Endangered (26 page)

“I’m kidding,” Sheridan said. “I’m on duty.
We’re
on duty.”

“Maybe another time, then,” Dudley said. “Do you work on this floor? I haven’t seen you around.”

“We fill in wherever they need us,” Sheridan said.

“Well, I hope they need you around
here
,” he said.

“Maybe.”

“I’ll keep my eye out for you,” he said with a wink.

When he was gone, Sheridan said, “Creep.”

“I think your instincts are right on about that one,” Lucy said.

Sheridan tousled Lucy’s hair as they walked down the hall. “Just follow my lead, little sister.”

—

N
ATE
’
S ROOM WAS DIMLY LIT
and he was the only one in it. An empty chair sat next to the bed with a paperback novel opened and turned facedown on the cushion. Probably where Dudley sat, Lucy thought.

Nate’s eyes were closed and a plastic oxygen mask covered his nose and mouth. The covers of his bed were pulled up to his chin. His face was bruised and there was a bandage on his right cheek beneath his eye. Dozens of tubes and wires snaked up through the sheets, leading to monitors. His head was tilted to the side. If it weren’t for the sounds of the machines clicking and the EKG screen that showed a heartbeat, Lucy thought he could have been dead.

He was a big man and he filled the hospital bed from end to end. Lucy had never seen him laid out like that.

“My God,” Sheridan whispered. “At least he’s still alive.”

Lucy nodded, but stayed near the door while Sheridan approached him. Lucy could hear him breathing, in and out, through the oxygen mask. It was clouded with condensation.

Her sister said, “Nate, it’s Sheridan, your apprentice. We’re all up here to see April, down the hall. Well, Dad isn’t here yet, but he will be.

“Look, you need to fight and get well. We need to fly falcons together someday, and you’ve got a lot still to teach me.”

Lucy looked down at her shoes. Her eyes stung. Her sister sounded strong and sincere.

Then she heard Sheridan gasp, and when Lucy looked up, her sister had her hands to her mouth.

“What?”

Sheridan turned. Her eyes were huge. “He winked at me.”

Lucy looked from Sheridan to Nate. He was just as still as he’d been when they’d entered the room. His head hadn’t moved a half inch.

“He winked at me,” Sheridan said again. “He opened his eyes and winked.”

Lucy didn’t respond.

“Really, he did,” Sheridan insisted. She turned back to Nate and said, “Do it again. Show my sister I’m not crazy.”

Nothing.

“Nate, come on.
Please
.”

After nearly a minute, Lucy said, “Sherry, maybe you
thought
you saw something. I believe you thought you saw him wink. But—”

“I
did
,” Sheridan said.

Lucy shook her head, her palms up. “I’m not going to argue with you.”

Minutes passed. Both Sheridan and Lucy studied Nate’s face for some kind of movement, some kind of recognition from him that they were there.

Finally, Sheridan said, “We better get back.”

Lucy agreed with her.

As they walked back down the hallway together toward the closed door, Sheridan said, “Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me.”

“Okay.”

“He opened his eyes for a second and he
winked
at me.”

“Okay.”

“Or maybe I just wanted him to so bad, I thought he did it.”

“Maybe.”

Sheridan reached out and pulled Lucy close as they walked to the storage room to change back into their clothes.

—

T
IMBER
C
ATES
watched them pass by through a half-inch opening of the maintenance closet door where he’d found the cart.

He recognized the older one, although she’d been behind him in school by quite a few years. The younger one he’d never seen before, but they looked so similar they had to be sisters.

What were they doing wearing hospital scrubs? And did the older one know who he was?

He had two brothers and so had only known brothers. The Picketts had three girls. They’d all grown up together in the same county a hundred and twenty miles to the south, but except for Dallas and April, the families had never interacted in any way. He thought how strange that was, but he couldn’t really come up with how he felt about it.

The things he did for Dallas, he thought.

Or more accurately, the things he did for his
mother
. Dallas probably didn’t even know he was out of prison.

Timber was assured that everything was fine and that he hadn’t been recognized when the sisters emerged from the storage room. They’d changed from their scrubs to civilian clothing and they seemed to be joking with each other, the younger one teasing the oldest. They were good-looking girls, he thought. In any other circumstance, he’d probably make a run at them.

The mother, Marybeth, met them in the hallway, and the three of them went into the room of his target.

The ceramic knife was in his sock, hidden by the baggy right pant leg of his prison hospital scrubs. He hadn’t even passed through a metal detector to gain entry to the hospital, so the precaution had been unnecessary. The prison ID, which he wore on a lanyard around his neck, looked similar enough to the ones they used at the hospital that it wasn’t getting a second look.

