in as their foster daughter. She was nine years old and halfway through third grade at Saddlestring Elementary when Jeannie returned to the valley with the Sovereigns and took her back with a legal maneuver. The Sovereigns were a motley collection of Montana Freemen, survivalists, and conspiracy theorists lead by an old bear of a man named Wade Brockius who chose the Bighorns to establish a mountain outpost during the worst winter of recent memory and make their stand. Although the Sovereigns had really broken no laws other than overstaying their campground permit, a rogue Forest Service district supervisor named Melinda Strickland, with assistance from overeager FBI, BATF, and local police, surrounded the Sovereign camp and forced the issue.
The memories were still painfully fresh because they’d never faded very far beneath the surface, and they came back and he was there again . . .
He had been slumped against the outside of the command Sno-Cat, but he now stood up. He rubbed his face hard. He didn’t know the procedure for a hostage situation—they didn’t teach that to game wardens—but he knew this wasn’t it. This was madness.
He reached into his snowmobile suit and found his compact binoculars. Moving away from the Sno-Cat, he scanned the compound. The nose of Brockius’s trailer faced the road. Through the thin curtains, he could see Brockius just as Munker had described.
Then he saw someone else.
Jeannie Keeley was now at the window, pulling the curtain aside to look out. Her face looked tense, and angry. Beneath her chin was another, smaller, paler face. April.
“Fire a warning shot,” Melinda Strickland told Munker. . . .
The slim black barrel of a rifle slid out of blinding whiteness and swung slowly toward the trailer window. Joe screamed “NO!” as he involuntarily launched himself from the cover of the vehicles in the direction of the shooter. As he ran, he watched in absolute horror as the barrel stopped on a target and fired. The shot boomed across the mountain, jarring the dreamlike snowy morning violently awake.
Immediately after the shot, Joe realized what he had just done, how he had exposed himself completely in the open road with the assault team behind him and the hidden Sovereigns somewhere in front. Maybe the Sovereigns were as shocked as he was, he thought, since no one had fired back.
But within the hush of the snowfall and the faint returning echo of the shot, there was a high-pitched hiss. It took a moment for Joe to focus on the sound, and when he did he realized that its origin was a newly severed pipe that had run between a large propane tank on the side of the trailer and the trailer itself. The thin copper tubing rose from the snow and bent toward the trailer like a rattlesnake ready to strike. He could clearly see an open space between the broken tip of the tubing and the fitting on the side of the trailer where the pipe should have been attached. High-pressure gas was shooting into the side vents of the trailer.
He looked up to see a flurry of movement behind the curtains inside the trailer a split second before there was a sudden, sickening
Suddenly, a burning figure ran from the trailer, its gyrations framed by fire, and crumpled into the snow.
Joe stood transfixed, staring at the open window where he had last seen April. It was now a blazing hole.
The Sovereigns had scattered on snowmobiles, Sno-Cats, skis, and four-wheel-drives. It was chaos. He’d chased down Munker and found him mortally injured.
When he returned to the Sovereigns’ camp . . .
He couldn’t even speak. He stared at the smoldering carcass of the trailer. It had scorched the snow and exposed the earth beneath it—dark earth and green grass that didn’t belong here. Melted snow mixed with soot had cut miniature troughs, like spindly black fingers, down the hillside. When he stared at the black framework, all he could see was the face of April Keeley as he last saw her. She was looking out of the window, her head tucked under the chin of her mother. April’s face had been emotionless, and haunted. April had always been haunted. She had never, it seemed, had much of a chance, no matter how hard he and Marybeth had tried. He had failed her, and as a result, she was gone. It tore his heart out.
Joe stood there, as the snow swirled around him, then felt a wracking sob burst in his chest, taking his remaining strength away. His knees buckled and his hands dropped to his sides and he sank down into the snow, hung his head, and cried.
And he cried now, six years later, hot tears dropping on Tube’s head and snout. Joe was always shocked by the appearance of his own tears, as if he’d forgotten he was capable of them. Angrily, he wiped them away.
When he recovered, he called Marybeth. It was after one in the morning, but he knew she’d be awake.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Nearly to Casper,” he said. Which meant still three hours away.
“This won’t be like our usual reunion,” she said, as if in warning.
“I know.” The only good thing about the distance of his district from their home was getting back together. They missed each other and yearned for each other terribly, and seeing each other was still . . . wild. Not this time, though.
He said, “You know what’s always bothered me about that day on Battle Mountain? I’ve replayed that day over and over in my head for six years. But you know what’s always bothered me the most?”
“What?”
“If it had been Sheridan or Lucy in that trailer, I think I would have gone in after either one of them.”
“You could have been killed trying, Joe.”
“I know that. But I think I would have
