“What did he say?”
Joe tried to recall the conversation verbatim, and repeated it.
She frowned. “The only thing I understand is he wants us to go. That I got. What was the rest about?”
Joe said, “He thinks Nemecek has someone inside. And so do I.”
He stood and said, “I’ve got to go out for a while.” Marybeth stepped aside, puzzled. “Where are you going?”
“Out,” he said. “I’ll ask Mike to hang around until I get back.”
He told her his suspicions and her eyes widened and she raised her balled fist up to her mouth.
She said, “I won’t even tell you to be careful,” she said. “Because if you don’t, I’ll kill you.”
He handed her the copy of The Looming Tower. “You might want to look through this,” he said. “You’re a much faster reader than I am. See if you can find anything that might relate to Nate, or Nemecek. Maybe you can find something about their old unit, or something they might have been involved in.”
She took the book and eyed him warily. “You mean when I take a break from packing and organizing the girls?”
He nodded. “Yup.”
“I’ll see what I can find,” she said.
As Joe reached for his coat, he noticed Lucy standing in the mudroom, a look of annoyance on her face.
“Did you forget something?” she asked.
He paused as he pulled on his parka, and it came to him. “Oh, Brueggemann on Facebook. I did forget.”
“Just as well,” she said. “He doesn’t have a page. There was nothing to find.”
Joe paused while he took it in.
“It’s weird,” she said. “ Everybody has a Facebook page. But not him.”
“I don’t,” Joe said, reaching for his shotgun.
“I mean everybody young,” Lucy said.
“Oh, thanks.”
25
Seven miles north of Crowheart on U.S. 287, past midnight, Nate Romanowski broke the long silence and said to Haley, “There’s an airport in Riverton with a commuter flight to Denver in the morning, where you can connect to wherever you want to go. I’ll give you money for a ticket.”
“Keep your money,” she said. “I don’t need it, and I’m not going anywhere.”
He shook his head and sighed.
“You’re stuck with me, dooley,” she said, her jaw set defiantly.
When he didn’t respond, she turned her head and looked out at the darkness and falling snow. “Where are we?”
“Out of the mountains,” he said. “If you could see anything, you’d see the Wind River Mountains to the west.”
“Okay.”
Nate gestured to the left. “Crowheart Butte is out there. On the other side is Bald Mountain. The road goes between them.”
They’d not encountered a single oncoming car for two hours.
“How do you know?” she asked. “I can’t see a thing anywhere.”
“I can feel it,” he said.
She snorted. “And how does one acquire this skill?”
He shrugged. “It comes from experience. Climbing trees, burrowing into the dirt, watching clouds go over. You’ve just got to open yourself up and not clutter your mind with thinking. Have you ever skied with your eyes closed?”
“Of course not.”
“Try it,” he said. “All of your senses open up. You can feel the terrain through your feet, and smell how close you are to the trees. You don’t have to go fast. Just try it sometime. The contours of the slope and the surroundings become clear even though you can’t see them with your eyes. It’s like being in a dark room. As you walk around it, you discover how big it is, where the tables are, how thick the carpet is. Sometimes, you can hear your own breath and your beating heart.”
“You sound kind of nuts,” she said.
“My friend Joe Pickett says the same thing.”
“Maybe we’re right,” she said.
“Maybe. But test it out,” he said softly. “Close your eyes. Crowheart Butte will come to you. You’ll know where it is…”
After a few minutes, she opened her eyes. “I’ve got nothing,” she confessed.
“Practice,” he whispered.
The highway cut through a vast carpet of foot-high sagebrush that gathered clumps of snow in the palms of its upturned, clawlike branches. But it wasn’t yet cold enough on the valley floor for the road to ice up.
“You said you wanted to ride this out until we found the guys who killed Cohen and the others,” he said. “We found them and put them down. Now you can go home and spend some time with your dad.”
“I already did that,” she said. “I said goodbye. Now I’m committed to riding this out.”
“You’re sure?” he asked.
“You don’t sound that disappointed,” she said.
“Remember the rules,” he said. “I can’t guarantee your safety. And I can’t promise you won’t see something much worse than what you saw back there.”
She hesitated, and for a moment he thought she might reconsider. Instead, she said, “Just drive. You said you know where this Nemecek is located, right?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “Unless that guy back there was lying or somehow tipped off Nemecek. But I don’t think so, given the circumstances.”
She cringed at the word circumstances and said, “You made that poor man back there make a call on his cell. What was that about?”
“I told him to call his team leader and tell him they’d lost Oscar and you. That you broke out of the cabin sometime during the night and they didn’t know where you went. That you were on the loose and they were coming back to reconnoiter.”
Haley looked over, puzzled. “Why?”
“So it would throw a huge kink in Nemecek’s operation. The idea was to eliminate all the operators in Camp Oscar so they wouldn’t be able to help me. But if two of you got away, Nemecek would need to figure out how to track you down before you went to the cops or the media. It throws his timetable off and threatens the entire operation.”
“Did Nemecek buy it?”
Nate said, “It appears so. He got real quiet and told our operators to meet him at his command post.”
“Is it possible Trucker Cap told him something in code? That Nemecek will be expecting you?”
Nate shrugged, “Unlikely, but possible. I was right there with him, and I could hear both sides of the conversation. Nemecek got very calm and cold. That’s how he reacts to pressure. He doesn’t scream or threaten, he just goes dead. That’s when he’s the most dangerous.”
“So why tip him off that his plan went screwy?” she asked. “Why not just let him think everything is sailing along?”
Said Nate, “It’s a diversion. I want him to coil up for a while and stew in his own juices. If he’s trying to figure out what his next move will be, that family in Saddlestring might have a chance to get out of there before he turns
