Primal Threat (3 page)

4

August

W
illiam Potter III’s entire life was blessed with luck, starting from the moment twenty years earlier when he’d dropped into the arms of the most expensive obstetrician in the state, and continuing as he rolled out of his playpen into the lap of a trust fund his grandfather set up for him and his sister, a fund that meant neither of them would ever work a day in their lives if they didn’t want to. Scooter, as he was affectionately known to friends and family, had decided a long time ago that only suckers worked for money. Sissie had taken a different tack and was in medical school, but he figured that would wear off.

Scooter squandered his time in high school partying and getting drunk, and after the family pulled strings to get him into Columbia, he ceased studying and even quit cheating on tests somewhere in his sophomore year—and eventually flunked out. His folks were furious, but what did he need school for? So he could translate his quarterly stock portfolio statements into English? He’d been explaining the paperwork to his parents since he was fourteen. To fill out his tax forms? He’d had a private accountant since he was twelve. Scooter understood finances, and when you understood finances everything else in life fell into place without a whole lot of exertion.

They’d trekked up I-90 to North Bend, four vehicles carrying five of Scooter’s best friends along with one of their girlfriends, Jennifer. Scooter was riding in the Porsche Cayenne with Kasey Newcastle, his best buddy since second grade, when they were both enrolled in the Bush private school. This year alone they’d taken two trips to Mexico and one off the Washington coast in the Newcastle family boat. Scooter couldn’t imagine not being best friends with Kasey. Hell, they were going to be family once Scooter settled down and married Kasey’s sister, Nadine.

In North Bend they spotted a few cyclists, but no large groups and none riding mountain bikes. After driving around for an hour looking for their quarry, they regrouped at Scott’s Dairy Freeze and had a flustered lunch trying to figure out where Zak and his buddies might be mountain biking for three days. Scooter had hatched the scheme to drive up into the hills and camp out, and if they happened to intercept them—well then, that would just be their good luck, wouldn’t it?

Even though Nadine and Zak weren’t supposed to be seeing each other anymore, during one of their semiregular phone chats Zak had told her that Thursday evening he and some friends would be riding out of North Bend and into the Cascade Mountains for three days. It burned Scooter up that she was still talking to the fireman on a daily basis, because when she broke up with
him
she’d done her best to cut off all communication and had at one point even threatened to get a restraining order against him. When he went over to visit Kasey, she wasn’t even civil, and it galled Scooter no end that she didn’t treat the fire dude the same way. For weeks after she told Scooter she didn’t want to see him anymore, he’d assumed she was joking. Even when he heard she was seeing the fireman, he thought it was a charade to make him jealous. By the time he realized Nadine was actually dating the guy, it was too late to reverse things. To Scooter’s way of thinking, Nadine had a simple mind, and that made her easy to manipulate, which was exactly what Zak had been doing from the moment he met her.

North Bend was a small town with traffic backed up on the main drag for blocks in either direction. Too much of their time had already been spent in that god-awful queue, which made Scooter abhor the town even more than he did to begin with. There were a lot of junky little houses off the main drag, and a few blocks farther on somebody had made a pathetic attempt at a swank neighborhood, but Scooter had lived in Clyde Hill his whole life, and contemplating a day out here in the sticks gave him the willies.

“Maybe they’re not all hicks,” Kasey said, once they’d grown accustomed to the dim light in the Sure Shot Tavern, where they’d gravitated after lunch. “I mean, look around. That guy in the corner nursing the beer, who looks like he’s been sleeping with pigs, sure. But check out the traffic outside. There’s a Benz. A couple of ’Vettes.”

“’Vettes are all bought on credit, Kase. You know that.”

