Those Who Wish Me Dead (10 page)

A
s the boys sipped water
and stretched aching legs beside the campfire, Ethan sent Allison a short text on his GPS messenger:

He put the GPS away then and let his eyes drift as he scanned the rocks and forested hills and the high mountains beyond. Empty. He had told the truth: they were alone. They had hiked all day beneath a high hot sun and a cloudless sky, and if you’d told people that only a few weeks ago, the Beartooth Pass had been closed with two feet of snow, they’d have laughed in your face.

No one was out there.

Not yet, at least.

And what if they come?

He’d asked himself that question the night Jamie Bennett had arrived and every waking hour since. What if they came, these men who were trained killers?

I’ll handle it. I’ve had my share of training too.

But he hadn’t. Not that kind. He didn’t end up in the Air Force by mistake. The son of a Marine who didn’t leave the combat overseas quite as well as he should have, Ethan had grown up pointed toward the military, and enlisting was the same sort of free-will decision that the sun made when it chose to set in the west. All his father had wanted was another Marine—a fighter, not a teacher. His old man hadn’t been impressed when Ethan tried to explain that he was teaching military personnel how to have what he called a survivor mentality.

“There are two kinds of men in war,” his father had said. “The killing kind, and the dying kind. If you’re the dying kind, you won’t survive shit. If you’re the killing kind, you will. It’s already in there. You’re teaching woodcraft, and that’s fine. But if they’re the dying kind, all your tricks won’t save ’em.”

Ethan shook himself back into the moment, back into watching, which was his job; killing wasn’t. The smoke from their campfire wasn’t heavy, the wood had been properly selected, but only a few miles out, someone else had one as well, the smoke visible above the ridgeline. It seemed like a lot of smoke. Ethan watched it for a while and wondered if a campfire had gotten away from someone. With this wind, it was certainly possible.

“You guys see that?” he said. “That smoke?”

They were tired and uninterested, but they looked.

“We’re going to keep an eye on it,” he said. “That one could turn into something.”

“Turn into something? You mean, like, a forest fire?” Drew said.

“That’s exactly what I mean. These mountains have burned before. They’ll burn again someday. Now, all of you look at the smoke and then look at your maps and tell me where it’s burning and what it means to us. First one to do that, I’ll build his shelter myself.”

Jace cared, and maybe that was a problem. The caring had started with the fire, when he struck two pieces of metal together and made a spark that made a flame that made a campfire. His vision of Connor Reynolds as a boy who did not care began to vanish. His bad attitude was disappearing even when Jace tried to keep it in place, because this stuff was pretty cool. It was
real,
it mattered in a way most things you were taught didn’t—this stuff could save your life.

He didn’t know what Connor Reynolds was running from up here, but back behind Jace were men who intended to take his life, and he began to think that maybe Connor should pay a little more attention. For the both of them.

Now Ethan had laid down a challenge, and while Jace really didn’t care about winning the shelter—he enjoyed building them, and they were improving with each night’s effort—he did want to be the first to place that column of smoke accurately. This was the sort of thing that most people couldn’t do. The sort of thing that could save your life.

He looked up at the mountains and down at the map and then back up again. To his right was Pilot Peak, one of the most striking landmarks in the Beartooths, easy to find. Move along from that and there was Index, and the fire wasn’t in front of either of them. Keep rolling and there was Mount Republic and beyond that Republic Peak, and now he began to get it. They were supposed to hike to Republic Peak, then claim the summit—that was what Ethan called it, at least—and hike back down the way they’d come. On every trip, though, Ethan gave them an escape route. Jace enjoyed those, even if the rest of the boys thought the idea was corny. The other kids didn’t know about the need for escape routes yet.

The smoke wasn’t between their camp and Republic Peak, but it seemed to be coming from the back side of Republic Peak. Connor traced the contour lines that lay to the west of the peak—they fell off in a tight cluster, indicating a steep and fast decline, toward Yellowstone National Park, and then those to the north were more gradual, spaced apart. A creek wound down from near the glacier that lay between Republic Peak and its nearest cousin, Amphitheater.

“It’s burning by our escape route,” he said.

