edge Adventures for your time tonight. But once you do all that, phone for help, ’cause otherwise a bunch of folks is gonna die.”

The rancher looked suspicious but concerned. He was in his late fifties, with a tanned, round face and a solid belly that spoke of a love of good steak. He stared from Kyle to Dustin and back again.

He lowered the shotgun. “My house is beyond that stand of trees at the bottom of the pasture. We can phone the sheriff and County Search and Rescue from there.”

He returned the shotgun to its scabbard beside the saddle. Then he wheeled the horse and spurred it toward the trees at the far edge of the pasture.

Dustin ran after him. He felt Kyle close at his heels.

“
D
ouble park,” Tina said.

Evan pulled her Mustang to the side of the road. They were on Russian Hill, in a quiet neighborhood of apartment buildings with bay windows and Easter-egg-colored Victorian homes. Monterey pines were a vivid green in the sunset. A cable car passed by at the corner, heading downhill toward Fisherman’s Wharf. In a small park, a group of young men were playing basketball, scrapping and shouting to one another.

Tina jumped out, dodged between parked cars, and ran up the front steps at a small house with brick red trim. Evan put on her flashers and followed.

The porch light was on. Tina’s key jangled as she unlocked the front door. “Jo?”

In the front hall she kicked a pile of mail that had fallen through the slot. She rushed down the front hall, glanced in the living room, turned into the kitchen. “Jo.”

The house was small but exquisite. Evan liked small but exquisite living spaces, tucked away from the road, where you could observe the world without it scrutinizing you back.

The compact living room had a sense of spaciousness. Modern furniture, a Persian rug on sanded hardwood, Japanese wood-block prints on the walls. Gold orchids, throw pillows in red and orange and white, a spread of color like the furnace of a forge.

A table lamp was on in the hall. The place looked exactly like a house that had been locked up while its owner went away for the weekend.

Tina ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Thirty seconds later she ran back down. “She isn’t here.”

“She didn’t go alone,” Evan said. “Would her boyfriend—”

“Gabe.”

“And he …”

“He can take care of himself. He’s a PJ with the Air National Guard, for God’s sakes. And Jo can take care of
her
self. But they went to an abandoned mine, and you said you found a connection to this ex-con …”

Evan jammed her hands in her back pockets. “Anybody else she might have contacted?”

“Maybe the guy next door.” Tina locked up and they hurried down the steps. “Ferd keeps an eye on the street. Mainly because he has a major crush on Jo and he’s always hoping to run into her.” She made a face. “Or to get her to diagnose his latest ailment. He’s a bit of a hypochondriac.”

Evan said, “Was that Gabe’s photo in Jo’s office—looked like they were camping in Yosemite?”

Tina led her along the sidewalk. “That’s Daniel. Jo’s husband.”

Evan glanced at her sharply.

“He died three years ago.”

“I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

“Medevac helicopter crash. He was an ER doctor. Jo escaped just before it went down.” Tina glanced at her. “She is one lucky cat. But even cats get only so many lives.”

Next door, a redbrick mansion loomed over the street. The plants that lined the walk were sculpted as if by an exacting Brazilian waxer. Statues of Roman gods adorned the balcony, fat cupids and leering goat men. Tina pounded on the door.

The man who answered looked both eager and nervous. “Tina?”

“Ferd, have you heard from Jo today?”

He wore a Compurama T-shirt and had enough gel in his hair to lubricate defibrillator paddles. When Tina mentioned Jo, he stood taller and flushed a deep red.

“No. What’s wrong?”

“She drove to the Sierras to do some work for a case and was supposed to go to Yosemite this afternoon. She hasn’t checked into the hotel.”

He actually clasped his hands and began wringing them. “I don’t know anything about it. But you look so worried. Come in, come in.”

Evan followed Tina inside. The hardwood floor and heavy maroon drapes gave the house a nineteenth-century feel. The staircase was grand, in a
Phantom of the Opera
way. Gamers’ magazines and a textbook on simian behavior sat on the hall table.

Ferd scratched his chest as though he were breaking out in a rash. “I saw her truck pull away this morning about ten. You can’t reach her at all?”

Evan said, “I think it’s time to take this to another level. We should get somebody looking for Jo.”

Tina nodded, fretful. “I know who to call. She’s an SFPD homicide detective. Her name’s Amy Tang.”

T
he wind whistled through the pines. Lightning flashed, illuminating tree trunks in stark black and white. Downhill a few hundred yards, Jo saw that the forest opened into a clearing.

The thunder rolled. Dustin and Kyle had headed west, downhill, this way. She slowed. She didn’t want to come upon Kyle unaware. She needed to get Dustin away from him—but if she couldn’t find him soon, she would have to give up and get back to the Hummer.

She reached the edge of the trees. In the stormy sunset, she faced a broad meadow. About two hundred yards from the tree line, a barbed-wire fence ran across the ground.

A fence meant private property. It meant somebody owned this land and might be around. Her spirits leapt.

Far across the pasture she heard cattle lowing. A herd of shorthorns was huddled on the distant edge of the pasture, where the forest resumed.

She ran to the fence. Just outside it she saw a crumpled cigarette pack. It was the brand Kyle had pulled from his pocket earlier.

She eked her way through the barbed wire and took off across the meadow.

 

 

Dustin and Kyle ran alongside the loping horse. The rancher peppered them with questions.

How many people were trapped? What were their injuries?

“How did you get carjacked?”

“Long story,” Dustin hacked. He could barely keep up.

“We have another few hundred yards to go before we reach the phone. I have time to hear it.”

Kyle was wheezing, going at a hard run in the altitude. “Man, we need your help. The guys who did it have friends out there. They’ll be back.”

“What are you saying?” the rancher said.

“You got more guns at home? Ammo, a rifle, something we can use to protect ourselves? ’Cause these hombres ain’t playing around.”

Dustin understood what Kyle was saying. He wondered why the rancher didn’t just ride ahead and call the cops.

“We’re not going to break into your house and steal your stuff,” he said.

Kyle shot him a pinched look. He rubbed a hand over his chest.

“What?” Dustin said. “I’m too tired to beat around the bush. Mister, we’re in bad trouble. Just gallop on ahead and phone the sheriff.”

The rancher glanced down from beneath his cowboy hat. He seemed to be sizing Dustin up.

“Where exactly is this wrecked Hummer?” he said.

Dustin wanted to kiss him. “In the gorge, off the logging, where it turns to gravel. It’s—”

“Oh my Lord
.
”

With a hard thud, Kyle fell to the ground.

Dustin turned. “You okay?”

Kyle rolled and grabbed his chest. His face contorted. “I can’t …”

The rancher wheeled his horse around. “You all right?”

“Can’t breathe.”

Dustin dropped to one knee at his side. “What’s wrong?”

“Chest. Tight.” He gulped a breath.

The rancher slung a leg over the saddle, climbed down, and knelt next to Kyle at Dustin’s side.

Dustin looked up at the rancher. “I think he’s having a heart attack.”

The man took off his hat. Gravely, he said, “Where’s the pain?”