The Sure Shot Tavern was a block east of the only stoplight in town, the interior filled with the aroma of suntan lotion, perfume, onion rings, and beer. Pickup trucks and SUVs shuffling along in the heat outside the door lent a whiff of exhaust to the mix. All seven of them were crowded around two tables in the tavern: the Finnigan brothers, Roger Bloomquist, Jennifer, Scooter, Kasey, and Ryan. Except for Jennifer, they’d all known each other for years, had all gone to the same private schools together. This past spring Chuck Finnigan had finished his first year at Stanford, and his brother, Fred, was slated to start this year. Kasey would be off to his third year at Columbia. It was hard to believe that for all practical purposes, everybody but Scooter would be gone in a week.

“Look at that guy over there,” Scooter said. “Holding a fifty-dollar bill like he’s never seen one before. You think he found it on the sidewalk? Come on. Let’s go have some fun.”

“Oh, boy,” said Chuck. On numerous occasions over the years the Finnigans found themselves sucked into crazy schemes with Kasey and Scooter, and more than once they’d had interviews with police or security personnel afterward. No matter what happened, Chuck always thought it was a grand adventure, while Fred dreaded the fiascoes.

Jennifer tugged at her boyfriend’s arm and said, “Chuck, you be good.”

“I’m always good, baby. You know that.”

“Except when he’s bad,” said Fred, sulking.

The local man wore a plaid work shirt, jeans that had seen better days, and the faded, angry smirk of a man who’d been trampled by life. He looked like a character actor in a CinemaScope western, his leathery skin a weathered contrast to a close-set pair of icy blue eyes.

Scooter said, “Hey, man. You didn’t happen to find some money outside, did you? My buddy here dropped a bill.”

“What kind of bill?”

“To tell you the truth, it was a fifty-dollar bill. Ulysses S. Grant. My favorite drinking president. Except for the one we got now, of course.”

“I didn’t find no money. And our president don’t drink no more.”

“Neither do I,” Scooter said, hoisting a brew.

“Don’t mind them,” Jennifer said, stepping forward. “They’re just trying to have some fun.”

“She’s absolutely right,” admitted Scooter. “The truth is, I saw you with that fifty and was wondering if you could change a hundred for me.” Scooter proffered a hundred-dollar bill as crisp as the bill the man had jammed into his jeans.

“You boys are from Bellevue, are you?” he asked without turning.

“Clyde Hill,” Kasey said. “Hey. Let me pay for that beer.” He slid a twenty across the bar and sat down next to the older man. “You know where we can meet some women around here?”

The local sipped from his beer, glanced at Jennifer, and said, “You lookin’ for women, are you?”

“We’re always looking for women,” said Scooter.

“Do you prefer the kind with teeth or the kind without?”

They waited five long beats and then began laughing. They laughed for a while and then Kasey said, “That was a good one. I guess we deserved that.”

“I guess you did.”

Moments later a small woman who dressed like a man trotted in, stood close to the local, and ordered the same brand of beer the man was drinking, all without making eye contact with anybody. Her short-cropped hair looked as if she cut it herself without a mirror. When her beer showed up, she gulped a couple of swigs and stared dully at the countertop.

“To tell you the truth,” said Kasey, “we’re up here looking for some friends. We were supposed to hook up in North Bend, but somehow we got our wires crossed. You wouldn’t happen to know about the mountain biking trails around here, would you?”

“Did you ask at the bike shop?”

“We tried there. We tried all the gas stations, too.”

“Are you talkin’ about an overnight trip?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” said Chuck, stepping forward eagerly. Scooter wished he hadn’t done that. Both Finnigans were huge, and they were intimidating this geezer, who just might know something. “We’re looking for a group of guys riding mountain bikes up into the hills.”

“Why you lookin’ for these fellers?”

“They’re friends of ours,” said Fred.

“Two hours ago I carried all their camping gear up in them hills. Base of the falls at Panther Creek. ’Course, it’s not really a creek this time of year. Barely enough runoff to keep it going.”

“Is that where you got the fifty?” Kasey asked.

“They paid me fifty dollars to take their gear up, and fifty more to haul it all down Sunday morning. So far, it’s about the easiest fifty bucks I ever made.”

