She told the gathered neighbors what the detective had said, and that he was coming out tomorrow to take statements. By then Milly had the tea brewed to her satisfaction and Cate was obliged to sit and sip, as was Neenah. To her surprise, her nerves did begin to settle and the faint sense of everything being out of place began to fade. It wasn’t until her three rock-climbing guests returned, tired and windburned and happy, that the gathering dispersed.
Because there was no restaurant in Trail Stop, the nearest one being over thirty miles away, at extra cost Cate provided an evening meal of sandwiches, chips, and dessert if the guests asked for it. Her climbers had, so she got busy with the cold cuts and cheese. Her mother kept the boys occupied, though they kept asking to go to the attic so they could hunt snakes, too, and got them fed while Cate was serving the climbers. By the time she and Sheila sat down, Cate was so tired she could barely eat. She knew it was her body’s reaction to the day’s stressful events; she was as exhausted as if she’d climbed all day, then hiked ten miles.
“Mom, I’m so sleepy,” she muttered, covering a yawn with her hand.
“Why don’t you have an early night for a change,” her mother suggested, in a tone that made it sound more like an order. “I can get the boys to bed.”
Cate surprised her, and perhaps even herself, by agreeing. “I’m dead on my feet. While you’re putting them to bed, why don’t you broach the subject of going home with you? They’ve never spent the night away from me, so they may be resistant.”
“Leave them to me,” Sheila said smugly. “By the time I get through with them, they’ll think Mimi’s home is better than Disneyland.”
“They haven’t been there, either, so they may not get the comparison.”
“Never mind the details. By morning, they’ll be begging you to let them go. That’s if you’re certain you want them to go. I still think you should sleep on it, make certain you aren’t saying this just because of what happened today.”
“Of course I am,” Cate said. “I want my children safe, and right now I don’t feel they are. Maybe I’m overreacting, but I don’t care.”
Sheila hugged her. “It’s your prerogative to overreact. And I won’t hold it against you if you change your mind in the morning…much.”
“Oh, thank you, that’s reassuring,” Cate said, and laughed. She hugged the boys and kissed them good night, explaining that Mommy was tired and was going to bed early, but that Mimi would put them to bed tonight, and they were satisfied. All the excitement had worn them out, too; they were already yawning and rubbing their eyes.
Cate brushed her teeth and showered, then fell into bed. She was so tired her body felt boneless, but her thoughts chased around like crazed squirrels, darting hither and yon, unable to settle on anything. She kept reliving snippets of the day, flash-card images: Neenah’s white face, the look in Calvin’s pale eyes as his finger tightened on the trigger of the shotgun—She hadn’t really noticed it at the time, but now she saw it over and over, the slight twitch of his finger that meant he intended to shoot.
Mellor must have seen the same thing, she thought, that telltale little motion, and decided to do things Calvin’s way. She shivered, feeling cold, and curled up in the bed so she could tuck her feet closer to her body for heat. She was often cold at night, and sometimes it wasn’t so much her reaction to the temperature as it was her aloneness, which seemed more acute in the dark. Tonight she huddled under the blanket with fear as a companion, fear for her children, fear of the violence that had come to her home that day, and she was made colder by the company.
Her subconscious replayed the look in Calvin’s eyes. She had known him for three years, but she felt as if she had seen him, really
seen
him, for the first time today. She had discovered a lot of things about her neighbors today, appreciated them in new ways, but this was different. Her perception of Calvin hadn’t undergone an adjustment; it had suffered a sea change.
Never again could she look at him and see just a painfully shy, good-hearted handyman.
Even worse, she felt as if more had changed than she realized, as if there had been a major shift in her life, but she hadn’t yet found exactly where, or how much the foundations had moved. She didn’t know how to react, what to think, because she didn’t know if she stood on solid ground or on quicksand.
The memory of Calvin’s pale eyes, the expression in them, arrowed into her with piercing clarity, and she went to sleep while trying to puzzle out if she should feel safer now, or more in peril than before.