Everybody looked up with interest, and Jace was proud to see it on Ethan Serbin’s face as well.

“You think?” Ethan said.

Jace felt a pang of uncertainty. He looked up at the mountains, wondering if he’d gotten it wrong.

“That’s what it looks like,” Jace said. “Like if we had to use the escape route and come down the back side of Republic, going backcountry, the way you were talking about, we’d run right into it. Or pretty close.”

Ethan watched him in silence.

“Maybe not,” Jace said, and now he was searching for the Connor Reynolds attitude again, shrugging and trying to act as if he didn’t care one way or the other. “Whatever. I don’t mind building my shelter, I don’t need you to do it.”

“You don’t? Well, that’s too bad because I was about to start on it.”

“I got it right?”

“Yes, you did. If that fire actually is spreading, which is how it looks right now, it’s going to be spreading pretty close to our escape route.”

T
he horses woke her.

A whinny in the night, answered by another, and Allison was awake quickly. She was a deep sleeper usually, but not since Ethan had gone into the mountains. She had no fear of being left alone on the property; most of her life, she’d been alone on the property. Some days she wanted to
send
him into the mountains just to be alone again.

This summer, though, the ill winds had blown through her mind daily. She tried to adopt Ethan’s amused disregard for such things, but she couldn’t. You could offer the heart all the instruction you wanted. The heart was often hard of hearing.

She was a different woman this summer, and not one she cared to be. She was a fearful woman. In the corner of the room, leaning against the wall near her side of the bed, was a loaded shotgun. On the nightstand where usually a glass of water and a book sat, she had her GPS, the one Ethan would text her on if something went wrong. Only a single message received today: they were alone in the woods. That was all he would say, and she knew that, but still, she’d taken to looking at the GPS far too often, and though she knew well that the horses had woken her and not the GPS, she checked it anyhow. Blank and silent.

Bastard,
she thought, and hated herself for it. How could she think that? Her own husband, the love of her life, and that was no joke, better believe he was the only love she’d encounter in this life, at least the only one that would run so deep. Deeper than she’d believed was possible.

And still she cursed him now. Because he’d made a choice, and he hadn’t chosen her. The resentment had plagued her ever since Jamie Bennett left Montana, the deal made. How could you resent a man who’d agreed to protect a child?

Jamie was reckless, and he knew it. She appealed to his ego, and he let her. I warned him, and he laughed…

Stop it. Stop those thoughts.

She rose, considered picking up the shotgun for a moment, then dismissed the idea. There was no need for a weapon, or for her resentments. Ethan had made the right choice; the only danger was with him, and she should be thinking of him instead of herself. She would go as far as the porch and see what there was to see. If there appeared to be real trouble in the stable, then she’d return for the shotgun. Occasionally you heard of problems with mountain lions and livestock, the sort of thing that happened when you offered up perfectly good prey in the homeland of a perfectly good predator, but in all her years there, the horses had never been bothered by one.

They also rarely woke her in the night.

She crossed the living room in the dark. A dull orange glow came from behind the glass door of the woodstove, remnants of a nearly extinguished fire. She hadn’t been asleep long. Just past midnight now. Between the living room and the porch was a narrow storage room, the washer and dryer crammed inside, rows of shelves surrounding them. She found a battery-powered spotlight by touch and then pulled a heavy jacket off the hook beside the door. Summer, sure, but the night air wouldn’t admit to such a thing, not yet. In the pocket of the jacket she put a can of bear spray. You never knew. One year they’d had a grizzly on the bunkhouse porch; another time one had inspected the bed of Ethan’s pickup after a garbage run. If a grizz was out there now, the pepper spray would be far more useful than the shotgun.

She went out into the night, and the breeze found her immediately and pushed its chill down the collar of her jacket. She walked to the far edge of the porch, leaving the door open behind her. Fifty yards away, in the stable, the horses were silent again.

She knew the shadows that lay between the cabin and the barn from years of night checks. In what should have been a stretch of open ground, every tree cleared from it long ago, something stood, black on black.

Allison lifted the spotlight and hit the switch.