“You got fifty dollars?” asked the local woman.

“I was going to tell you about it.”

“When?”

“I was going to tell you.”

“I suppose you want another fifty to tell us where they are?” Kasey asked.

“I was thinking more like a hundred.” He pronounced it
hunnerd
.

Scooter looked at the others. After two and a half hours of wandering around this stinking hamlet, it had just become all too easy. But then, Scooter’s entire life had been too easy. He’d had one stroke of unstinting good luck after another.

They paid the man and watched him draw a map on the back of an envelope, sketching with a leaky pen he’d picked up in a doctor’s office. They gulped down their beers and were on their way out the front door of the tavern when the man hollered after them. “You realize you boys just wasted a hundred bucks.”

“What do you mean?” Kasey asked, holding his arm in front of Chuck’s burly chest to keep him from rampaging back into the tavern.

“There was a fire danger alert posted this afternoon. You boys’ll never get past the guard.”

“How’d you get in?” Chuck Finnigan asked.

“I went in the main county road before the guard was posted.”

“How are you going to get their stuff on Sunday?” Fred asked.

“I ain’t figured that out yet.”

“So we can’t get into those backwoods?” Scooter asked.

“Not any way I know of.”

“Thanks,” said Kasey.

“Maybe you should give that money back,” said Fred, who was now even more steamed than his brother. Chuck took hold of his thick arm and pulled him out the doorway. “It’s like selling a car you know doesn’t run,” Fred said, once they were on the sidewalk. “That fucker.”

“How much did it cost
you
?” Scooter asked. “That’s what I thought. Let it go.”

“I know these cyclists,” said Kasey. “They’ll get in there somehow. And so will we.”

“The area they’re heading into is the size of some states,” said Scooter. “There must be dozens of entrances.”

“I’m not so sure about this,” said Roger Bloomquist. “Maybe we should forget it.”

“Forget it?” said Scooter. “You get up there in the mountains with us sitting around the campfire telling ghost stories and singing ‘If I Had a Hammer’ and ‘So Happy to Be a Webelo,’ you’ll be glad you came.”

On the sidewalk in front of the Sure Shot, it was agreed they would retrieve their vehicles and meet on Ballarat, the road that if followed far enough through its various incarnations led north into the foothills. Scooter had to admit that the closer they got to the mountain, the more impressive it looked. Even though he’d lived his whole life in the Seattle area and driven to Snoqualmie Pass dozens of times every winter to snowboard, he’d never been this close to Mount Si except for once as a child, when Vivian and Harry had taken him and his sister hiking up it. He’d gone maybe a mile when he made them all turn back. Even as a nine-year-old, no way was he going to do anything he didn’t want, and he certainly didn’t want to hike for five or six hours. Harry had blown his stack, but Vivian defended Scooter the way she always did, and then a few years later Harry was history like all the others.

They drove through a narrow valley, houses in the trees off to their right, then after a mile or so headed up a short but very steep hill. First in line was Kasey’s Cayenne. Next came Roger in his Land Rover and Ryan in his Jeep. Then Chuck’s Ford truck, outfitted for the backcountry, the body of the truck jacked up so high that Chuck had been lifting Jennifer in and out of the cab all day. His dog Dozer and most of their gear were in the bed.

Just at the point where the pavement gave way to a steep gravel road, they found their pathway barred by a steel gate, beside the gate a potbellied security guard in glasses, a cap, and a dark green uniform with sweat stains under the armpits and around the belt line. On the hood of his dust-covered vehicle sat a large jug and a cup.

“There’s no way this is going to work,” Kasey said to Scooter as they slowed.

“Bet you a hundred bucks.”

“You’re on.”

“You boys are going to have to turn around!” The security guard wasn’t much older than they were, midtwenties, full of fake bravado, swaggering over to the passenger’s window Scooter had rolled down. “These woods are closed until further notice. We’re not allowing any parties up in there.”