Rocky Mountain Lawman

chapter 13



Dawn brought a perfectly clear sky with light so breathtaking and crystalline that Sky ached to paint. Craig had managed to distract her for a while—well, it was easy now that she had discovered just how good sex could be—but finally there was no escaping the day’s requirements. He kissed her over and over again, as if he didn’t want to let go, and she pretty much felt the same way.

Except that letting go was inevitable. Impending sorrow lanced her heart but she tried not to let it show. If there was one thing she had learned, life was what it was, and sometimes it hurt like hell.

She reminded herself that he had asked how long she could stay, but he hadn’t even hinted that he didn’t expect this to end. It was just a fling. She needed to keep that in mind and simply enjoy it for what it was. Living in the moment was a skill she had learned in Iraq. Looking forward and looking back changed nothing, enhanced fears and pain, and made you miss the good things right in front of you.

“I’m taking my car,” she said as they left the cabin. She carried her painting kit.

“Why? I can bring you back after the shopping.”

She shook her head. “I’ll meet you here later. This light...I can’t waste this light, Craig.”

He looked up at the sky as if it might reveal the answer to a mystery, but he didn’t see light the way she did. He probably noticed that the rain had left the air so clear that everything seemed sharper and brighter, but he probably couldn’t grasp what that meant to her. Not since she had arrived here had she seen light like this, and at home the higher humidity often affected the way things looked.

There she didn’t often see light like this, so fresh it might have been poured unused from a bottle.

“You’re going to paint,” he said.

“I need to. I can’t waste this light.”

“I heard that part.” He sighed, looked at her and apparently concluded she was determined. “All right. Just stay on the hillside in the open and keep the radio with you. I’ll do the grocery shopping as fast as I can. No point in both of us going into town.”

She touched his arm. “I can take care of myself, Craig. If anyone bothers me, he’ll regret it, okay? They’ve got to know by now I’m just a painter. Neither of us have done a thing to make them nervous. They’ll probably just stay clear.”

“Probably.” He clearly didn’t feel he had a good argument against that. “I may be a little while. I have some things to take care of.”

“That’s fine. I’ll probably be back here by noon or one, because the dust will start filling the air again.”

“If you’re not,” he warned, “I’ll come looking for you.”

“Fair enough.” She laughed, gave him a quick kiss, enjoying the fact that she could do that so freely now, and went to climb into her car.

It didn’t strike her until she was setting up her easel on the hillside, hunting for the firmest ground, that he had said he had things to do.

What things? Surely he wasn’t going to confront Buddy again? Or take a look at those trip wires?

No, of course not. It was daylight now, and Craig was nobody’s fool. She spread her tarp and settled in.

* * *

“She’s painting again,” Cap remarked, looking through binoculars from one of the new watchtowers.

“So?” Buddy asked, standing beside him. “That’s all she ever does.”

“True,” Cap admitted. “That and hanging out with the ranger at that cabin.”

Buddy sighed. Cap had begun to seriously irritate him. “The ranger’s not a problem. He hasn’t even been back over here. If he’s got the hots for her, so much the better. He’ll be thinking about everything else but us.”

“What about your plan to turn us into heroes?”

Buddy shifted uneasily. It was a good plan, if they did it right. He was just worried that Cap might go too far.

“As long as she just gets lost and we can find her, it’s a good plan. If you kill her, this place is going to be crawling with Feds after that hiker. It won’t just be Craig. It’ll be the damned FBI. That wouldn’t be smart.”

“Depends.” But Cap lowered the binoculars. “Okay, I’ll play along. We’ll cause her a small accident today. Then when the search starts, a few of us join up.”

“Me included. They know me. If I don’t show up, it’ll look weird. The important thing is to make them forget about us. To look like the good guys to them.”

“It would help,” Cap said.

