Those Who Wish Me Dead (5 page)

“All the same,” Patrick said, “I’d like to have been paid to find the boy.”

“Young Jace offers us no reward, that’s true. The risk, though…”

“Yes,” Patrick said, gunning the big V-8 to life. “The risk is substantial. And so I suppose we’ll have to find him.”

“I suppose we will.”

D
on’t try to guess.

That had been Allison’s rule for the day. She had seen all of their files, she knew the boys by heart in some ways, and she hadn’t even met them yet.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said aloud when she fed the horse, Tango, her baby, a rehab horse. He’d been kicked and sustained a fracture that went almost the full length of his leg. The bone was broken but not shattered. If it had been, he would have had to be put down. Instead, there was hope, though he’d never be able to perform at the level he once had. He was now on the third month of his rehab—which meant that he hadn’t lain down in three months. Tango had been standing up for ninety-four consecutive days. He wore a bit connected to two tension bands that kept him from lying down. If he did get down, the chances that he’d destroy the leg were high, because he’d have to put a huge amount of force on the foreleg in order to push himself up again.

And so he remained standing. He betrayed no trace of pain or frustration or fatigue. Allison had been around horses her entire life, and she knew they didn’t have to lie down for sleep or to rest in the way that humans and many other animals did, but still it astounded her to see him there, day after day, so patient, so steadfast. So trusting.

She spoke to him while she groomed him, and he gave a series of low snorts and, in trademark Tango fashion, shot a streamer of snot onto her arm. This was a compliment. This was true affection.

“Two more weeks, big guy,” she said. That was all he had left wearing the bit. The foreleg should be fully healed by now, he’d taken walks and shown no trace of pain, but he hadn’t held a rider. She couldn’t wait to return to this horse. It was something to look forward to in a summer of unease.

Once she’d ridden horses for show. Fairs, competitions, bizarre Montana beauty pageants. Her mother had loved that world. Allison, not so much. The horse was always an afterthought to her mother—Allison’s wardrobe, her hair, her stance: that mattered most. After a while, you began to wonder which creature was really being trotted out for show.

She was still talking to the horse when the van pulled in, and there they were: six boys of the sort she’d met every summer and one who was on the run from a killer. They unloaded in front of the bunkhouse, a simple cabin with no electricity or running water. Allison was already scrutinizing them during introductions, couldn’t help it,
don’t try to guess
a laughable command now.

There was Drew, sixteen, from Vermont. Tall and sullen and wanting to be someplace else. Raymond, fifteen, from Houston. Dark eyes that darted around as if he were taking an inventory of all possible threats. Connor, fourteen, from Ohio, who stared at Allison’s breasts instead of her eyes when he was introduced and then blushed when he realized he’d been caught. Ty, fourteen, from Indiana, a smaller kid but knotted with muscle and puffed up to show it as much as possible. Jeff, fifteen, from Kansas, who stood behind the others and didn’t make eye contact with anyone when he introduced himself. Marco, fifteen, from Las Cruces, already stepping into the role of class clown, making a series of soft jokes about the “compound” that earned smiles from Bryce, fifteen, of Chicago, but they were nervous smiles.

Already she was handicapping them. Bryce looked uneasy and was trying hard to find a friend. Possible. Jeff and Drew both looked like they wanted to be on the first flight out, but Drew’s expression carried more attitude problems. Jeff just looked scared.

Probably Jeff,
she thought, and then she realized Ethan was watching her and she smiled at him and turned away, chastising herself.

It doesn’t matter.

But it felt like it did. She was frustrated that they couldn’t know, even if the logic for the decision was clear.

“Remember those cows we saw in the road?” Ethan said. “The feared mountain cows? They belong to my wife here.”

“How do you just let them wander around in the highway?” the one named Raymond asked. “We had to honk to get them to move.”

“Lease on public lands is cheap,” Allison said with a smile. “What can I say? I like to save my dollars.”

“How in the hell—”

“Language,” Ethan said.

“Sorry. How do you get them
back?
”

“Cowboys do it,” Allison said.

