“We had a deal,” Joe said, gasping.
“Yes we did,” Portenson said, “and I honored it. But you didn’t have a deal with
“He’s been on our list for quite a while,” McIlvaine said, confirming without saying what the whispering campaign on the radios had been about.
Joe threw himself at Portenson and his fist caught the FBI agent square in the nose, hard, smashing it flat against his face in a concussion of dark red blood. Portenson dropped to the floor, unconscious. Joe tumbled on top of him, cocked his arm back for another blow, when McIlvaine and two other agents tore him away.
Before cuffing Joe around a knotty pine stanchion to keep him out of the way, McIlvaine leaned into his ear again and said: “Don’t you know by now?
Through a fog of rage and betrayal, Joe watched as the assaultteam read Miranda rights to James Langston, chief ranger of Yellowstone Park; Layton Barron, CEO of EnerDyne; Chuck Ward, chief of staff for the governor of Wyoming; and Nate Romanowski,ex-special forces officer and outlaw falconer. Layborn’s body had been rolled up in dustcovers taken from tables in the restaurant. Portenson moaned from where he lay on the couch near the fire, holding a handkerchief to his head.
McIlvaine had ordered up another snow coach from the South entrance to take everyone away. It would be three hours before the tracked vehicle could get to Old Faithful, he reported to his men.
Across the room, Joe and Nate locked eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Joe said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Nate mouthed, “it’s not your fault.”
“It is,” Joe said. “I’ll get you out. I promise.”
“You promise?” Nate said, arching his eyebrows, the words visibly relaxing him, making him smile.
“Stop it!” Joe screamed, but at the same time he felt incrediblyindebted to Nate, wondering if he could possibly come through with his promise and thinking,
That’s when del Ashby shouted, “Hey! where’d McCann go? And where is Olig?”
The room froze with silence. Even Joe turned from Nate and looked around.
The front door burst open, and the FBI agent who had been stationed in the woods entered, shook the snow off his coveralls,and said, “Who just took the snow coach?”
32
The flamers were being lit one by one, the whole line of them, columns of angry fire reaching as high as six feet into the snowy night sky, melting the falling snow with sharp sizzles that sounded like
Clay McCann leaned back against the trunk of a lodgepole pine, noting how the flames played on Olig, made him look biggerand meaner than he really was, making him look like some kind of biblical avenger. The handcuffs bit into the flesh of Mc-Cann’s wrists.
“Just take them off for a minute,” McCann said. “Please? I need to scratch my ear where that maniac tore it off. It really hurts and I need to scratch it.”
“Gee,” Olig said, roaming around looking for more flamers to light, “I really feel for you.”
The stolen snow coach was parked in the trees at the edge of the firelight. McCann could see a reflection of flame in one of the side windows. The pain in his chest had steeled into a steady throb and he was just now able to speak. He recalled how he’d tried to shout as Olig attacked him earlier and hustled him out the front door of the Old Faithful Inn, but the impact of the bulletshad kicked not only the breath out of him but also his abilityto talk.
Finally, Olig walked over to where McCann was sitting.
“I’ve been thinking of you for a long time.”
McCann sighed. “Why weren’t you there that day?”
“Rick and I had a disagreement. I decided to pass on the reunionthis year. I wish I was there.”
McCann smiled malevolently. “I wish you were there too.”
Olig said, “I wondered for months what it could possibly feel like to kill someone. It’s beyond my understanding how someone like you could be so cruel. Someone supposedly with education, like you.”
McCann thought about it for a moment. “It isn’t as hard as you think. It was a means to an end. Nothing personal, like I said earlier.”
Olig seemed to be studying him, his mouth curling with revulsion.
“That makes it worse,” he said.
“Maybe it does,” McCann conceded.
“Get up.”
McCann felt a trill of pain in his groin, and he squirmed. “I’m sure we can work something out if you’ll let me try.”
“Nope,” Olig said. “No deals. Especially with a lawyer who killed my friends.”
“But you’ll be a murderer,” McCann said. “You’ll be as bad as me.”
Olig smiled. “I’ll never be as bad as you.”
“I’m not moving.”
Olig reached out and grabbed McCann’s good ear, asking, “Do we have to go through this again?”
McCann felt the flames on his face as he was pulled toward the hot springs. He thought about running, thought about fighting,thought about trying to negotiate.
The surface of the water smoked with roils of steam, looked oddly inviting. He thought of Sheila, hoped he’d see her again wherever he was going, hoped she wasn’t too angry with him.
He felt a massive, two-handed shove on his back and he was flying forward. The water was so hot it seemed cold.
It was quick.
33
Joe drove lars’s pickup back toward mammoth with Ashby in the passenger seat. It was two-thirty in the morning,the snow had stopped, and the FBI agents had left an hour before with their prisoners en route to Jackson Hole. The snow was deep and soft, but the oversized tires bit well and Joe had no doubt that if he held the vehicle steady and kept it moving forward, he wouldn’t get stuck.
As quickly as they’d come, the storm clouds dissipated, leaving a creamy wash of stars and an ice-blue slice of moon that lit the snow blue-white. Joe didn’t even need his headlights.
He and Ashby hadn’t talked about what happened. Ashby seemed lost in his own thoughts and loyalties, and Joe certainly was. Joe replayed his brief conversation with Ward. Of
Unless, Joe thought darkly, Ward and Rulon expected him to fail. Unless they figured Joe Pickett, shamed ex-game warden, was too bumbling and incompetent to crack the case, thus givingthem the political cover of claiming it had been investigated but nothing was found. And, eventually, Ward would be rich personally and the State of Wyoming would have yet another source of revenue.
Could Rulon possibly be that manipulative? Yes, Joe thought, he could. But was he? Joe wasn’t sure.
The only thing he was sure about, as he drove, was that he’d use the relationship he’d established with the governor to press for Nate Romanowski’s release. The governor owed him that, Joe figured.