Buddy looked at him, feeling that Cap was agreeing with him without meaning it. He knew Cap had big plans, but in simple fact, Buddy couldn’t imagine how starting them here in this isolated place would make a damn bit of difference. He remembered Idaho, damn it.

“The thing is, we look innocent. They leave us alone and we can keep planning the big action.”

Cap nodded and let the binoculars dangle from his neck. “I’ll send one of my guys out to set up a problem. Then maybe he can lure her into that gorge again. You can live with a broken leg, right?”

The tone was almost scornful. “I just don’t want her dead. Neither should you if you’re half as smart as you seem to think.”

Cap frowned at him in a way that made Buddy climb down from the tower and head for his own cabin. His wife, Vera, was looking worn and tired these days, probably because she and the girls were having to cook and clean up after so many more. He felt a twinge of conscience.

But he also knew something else. If Cap went too far, he didn’t want his family in any potentially dangerous crossfire. Not like what happened in Idaho.

“Stay close,” he said to her. “You and the kids. The minute anything seems to be going cockeyed, you get to the safe room and don’t leave it.”

Weariness gave way to fright. “Buddy, what’s going on?”

“Nothing yet. You know what I told you to watch out for. You keep them kids close, hear?”

* * *

Craig loathed leaving Sky behind. No, there was no specific threat. No, he couldn’t point to a damn thing except there were new people haunting these woods carrying AR-15s, which wasn’t illegal, and if they were just playing at being soldiers he couldn’t say a whole helluva lot about any of it. There’d been no overt threat. He didn’t like that one of them had followed her the other day, but on the other hand she was probably right: after checking out her kit they’d have to realize she was exactly what he’d told them she was, a painter.

Except that the increasing amount of surveillance they seemed to be under was making him jumpy as a cat. It was almost like the tightening of a noose. Which didn’t make sense. Why the hell would they care about a painter?

So they shouldn’t pay Sky any further attention. Did he like that one of them may have been lurking outside the cabin yesterday? Definitely not. But it wasn’t like he could prove it was one of them. People wandered these woods all the time, and while the numbers weren’t huge, there were still about twenty or thirty hikers and campers out here at any one time. Then there were the poachers. They probably constituted a bigger threat than Buddy and his friends.

In fact, it could well have been a poacher who mixed it up with that bear yesterday. That was more likely than that it had been one of the toy soldiers.

Sky wouldn’t have a thing to fear from the poachers. They didn’t like attention, and the only people who could cause them trouble were the rangers.

So... He blew a long, loud breath between his lips and told himself to calm down. He usually wasn’t one to get worked up, but since Sky’s arrival he’d been getting worked up a whole lot.

She awakened his every protective instinct, and he seemed to have a whole lot of those. Worse, he had figured out that she desperately needed affirmation in every way. She had been a trained soldier. Hector had undermined her in a lot of ways. She was struggling to regain her confidence, and to have argued with her about her ability to look after herself would have been wounding.

He couldn’t do that to her.

And to think that such a short time ago he would have thought her perfectly safe in that clearing, just sitting there painting. What had been the threat to her then? A bear? Not likely when all she was doing was sitting there. The smells of human and those oil paints would have kept any sensible bear quite a distance away.

So why was he so certain that things had changed? Because that Cap guy had been hanging around on the fringes of so many radical groups that espoused terrorism? No reason they would pick on one woman.

But then there was the hiker. Much as he’d tried to minimize that when talking about it with her, it still nagged at him. A lot of things could kill you out there alone in the woods. No question. A fall, a stumble, hypothermia if you got caught in the rain...yeah, whole lot of reasons. And no good reason to tie it to Buddy and Cap.

He stopped in at headquarters, let Dusty loose in the corral with a few other horses and spoke for a few minutes with Lucy.

“I’ll make sure someone goes that way at least once before you get back,” Lucy promised him. “We’ll keep an eye on her for you. I just wish I knew what was coming down. Or if something even is.”

