Cover of Night (21 page)

Blake spoke for the first time. He was twenty-five, a six-footer, with short dark hair and eyes, a lot like his uncle. “Not necessarily. They don’t know if an individual customer is having trouble, even when it’s line trouble; someone has to report the problem. Trail Stop is the end of the line; there’s nothing beyond. And if they do show up—hell, the bridge is out, they can’t get across. What they gonna do? Wait for the state to fix the bridge, that’s what.”

Teague thought that over and gave a short nod. “That should work. All you two guys have to do”—he glanced at Toxtel and Goss—“is convince them you work for either the state or the construction company hired to rebuild the bridge. Neither of you looks like a construction worker, so state would be more believable—but you have to lose the suit.” That last was targeted at Toxtel. “Khakis, boots, flannel shirts, jackets. That’s what you wear on this job. And get a couple of hard hats, to make it look official.”

“Time line?” Goss asked.

“There’s one more little detail I need to take care of.” Creed wasn’t so “little,” but they couldn’t put the plan into action until Teague had located the guide. “You two take tomorrow to get the clothes and gear you need. I’m good with my supplies. And while you’re buying, don’t forget camping gear. None of us are leaving Trail Stop until the dance is over, so that means food, water, lanterns, and heaters. It can get damn cold at night, and the weather’s changing. Thermal underwear. Extra socks and underwear. Whatever else you can think of. Get all of that packed and ready, so we can move in tomorrow after
midnight
. I’ll have the power and telephones off by
two o’clock
, and then we take out the bridge.”

* * *

There hadn’t been any point in calling Creed’s cabin when he didn’t expect Creed to be there, but by Saturday morning Cal Harris judged Creed should have sent his client home by now and would be kicked back for some downtime. Old Roy Edward Starkey had judged the client to be a major pain in the ass, and Roy Edward was a good judge of character. That meant Creed would need even more alone time than usual, to reward himself for not choking the son of a bitch to death.

First
Cal
treated himself to a muffin and cup of coffee at Cate’s house, just to watch her move among the customers and to hear her voice. Her mother had taken the twins home with her for a visit, and he was of two minds about that. On the one hand, he missed the little stinkers. On the other, this was the first time in the three years he’d known Cate that the boys weren’t close at hand, the first real opportunity he’d had for some private conversation—provided he could string two words together without stammering and turning beet red like some idiot.

Cate barely glanced at him as she served his muffin, though when he darted a look at her, he saw that her cheeks were pink and she seemed flustered. He didn’t know if that was good or bad. He wanted her to be aware of him, but he didn’t want her feeling uncomfortable. That couldn’t be good, could it?

The entire community was aware of, and amused by, his predicament. Everyone was also unfailingly on his side, though he’d warned them to stop deliberately sabotaging Cate’s plumbing, wiring, Explorer, or doing whatever else their fertile brains could concoct to throw the two of them together—as if having his head stuck under her sink with his ass in the air was going to ignite her interest. Besides, all those little “repairs” caused her added stress, and she was under enough of that without their help. She was a young widow with four-year-old twins, trying to make a go of an old Victorian bed-and-breakfast in the middle of nowhere, for God’s sake.

When he was certain that what he was repairing was one of those little sabotage jobs, like Sherry’s loosening the connection beneath the sink to make it leak, he refused to let Cate pay him. Even when it was a legitimate repair, he cut his charge down to expenses. He wanted Cate to succeed in business; he didn’t want her to close down and move back to Seattle. He wouldn’t have charged her anything at all, except he had to live, too. There was a surprising amount of work for him to do here, considering how small the community was; he’d become the go-to guy for just about any kind of repair work or odd job that needed doing. He’d always been good with his hands, and though his strength was mechanics, he’d found he could repair a windowsill or put up a screen door as well as the next person. Neenah had asked if he could refinish her old cast-iron tub, and he’d been reading up on that, so he guessed next he’d be a tub refinisher, too.

Hell of an occupation for a man who’d spent most of his life with a rifle in his hands.

