C. Box - Endangered

“Stay right where you are,” Joe said.

“I’m not goin’ anywhere, but I ain’t dyin’, neither,” Cudmore said, revealing a mouthful of long yellow teeth in what was either a grimace or a grin. “I was prepared for your gestapo tactics.”

It was then Joe saw the collar of the body armor vest that Cudmore wore beneath his coat. Although the body armor had prevented rounds from entering his body, their impact had done damage. Cudmore hugged himself and whimpered.

“You’re going to pay for what you did to April,” Joe said, leaning in hard with the shotgun.

In Cudmore’s rheumy eyes was confusion at what Joe had said, then a slow realization.

“So that’s why you’re here,” the man said. “You think I done something to some girl. You people—”

The fourth pit bull charged Cudmore as if to attack him, but feinted at the last second and ran away. It got close enough to scare Cudmore, though. Joe admired the dog and watched it run off into the night.

—

“ GET THAT THING OUT OF HERE! ” Sheriff Reed yelled, wheeling his chair across the yard until it thumped into the front bumper of the MRAP.

The local cop garbed in camo and an army helmet who had fired the burst with the machine gun that missed Cudmore and nearly the entire trailer, said, “Sheriff—”

“Get that thing the hell out of here or I’ll arrest the lot of you!” Reed shouted. Joe had never seen him so mad.

The MRAP backed away, crushing a snow fence.

—

FIVE MINUTES LATER, with his ears still ringing from the explosion of gunshots, Joe heard Reed fume to Dulcie, “I just about had him in custody without anyone getting hurt. Then Williamson showed up with his goddamned tank .”

—

REED SAID, “If it weren’t for Deputy Boner’s injuries, I might ask the EMTs to slow down on their way out of here, and maybe we grab us some coffee while Cudmore rolls around in pain. But that wouldn’t be right, would it?”

“Um, no ,” Dulcie said, her face white with shock at what had just happened.

Reed wheeled over to Joe. “Thank you for your restraint in not shooting him.”

“It didn’t seem right,” Joe said. “I really hated to shoot those dogs, though.”

“That last dog must have really hated him,” Reed said, shaking his head. “He finally got the chance to show him how much, is what I think.”

Joe barely heard him. His nerves jangled from the release of adrenaline and his throat ached from having witnessed—and participated in—such a scene of savagery.

He had his arm around Lucy, who had stayed silent since the shooting was over. He hoped she hadn’t seen much, but he was afraid she had. He wondered what she thought of her father if she’d seen him prodding a shotgun into the face of an injured man lying flat on his back on the ground.

“But we got our man,” Reed said.

Joe took a deep breath and recalled the confusion in Cudmore’s eyes just before he’d been attacked. He said, “Are you sure about that?”

“Maybe this will help,” a deputy named Woods said as he backed out of Cudmore’s Humvee, where he’d been searching the front cab.

He held up a Visa card and an iPhone.

“The credit card belongs to April Pickett,” Woods said. “I found it under the seat.”

Lucy shrugged out of Joe’s arm and approached Woods with her hand out. Woods turned over the phone.

Lucy swiped it on and punched a four-digit code and the phone lit up. She held it up so Joe could see the backlit image of April and Dallas Cates taking a selfie. They were grinning like fools with their cheeks pressed together, looking up at the camera.

7

On Monday morning, Nate Romanowski blinked against the harsh interior lighting of the interrogation room in the Federal Building in downtown Cheyenne. He wore a loose orange jumpsuit stenciled with DOJ over the breast pocket and large red Crocs on his feet. His long blond hair cascaded past his shoulders. His complexion was waxen and pale and his sharp blue eyes looked out as if from behind a mask. His hands and wrists were bound by a Smith & Wesson Cuff-Maxx high-security belly chain and restraints, even though his trip had consisted only of an elevator ride from the basement cell to the seventh floor.

The guard guided him through the door and shut it behind him.

“Was this really necessary?” he asked as he rattled his wrist chains at the bulky man on the other side of the interrogation table. A slim manila folder was on the surface of the table.

“Probably not,” the man answered with a slight grin. He wore a suit jacket, tie, and a white shirt that strained over his belly. His name was Stan Dudley, and he was the FBI special agent in charge of Nate’s case. Dudley was in his mid-forties, with a fleshy bland face and pasted-down light brown hair that would rise away from his scalp as the day went on. He had close-set eyes, a rounded nose, and ancient acne scars beneath his cheekbones. His thick neck bulged over the collar of his shirt, and sometimes when he talked, the swell of fat under his jaw trembled.

“Then why did you bring me up this way?”

“People talk,” Dudley said. “We don’t want the guards and other staff to think we’re letting you walk, do we?”

Nate grunted.

“Have a seat.”

“Do you have a key for these?” Nate asked, thrusting his arms out.

“Someone does. Sit down.”

Dudley liked this, Nate knew. He liked telling Nate what to do and how to do it and when he wanted it done. And he liked stringing him along, reminding Nate who was in charge and who was in custody.

As he repositioned the hard-backed chair with his foot so he could sit down in it, Nate thought how easy it would be to quickly reach across the table and twist Dudley’s ears off. The chain between his wrists was long enough that he could grab both of them.

But because he wanted out and he knew that Dudley would love the excuse to keep him inside, Nate sat.

Dudley reached out and tapped the file. “You know I fought against this, don’t you?”

Nate didn’t respond.

“I think it’s a despicable deal. If it was up to me, I’d unleash the federal prosecutors on you and put you away for a hundred years. I know—and you know—that you’ve been responsible for murder and mayhem across most of the continental U.S. People just can’t go around serving as judge, jury, and executioner based on some kind of personal code. We have laws for that. To that, we can agree.”

Nate agreed to nothing.

“But we’ve gotten the word to back off. All they care about at the Department of Justice right now is this deal,” Dudley said, again tapping the file. “I don’t know if you realize how flipping lucky you are.”

“I’m Mr. Luck,” Nate said sourly. He’d been held in the basement of the Federal Building in detention for four months. He’d not flown his falcons, or breathed mountain air, or eaten his normal diet of lean game meat he killed himself. Although he’d done thousands of push-ups, pull-ups, squats, and other exercises in his cell, and he was in many respects in the best physical shape since he’d been in Special Operations, mentally he felt bloated, flabby, dull, and completely off his game. His brain was foggy, and he had trouble concentrating. Nate had come to understand the vacant-eyed tigers he’d seen pacing rhythmically back and forth in the zoo because he felt like one of them.

“Rulon didn’t help, either,” Dudley scoffed, referring to the governor of Wyoming, who had two and a half years left in his second and final term of office. “I don’t know what you ever did for him, or if you have illicit photos of him or what, but he went to bat for you. He somehow convinced my superiors you’d be of better service to us out there than in here. I think he’s full of shit, but he must have been pretty convincing.”