C. Box - Out of Range

A security guard shone a flashlight into Joe's face and asked him to remove his driver's license from his wallet.

"I know you," the guard said, seeing his name. "You're the guy who shot Smoke Van Horn."

Joe nodded and looked away. A Secret Service agent stepped from behind the guard and walked around the front of the truck to the passenger side and opened the door. The agent was lean and young, with an earpiece and cord that snaked down into his jacket. "Are there weapons in this truck?" he asked, looking around inside.

"Standard issue," Joe said, pointing out the carbine under the seat, the shotgun in the gunrack, the cracker shell pistol in the glove box. He was glad he'd left his holster and weapon in the statehouse.

"This is a problem," the agent said, stepping back and speaking into a microphone in his sleeve.

Joe waited, and several cars pulled up behind him.

Finally, the agent climbed into the cab with Joe and shut the door. "Sorry for the inconvenience, but the vice president will be here soon. We'll need to park you away from the premises," he said. "I'll walk you to the front door, and I'll need your keys while you're inside. When you're ready to go tonight, just tell one of my colleagues and I'll meet you at the front door and walk you back to your truck."

The Ennis home was spacious, with high ceilings, marble floors, and walls of windows that framed views of the Tetons. The furniture was made of stripped and varnished lodgepole pine, the style favored locally, and a massive elk antler chandelier with hundreds of small lights hung from a faux-logging chain. The home was crowded with guests bunched around portable bars, waiting for bartenders in tuxedos to pour their drinks. Joe scanned the crowd in the front room for anyone he might know, and saw no one familiar. Everyone, he noticed, looked exceedingly healthy and fit. The men wore open collars and jackets with expensive jeans or khakis, and the women wore cocktail dresses or ultra-hip outdoor casual clothes. He felt out of place, as he normally did. The feeling was made worse when guests gestured toward him and nodded to one another and he realized he was, in fact, being talked about.

A tall man with silver hair and a dark tan-Pete Illoway, the Good Meat guru-broke out of one of the knots of people and strode across the floor with his hand held out to Joe in a showy way. Cautiously, Joe took his hand, wondering what he wanted, while Illoway leaned into him.

"Good work up in those mountains, Mr. Pickett," Illoway said, pumping Joe's hand. "Smoke Van Horn will not be missed. He was an anachronism, and the valley had passed him by."

Joe said nothing, not accepting the praise nor refuting it, thinking about when Smoke had called himself an "arachnidism."

"May I buy you a drink, sir?" Illoway asked.

"That's okay, I can get it myself," Joe said.

Illoway smiled paternalistically, then signaled a bartender and pointed to Joe.

"Bourbon and water, please," he said.

Don Ennis strode purposefully into the room, parting the crowd, saw Joe, and stopped as if he'd hit an invisible wall. Ennis looked at Joe coolly for a moment, then broke into a stage grin and walked over just as Joe's drink arrived.

"Glad you could make it, Mr. Pickett," Ennis said. "I know Stella will be pleased."

Joe wondered what he meant by that.

"Everyone's talking about the incident up in the Thorofare," Ennis said. "You've become quite the celebrity."

"Was it really a gunfight like in the movies?" Illoway asked eagerly.

Joe shook his head. "Not really. It was pretty bad," he said, the image coming back of Smoke's vacant eyes, the way he chanted, It really hurts, it really hurts, it really hurts.

"Well done," Ennis said smartly.

"I said it was bad," Joe snapped back. "It isn't something I'm proud of or something you two should be so damned pleased about."

"But it couldn't have happened to a better guy," Illoway said, raising his glass as if he hadn't heard a word Joe said. "He was an absolute asshole, if you'll pardon my French. Totally against Beargrass Village, and very vocal about it in public meetings. He was Old World, not New World, if you know what I mean."

"Speaking of," Ennis interrupted. "Have you come to a decision on your recommendation? I know we've still got a few days, but…"

Joe had been waiting for this. What he wasn't expecting was to find out Illoway and Ennis thought Joe had done them a huge favor by shooting Smoke.

"I still haven't filed my recommendation," Joe said evenly, "but I'm going to recommend that the concept not go forward unless you install some gates or bridges so the wildlife can migrate. We can't have a situation where the game is forced to cross the highway to get to lower ground. That would be dangerous to drivers and to the herds."

Something dark and cold passed over Ennis's face, as if Joe had double-crossed him. It was the same expression Joe had briefly seen when Stella entered the meeting room the week before.

"You're fucking kidding me," Ennis said in a tight whisper. "You're kidding me, right?"

"Nope," Joe said. "It's the same recommendation Will Jensen was going to make, as you know. I found his last notebook where he came to that conclusion."

Illoway reached for Ennis's arm, but Ennis pulled away, his eyes narrowing into slits.

"Don …" Illoway cautioned Ennis. "Now is not the time." Turning to Joe, Illoway said, "You know, if native species are allowed into the village they could infect our pure meat stock through interaction. I'm sure you're aware of that."

Joe shrugged. "Sure, it's possible. But I don't think you can have a perfectly controlled environment in the middle of wild country. A wise man once told me that real nature is complicated and messy." He enjoyed saying that, but tried not to smile.

"Who was that?" Illoway asked; he looked offended by the thought.

"Smoke Van Horn," Joe said, "the night before I shot him."

"I thought you were smarter than Jensen," Ennis spat. "He was nothing but a philandering drug addict. He was an insect compared to the size and scope of this project."

Joe looked at Ennis and took a sip of his drink. "How do you know he took drugs?"

Ennis looked like he was about to explode. Joe wanted to see it happen, see what the man said and did when he was enraged. Only the entrance of the vice president and his wife averted the concussion. Ennis turned away to greet the man, but before he did he looked over his shoulder and said, "We're not through here."

"No, we're not," Joe said evenly. "You and I have a lot to discuss."

Illoway looked at Joe and shook his head sadly. "What are you trying to do here? And what did you mean when you said we knew what Will Jensen's decision was going to be?"

"Oh," Joe said, his voice calmer and more measured than he felt. "I think you know the answer to that."

He found Stella in the living room, with her back to the bar, sipping from a tall glass. She was well dressed in a crisp white billowy shirt, a short black skirt, and knee-high black boots. For some reason, he assumed her toenails were painted red. She seemed amused by the sight of him, amused by the evening in general. He noticed that she giggled out loud when one of the trophy wives, who was straining for a look at the vice president in the other room, accidentally dropped a cracker covered with some kind of soft white cheese on the leg of her cream-colored pantsuit.

"I'm glad you came," she said when he joined her.

"Your husband isn't," Joe said.

"What was going on in there? It looked like you were trying to bait him."

"I was," Joe said.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

Joe smiled. "I never do. I just bump around sometimes until I hit something."

She finished her drink and handed the glass to the bartender. "Another gin and tonic, please. And what would you like?"