That thought brought him back to the reason he needed to call Creed.

The two of them were a pair, he thought with amusement. Give them weapons, point them at the enemy, and they functioned like Swiss clockworks. Throw a woman they wanted in front of them, though, and apparently neither of them could find his ass with both hands and a flashlight. Creed was even worse than
Cal
; at least
Cal
had a reason for waiting, because Cate had still been shell-shocked from losing her husband. Three years was a long time to wait, but grief took its own sweet time; even after she had recovered from that and could laugh again, she had protected herself by building a wall between her and any eligible man. He understood, and because he’d judged the prize worth the wait, he’d hung in there. His patience had been rewarded; now that wall was showing signs of cracking, and he was ready to help it along with a few nudges.

Creed, though, when it came to the woman he cared about, the toughest man
Cal
knew had proven himself a coward.

About
ten o’clock
, figuring Creed could sacrifice a little of his downtime,
Cal
called. And got the answering machine.

“Major, this is
Cal.
Give me a call. It’s important.” He could picture Creed scowling at the machine as he listened, trying to decide whether or not to pick up. Normally Creed would ignore a call until he was damn good and ready to respond, so
Cal
had tacked on the “it’s important” to whet his curiosity. Creed knew there was damn little
Cal
would consider all that important; if he was there, he should call back in a few minutes.

Cal
waited for the call. The telephone remained silent.

Well, shit. It was possible, after being on a hunt for five days, Creed had gone into town to restock his supplies so he’d be ready for the next client. Small stuff he would pick up here in Trail Stop, but a full-bore restocking called for more than the community could offer. Hell, he might even be meeting a new client, though
Cal
doubted it. Creed seldom did back-to-back hunts. He offered guiding trips, at outrageous prices, so he could afford the solitary but small-scale luxurious life he wanted; too many trips would have meant he wouldn’t have time to enjoy that life. The irony of it was, the higher he set his prices, the more he was in demand. Creed was turning down jobs left and right, which in turn made him seem even more requested, and the people doing the asking responded by asking earlier and more often.

As
Cal
had once told him, success was a vicious circle—to which Creed had replied with a suggestion that
Cal
do something anatomically impossible.
Cal
had responded that while Creed’s dick might be floppy enough to do that,
his
wasn’t, and from there the conversation had disintegrated to the point that even two old battle-hardened former marines had been wincing in disgust.

After waiting as long as he could,
Cal
left to attend to his current job of replacing the sagging step on old Mrs. Box’s back porch. When that was finished, he helped Walter put up a new shelving unit in the hardware store. He then went back to his place over the feed store to check his answering machine, but Creed still hadn’t returned his call.

Neenah was moving bags of feed around, and though she was stronger than the average woman,
Cal
took over the job. Some days he didn’t get around to using the free-weight set he had in his bedroom, so lifting fifty-pound bags of feed helped keep him in shape.

Neenah had been quiet and a little withdrawn since the episode with the two men in Cate’s house. She was a quiet, serene woman anyway, but friendly.
Cal
suspected that had been the first time she’d experienced violence firsthand, and she’d been left reeling. She was trying to handle it herself, and he didn’t think she should, but he wasn’t the person to help her.

Night had fallen when Creed finally returned his call, and
Cal
was pissed. “Took you long enough,” he snapped.

Creed paused, and
Cal
could almost see his eyes getting squinty, and his back teeth grinding together. “I’ve spent six days with the biggest fucking asshole this side of the Rockies,” he finally said. “He was supposed to have left yesterday, but the son of a bitch sprained his fucking ankle, and I had to fucking carry him five fucking miles to camp, then hold his fucking hand until I could get him to a clinic and get him X-rayed and on a fucking plane home at five fucking o’clock this afternoon. So what’s so fucking important?”

Over the years, Cal and the others on their team had learned that Creed’s mood could be measured by how many times he inserted the word
fuck
into a sentence. Judging from the number of F-bombs he’d just spit out, his mood was a centimeter short of homicidal.