So did he. Climbing back into the truck, he headed into town, determined to stop and see Gage and find out about this ATF move. As law enforcement himself, he had a right to know.

Then he was going to stock two coolers and hightail it back up there.

Because for some reason he kept seeing those trip wires he hadn’t been able to check out last night. Tonight, he promised himself. Tonight he was going to make sure they were innocent...or not.

Having an action plan settled him a bit. He knew he ought to insist Sky stay in town until this was over, but he figured he wouldn’t get very far with that. That woman was stubborn.

And for some reason that made him grin. Her arguments might sometimes seem to be all over the map, but he had figured out the gist: Sky had something to prove, and to her that meant sticking this out and being his sidekick.

Okay, then. They’d deal with it.

The back offices at the Conard County Sheriff’s department had turned into an ad hoc operations center.

Gage greeted him with “We’re getting ready for the ATF.”

“What are they going to do? Knock on Buddy’s gate?”

“I don’t know. I just found out that first sheet we got on Cap McDonald wasn’t all of it. He’s on a terrorist watch list and has been for a while.”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. That and what the hell is he doing at Buddy’s place. Buddy’s no terrorist. He likes to dream about it, but he wouldn’t do it.”

“No, he just wants to survive it. I’d bet he doesn’t know much about Cap.”

“Apparently not. But while you and I will distinguish, I’m not sure about ATF.”

“They won’t want another Idaho.”

“Damn, I hope not. The Jacksons have always been on the fringe around here, pretty much keeping to themselves. At least since I moved here a couple of decades ago. But they’ve always been harmless fringe. You know that.”

Craig nodded. “I’ve talked to him any number of times over the past three years. I wouldn’t have pegged him for trouble. So maybe we need to be worrying about him. Just suppose Cap sees Buddy’s place as a base of operations. What if Buddy gives him trouble?”

“Then Cap had better move on because it won’t go unnoticed for long.”

“Sure it would. They never go to town. Who’d notice if they just disappeared?”

“You for starters,” Gage said. “My wife for another. Vera Jackson borrows books from the library on a regular basis to help teach her kids. Emma, my wife, lets her keep them for a month at a time, rather than two weeks, but she’d notice if Vera didn’t show up.”

“And you’d hear about it?”

“Believe it. I wouldn’t get a decent night’s sleep until I went out there to make sure Vera and the kids were okay. Cap may not realize that. He might think nobody would notice.”

Craig rubbed his chin. “Then maybe Buddy’s got a whole lot to worry about.”

“It’s possible. We don’t know all about what’s going on out there, though. As for the ATF...you’re senior officer on the forest lands. I’m going to make sure they understand that very clearly.”

“I’m not at their level. The kinds of crimes I investigate don’t rise to that level.”

“But you know the forest. You know the Jacksons. And it is your job. If nothing else, they’ll have to keep you in the loop.”

That didn’t exactly make Craig feel any better. He was a federal law enforcement officer, yes. But he also knew the limits of his experience: poachers, the all-too-frequent idiots who thought the isolated forest would be a great place to raise some cannabis, and other miscreants.

But he understood what Gage was trying to do. He was trying to keep a federal officer in the loop to protect the Jacksons...unless they were in it up to their necks.

The more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed to Craig. Gage was right, the guy was a bit of a nut, but so far he’d been a harmless nut. If he crossed that borderline, it would most likely be the result of Cap’s influence.

On the terrorist watch list? The thought sent chills down his spine and he hurried to pick up ice and supplies.

Sky might be safe out there, seeing as how she posed no threat to those guys, but he was incapable of understanding the mindset of a terrorist. They struck him as no different from any other mass murderer or serial killer, except they cloaked it in some political reason.

He didn’t get those guys at all.

And that made him fear for Sky.

* * *

Well before noon, the breeze had begun to stir up enough dust that the light lost its clarity. Edges that had been sharp earlier began to blur ever so slightly. Sky sighed contentedly and started to put her brushes away. She snapped enough pictures earlier to have captured the transparency of the light, and digital cameras were far better for that than film, which softened everything just a bit. Not so much that most people would notice, but she did.

