C Box - In Plain Sight

They had to go straight down the middle.

Joe knew the trick would be to keep the bow pointed straight downriver. If he let the bow get thrown right or left, the current would spin them and they’d hit a wall of water sideways, either swamping the boat or flipping it.

“Here we go!” Nate shouted, then threw back his head and howled like a wolf.

The bow started to drift to the left, and Joe pulled back hard on the right oar. It would be tough to keep the oars in the water as they hit the rollers, but he would have to. If he rowed back and whiffed-the oar blade skimming the surface or catching air-he would lose control.

“Keep it straight!” Nate hollered.

Suddenly, they were pointing up and Joe could see clouds. A second later they crested, the front half of the boat momentarily out of the water, and the boat tipped and plunged straight down. He locked the oar grips with his fists, keeping them parallel to his chin, keeping the blades in the water.

They made it. Only a little splash came into the boat.

But before he could breathe again, they were climbing another roller, dropping again so swiftly he thought he’d left his stomach upriver, then climbing again, aiming straight at the clouds.

Joe kept the boat straight through seven massive rollers.

When the river finally spit them out onto a flat that moved swiftly but was much more calm, Joe closed his eyes for a moment and breathed deeply.

“Damn,” Nate said with admiration. “That was perfect.”

Joe relaxed his hands and arms and gave in to the terrible pain that now pulsed from exertion in his shoulders, back, and thighs.

“JOE,” NATE SAID, turning around on his bench and facing Joe at the oars, “about Marybeth last year.”

“Not now,” Joe said sharply.

“Nothing happened,” Nate said. “I never should have behaved that way. I let us both down.”

“It’s okay,” Joe said. “I mean it.”

“I wish I could find a woman like that,” Nate said. He started to say more, then looked at Joe’s face, which was set in a mask.

“We’ve got to get square on everything,” Nate said. “It’s vital.”

“Okay, we’re square,” Joe said, feeling the shroud that he’d been loath to admit had still been there lift from him. “Now please turn around and look for rocks. Finding my girls is the only thing I care about right now.”

THE RIVER ROARED around to the right and Nate pointed at something on the bank. Joe followed Nate’s arm and saw the roof of a building through the brush. A moment later, corrals came into view. The corrals were underwater, the railing sticking out of the water. Two panicked horses stood in the corner of the corral, water up to their bellies.

“It’s Hank’s place,” Joe said, pulling hard on the oars to work the boat over to the corrals.

They glided across the surface of the water until the railing was within reach and Nate grabbed it and the boat shuddered to a stop. Joe jumped out with the bow rope and pulled the boat to shore. They tugged until the boat was completely out of the water, so that in case the river continued to rise the boat wouldn’t float downriver without them.

AFTER FREEING THE horses, they slogged through the mud toward the lodge. Nate had his.454 Casull drawn and in front of him in a shooter’s grip. Joe wished he still had his shotgun because he was such a poor shot with his handgun.

As he followed Nate through the dripping trees toward Hank’s lodge, Joe drew his.40 Glock. The gun was wet and gritty. He checked the muzzle to make sure there was no dirt packed into it. He tried to dry it on his clothing as he walked, but his shirt and pants were soaked. He wiped it down the best he could, then racked the slide to seat a round.

Hank’s lodge was handsome, a huge log home with a green metal roof. It looked like a structure that would suit an Austrian prince who entertained his hunting friends in the Alps.

Nate began to jog toward it, and Joe followed. The front door was open. Joe could see no signs of life, and no lights on inside. He wondered if the storm had knocked out the electricity.

Nate bounded through the front door and moved swiftly to his left, looking around the room over the sights on his revolver. He had such a practiced way about his movements, Joe noted, that there was no doubt he had entered buildings filled with hostiles before in his other life.

Joe mimicked Nate’s movements, except he flared off to the right.

It was dark and quiet in the house. It felt empty.

The floor was wet and covered with leaves from the open door. Dozens of mounted game animals looked down on them from the walls. Elk, moose, caribou, antelope, mule and whitetail deer. A full-mount wolverine, an endangered species, looked poised to charge them. A golden eagle, wings spread as if to land, hovered above them.

“That son-of-a-bitch,” Nate said, referring to Hank but looking at the eagle. Nate liked eagles.

Arlen was right, Joe thought. The lodge was filled with illegally taken and poached species. The mounts were expertly done. He knew the work of all the local taxidermists, and whoever had done the mounts was unfamiliar to him. But that was part of his old job, Joe thought. It no longer concerned him.

Nate moved through the living room into a massive dining hall. Joe followed.

Dirty plates covered the table, and a raven that must have flown in from the open front door walked among the plates. The bird stopped and looked at them, head cocked to the side, a piece of meat in its beak. The raven waddled the length of the table until it got to the head of it. Then it turned and cawed, the sound sharp and unpleasant. Nate shot it and the bird exploded in a burst of black feathers.

“I hate ravens,” Nate said.

Joe’s ears rang from the shot in the closed room, and he glowered at Nate.

“Uh-oh,” Nate said. “Look.”

The chair at the head of the table was knocked over. Nate approached it and picked up a red-stained steak knife from the floor next to it.

Joe began to walk around the table when he felt the soles of his boots stick to the floor. He looked down and recognized blood. There was a lot of it, and it hadn’t dried yet.

“I wonder who it was?” Nate asked.

Now Joe could smell it. The whole room smelled of blood.

But there was no body.

They quickly searched all the rooms of the house. It was empty.

As they slogged back to the boat, Joe felt a mounting sense of dread that made it hard to swallow. The river would take them to Arlen’s place next.

“Let’s go get my girls,” Joe said.

THE NEXT SET OF RAPIDS WAS NOT AS SEVERE AS THE big rollers they had been through, and although his arms were aching, Joe kept the boat straight and true and they shot through them without incident. The rain receded to a steady drizzle, although there was no break in the clouds. Because the sky was so dark, Joe couldn’t tell the time. He glanced quickly at his wristwatch as he rowed but it was filled with water and stuck at 8:34 A.M., the exact time the river had sucked him in.

Joe and Nate didn’t talk, each surrounded by his own thoughts. Joe contemplated what they would find at the lower ranch. If he let his mind wander off the oars to the fate of his girls he found it difficult to remain calm. Inside, his heart was racing and something black and cold lodged in his chest. As hard as he tried, though, the faces of Sheridan and Lucy at breakfast kept coming back to him.

He thought: No matter what, there will be hell to pay. THE RIVER NARROWED through two tall bluffs. Although there were no rapids, it was as if the current doubled in speed. Joe could feel wind in his face as they shot forward. The tiniest dip of an oar would swing the boat about in water this fast, so he steered as if tinkling the keys of a piano, lowering an oar blade an inch into the water to correct course.