A man appeared, halfway between her and the stable, and though he blinked against the harshness of the light, he seemed otherwise untroubled by it. He was young and lean and had bristle-short hair and eyes that looked black in the spotlight. The glare had to be blinding, but he did not so much as lift a hand to block it.

“Good evening, Mrs. Serbin.”

This was why she had the shotgun. This was why it was kept loaded and propped near the bed and now she had walked away from it because for too long she had lived in a world where a shotgun was unnecessary.

You knew
, she thought, even as she stared at him in silence.
You knew, Allison, somehow you knew he was coming, and you ignored it and now you will pay.

The man was advancing toward her through the narrow beam of light, and his motion induced her own, a slow backward shuffle on the porch. He did not change his pace.

“I’d like you to stop there,” she said. Her voice was strong and clear and she was grateful for that. “Stop there and identify yourself. You know my name; I should know yours.”

Still he came on with that carefree stride, his face a white glow and his eyes squinted nearly shut. Something was wrong with that. His willingness to accept the glare, to walk directly into it without taking so much as a side step, that wasn’t right. She’d caught him in the beam and for some reason he was embracing it. Why?

“Stop there,” she said again, but now she knew that he would not. Her options rolled through her mind fast because they were few. She could wait here and he’d come on until he’d joined her on the porch and whatever had brought him here in the night would be revealed. Or she could turn and run for the door, close and lock it, and get the shotgun in her hands. She knew that she could make it before he caught her.

He knows I can too. He can see that.

But still he walked without hurry, squinting against the spotlight.

She knew then. Understood in an instant. He was not alone. That was why he was not hurried and it was why he did not wish her to move the light away from him.

She pivoted and headed for the door only to stop immediately. The second man was already almost to the porch. Far closer to the door than she was. He’d come from around the other side of the cabin. Long blond hair that glowed near white in the beam. Boots and jeans and a black shirt unbuttoned almost to midchest. Pistol in his hand.

“Be still,” he said. He had a doctor’s bedside tone. A professional soother.

She stood where she was as he walked toward her from the front and the other one reached the porch at her back. No way to face them both. At once, she was relieved that she had not taken the shotgun. She could shoot only one of them at a time, the way they were positioned, but that was still more shooting than they likely wanted, and if they’d thought she was a threat, they might have fired first. Right now, they did not think that, and in their perception of her as harmless, she was being given one last valuable tool: time. How much of it, she did not know. But there was some, and she needed to use it now, and use it right.

She thought of the bear spray, and then she lifted her hands into the air. To reach for it was to admit it was there. The bear spray was of little comfort in the face of a gun but it was what she had and she intended to keep it. Keep it and earn more of what these men could grant: time. Whether it was hours or minutes, whether it was seconds, her hope lay in buying more.

“What do you want?” she said. Voice no longer so strong. “There’s no need for a gun. You can tell me what you’d like.”

“Hospitable,” the long-haired man said. “That is a pleasant change from others we’ve encountered.”

“It certainly is.”

“A calm woman, all things considered. Middle of the night, you know. Strangers.”

“Strangers with guns. Very calm, I’d say. Unusually so.”

They were talking around her as they advanced, conversational as two men on a road trip making observations about the scenery. It chilled her more than the sight of the gun had.

“What do you want?” she repeated. They were almost upon her, one at the front and one at the back, and it was harder now to keep her hands in the air; she wanted to bring them down and throw a punch, wanted to run, wanted to drop to the porch floor and curl up and protect herself from their impending touches.

But none of those options would buy her time. She kept her hands in the air, though they were shaking now.

“May we step inside, Mrs. Serbin?”

The one facing her, just inches away, asked the question, but he wasn’t looking her in the eye. His gaze was covering her body, and she had the sense that he was inventorying her in every way. There was violation in his stare and also threat assessment. She wore black leggings, nothing over them, her boots loose along the calf, and when she’d lifted her arms, the jacket had pulled back to reveal the long-sleeved T-shirt she’d been sleeping in. There was no place on her body, under the jacket, to hide a weapon, and that was evident. The oversize jacket hid the bear spray well. She had a feeling that they would take the jacket, though. That, too, was only a matter of time.