She had just finished putting her brushes in a plastic bag along with a little cleaner to keep them soft when she heard something from the woods.

Glancing over, she saw something dart away. She froze, almost certain it had had the shape of a man. She hadn’t felt watched most of the morning, so she tried to talk herself into thinking she must have seen something else. Fifteen minutes later, packing all the while, she was still trying to talk herself into believing it was nothing, and since she didn’t catch sight of anything else, it should have been easy to believe.

But if there was one thing she trusted, it was her eyes. They were tuned the way a musician’s ears were tuned, to a level of exquisite perception. She didn’t mistake shapes.

She wrapped a rubber band around the bag holding her brushes and tucked them into her kit while she debated what to do. Craig had told her to stay here. But if something was going on in those woods, he needed to know it.

Then she heard a cry. It came from quite a distance, toward the gorge, but it sounded like someone had gotten hurt. There was no longer any question.

She jumped up, grabbed the radio and tried to call Lucy to tell her what was up. All she got was crackling static.

That was weird. She knew this model of radio and she should have been able to bounce a signal off a satellite and talk to anyone around here on the same frequency. Maybe the battery was dying? Or maybe some atmospheric thing after the storm of yesterday. She could go back to her car and drive down to the station.

But the cry haunted her. If someone was seriously hurt, time could be of the essence. How long would it take to get to the station, then send out a search party?

She keyed the radio again, and through the static was glad to hear what she thought was Lucy, although the signal was breaking up so badly she couldn’t be absolutely certain.

“Lucy, it’s Sky. It sounds to me like someone just got hurt in the woods. I heard a scream.”

A broken answer came back. The only words she could make out were “mountain lion.”

Did Lucy mean mountain lions could sound like someone in pain? Or was it a warning to watch out for them? Keying the radio again, she told Lucy which direction she was heading but got no response. She hoped like hell her message had gotten through.

In the meantime, she picked up everything that could conceivably be useful from her canteen to her palette knives. She’d just keep trying the radio, but she couldn’t ignore that scream.

Then she trotted toward the woods. She would go no farther than the gorge, she promised herself. She could find her way back from there without any trouble. Wandering around wildly with nothing to guide her wouldn’t be smart. She paused frequently to check the pocket compass she carried, making sure to keep her bearings straight and true. From time to time she picked up a few dry sticks and left a trail marker, just in case.

The path she left behind disappeared swiftly as water-filled grasses sprang right back up. When she hit the forest floor, it was a little spongy, but it, too, rebounded. Ten minutes later it would have been hard even for an experienced tracker to follow her trail.

She never dreamed that someone was following her, removing the trail markers and all other signs of her passage.

* * *

Craig stopped at headquarters to let Lucy know what was coming tomorrow. But Lucy diverted his news about the ATF almost immediately.

“Sky called. The signal was all broken up, so all I know is that she heard someone scream. I told her it could be a mountain lion, leave it alone and leave the area.”

“I hope she listened.”

“I don’t know. We lost signal again, damned if I know why. Probably a bad battery. I asked Don to go check on her, but he’s all the way to hell and gone because we lost another hiker. Most of our people are out there searching. Don said he’d head her way, though.”

Craig’s skin began to crawl with uneasiness. “Where are they looking for a hiker?”

“Up in Murfree’s Pass.”

“Great.” At the far end of the forest. “All right, I’ll check on her.”

Lucy half smirked. “I kinda thought you would.”

“Did anybody ever tell you that you think too much?”

Lucy’s laugh followed him out the door.

Dusty welcomed him gladly, and seemed more than ready to be tied again to the pickup. Making sure not to move too fast for the horse, Craig picked his way up the service road as quickly as he dared. Dusty trotted in the grasses alongside the road, beside the truck, tossing his head as if he enjoyed the clear, sunny day. After all that rain yesterday, he probably did.