Hell, he thought, he could have brought a gun. But the knife would do.

He’d wait. They’d all have to leave the room eventually.

P
lumes of snow sprayed out from the tires as Joe barreled down the mountain in the foul-smelling cab of Bull’s Ford F-250 meat wagon. Brass casings that had been ejected during the fusillade danced across the dashboard.

The snow wasn’t falling as hard as it had been and there were breaks in the clouds. The big spring storm that had been predicted didn’t turn out to be all that big, he thought, although it had dumped six to eight inches that would remain in the forest overnight and it made the road down the mountain slick and treacherous. He had less than an hour of light.

Joe had left his own pickup where Bull had shot it up in the elk camp. He doubted it could be repaired after being hit twenty to thirty times with high-powered rifle rounds.

He thought:
Another one
.

—

D
AISY WAS ON
the bench seat beside him and Bull’s lifeless body rolled around in the back. Joe had tried to wrestle the mass into the bed, but it was too heavy and ungainly. At one point, he’d sprained a muscle in his back while trying to lift Bull’s upper torso onto the tailgate far enough that he could release his grip and push the legs up and over the lip, only to have the body slide off into the snow again. Bull’s body was slick with blood. It was worse than loading a dead elk. At least with an elk, there were antlers to grab on to.

Rather than leave the body to the snow and predators, Joe had wrapped a chain around the legs and used Bull’s own game winch to hoist the body into the air. He was then able to swing Cates’s 280 pounds up and over the bed wall, where he lowered it into the back.

Despite the situation and the gore, Joe admired how well the game winch had been welded together. Probably Eldon’s work, he thought. Bull was useless.

Had been
useless.

—

J
OE
’
S SHOTGUN LEA
NED AGAINST
the bench seat, muzzle down. Next to it was Bull’s Ruger Mini-14. It was still warm to the touch.

The inside of the cab reeked of sour, spilled beer and whiskey, bloodstains, motor oil, and rotting food in fast-food wrappers on the passenger-side floorboard. There was a long crack through the front windshield and a dead rabbit on the console that Bull must have shot along the way to the camp.

But the pickup ran well, and the tires gripped the slick rocks on the road better than Joe’s pickup had on the way up. He was making good time.

He knew if the dispatcher was trying to reach him he was out of touch, since Bull’s pickup obviously didn’t have a radio. Joe realized he’d left his handheld radio in his pickup back at the elk camp and he cursed himself for forgetting it.

Then he checked his cell phone. Ten percent battery life and still no signal. Naturally, he’d left the charger back in his truck as well.

He glanced down at the gauges. Unless the fuel gauge was broken, it looked like the pickup was almost empty.

“Bull, you idiot,” Joe said aloud.

He’d never make it all the way to the highway, he thought. The closest place that might have gasoline was the Cates compound.

And it was where he was headed anyway.

—

W
HEN TH
E TREES CLEARED
,
Joe’s phone came to life with a quick series of pings
.

He pulled it from his pocket and saw there were five missed calls from Marybeth. His phone now had five percent battery life left, which would be just a few minutes of talk time.

Joe had a decision to make and he didn’t like it, but he punched the preset for Sheriff Reed’s cell phone. He didn’t have enough time to go through the office’s receptionist. When he raised the phone to his ear, he winced at the jolt of pain from the bullet wound.

“Joe?” Reed said through a mouthful of dinner.

“Mike, listen to me. I’m on my way down the mountain right now and my phone is about to die on me. I found Eldon’s elk camp and Nate’s van was ditched there. Bull showed up and started blasting away—”

“Are you hurt?”

“Mike, please. I’m fine. But Bull’s dead. I’m in his pickup because mine was shot up. I’m headed toward the Cates place right now. I need you to put out a high-priority call to your guys and any LEs in the area to converge on the compound as quickly as they can get there. I don’t even care if Chief Williamson fires up his MRAP, because we know Eldon will be armed. I don’t know the connection between Nate and Eldon, but it’s there.”

“Jesus,” Reed said.

Joe could picture the sheriff pushing his chair back from the table with one hand and wiping his mouth with a napkin held in the other.

“What about Olivia Brannan?” Reed asked.

“I didn’t find her body. It’s possible she’s buried on the compound or maybe even still alive. I don’t know.”

“How soon will you get there?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes,” Joe said.

He was on the two-track now. There were two sets of tire tracks in the road before him: his and Bull’s.

“We can’t get there that fast, Joe. Can you pull up and wait?”