“Two guys got rough with Neenah and Cate,”
Cal
said. “A couple of days ago.”

The silence on the line was black and icy; then Creed said softly, “What happened? Were they hurt?”

“Scared, mostly. One jammed a pistol against Neenah’s temple and she’s sporting a bruise. I bashed the other one in the head with my Mossberg, then got a bead on the guy holding Neenah.”

“I’ll be right there,” Creed said, and crashed the phone down in
Cal
’s ear.

TEAGUE WAS ALMOST IN POSITION OUTSIDE CREED’S CABIN when the front door banged open. He froze in place, wondering if the place was rigged with motion sensors or night-vision cameras that he hadn’t spotted during his reconnaissance, and whether or not Creed would shoot first and try to identify him later. As a result, Creed had slammed into his pickup truck and was fishtailing down the rutted lane that was his driveway before Teague could react.

“Shit!” Teague grabbed his Motorola CP150 two-way hooked to his belt, thumbed the “talk” button. “The subject just left in his pickup, coming toward the road. Follow him.”

“What about you?” came Billy’s reply, his tone very quiet but his voice clear.

“Send someone back for me. Don’t let him give you the slip—and don’t let him see you.”

“Roger that.”

Still swearing, Teague carefully reversed the path he’d taken. He could have made better time if he’d moved down into the lane, but he would also leave boot prints, and he preferred staying in the rough. He wondered what had happened to cause Creed to take off like a cat with its tail on fire, and whether he’d be better off waiting here and taking his shot whenever Creed returned, instead of following.

The problem was, Creed might be gone for days, and Teague had no intention of sitting on his ass that long. He wanted to know where Creed had gone. Even more to the point, he’d rather chase the action than wait for it to come to him—more fun that way.

Less than half an hour after Creed had hung up on him, a thunderous pounding on his door made
Cal
wonder if the thing would come off its hinges before he could get it open. It wasn’t locked, so he yelled, “For God’s sake, turn the doorknob!”

Creed powered into the room like an avalanche, his jaw set and his fists clenched, just as
Cal
had known they would be. “What happened?” Creed demanded in a hoarse growl.

“It started last Monday,”
Cal
said, turning away to grab a couple of long necks from his beat-up, avocado-green refrigerator. He popped off the tops and handed a bottle to Creed, who took it in a grip that made
Cal
wonder if he intended to crush the bottle in his bare hand. “A guy staying at Cate’s bailed out the window and drove off, left his stuff behind.”

Immediately Creed’s hazel eyes took on the analytical expression
Cal
knew so well. “I was there Monday morning,” Creed said. “She was busier than usual. Who was he running from?”

“Don’t know who or why. He didn’t come back. On Tuesday, Cate reported him missing, but because he left under his own steam, the sheriff’s department didn’t do much more than check the area hospitals and instruct deputies to be alert for signs of an accident. Also on Tuesday, some guy called Cate pretending to be from a car rental agency, trying to track this guy down. Later Cate called the rental agency but found they had no record of this guy ever renting a car from them.”

“Caller ID record?” Creed asked.

“Unknown name and number. I guess the phone company could give us more info than that, but why would they? No crime was committed, no threats made. Same with Cate’s customer—he hadn’t run out on his bill, so no crime was committed, so the cops aren’t interested.”

“What was the guy’s name?”

“Layton. Jeffrey Layton.”

Creed shook his head. “Never heard of him before.”

“I hadn’t either.”
Cal
tipped back his head and poured down some cold beer. “Then, on Wednesday, these two guys checked into Cate’s.” He explained why Cate had been suspicious, and that one of the men had evidently overheard her and Neenah talking in the kitchen. “Next thing they knew, the guy calling himself Mellor came through the door with a pistol in his hand, demanding Cate give them the stuff Layton had left behind.”

“I hope she didn’t argue,” Creed said grimly.

“She didn’t. In the meantime, I was going into town to pick up some stuff, and I stopped by to get her mail. I thought she was acting weird, kind of jumpy and distracted, and when she gave me her mail, she’d put the stamps on upside down.”