“Damn, Dusty,” Craig said, “women cause a lot of trouble. You know that? No, how would you know that? They gelded you before you had a chance to find out.”

Dusty snorted but didn’t break stride.

“I mean, Sky is a grown, capable woman, right? So why the hell should I be worried? She went out to paint, the way she was doing before she even met me. She was doing just fine on her own without me. She even has combat experience and training, something most women don’t have. So I’m stupid to be all worried, right?”

Dusty didn’t answer. Of course.

“Just because something weird is going on over at Buddy’s doesn’t mean she’s in any danger. Hell, Don saw those guys playing their little games in the woods, but there’s absolutely no reason they should go beyond that, not unless they’re hunting for some serious trouble. Are they that stupid? I doubt it.”

Again no answer from his companion. Talking to a horse had its advantages, in that he didn’t get any back talk, but sometimes it was seriously unsatisfying.

Then he asked himself probably the most important question of all: Would he be nearly as worried about any of this if Sky weren’t in the equation?

The answer: no. Most definitely no. He had confidence in his ability to deal with damn near everything that life delivered his way. So why shouldn’t he give the same courtesy to Sky? She might not know the forest the way he did, but she sure as hell knew a lot of other stuff that could be useful, even out here. She was trained, damn it. She hadn’t just walked off a street like a lost lamb.

That settled him down some and he eased up on the pedal a bit, giving Dusty a breather. Not much farther now to where Sky usually parked.

Her car was still there. Good sign? Bad sign. He cussed, parked right behind her and got out to saddle Dusty. Dusty stood perfectly still for him, his flanks almost quivering in anticipation.

Craig patted him. “You like a good ride, don’t you?”

Of course he did. It wasn’t just running around and working off energy that Dusty liked. Craig had long since figured out that the horse liked feeling useful, too.

When he was sure he had everything, he mounted Dusty and headed along a narrow deer track that would take him to the place where Sky liked to paint. Overhanging limbs kept him from moving too fast, and his heartbeat seemed to increase with every little delay.

If Sky thought someone needed help, she wouldn’t hesitate. He was sure of that, as sure as he was of anything about her. She dove right in, wanting to be helpful and part of any solution. Wanting to protect. That seemed to be as strong in her as it was in him.

He hoped like hell that she’d listened to Lucy about the possibility she’d heard a mountain lion. They didn’t make the sound often, but he’d heard it on occasion: it sounded just like a man screaming, very different from their usual roars and growls. It could fool someone who hadn’t heard it before.

He worried, too, because an experience like Iraq seemed to burn most normal fears and cautions out of people. Well, of course it did. You had to do things that ordinary folks would never do. You had to learn to stifle spine-chilling fear in favor of action. And then it just seemed to burn out, as if you grew dead to it.

So she wasn’t going to stand there wringing her hands and she clearly hadn’t returned to her vehicle.

He swore quietly and watched Dusty’s ears prick. Leaning forward, he patted Dusty’s neck. “Not you, boy. Not you.”

It seemed like a lifetime passed before he reached the clearing, and what he saw jumped his concern into high gear. Her painting kit lay in the grass. Her radio was gone as was her tarp, and maybe some other stuff. She had evidently taken off to investigate the scream.

It was exactly what he would have done, so he couldn’t blame her.

From horseback he couldn’t see any signs of where she had gone. Dismounting, he scanned the area around her painting supplies and couldn’t glean anything either. Grasses full of water sprang back quickly, and on this slope the water had drained too fast to leave muddy ground that would record depressions.

He cussed again and reached for his shoulder microphone. “Sky? Sky, do you read?”

Atmospheric static answered him. He tried three more times before Lucy broke in. “I told you. Her radio’s out. They found that hiker, so everyone is heading your way now. Any idea which way she went?”

