C. Box - Nowhere to Run

There were other conversations, but the roaring of blood through his ears blocked them out. He tried to stay calm, play dead. Tried to recall stories he’d read of victims of mass firing squads or massacres who survived by pretending they were killed. Wondering how in the hell they were able to pull it off when he felt like screaming.

Then the voice telling him to open his eyes. He was caught .

Something sharp tugged at the skin on his cheek and he flinched. There was no way of pretending anymore.

He opened his eyes as the brother with the dirty compress on his chin-it wasn’t a red rose after all-withdrew the point of a knife. Both brothers hovered over him, looking down. Their faces were in shadow because the sun was directly over their heads and beating down. Farkus squinted, trying to see them. They were mirror images of each other, except for the bandage on the face of one of the brothers.

“This probably isn’t going to be your best day ever,” one of them said in a flat midwestern accent.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4

Joe drove his pickup and empty horse trailer past the sign on the highway that read ENTERING WIND RIVER INDIAN RESERVATION. Nate sat in the passenger seat, running a BoreSnake cleaning cable through the barrel and five cylinders of his.454 Casull. The pickup reeked of cleaning solvent and gun oil, and Joe lowered his window to flood the cab with fresh air. The FedEx box from Billings was lashed to the sidewall of the pickup bed with bungee cords.

As they rolled down a battered two-lane toward Alicia Whiteplume’s uncle’s ranch, Nate said, “Is the governor aware of what we’re doing?”

“I thought it best not to tell him,” Joe said.

“Is that wise?”

Joe said, “Probably not, but I can live with it and this way he has deniability.”

“What about your director? What does he know?”

Said Joe, “Nothing. As far as he’s concerned, I’m on administrative leave.”

“Marybeth’s okay with it, though?”

“She’s the one who said go,” Joe said.

Nate grinned. “Let’s go with the higher authority, then.”

“That’s what I always do,” Joe said.

Nate said, “Something I learned years before in special operations when dealing within the bureaucracy was, ‘It’s always better to apologize than to ask permission.’ ”

“Exactly.”

Joe said, “I’ll call Sheriff Baird as we start up into the mountains, but not before. He needs to know we’re in his county even if the news makes him blow a gasket. I can’t see him coming after us, having spent his budget and all, and he really can’t prevent us from going back up there.”

Nate loaded the cylinder with cartridges the size of cigar stubs and snapped it closed and holstered the revolver. “Okay, I’m ready,” he said. “What are you packing?”

Joe said, “I picked up a new twelve-gauge at the pawnshop.”

Nate dropped his head. “The pawnshop?”

“It’s a good pawnshop. Besides, not everyone spends their conscious hours thinking about their immediate weaponry and how they’d react if attacked. Believe it or not, Nate, but there are even people who don’t own guns.”

“I know that,” Nate said. “Don’t assume I disapprove. The more who don’t own guns, the greater my advantage. Even so, back to you. Another Remington Wingmaster?”

“Yup. I lucked out. There aren’t as many guns available these days as there used to be. Folks are hoarding them. Oh,” Joe said, reaching down and patting the.40 Glock on his hip. “And my service weapon.”

Nate narrowed his eyes. “Are you ever going to take the time to learn how to hit something with that? You drive me crazy.”

Joe shrugged. “I’ve done some damage with it.”

“From an inch away and by spraying the landscape with slugs.” Nate snorted. “A monkey could do that.”

Joe smiled. “Every time I pull this gun, I think it’s the last time I’ll ever do it. Not because I think there will be world peace-I just never think trouble will come my way again.”

Nate shook his head in disgust. “But it always does,” he said.

Joe curled his mouth on the sides and nodded. “Yup, it seems to.”

“That doesn’t just happen,” Nate said.

“Oh, maybe it does,” Joe said.

Nate shook his head and looked away. They eventually settled into a comfortable and familiar silence.

Joe’s phone burred and he plucked it from his breast pocket and looked at the display. “Uh-oh,” he said.

Nate said, “Who is it?”

“It’s a 777 number I don’t recognize. But 777 is the state phone prefix. It’s probably the governor or one of his staff calling.”

The phone continued to ring.

“Are you going to answer it?” Nate asked.

Joe dropped the phone back into his pocket, then bent forward and clicked off his radio under the dashboard as well.

“Radio silence,” Nate said. “I like radio silence.”

“Unless, of course, Marybeth calls,” Joe said.

“Obviously,” Nate said.

“This one’s got a lot of moving parts, doesn’t it?” Nate said after fifteen minutes. Joe knew he was referring to the situation in general.

“Yup.”

“And a bunch of parts we don’t even know yet.”

“That’s the feeling I get.”

“Are the feds with us or against us on this one?”

Joe shrugged. “That’s something I can’t quite figure out yet. The FBI seems very interested in it, but from the outside. Usually, they move in and try to take over. This time, it’s like they’re trying to stay out of it but control things at the same time.”

“Have you talked to that agent you know, Coon?”

“Yup, I called him but he didn’t tell me much. He said he couldn’t comment on ongoing investigations, as if I were a reporter or something.”

“Ongoing investigations? And he hasn’t tried to get in touch with you since?”

“Nope,” Joe said.

“That tells me something right there,” Nate said.

“Me, too.”

“He should have contacted you again by now, if for no reason other than to see how you’re doing. There’s a reason he’s stayed away, and that’s probably because he doesn’t want to communicate with you and maybe let something slip out.”

Joe nodded. “The governor said there were some indirect federal contacts. Plus, Coon was adamant that the Grims, or Grimmengrubers, didn’t exist. At the time, I thought he was telling me I was nuts. In retrospect, I think he was telling me the names didn’t jibe with his investigation. In other words, he knows these brothers exist, but not under those names.”

“I wonder what he’s hiding,” Nate said. “And I wonder how far it goes up the chain.”

Joe’s phone rang again. He said, “Another 777 number.”

Nate said, “It’s always better to apologize than to ask permission.”

Joe breathed deeply and dropped the phone back into his pocket without answering.

Alisha’s uncle, Willie Shoyo, had herded a dozen of his horses into a temporary corral made of twelve-foot rail panels in the sagebrush well out of sight of his home and barn. Beyond the corral were undulating grasslands that rose in elevation and melded with the dark brush marching downward from the mountains. The horses in the corral obviously didn’t like being penned up together, and they were restless and jockeying for preeminence in the nascent herd. In the distance, horses that hadn’t been selected by Shoyo grazed on yellowing grass and pretended they weren’t paying attention to the arrival of the pickup and horse trailer.