Cal Harris had long ago discovered that if he stood at the window in his darkened bedroom, he could see the light in the window of Cate Nightingale’s bedroom. The B and B was perhaps the equivalent of a block and a half down the road, but the road had a dogleg angle in it that let him see the windows of the two front bedrooms. The first set of windows was the twins’ bedroom. The second set was Cate’s.
He’d been in her bedroom when he was working on the plumbing in the attached bath. She liked pretty things, like fancy throw pillows on the bed, and in the bathroom were thick cotton rugs that matched the shower curtain and the thing that covered the lid of the john. Her bedroom smelled good, too, like a faint perfume…and like a woman. He’d looked at her bed and his imagination had gone wild.
His reaction to her was so strong he couldn’t control it. He blushed and stammered like a fourteen-year-old, to the endless amusement of their neighbors. For three years they’d been urging him to ask her out, but he hadn’t. From the way she called him “Mr. Harris” and looked at him as if he were her grandfather, he knew she was nowhere near ready to start dating.
It had been a while since he’d aimed a weapon at another human being with the intention of pulling the trigger, but that bastard, Mellor, had come within a hair of having his head blown up like an exploding pumpkin. Only the realization that Cate was watching, and that she would have been even further traumatized, had stayed
Tonight her bedroom window was dark. He saw the twins’ light come on, then go off about fifteen minutes later, but Cate’s light never came on. Intuitively he guessed she was exhausted, and was already in bed; her mother must have put the boys to bed.
For three years he’d waited, and common sense had long since told him to give up and move on, but he hadn’t. Whether it was bone-deep stubbornness that held him, or the little boys clinging to his legs and his heart, or Cate herself, he hadn’t been able to say, “That’s enough, I’m through.”
The day’s terror had broken down some barricades. He sensed it, knew it. Today, for the first time, she’d called him “Calvin.” And she’d been the one blushing.
He went to bed feeling as if the world had shifted, and he would start tomorrow standing in a new place.
THE NEXT MORNING, GOSS AND TOXTEL SAT IN TOXTEL’S motel room, a map spread out in front of them on the rickety round table. They were drinking bad coffee made in the motel’s cheap, tiny four-cup maker, and eating stale honey buns bought in a convenience store. The town had a mom-and-pop restaurant that served breakfast, but they couldn’t discuss business in the middle of a local gathering place.
Toxtel pushed a sketch across the table toward Goss. “See, here’s the layout of the place, as I remember it. If you remember something different, say so. This has to be accurate.”
Toxtel had made a rough drawing of Trail Stop and the road leading to it, putting in stuff like the bridge, the stream, the river roaring on the right, the mountains looming tall on the left.
“I think there’s a pig trail coming in from the right somewhere along that sorry excuse of a road,” Goss said. “Couldn’t tell if it was a driveway or some sort of hunting trail.”
Toxtel made a note of that, then checked his watch. He’d called someone who called someone, and a local who knew the area—and was supposedly good at taking care of problems of a certain type—was supposed to meet them here in Toxtel’s room at nine. Goss was smart enough to know they were in over their heads and without expert help they wouldn’t be able to contain those hayseeds in Trail Stop. They needed someone who was wilderness-savvy and who was good with a rifle. Goss did okay with a pistol, but he’d never fired a rifle. Toxtel had, but many years ago.
This local guy they were to meet supposedly had a couple of other guys he could call on to help. Goss wasn’t an expert, but even he could tell there were more avenues of escape than just three people could cover—not to mention the fact that those three people also needed to sleep occasionally. For Toxtel’s plan to work, he figured they’d have to have at least two more people, though three more would be better.
Goss was content to play along with whatever wild idea Toxtel came up with; the wilder the better, in fact, because that increased the chances the whole situation would blow up in Toxtel’s face and Salazar Bandini would get a lot of attention he wouldn’t want—like the Federal kind—which would make him very unhappy with Yuell Faulkner.
Goss had tried to come up with a concrete idea, but there were too many variables. The best he could hope for was that situations would present themselves in which he could surreptitiously foul things up, maybe make them worse. The best outcome would be that they got Bandini’s flash drive and no one got hurt or killed—the best outcome for Bandini, that is, and by extension, the best outcome for Faulkner. Therefore he had to make certain the first thing didn’t happen, and the second one did. He also wouldn’t mind if that bastard handyman was one of the ones who got shot.
