C Box - Blood Trail

Joe and Stella exchanged glances.

“Don’t screw this up, Joe,” she said. “If my name’s on the document you better make sure you bring him back.”

Joe shrugged. “I’ll do my best.”

“I hope you’ll do better than that.”

Joe’s phone burred in his pocket and he drew it out. It was Pope.

“You need to keep me apprised, Joe,” Pope said, “every single step of the way. Every. Single. Step .”

“I don’t work for you,” Joe said.

“You don’t understand,” Pope said, his voice cracking. “This means everything to me. My agency, my career-”

Joe snapped his phone shut as the heavy doors opened and Nate Romanowski was led into the room in an orange jumpsuit, his cuffs and leg irons clanking.

But it wasn’t the Nate he knew, Joe thought. The man who shuffled forward with the crew cut, sallow complexion, slumping shoulders, and haunted blue eyes just looked like the container that used to house Nate.

THEY DROVE NORTH on I-25 under a wide-open dusk sky striped with vermilion cloud slashes stacked on the western horizon. The lights of Cheyenne were an hour behind them. Mule deer and pronghorn antelope raised their heads as the Escalade passed by, the tires sizzling on the highway, acknowledging the fact that Joe Pickett and Nate Romanowski were reunited. Or at least to Joe it seemed like it was what they were doing.

Nate had a smell about him that hung in the closed space of the state Escalade. Sterile, institutional, vapid. A jail smell. He wore his orange prison jumpsuit and a pair of blue boat shoes without laces.

“Nice sunset,” Nate said in a whisper so low Joe asked him to repeat it.

When he did, Joe said, “Yup.”

“They’ve got nice sunsets down here on the high plains,” Nate said. “I know this because I’ve watched three-hundred-and-five of ’em straight through a little gap in the window of my cell. This makes three-hundred-and-six.”

NATE SEEMED to relax as they hurtled into the night, Joe thought, as if his friend were shedding bits of defensive armor that had formed on his body over the past year, leaving them to skitter across the highway behind them like chunks of ice from the undercarriage of a car. Nate said, “It’s no fun to be in prison, I don’t care what anyone says.”

Joe grunted.

“Can you pull over here?” Nate said, gesturing to an exit off the highway that led to a ranch a mile away whose blue pole lights twinkled in the darkness.

Nate was out of the vehicle before Joe fully stopped it. Joe watched Nate stumble out and walk briskly into the brush, his broad back reflecting moonlight. Nate dropped to his knees and bent over forward, as if praying or in pain.

Joe called, “Are you all right?”

“Fine.”

It took a moment for Joe to realize Nate was burrowing his face into the ground, breathing in the sweet dusky smell of sagebrush and grass, filling himself with fresh outdoor air as if fumigating his lungs of tainted, indoor oxygen.

While he waited for Nate, Joe called Marybeth on his cell phone.

“I’ve got him,” he said.

“Nate? How’s he doing?”

“I can’t tell yet.”

“Where is he now?”

“Outside the car smelling sagebrush.”

She chuckled.

“How’s Nancy?” he asked.

“Doing well, considering. I just left her at her house. She’s got relatives on the way. I’m going to go home and bake her a casserole and bring it by tomorrow.”

“How are the girls?”

“Fine. Joe, it’s only been two days since you went up into the mountains.”

“It seems longer than that.”

“A lot has happened, hasn’t it? You need to come home and get some sleep.”

“I need you .”

“That’s sweet, Joe. But you need sleep even more.”

He shook his head, not thinking that she couldn’t see him. “Did you hear the governor’s press conference?”

She laughed drily. “Yes, it’s good to know you’re closing in on the bad guy.”

“We aren’t,” Joe said with a sigh.

“I didn’t think so. Maybe Nate can help you out.”

Joe looked up to see Nate shedding his jumpsuit and rolling it into a ball, which he threw into the darkness like a football. Nate turned and walked back toward the Escalade in his laceless boat shoes, kicking off his baggy, dingy jail boxers. He left them draped in the branches of a mountain mahogany bush.

“You might not say that if you could see him now,” Joe said.

“Tell him hello,” she said. “Tell him we missed him.”

“I’m going to tell him to put some clothes on,” Joe said.

“What?”

“I’ll explain later,” Joe said.

“Call when you get close to town. Try to stay awake.”

Nate climbed into the passenger seat, briskly rubbing his arms, chest, and thighs.

“It feels good to get that shit off,” he said, closing the door.

Joe eased onto the highway and set his cruise control at two miles under the speed limit. He didn’t want to risk being pulled in the governor’s car over by a trooper and trying to explain why there was a naked man sitting next to him.

“JOE,” NATE SAID as they got back on the highway, “I’m not going back.”

“But-”

“I’m not going back.”

“We’ll discuss it later.”

“There’s nothing to discuss,” Nate said with absolute finality.

TO KEEP AWAKE and try to make some sense out of the last two days, Joe detailed to Nate what had happened to the hunters and the investigation thus far. Nate listened silently, grunting and shaking his head.

At a convenience store near Casper, Joe filled the Escalade with gas and bought a set of extra-large Wyoming Cowboys sweats inside from a discount rack. He handed them to Nate, said, “Put these on.”

“I was just starting to feel good again,” Nate said sourly.

THEY WERE south of Kaycee when Nate finally said, “Amateurs.”

“Who?”

“All of you. Everyone except the shooter. He’s been playing with you people.”

“Maybe I ought to take you back,” Joe said.

Nate snorted. “Don’t be so sensitive. When I think about what you’ve told me, there are some things that just don’t fall into place like they should. When you lay it all out, there are some wrong notes in the narrative.”

“What wrong notes?”

“I’m not sure yet,” he said. “I’ve got to think about it more, let it settle and see what rises to the top or sinks to the bottom. But something just doesn’t work right here. It all seems so neat while at the same time there’s something wrong.”

“I have no idea what you’re saying,” Joe said, taking the exit for Kaycee.

“Neither do I,” Nate said. “But I get the feeling none of this has much to do with hunting.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Great minds.” Nate smiled. “Hey, I’m hungry. Pull over here.”

AS THEY entered the town of Kaycee, Joe and Nate both raised imaginary glasses and clinked them, said, “To Chris,” referring to the late, great singer, rodeo champion, and Wyoming icon Chris Ledoux, who died young and once lived there on a ranch outside the town limits. His family still did.

Nate and Joe pretended to toast and drink. It was something they did every time they drove by.

THE ONLY restaurant in Kaycee was closed, but Nate knew where the owner lived and directed Joe to a shambling log home in a bank of cottonwood trees outside the town limits. Nate got out and banged on the front door until a massive man threw open the door, ready to pound whoever was disturbing him. The fat, bearded man at the door was nearly seven feet tall and dressed in a wife-beater undershirt and thick leather gloves up to his elbows. Joe hung back while the man recognized Nate-a fellow falconer-and enthusiastically invited both of them into his home. The man pulled off the gloves he’d been wearing so his falcons could sit on his forearm while he groomed them, and started pan-frying two of the biggest steaks Joe had ever seen.