He could look off the sagebrush bench now and catch glimpses of the Cates compound in the swale below. Although it was almost too dark to see, Joe could make out Eldon’s red pump truck cruising across the untracked snow in the equipment yard, headed toward the edge of the outbuildings. Puffs of exhaust rose in the cold air from dual pipes.

“No,” Joe said. “Something’s going on down there.”

“What?”

“I don’t know
.
”

“Okay,” Reed said. “I’ll put out the word and we’ll get there as soon as we can. Joe, don’t do anything stupid and don’t get yourself hurt.”

“Yup,” Joe said. “Please call Marybeth. Tell her I’m all right and I’ll call her as soon as—”

His phone died. He’d used up all of the battery and he had no idea whether Reed had heard any of his last message.

B
renda stood at the edge of the root cellar doors, wearing her heavy winter coat. Liv saw she was wearing the same scarf over her hair that she had worn when she introduced herself as Kitty Wells. It was almost dark out.

Brenda didn’t look down. Instead, she peered off into the distance and motioned with her arms, indicating
Come on, come on
.

Liv was confused. But when she heard the low rumble of heavy equipment, she realized what drew Brenda’s attention.

She said, “Brenda,
what’s going on
?” Her voice was flushed with panic.

Brenda shushed her with her hand, then continued gesturing.

Liv could hear the sound of a truck entering the compound.

When Brenda finally bent slightly and looked down, Liv thought she could see tears on her cheeks.

“It’s time, girl,” Brenda said. “Eldon’s back with a full load.”

Liv closed her eyes.

“Put all them dishes and the silverware in the bucket. How’d you like the pork chops? I made ’em especially for you this time. Eldon and Bull will have to wait for theirs later on tonight. At least, if that damned Bull ever shows up. And Dallas, too. He saw this snow and took off an hour ago on that snowmobile. But I bet he’ll be back later for his dinner.”

She talked to Liv as if Liv cared about these details.

Liv said, “You don’t have to do this, Brenda. I told you, I won’t talk.”

Brenda ignored her and started lowering the bucket hand over hand with the rope.

“Just put everything inside, sweetheart,” Brenda said. “Don’t make this any harder than it already is.”

“Are you really going to bury me in raw sewage?”

“Don’t think of it like that.”

Liv felt cold fear spasm through her. “How in the hell can I think of it any other way?”

“Don’t get hysterical, darling.”

“
Why are you doing this to me? Why don’t you just shoot me and get it over with?”

“Shhhhhh.”

The pump truck was coming toward the root cellar. It was still out of view. Liv heard a squeak of brakes. Then it began to back toward the opening.

Reep-reep-reep.

As it got closer, the warning increased in volume. Liv saw Brenda glance up at it and cock her head to the side to guide it in. She had moved to the other side of the opening so that the bumper of the truck wouldn’t knock her into the root cellar.

Brenda was suddenly lit up in red from the taillights. Liv could smell the exhaust of the big truck now, and she saw a bronze valve, like a snout, ease over the opening of the cellar.

“Don’t come any closer, Eldon,” Brenda shouted. “You’re far enough.”

To Liv, she said, “Put them dishes in the bucket. I can’t bear to lose a place setting.”

The sheer unreality of the situation almost overwhelmed Liv. Brenda was concerned about her dishes getting buried in filth?
That’s
what she was concerned about?

“Eldon,”
Brenda said. “That’s good right there.”

Liv raised up her hands for the bucket as it lowered. She looked up to see that Brenda was distracted by the proximity of the release valve of the pump truck.

Liv grabbed the top of the bucket in a firm grip and yanked down as hard as she could, putting all of her weight behind it. A guttural sound came out of her as she did it.

Instinctively, Brenda didn’t let go in time. And now she pitched forward off balance, pausing for a half second on the edge of the opening and windmilling her arms before falling in.

Liv threw herself to the side of the wall so she wouldn’t get hit. Brenda dropped fast, her body hitting the floor with a horrible crunching sound like a full bag of ice cubes dropped on pavement.

Reep-reep-reep.

The ear-piercing sound filled the hole.

Liv bent over Brenda, who had landed facedown. Her housedress was flopped up on her backside, exposing her thick white thighs and knee-high support hose, and her coat had bunched up on her shoulders. Brenda’s arms were splayed out on either side. Her head was turned toward Liv and her eyes were open.

Brenda’s eyes bore into Liv with so much hatred that Liv shuddered.

But she couldn’t move. Brenda Cates was alive, but she’d broken her neck in the fall.

