Си Бокс - Dark Sky

Steve Price cradled his phone in both hands with the ConFab app open. He simply stared at it as if it were a Christmas package he was scared to open because he didn’t know what was inside. Finally, he looked up to Joe and said, “I don’t even know where to start.”

They were sitting side by side inside the Bell 206B-3 helicopter as it lifted off from the mountain meadow and made a turn over the timber to fly west toward Saddlestring. Joe was entranced by the forest as they rose above it and the trees and clearings got smaller and smaller in view and became scenery. The contrast was jarring. Just a couple of hours before, he thought, he was down there on his hands and knees in the dirt moving in increments of inches.

Kirby was strapped down on a stretcher and laid across the other two seats of the helicopter. His mouth and nose were obscured by an oxygen mask, but his eyes were open. Because he didn’t have a headset on like Joe and Price, he couldn’t follow their conversation. But he watched them as if he could.

They’d left the bodies of Earl and Brad Thomas where they’d fallen. They’d be retrieved on the next flight.

Sheridan, Nate, and two deputies had gathered all the horses and were leading them down the mountain to the trailhead. Sheriff Tibbs and the rest of the search-and-rescue team were still on the ground as well, because they were documenting and photographing the scene of the shootout. They’d be up there for a while, Sheriff Tibbs had said sourly, because Kirby had told them there were more bodies to find: Zsolt Rumy, Aidan Jacketta, Brock Boedecker, and Tim Joannides.

Even though Kirby had been helpful to the search-and-rescue team, Joe had told him as they loaded the gurney into the chopper that he still planned to arrest him for his Game and Fish Department violations—if he survived. Kirby had scowled at him before the oxygen mask was attached to his face.

“What did you say?” Joe asked Price.

Price held up his phone. He said, “I don’t know where to start. So much has happened. It’s like I’ve been up here a lifetime. I’m nervous about my reentry into my world. How much do I post about what happened?”

“Just tell ’em you’re alive,” Joe said. “That’s what I told my wife.”

Price nodded his head, unsure. Then he used his intercom to ask the pilot if his jet would be waiting for him at the airport. The pilot assured him it would be.

“You’re leaving right away?” Joe asked.

“Just as fast as I can. I need to get back to work. I need to put all this behind me.”

“What about some of those things Brock said about ConFab? Are you going to make any changes?”

Price stared at a spot above Joe’s head, then said, “I’ll think about it. I’ll think about a lot of things.”

As Price talked, Joe could see a change in him. The vulnerability and fear Price had revealed in their ordeal was melting away and being replaced by the arrogant and indifferent shell he’d been wearing when he arrived. Even his posture was different.

“I think the sheriff wants you to stick around and give a statement,” Joe said.

Price waved it away. “He knows where to find me.”

“There’s something we never had a chance to talk about,” Joe said, hoping his voice didn’t sound as uncomfortable as he felt.

“What’s that?”

“Governor Allen was hoping you’d be impressed enough with our state that you’d consider locating your big server farms here. He has lots of reasons why it would be a good idea for everybody.”

Price looked at Joe without expression. For a good long time.

“I can’t,” Price said finally.

“Why not?”

Price gestured toward the tops of the mountains out the window as they streaked along. “This,” he said. “All of this. I can never look at this place or think about it again without the image of me smashing that rock into Brad Thomas’s head. I was excited to do that at the time. I wanted his brains to come out of his ears. In three days, I turned into an animal . That’s not how I like to think of myself.”

Joe sat back. The scratches on his back hurt and his brain was numb and fuzzy. The effects of what they’d gone through were starting to overwhelm him, as they obviously had with Price.

“That’s not all,” Price said. “Last night in that shack, Boedecker tore me a new asshole. It was just relentless abuse, Joe. That’s never happened to me in my entire life—to be treated with such contempt and disdain like that. I’ve testified before Congress and they were gentle compared to that. It made me realize that Boedecker probably isn’t the only person out here who thinks like that.

“These people don’t respect what I’ve done and they don’t have a filter. They don’t understand that I live in a different world, even though you tried to show me a new one. Joe, I’ve gone from being scared to death of germs and viruses a few days ago to having my life threatened by violent men and getting ripped up by a fucking wolverine! And trying to brain some mouth-breather with a rock . I don’t ever want to experience those feelings again.”

Price sat back. “No, I need to be with my own kind.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“It’s okay,” Price said. “Your governor thought that maybe I’d have such a good experience that I’d want to urge my team to build here. That’s how things are in my world: everybody wants something from me. It is what it is.”

Joe couldn’t argue with that.

“This is the last elk hunt I’ll ever go on,” Price said.

“They aren’t all like this,” Joe replied.

“I hope not.”

“I was really hoping you’d be more open to the governor’s request,” Joe said. “I’m being purely selfish here. He all but threatened me and my department if it didn’t go well for you. And it didn’t go well for you at all.”

Price placed his phone screen down on his lap. It was an immense concession, Joe thought.

“Tell your governor something for me,” Price said, his mouth tightening. “Tell him if he goes after you in any way that I’ll sue him. I’ll destroy him and his administration. Tell him I think he put me in a position where I lost two of my people and nearly lost my own life because of his negligence. I can throw an army of lawyers at him that will keep him and his administration tied up in court for the rest of his natural life. Tell him that .”

Joe didn’t know how to reply.

“I owe you a well of thanks,” Price said. “You’re not selfish at all. I know you could have given me up at any time with no cost to you. No one would have even known about it. But you didn’t.”

“I . . . I just did my job,” Joe said, stammering.

“That wasn’t your job,” Price said. “You went so far beyond your job I’ll forever be grateful. I want to reward you if I can.”

“You can’t,” Joe said.

Price made an I don’t take no for an answer face. He dug in a side pocket of his seat until he found a crumpled blank envelope and a pen. With writing that scrawled with the vibration of the rotors, he scratched out a message and folded it in half and placed it facedown on his lap next to his phone.

“When we land, I’m giving you this. You have to accept it and you can’t hand it back,” Price said. “I’ll tell my people to be ready for your call.”

“What is it?”

Price ignored the question. Instead, he tapped out a quick message telling his millions of followers that he was alive and well and that the hunting trip was a “tragic misadventure.” Joe could see the screen because they were in such close proximity.

Then Price wrote: More to come . . .

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