“None. It’s like she was beamed out of here.” That meant he needed to stay put until the others arrived. Coordination in a search was essential.

“She’s probably all right, Craig,” Lucy said almost gently.

He didn’t need gentleness, he needed action. “Yeah. But I’d like to see for myself. How long since she tried to talk to you?”

“An hour, maybe a little longer.”

“Hell.” An hour. Easy enough for her to have walked three or four miles in almost any direction. And with every minute he waited, she could be going farther. Or she could be coming back. Regardless, someone had to be planted right here until she returned or others arrived.

He looked at the sun, realized that in little more than an hour or so it would sink behind the western peaks, dimming the light, making it harder.

The only thing going for her right now was that he was certain she had good navigation skills. He didn’t know if she had a compass, but she knew how to mark her own trail so she could follow it back. All the military training would stand her in good stead, even if this turned out to be nothing but a stroll.

Damn, she must have been propelled by the sense that someone was in serious need of help, because he could count at least a dozen reasons not to go haring off alone in what might be a dangerous situation.

Then he remembered the gorge she had told him about discovering. That meant she had gone into these woods alone before. Maybe he needed to have a good talk with her about the dangers out here. This wasn’t Iraq and it wasn’t Tampa. Something as simple as a twisted ankle could kill someone who was out here alone.

Dusty started grazing on the greened-up grass and Craig squatted, waiting, using his binoculars, surveying the area all around for any sign of her passage, an indication of which way she might have gone.

He found nothing.

* * *

Sky heard the cry again, and she could make out the word: help. It sounded fainter, weaker, but it pulled her directly to that gorge she had discovered the day before yesterday. In the thick woods, she might be mistaken about the source of the sound and she knew it, but it was the only direction she had. She tried the radio again, but couldn’t get a decent signal.

Damn. Well, to the gorge and no farther. Craig would probably have plenty of words for her about doing this solo, and she wouldn’t blame him. But she couldn’t ignore that cry, either. Mountain lion? No way. Somebody was hurt.

But she was also aware that she was no woodsman and had no illusions about her ability to find a single person in such a large area with such heavy growth. There was just so far she could take this. If she didn’t find anything by the time she reached the gorge, she was going to have to head back and hope that Lucy had summoned help.

She heard water rushing ahead of her now and realized she had almost arrived. She quickened her pace, intending to stand on the edge of the ravine and call loudly to see if anyone answered. The roar of the water, the river engorged by yesterday’s rain, would probably make it difficult for her to be heard even a few feet away, but she had to try it. Besides, she might see something.

She reached the edge of the ravine and put her hands to her mouth, calling, “Hello? Hello?”

The roaring water deadened the sound, preventing even an echo. Regardless, she tried a couple more times.

She was just about to turn around and head back when something caught her eye. It looked like orange fabric, the kind a lot of people wore in the woods so they wouldn’t be mistaken for a deer—probably a wise thing even when it wasn’t hunting season, given what Craig had said about poachers. She was willing to bet people tried to hunt all kinds of things out of season here.

She walked a few more steps to a place that looked like she could climb down without too much trouble. Turning around, she hooked the radio on her belt, then knelt and backed up until she could feel the edge. Lying on her stomach, she pushed back until she bent at the waist and could feel rocks beneath take her weight. She eased downward, feeling her way, sure there were enough protruding rocks to make it safely. It wasn’t that steep, after all, and getting down was always the hard part. Coming up was ever so much easier, although what she would do if she found someone in dire need remained to be seen. Well, there had to be easier ways out of here, and she could always go for help once she knew.

Her arms were over her head, clinging to the lip of the gorge while her feet felt for another place to support her. Just then, the rock she was hanging on to gave way.

She barely had time to realize she was falling. Her awareness filled with blossoming pain as she tumbled, hitting sharp rocks. Then she came to an abrupt halt. The pain that erupted in her leg turned the world black.

She passed out.