“
No shit?
Actual cow—”

“Language,”
Ethan repeated. “Raymond, are we going to have a problem with this?”

Raymond shrugged. A faint smile played on his face. Allison looked at him and thought,
No, too confident, he’s not scared, and the right one will be scared.
They were all white except for Marco, who was Hispanic.
A big drug case, maybe, or some kind of border killings, one of those smuggling rings you read about,
Allison thought, and then, right on the heels of that thought,
You racist bitch, did you actually just think that? What are you turning into over this?

“Cowboys,” Raymond said, and he shook his head and laughed. “You gotta be kidding me.”

“Go on and get settled in the bunkhouse,” Ethan told the boys. “There are sixteen bunks in there and only seven of you, so there shouldn’t be much trouble finding a bed. We’ll meet at four by the campfire over there. Get some rest, relax. Enjoy those mattresses. Soon you’re going to be sleeping up there.”

He pointed to where Pilot Peak and Index Peak loomed against the gray sky, and the boys looked up. Judging by their faces, you’d think they were staring at menacing stone monuments to the memory of those who had perished in the mountains before.

“We climb them?” Connor said.

“No, dude, we take the escalator.” This from Marco, drawing laughs.

“We’ll do some climbing,” Ethan said. “But not on those bad boys. Not just yet. All right, get settled in, and then be at the fire at four sharp. We’re going to review all of the gear you need for the trail. Anything you don’t pack, you won’t be able to use, so I’d suggest you listen good.”

They hauled their luggage into the bunkroom. Most of them had suitcases or duffel bags; a few were already outfitted with backpacks. It was a small group, but that was intentional. Ethan’s permits and insurance allowed him to be the sole instructor only with groups of eight or fewer. Get above eight, as he sometimes did, and he had to have an extra instructor.

When the boys were in the bunkhouse and it was just the two of them, Ethan turned to Allison and said, “I think it’s Drew. Doesn’t talk like he’s from New England, which is supposedly his home, and definitely doesn’t want to be here, but he’s kind of curious about what we do.”

She stared at him in astonishment, and he smiled and said, “Baby? It’s human to wonder. We won’t
try
to find out, but be honest with yourself. It’s human to wonder.”

She shook her head and sighed. “I’d like to know.”

“No gain to knowing.”

“Maybe there is.”

“I don’t see it.”

She nodded.

“They have an hour,” Ethan said. “And I’d like them to get some space. They need to start feeling each other out.”

“You think you’ve got an hour till the first fight?”

“Let’s hope so,” he said, and then he took her hand and guided her inside the cabin.

They were in bed in the cabin, a stolen hour while the kids settled into the bunkhouse, and Allison lay there and traced the muscles in his chest with her fingernail and said, “Have you thought any more about it?”

“About what?” Ethan asked, and she took her hand away, rolled onto her back, and sighed, staring at the shadowed ceiling. Ethan missed the warmth of her immediately. A minute passed and then maybe five and finally she broke the silence.

“If someone comes for him,” she said.

“They won’t.”

“But have you thought about it?”

He paused. He didn’t know what she wanted to hear, but he decided to tell her the truth whether she wanted to hear it or not.

“Yes. And I think I’m ready if they come. But they won’t.”

“You could lose a lot, betting on that,” she said. “Could lose it all.”

“I won’t lose it all.”

“No? Something happens up there in the mountains, Ethan? Somebody takes a shot at one of those boys? You’re done, then. Everything you’ve built is done.”

“It won’t happen, Allison.”

She sighed again, and when he reached for her, she stayed motionless, unreceptive. The outline of her was visible in the dim room with the shades pulled and he could smell her hair and skin and he wanted to stop talking about this; their hours together in the summer were few and couldn’t be wasted on argument.

“I can help him,” he said, tracing the side of her breast and squeezing her hip. “Whichever one he is, I can help him.”

