came from his throat was unfamiliar, but it sounded vaguely like a woofing bear.
He lurched from smoking tree to smoking tree, burning the flesh on his hands, to the cave entrance. It was eerily quiet; the buzzing in his ears was competing with the pounding of his heart, and he took in the horrible scene with the sound off.
Bits of clothing and hair. Shards of bed covering and chunks of electronic equipment. Her shoe, the foot still in it.
The bear sound came again, low and rumbling, choked off at the end in a yelping sob.
He reached out with a trembling hand and grasped a thick strand of her long black hair that was stuck to the cave wall, and he pulled it into his face and smelled it and it smelled like her.
Nate turned slowly, still holding the hank of hair to his face. The figures he had tracked earlier were nearly to the top of the canyon rim, specks in the distance. The vapor trail of the rocket wasn’t entirely dispersed, and arched across the void. It all came back to him with sickening clarity.
He searched in vain for his weapon inside. It was hard to see in the dust and smoke that hung there, and what he did see and touch enraged and nauseated him. Alisha had always been so much more than a sum of her parts, but that’s all she was now: parts. He felt hollow, as if they’d killed him as well.
And he decided that if he didn’t go after them immediately, they would get away, weapon or not.
He would tear them apart with his hands.
He raced down the canyon. His head pounded and he fought through it as he plunged headlong into the river, splashing through the icy thigh-high current, slipping on slick submerged river rocks, going under, nearly drowning, getting completely turned around by the time he broke through the surface twenty yards downriver from where he went in.
But the cold water served to wake him up a bit, sharpening his senses a few clicks, and when he staggered up the other bank he imagined the two killers close to the top of the canyon now. He imagined them chuckling, high- fiving, patting themselves on the back for the fine shot, oblivious to the fact that he’d soon be on them.
Nate charged up the rough foot trail, his knees pumping, his breath coming in labored honks. He strode through the brush from which he was sure the rocket had been fired and paused to turn and look. He could see the top of his cave from there. A curl of smoke came out of it, like a child’s drawing of a chimney. He noted a Coors beer bottle that had been tossed aside, as well as a couple of bottle caps in the dirt. There would be fingerprints. Even DNA left behind. This confused him, but didn’t slow him. It made no sense that any of the people from his past who were after him would be so sloppy. The Five were professionals, as he had once been. They wouldn’t leave evidence.
Near the top of the canyon, when he could see the rim and the light blue sky with fat-bellied rain clouds scudding across it, he stopped for a moment to catch his breath. It would do no good to be exhausted when he found them. He’d need all his speed and strength to rip their throats out.
They were gone.
He walked unsteadily on the trail, stepping in their footprints to and from the canyon. He saw a spatter of dark blood from one of them beading on the dust and he ground it into the dirt with his heel. Heat shimmered over the sagebrush flat, and he could see the back bumper of their pickup retreating at least a mile away. Dust from the tires still hung in the air.
Nate stood up tall and straddled the trail. He lifted his right arm and placed his left hand beneath the right fist that still clutched Alisha’s hair. He pointed his right index finger and cocked his thumb like a hammer and sighted down his forearm. The thumb fell.
He said, “You’re dead.”
Halfway back down the canyon, Nate sat and put his head in his hands. One of the lone thunderclouds settled over the canyon and plunged it into shadow, and errant raindrops smacked onto the dry ground and freckled the rocks in the trail. He lifted his face to the rain, knowing nothing would ever wash this day away. To Alisha’s spirit, he said, “I’m so sorry.”
Joe Pickett was finishing his statement across the desk from Deputy Sollis in the County Building when Marcus Hand arrived. Dusk painted the windows and, despite the furious activity that had gone on throughout the day, the squad room was oddly silent. Most of the sheriff’s department was at dinner, except for Deputy Reed, who was still at the crime scene assisting the DCI forensics crew as well as the crane operators who, as far as Joe knew, were still trying to figure out how to lower The Earl’s body from the windmill without dropping it.
Joe’s cell phone was backed up with three messages from Marybeth, no doubt wondering what was going on, and he held the phone in his hand as if to alleviate his guilt at not responding sooner. Sollis was a two-fingered typist, and his fingers were as thick as his neck, and they’d spent most of the previous hour going over the circumstances related to the discovery, the climb up the tower, and the condition of The Earl’s body that Joe could recall. Every other word Sollis typed, it seemed, was misspelled or wrong, and he was constantly leaping backwards in the text and correcting his errors. When Joe offered to key it in for him, Sollis shot him a murderous glare.
“You say his boots looked big,” Sollis said. “What do you mean by that?”
“Centrifugal force,” Joe said. “He’d been up there spinning so long and so fast that the fluids in the body were driven toward his extremities . . .”
“So you’re a forensic scientist as well,” Sollis sneered, rolling his eyes. “I thought you were just the game warden. Turns out you’re an expert on centrifical force, too.”
“Centrifugal,” Joe corrected. “I’d suggest you look it up, but it would take an hour for you to Google it using your sausage fingers.”
“Look, buddy,” Sollis said, turning in his chair away from his monitor and thrusting his meaty face halfway across the desk, “that’s about enough of that crap from the likes of you . . .”
Joe leaned forward as well, fed up, nearly but not quite wanting Sollis to start something, when he noticed the deputy’s attention was elsewhere, his tiny eyes squinting over Joe’s shoulder.
“This is the sheriff’s department,” Sollis said over Joe’s shoulder. “Can I help you with something?”
The voice that responded was deep and smooth, like thick syrup: “Sir, I’m well aware of my location. I’m also