Liv’s words were absorbed by the
reep-reep-reep
when she said, “God forgive me for what I’m about to do.” Somehow, though, Brenda must have heard her because her eyes got even harder.

The
reep-reep-reep
sound suddenly cut out above and the motor sputtered to a stop.

“Brenda?”

It was Eldon. He’d shut the motor off and was clambering down out of the cab of his pump truck.

“Brenda, where are you? Where did you go?”

Liv knew if Eldon saw Brenda’s damaged body down there, he’d likely grab his gun and start blasting. She knew she could try to wedge herself beneath Brenda’s bulk, make herself harder to hit, or . . .

—

E
LDON SAID
,
“Oh no. What the hell happened?”

He was bending over the opening, looking down, the beam of his flashlight moving gently over Brenda as if caressing her with light.

The pool of light found Liv. She was on her side, legs and arms splayed out as if
she’d
fallen, too. She kept her eyes closed even as the light turned the inside of her eyelids orange.

Then it was gone.

“Oh nooooo,”
he said, his voice choked with emotion.

When the light vanished, Liv opened her eyes a crack and found Brenda still glaring at her from a few feet away. Liv had never experienced so much raw, focused hate in her life. But this time, instead of shuddering, she grinned.

She whispered, “What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue?”

Then: “You can watch what happens next.”

—

A
FTE
R THIRTY SECONDS
of Eldon’s panicked shouts to Bull for help, which went unanswered, and then to Dallas, who wasn’t there, he slid the ladder into the root cellar. The feet of it settled between Brenda and Liv and broke up their staring contest.

As Eldon backed down the ladder, he grunted with each step. Liv closed her eyes again in case he shined the flashlight at her.

Eldon reached the floor and immediately turned to Brenda. He bent down over her, stroked her hair and back, and said with grateful astonishment,
“You’re still breathing.”

Liv cracked her eyelids to see that Brenda’s eyes were on Eldon in a sidewise glance. They looked desperate. She was trying to warn him.

“What happened? Did you fall in? Don’t tell me I hit you with the back of the truck and knocked you in here.”

As quietly and gracefully as she could, Liv rolled to her feet and grasped the rock in the wall. It pulled free, but it was heavy.

Brenda’s eyes clicked back and forth between Eldon hovering over her and Liv approaching him from behind with the rock raised unsteadily over her head.

Eldon said, “Did that nigger bitch get you down here somehow?”

Before he could turn around, Liv smashed the stone down on the crown of Eldon’s head and he rolled forward onto Brenda, whimpering like a wounded dog.

Blood streamed down the sides of his face onto Brenda’s coat and back.

—

B
EFORE SHE MOUNTED
the ladder, Liv looked over her shoulder. Eldon’s arms and legs were twitching slightly and the back folds of his C&C Sewer and Septic Tank Service
uniform shirt tightened and relaxed. He was still breathing as well. He was a tough old man with a really hard head, she thought. That rock would have instantly killed anyone else.

She climbed the ladder recklessly, once losing her footing on a rung and nearly falling back into the cellar. The near-accident focused her attention and she climbed out very deliberately the rest of the way. But when she reached open air and felt the sting of the cold fresh wind on her face, she whooped.

Then she grasped the ladder and started to pull upward. It would not come free.

Liv yanked hard on it and there was some give, but not enough.

Was it stuck on something?

She peered down into the hole and cursed. Eldon’s huge hand grasped the bottom rung. He was still on the ground, still on top of his wife, but he held the ladder in a death grip. Even with one hand, he had more strength than she did.

Liv looked around. The compound was silent. The only light was the porch light at the main house. Bull and Dallas were still away.

Maybe Eldon had some kind of tool in his truck, she thought. Something she could slide down the ladder or drop on Eldon to make him give up his grip.

She found a flathead shovel sticking up on the side of the pump unit and she pried it loose. Liv ran back to the root cellar and threw the shovel down blade-first like a spear. It bounced harmlessly off Eldon’s back and clattered in the corner of the cellar. He still had that one-handed grip.

Then she thought about leverage. She couldn’t outmuscle him, but . . .

—

S
HE TWISTED THE LADDER
hard to the right. It gave, but not enough. Then she violently reversed the twist to the left in a full rotation and it came free. She’d managed to wrench it out of his fingers.

When the ladder was up and out of the cellar and lying in the snow, she whooped again.

Hot tears stung her eyes and her cheeks. She didn’t want to look back down in that hole, didn’t want to see Eldon and Brenda Cates twitching down there like bloody salamanders.

She just wanted to be out of there.

That’s when she looked up and saw headlights coming fast from the west.