Out in the stable, one of the horses whinnied again. A high keening sound. The moon was visible now, clean white light. Would things have been different if it had been out when she opened the door? Would she have seen enough to step back inside? Could a cloud change your life?

“Yes, I think we’ll go inside,” the man behind her said. He reached out and pushed her hair back over her shoulder, one fingertip on her skin, and that was when she dropped her hands and screamed and then his arm was around her, drawing her body hard against his, pinning her arms to her sides. The spotlight fell to the porch floor and bounced. He’d wrapped her up in such a way that her hands were pressed up near her face, useless.

The man in front of her had watched the brief flurry of resistance without reaction. Heard her scream and did not blink. He stood still while the other one held her, and for a time there was no sound but the horses stirring, unsettled by Allison’s scream. The spotlight beam shot crookedly into the night sky, illuminating half of his face.

“Still hospitable?” he said at last.

The grip around her felt like a steel band and there were tears threatening, pain and fear mixing. She blinked the tears back and forced herself to look directly at him when she nodded. She didn’t say a word.

“Marvelous,” he said. He drew the word out slow and looked away from her, taking stock of the grounds a final time, the stable and the pasture and the empty bunkhouse and the garage beyond. She had a feeling they’d inspected the property thoroughly before approaching the house. She didn’t like that measured surveyor’s stare. He saw too much, missed too little. It was the way Ethan took in a place. It wasn’t a quality she wanted to see in a man like this.

When he was satisfied with his assessment, he made the smallest of nods and the other one shoved her forward, through the door and into the living room, without loosening his hold.

“I believe I’ll give myself a tour,” the long-haired one said.

“One of us probably should,” the other answered. Allison could feel his breath on her ear. Could smell his sweat and a heavy odor of stale, trapped smoke. Not cigarettes. Wood smoke.

He held her in the center of the room and did not speak while the other one took a patient stroll through her home. He unplugged phones and lowered window blinds and talked while he moved, and the one holding her answered.

“Quite an empire they have here.”

“Beautiful place.”

“They like mountain landscapes, did you notice?”

“Seems to be the favored artwork, yes.”

“Strange, living in a place like this. Why do you need the paintings, the photographs? Just look out the window.”

“Gifts, I suspect. What do you give someone who lives in the mountains? A photograph of the same mountain that person sees every day. It doesn’t make sense, but people do it all the same. Like that man who raised the dogs. Remember him? The bloodhounds.”

“Pictures of bloodhounds all over the place. Even though the real deal was right there.”

“Exactly. I’m telling you, they are gifts. No one has any imagination these days.”

The grip on Allison hadn’t loosened a fraction, though the man who held her spoke easily. Another smell mingled with the wood smoke, but it took her a minute to confirm what it was. Or accept it.

He smelled of blood.

The long-haired one faded from sight but she could hear his boots as he moved through the rooms behind them. Then he reappeared and crossed the living room. He had a hat in his hand. A black Stetson, wide-brimmed. Ethan’s hat, one that he’d never worn. He hated the cowboy look, but people had their assumptions.

“I like this,” the long-haired man said. “Very Wild West.” He put the hat on and inspected himself in the reflection from the glass door. He smiled. “Not a bad touch.”

“Not bad at all,” the short-haired one said.

“Is it your husband’s hat?” He turned to face Allison.

“It was a gift,” she said. “He doesn’t like it.”

They laughed at her then. “Excellent,” the long-haired one said. “That’s excellent, Mrs. Serbin.” He wandered away again, still wearing the hat, and entered her bedroom. He’d picked up the spotlight when they came inside and was using it rather than the overhead lights. She watched the beam paint the walls and then come to a stop on the shotgun. He went over to it and lifted it with one hand and opened the breech. When he saw the shells inside he snapped the breech shut and returned to the living room, carrying the spotlight in one hand, now turned off, and the shotgun in the other, held down against his leg. The pistol was in a holster at his back.

“Oh my,” he said, easing onto the couch, stretching his legs out in front of him, and leaning the shotgun against the cushion. “It’s been a long day, hasn’t it?”

“Productive, though.”

“True.” The longhair gave a heavy sigh, chest rising and falling, staring at the woodstove. He looked at it for a long time before glancing back at them. “You good?”