Long ago, when Ethan left the Air Force after years working as a survival instructor in every climate known to man and made his home in the Montana mountains, he’d had an idea of what he wanted to do with his skills. The Air Force trained survival instructors in every elite branch of the military; if an Army Ranger told you he was a survival instructor, it meant he’d been through the Air Force program; same for the SEALs, same for everybody, no matter what unit or how elite. Ethan had done well with those types because he understood something that needed to be understood. They were bad sons of bitches, they could kill you with any weapon known to man or with no weapon at all if necessary, and his job was not to impress them or try to match them; his job was to make them proficient in yet a few more areas of combat, known as SERE: survival, evasion, resistance, and escape. And in those areas? Ethan was as good as anyone got.

One of the things he learned, teaching those warriors, was that a survivor had specific skills, and almost all of them were between the ears, a convergence of cognitive prowess and emotional control. Some of the muscled-up types had trouble with that. Others didn’t. But in the attempt to instill those ideas, he became fascinated with the concept of whether someone could
build
a survivor mentality. Did you have to be born with it, carry it in some twisted strand of DNA, or could you learn it?

These were the things you had time to consider when you spent weeks in the desert, alone under a night sky so laden with stars it was hard to comprehend; or in the jungle, sleeping in a homemade hammock that kept you elevated from the insects that would otherwise devour your flesh; or in the Arctic, building a fortress out of ice blocks. What Ethan had decided, what he’d determined from years invested in the study and craft of survival, was that the gain could extend far beyond what he taught in the military. By now he’d helped teens from all around the country, in every circumstance imaginable, and he knew that he’d done good work, that he’d made a difference. You did the best you could, and you didn’t hold yourself responsible for the ones you couldn’t reach, because you couldn’t reach them all. You had to acknowledge that early, had to let yourself accept that some would falter despite your best efforts. He could not get his head around that with this summer’s special case, though. Whoever the boy was, Ethan wanted to make an impact. He believed that he could.

Beside him in their bed, his wife was still silent.

“Allison? Please.”

She turned back to him then, rolling onto her side. Ran one hand up his arm and then held the side of his face, propping herself up on an elbow. Looking into his eyes.

“I’d feel better if there was more help,” she said. “If you’d gotten a few people in here, just for these weeks. Reggie, maybe. He’d be good.”

“Reggie’s in Virginia. He’s got his own thing.”

“
Someone,
then. So it’s not just you out there, alone.”

“You know the agreement I made on this. I
have
to be alone.”

“You’re taking them into the mountains tomorrow. The first morning, and you’re taking them up?”

“It’s how it will need to go this summer. Not bad, just different. I want my usual patterns disrupted. Just in case.”

“You should have demanded someone else come along.”

“I love you,” Ethan said.

“That’s sweeter than saying
end of discussion.
Even if it means the same thing.”

“I love you,” he repeated.

She leaned down and kissed him, then rested her forehead against his, and her lips grazed him when she spoke.

“I’ll let it go. I won’t speak of it again. You don’t need it, and Lord knows, I don’t need to beat my head on the chunk of granite that you like to call your
opinion.
”

“Nasty tone, Miss Montana.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Sorry. I know you were only the runner-up.”

Usually he could get a rise out of her with this, could turn anger to laughter. This afternoon, though, she was silent. He took her in his arms, pulled her on top of him, and still something was wrong. Tensed muscles where loose ones belonged. He put his hands on her sides and pushed her back, and now it was his turn to search for eye contact in the darkness.

“What’s wrong?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I just have a bad feeling. I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to worry about him. Whichever one
he
is. But it’s more than that. I just…something doesn’t feel right. I’ve been restless. Uneasy. Like something’s on the way.”

He laughed at her then, something that he would recall over and over in the days to come, the serious weight of her warning and how melodramatic it had sounded to him there in the darkened bedroom with her body pressed to his and the cabin full of warmth and wood smoke.

“You’ve been back to the folklore books?” he said. They were a favorite of hers, and she’d spoken countless times of her envy of those with the gift of premonitions, which was always a source of amusement to him, both that she believed in it and that she desired it. “What do you see, baby? Shade of the moon, shadow of a spider, the way the cat holds his tail?”

“No,” she said. Her voice soft. “Nothing like that. But I feel it, all the same.”