Джеффри Дивер - The Goodbye Man

Turning away, Victoria gazed skyward. “You see the eagle? I’d love to get him in the shot too.”

Shaw was scanning the sky. “No bird.”

“Call his agent,” she said, laughing. “Have him set it up.”

As he aimed the lens once more, Shaw heard the sound of brush rustling. He turned to see someone sprinting quickly through the woods toward the clearing. A heavyset man in a Foundation uniform burst from the foliage, red faced, sweating. He was gasping from the exertion. The climb up here from the camp was steep.

It was Journeyman Samuel. He glanced from Shaw to Victoria, who was closest to him. He sprinted toward her.

“Victoria!” Shaw shouted. “To your right!”

She turned.

It was too late. She had no time to strike a defensive posture. The big man’s bulk and speed slammed her flat to the ground. She lay stunned and breathless.

Shaw dropped the phone and started running. “No, Samuel! No!”

The man gripped Victoria by the sweater, dragged her to the edge of the cliff and without a moment’s hesitation pushed her over. Shaw heard her piercing cry as she fell the hundred or so feet.

Samuel rose and looked at Shaw, his tear-filled eyes revealing both sorrow and anger. He whispered, “Goodbye... until tomorrow,” and leapt after her into the emptiness.

This time the rattlesnake was real, unlike the imaginary serpent Dalton Crowe had used as an excuse to shoot a hole in his rental car’s Michelin a week or so ago.

Colter Shaw was hiking up a narrow trail of rock and dirt and gravel in a remote corner of his family’s property in eastern California. The snake, a big one, was smack in his route, in its coiled state, lazy, probably full of a tasty rodent lunch. Still it was ready for a defensive strike, which would be fast and accurate. They are, after all, pure muscle.

Shaw had spotted it and paused at the same time as the urgent rattle from the tail began. Amazing how creatures come to be, he was thinking. It would have taken hundreds of thousands of years to develop this curious feature, which said, in effect, Stop or I’ll shoot.

Shaw was not alone on his trek. He was accompanied by a solidly built black-and-brown Rottweiler. Another canine might have instinctively charged — not having learned from YouTube or 1960 TV Western reruns what the rattle meant. Chase tensed but Shaw’s command, “Wait,” froze him in position.

There aren’t many defenses against a rattlesnake, other than gaiters — leg guards. Pepper spray is useless. Their eyes are protected with an impervious shield, and the capsicum that blinds us is like water to them. And, as many a person who’s ever tried to Mace a snake can attest, if you’re close enough to hit them, they’re probably close enough to hit you.

As for Chase, the dog, a canine’s physiology is less susceptible to snake toxins than a human’s. But as an added precaution for this outing, Shaw had administered snakebite vaccine. He recalled, from years ago, his father’s question to the youngest of the Shaw children: “So, Button, the odds of a vaccinated dog surviving a rattler strike are what?”

Nine-year-old Dorion had squinted, considering. “Depending on size — of the dog and the snake — and where it strikes, maybe around eighty percent.”

“Yep, good. And the odds of a vaccinated dog surviving a dead rattler?”

“Pretty much a hundred.”

“You’ve got it.”

“But I don’t want to shoot a snake, Daddy.”

“Who does? But sometimes it’s a question of you or them, Button. And the answer is always: you.”

Shaw was wearing a hip holster in which sat his Colt .357 Magnum revolver (a model ironically named after another snake, a Python). But he didn’t want to shoot a snake either. His thinking was that he and Chase were in its backyard, not their own — and, truth be told, the creature wasn’t behaving badly at all; it was simply being a snake.

So he chose another option. Detour.

Shaw found a fairly straight branch, about four feet long, and trimmed it with his Ka-Bar knife.

Never go into snake brush without a trekking stick. You can push plants aside ahead of you, and if there’s a strike, the snake will likely go for the stick.

“Heel,” Shaw commanded and together he and Chase turned left and struck out through the dense woods. The rottie hewed close to Shaw’s left thigh as they circumvented the rattler and continued on their mission, the human probing thickets before they trod through them.

That mission was the second of the two he’d been thinking of for the past several weeks, the one he’d put aside to pursue Erick and Adam... and, as it turned out, that little trip to the Osiris Foundation.

He was looking for what his father had hidden here in this mountainous part of the family property years ago.

In some University of California archives, Colter had found a clue that told him that the mysterious message was here, in an area roughly the size of a suburban neighborhood. A daunting search to many, but even if Shaw did not know the exact location, he knew how to find it.

The path now led them to the crest of Echo Ridge — where, years ago, the woman who’d been hunting his father, Braxton, had sent one of her hired guns to follow Ashton and torture him to give up his secret. Ashton had tricked the man and come up behind him. In the ensuing struggle, though, Ashton had slipped and fallen to his death. Teenage Colter had discovered the body — that was the motivation for his mad, and pointless, high-speed rappel down the face of Echo Ridge to the creek bed where his father’s body lay.

Shaw reflected that he’d thought of Adam as the man on the cliff. Now, he realized that he was, as well — and so was Ashton.

Shaw had learned recently that Braxton had dealt harsh justice to her thug; the man was no longer among the living. The woman, apparently, had little tolerance for incompetence.

The hired muscle, Ebbitt Droon, had taken over his job.

Ironically, Braxton and Droon never guessed that Ashton had hidden the secret here. If they had, they would have returned to search and they never did. There was no other access to Echo Ridge except past the cabin and its security system, which Mary Dove had installed just after her husband’s death. Braxton would assume the secret was hidden in San Francisco, where Ashton’s efforts had been focused. To them, Echo Ridge was a conveniently deserted place in which to waylay Shaw’s father and force him to tell what he knew.

The dog now tensed and looked to the left, through a tall line of sycamore, black walnut and gray pine. Brush too: bladderpod, creosote, lupine and snowberry.

A sound? Not a rattle — a crackling of dry leaves. Maybe deer? Bear? Detour was not often an option with the latter, and Shaw’s hand dropped to the Colt. But whatever it was meandered away, as ninety-nine percent of forest inhabitants will do when they hear, see or smell you. The two continued on. He kept his eye on the trail and checked his phone for GPS directions.

Shaw felt the urgent anticipation that comes with closing in on your prey. What had his father found, and why were some people willing to kill — and others die — for it?

At the direction of the electronic navigator, he and Chase now turned away from the cliff and headed into the woods. They climbed onto a limestone shelf. Shaw checked his phone once more. They were on the eastern edge of the hunting ground. His father’s coordinates defined an entire square mile, one filled with dense forest, thickets, brush and brambles, rock formations, streams and ponds.

He surveyed the expanse now.