C. Box - Breaking Point

Pam Roberson sat in the Ford, her hands on her lap, staring straight ahead. When Marybeth went out the gate in front of her, Pam seemed to snap to attention and quickly got out.

“I’m sorry,” Pam said. “I know it’s late, but I didn’t know where to go. There are television trucks in front of my house and these people keep knocking on my door. Butch’s driver’s license picture-which is a really bad one-is all over the news. I just couldn’t stay there, so I snuck out the back and drove over here.”

Marybeth took Pam by the arm and ushered her toward their house.

“You can stay as long as you like,” she said.

“I guess I wanted to see Hannah,” Pam said. “I wanted to be near her.”

“I understand.”

Pam paused before they went in. “Marybeth, did you hear about the hostages?”

“Yes.”

“I just can’t believe it. It’s so awful. It’s like I just don’t know Butch anymore. It’s like there’s some dangerous criminal up there in the mountains who has my husband’s name.”

Marybeth nodded and led the way inside.

Lucy and Hannah glanced up to see who was behind Marybeth, and Hannah looked stricken. The color had drained out of her face, and her eyes were huge. Marybeth was taken aback at first, and hoped one of her daughters never acted that way when she entered a room. Then she thought Hannah was likely anticipating bad news and assumed Pam was there to deliver it.

“Hey, girls,” Pam said wearily.

“Mom. .” Hannah said.

“I haven’t heard anything about your dad,” Pam said, trying to put up a strong front-like Marybeth.

“So he’s okay?” Hannah asked.

“I just don’t know. But you know your dad. He’s tougher than the rest. ”

Marybeth recognized the phrase as one from a Chris LeDoux song, and it broke her heart.

“Let’s have a glass of wine,” Marybeth said, leading Pam through the living room into the kitchen.

After two glasses of wine, Marybeth sent Lucy and Hannah to bed and made up a spare bed on the couch in the living room for Pam. The wine seemed to have gone straight to her head, probably from being overtired and stressed, and Pam slurred her words while Marybeth showed her where the towels were.

Pam went immediately to sleep and was snoring by the time Marybeth finished closing the house up for the night. While Marybeth tiptoed through the living room toward the stairs, the front door opened and Sheridan burst in.

Sheridan instinctively began to toss her backpack on the couch when she realized someone was sleeping on it, and jerked it back before it hit Pam Roberson in the face.

“Yikes,” she said.

Marybeth shushed Sheridan and gestured for her to follow her out into the kitchen.

Sheridan sat down at the table, obviously puzzled. Marybeth poured a glass of wine. Sheridan grinned and asked, “Do you mind if I have a glass?”

Marybeth hesitated for a moment, then said, “Just one.”

“You forget I’m in college.”

“Yes, I do,” Marybeth said softly, placing another glass on the table. Sheridan filled it halfway.

“What’s going on?” Sheridan asked. “Is Dad home?”

Marybeth spilled, telling Sheridan about Butch and the hostages, the collapse of the Saddlestring Hotel, the arrival of Pam Roberson. She didn’t want to speak loud enough to wake up Pam in the next room.

“It’s been a bad day,” Marybeth said, not yet sure whether she regretted saying so much to Sheridan.

Sheridan simply nodded and sipped at her wine. Although Marybeth knew it wasn’t Sheridan’s first drink-she was soon to be a sophomore at the University of Wyoming, after all-it was the first time they’d shared wine together.

“I’m worried about your dad up there,” Marybeth said. “And I’m worried about what will happen to Butch, for Pam and Hannah’s sake.”

Marybeth’s phone lit up, and she glanced at the display. The call was being made by an unknown number. She hesitated.

“Might as well take it,” Sheridan said.

She did.

“It’s me,” Joe said.

Marybeth said to Sheridan, “Well, speak of the devil.” To Joe: “Where are you calling from?”

“I borrowed a satellite phone from a guy and I don’t have much time before he wants it back. Do you have something to write down a couple of names? I really need your help with some research.”

“The girls and I are fine,” Marybeth said, motioning to Sheridan to hand over the pad and pen she used at the Burg-O-Pardner for taking orders. “Thanks for asking.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said, clamping the phone to her shoulder with her cheek and flipping the pad open. “Okay.”

She wrote down Juan Julio Batista .

“Got it.”

“I really appreciate it,” Joe said. “Find out everything you can about him and call me back at this number. See if he links up somehow with the Sackett case. I won’t be home tonight, and who knows when tomorrow. But this may be important.”

“You said ‘names,’ plural.”

“The second is Pate. John Owen Pate.”

“Gotcha,” Marybeth said. “By the way, I looked up the Sackett case today, and it’s exactly like you said. I can’t find a connection, though, with Pam and Butch. So maybe it’s this Batista.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“I have the time to do this,” she said, “since I don’t have to spend any more on that stupid hotel.”

Joe said, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get ’em next time.”

She could tell by the way he said it there was something else.

“Joe?”

“I got offered a new job today by the new director.”

As he described it to her, Marybeth jotted down Cheyenne, desk , and $18K .

“I’d become a bureaucrat,” Joe said sourly.

Before she could ask for more detail, she could hear another voice in the background.

“The guy wants his phone back,” Joe said. “He’s waiting for a call.”

“Have you found Butch?”

“Not yet.”

“Is it true about the hostages?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“What happened to him, Joe?”

“He broke. Now I’ve gotta go. .”

At five to midnight as she got ready for bed, Marybeth remembered the call from Matt Donnell on her phone. She sighed, then punched it up to listen.

Matt said, “Marybeth, I may have a line on something. We might be able to unload that piece of crap after all. I’ll give you a call tomorrow and tell you more. I just hope you don’t completely blame me for what happened. It’s just this damned fire marshal. There’s too many of those types out there. They want to be involved in every aspect of what we do. .”

So, she thought, they’d gone from building something good to trying to “unload it.”

He went on, but she didn’t want to listen to the rest.

Instead, she padded downstairs in her bare feet in the dark. She could hear rhythmic breathing all around her-a house filled with anxious, sleeping females.

Marybeth slipped into Joe’s tiny office off the living room and closed the door and turned on his desk lamp. She sat down and opened the browser of his computer and called up a website called themaster falconer.com.

It was an old site, and rarely used. She was surprised it was still up. Joe and Nate had used the comment threads to communicate surreptitiously the previous year. She knew Joe still checked it from time to time to see if there was any word from Nate, but he reported that there had been nothing.

She called up a discussion thread on the training of kestrel hawks, which was the thread they had used. There had been no new comments posted for months.

When she’d been doing her inventory of her family and where they were at that time, she’d also thought of Nate. He wasn’t related to them by blood, but he’d certainly been an oddball part of the family for years until all of the violence had happened and he’d gone away. She knew federal law enforcement was still looking for him, and that Joe occasionally got calls or visits to ask if he’d heard anything.