Nowhere to Run

“I’m desperate,” she said. “He expects Joe to be on call for him whenever he needs something. I told him he needs to be on call for us.”

“So Joe’s by himself as far as you know?”

“Yes, damn it. He told me before he went there was some kind of incident down there. Some hunters said they shot an elk and somebody butchered it before they could tag it. He was going up into the mountains to find whoever might have done it.”

“No backup?” Nate said.

Marybeth groaned. “He never has backup. That’s the way game wardens work, Nate. It drives me crazy.”

“What else have you done?”

“I called the sheriff down in Baggs. He didn’t help my state of mind, because he said there were all sorts of rumors about weird things happening in the mountains down there. He said ranchers had pulled their cattle from leases in the mountains because they thought there was something strange going on. And there’d been break-ins at cabins and trailheads.”

“The Sierra Madre,” Nate said. “Isn’t that where that runner vanished a while back?”

“Yes!”

“So the sheriff didn’t give you any help?”

“It’s not that he refused,” she said. “He just wasn’t sure what to do. Joe didn’t exactly file a flight plan, which sounds like Joe. The sheriff called me today and said he’d talked to some ranch hand who’d shuttled Joe’s pickup and horse trailer around the mountains. The truck is sitting there, I guess. But Joe hasn’t shown up. Nobody knows where he is.”

Nate said, “Fly, damn you. Kill something.”

“What?”

“I was talking to a bird. Never mind.” Then: “When is he supposed to be down?”

“Today. This morning. He said before he left that he’d call as soon as he got to his truck.”

Nate said, “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but shouldn’t you give him the chance to call before you conclude something’s wrong? Maybe his phone went bad up in the mountains and he just hasn’t been able to reach you.”

Silence.

Nate said, “Marybeth, are you there?”

She said, “Yes. Are you suggesting I’m hysterical? That I’d call you with no good reason?”

He thought about it. “No.”

“I told you, I have a bad feeling. Something’s happened.”

“Okay,” he said. “Call me again if you hear anything at all.”

“I will. And there’s something else. I know the situation you’re in. I’d never compromise you unless I thought we needed help. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve got to go now.”

He punched Disconnect.

ALISHA WHITEPLUME, the reason he’d climbed out of the canyon, arrived within the hour, as planned. He saw her pickup a mile away through heat waves. He stood and walked down the two-track to meet her.

The truck stopped, and she leaped out. She was luminescent, he thought. Long dark hair with highlights that shined blue in the sun, smooth cappuccino complexion, sparkling dark eyes, rosebud mouth. She wore a starched white sleeveless shirt, tight Lady Wranglers, Ariat lace-up boots, her prized Idaho Falls Rodeo barrel-racing championship buckle. God, he loved her.

Alisha worked as a teacher on the Wind River Indian Reservation near Saddlestring. She’d traded her corporate career to come home.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. He kissed her back.

He said, “Where’s Megan Yellowcalf?”

“With my mom,” she said. Her two-year-old daughter was adopted from Alisha’s best friend, who’d died. “We’ve got the entire weekend before school starts.”

Nate said, “There’s been a development.”

She stepped back, eyeing him.

“We need to go to Saddlestring. And I may need to be gone.”

“Joe?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Not Marybeth?”

“Her, too. Joe may be in trouble.”

“Your thing,” she said.

“My thing.”