The fact that Goss hadn’t died during the night meant he probably didn’t have brain damage, but he still had a bitch of a headache. He’d taken four ibuprofen when he woke up, and while that had taken the edge off enough for him to be able to concentrate, he hoped he wouldn’t be required to do anything more strenuous today than sit and talk.
At
sharp there was a single rap on the door, and Toxtel got up to answer it. He opened the door and stepped aside for their visitor to enter.
“Name,” the man said briefly.
Hugh Toxtel was no one’s flunky, but neither was he so full of himself that he took umbrage at every little thing. “Hugh Toxtel,” he said as matter-of-factly as if the guy had asked what time it was. “This is Kennon Goss. And you are—?”
“Teague.”
“Got a first name?”
“Teague will do.”
Teague looked like the Marlboro Man gone junkyard-dog mean. His face was so weathered it was impossible to tell how old he was, but Goss guessed maybe in his fifties. His hair was salt-and- pepper, and cropped close to his head. There was American Indian blood there, a few generations back, evidenced in the high cheekbones and dark, narrow slits for eyes. If he’d let himself go soft, it didn’t show anywhere.
He wore jeans, hiking boots, and a green-and-tan-plaid shirt tucked neatly into his waistband. A serious-looking knife rode in a sheath at his right kidney, the kind of knife used for skinning deer. It sure as hell would never qualify as a pocketknife. He was also toting a worn black canvas bag. Everything about Teague shouted “serious badass,” and it wasn’t anything he said or wore, it was the utter confidence with which he carried himself, the look in his eyes that said he’d gut someone with no more concern than if he were swatting a fly.
“I got word you need somebody who knows the mountains,” he said.
“We need more than that. We’re going hunting,” Toxtel said neutrally, and indicated the map on the table.
“Just a minute,” said Teague, and hauled an oblong electronic device out of the canvas bag. He turned it on and walked around scanning the room. When he was satisfied there were no listening bugs, he turned it off and turned the television on. Only then did he approach the table.
“I appreciate a careful man,” Toxtel said, “but tell me up front if you have the feds dogging you. We don’t need a complication like that.”
“Not that I know of,” Teague replied, face expressionless. “Doesn’t mean things can’t change.”
Toxtel regarded him silently. In the end, Goss thought, it came down to trust: Did Toxtel trust his contact? Trust was a commodity in short supply in their business, because there was no such thing as honor among thieves—or killers, as the case may be. What trust existed was there because of a sort of mutual-assured-destruction thing. Goss knew enough to bury Toxtel, and Toxtel knew enough to bury Goss. He felt safer with that than he would have with friendship.
Finally Toxtel shrugged and said, “Good enough.” He turned back to the map and quickly outlined the situation, without mentioning Bandini’s name; he just said that something very important had been left at the B and B and the owner wasn’t inclined to give it to them. Then he laid out his plan.
Teague bent over the map, his hands braced on the table and his brows drawn together in a frown as he worked things around in his mind. “Complicated,” he finally said.
“I know. It’ll take some people who know what they’re doing.”
“That’s why you’re here,” Goss said drily. “Hugh and I aren’t exactly loaded with wilderness experience.” It was the first thing he’d contributed to the conversation, and Teague flashed him a quick glance.
“Smart of you to see that. Some people wouldn’t. Okay. There are several things to consider. First, how do you cut off contact with the outside world? Not just physical contact, but phone, computer, satellite?”
“Cut the phone and power lines,” said Goss. “That takes care of phones, computers, and satellite e-mail.”
“What if one of them has a satellite phone? You considered that?”
“Satellite phones aren’t real common,” replied Goss, “but just in case one of those yahoos does have one, we’ll need to know. Should be easy enough to find out in a place that small. Likewise, it’ll be easy to spot any vehicles new enough to have OnStar or something like it.”
“OnStar won’t work out there,” Teague said. “No cell phone service. You’re safe on that.”