The Last Family

5

The two men who stepped into the narrow dirt street from the Ford Explorer were trouble. Aaron Clark, alone in his general store, knew it as soon as he saw them. He watched as they looked the town over and then turned their attention to his store. They came inside with the demeanor of gunslingers, sweeping the store with cold, measuring eyes. Aaron, who had been sorting mail, cut his eyes to the short-barreled Wingmaster pump shotgun that lay under the counter. You just never know-he had learned that from years of living on the edge of nowhere. The men were wearing military-style eyeglasses, new hunting boots, and factory-stiff canvas game jackets. Aaron knew they weren’t fly fishermen, and elk and mule deer weren’t in season for a spell. Aaron assumed the coats were hiding handguns.

Aaron Clark had lived high in the clouds over Montana for sixty-eight years. His store, Clark’s Reward General Merchandise, comprised six low log buildings built one into the other over the course of 120 years. The bulk of his business came from loggers, sportsmen, and the few full-time residents. Mountain people were clannish, but they could abide visiting sportsmen as long as they were well behaved-didn’t shoot livestock, take too many trout, try to make the local women, and didn’t overstay their welcome. Lumberjacks? Well, on the weekends you gave them elbow room and prayed they kept their knives folded and their motor-driven saws in their trucks. Years before Aaron had been forced to kill one who was attempting to saw off the head of the bartender with a knife for refusing to sell him a fifteenth glass of bourbon. Luckily the knife had been dull and there had been time for a barmaid to fetch Aaron. There were still nine buckshot holes in one wall of the saloon where the pattern overestimated the size of the man.

There was a constable who lived fifteen miles away, the county’s sheriff three times that far. The killing of the lumberjack was ruled death by misadventure. The bartender’s neck took sixty stitches but healed eventually, and the locals called him Frankenstein because it looked as if his head had been hastily added to his torso. The residents of Clark’s Reward, Montana, were the serious sort, and even the drunkest of loggers would have to be mighty desperate to challenge any of them. The local axiom was, “If a boy can’t shoot the heart out of a running deer by the time he’s three, he’s considered retarded.”

Aaron Clark wasn’t afraid of the two men he was watching. Hell, he had always stayed in shape and kept a gun handy. Regardless of what the movies might show, never once in the history of the West had any outlaw or gang of outlaws intimidated a town full of citizens into submission. The American West had always been populated by people with the grit and the means to defend their own. It might be different in the cities and towns, but in places like Clark’s Reward, Montana, the law was still pretty much what you made it. Generally speaking, mountain people didn’t run crying to the authorities every time there was trouble; they handled it themselves, in their own way, and usually it stayed handled.

Clark’s Reward wasn’t one of those places you drove into accidentally. People came there on purpose or not at all.

The Black Canyon Inn, down the street, was open only during hunting season, and it had room for about two dozen sportsmen at any given time. The local guides, almost one-fourth of the resident total, bunked clients there. The guides were responsible for attracting most of the area’s cash flow. There was a restaurant/lounge where a line painted on the floor separated the two enterprises. It got lively after the dinner crowd thinned out and the jukebox was plugged in, but it was rare that anyone crossed the line with a drink in hand; the restaurant was a respectable establishment where families could take meals. The bar served three kinds of beer, all domestic, four brands of bourbon, one domestic vodka. Beefeater gin, and a single malt Scotch for the fancy-pants shooters and fly fishermen from the city. The jukebox was filled with country tunes, the whinier the better. A yodel here and there didn’t hurt the chances of a song staying on the menu.

Aaron’s general store also served as the post office, and he accepted payments for electricity from those few who had it and used it. He, like his father and grandfather before him, took the “general store” title to heart. He sold staples, hardware, knives of all manner, utility clothing, Harley-Davidson T-shirts, sleeping bags, snuff, sporting guns and ammunition, fishing rigs, and a thousand other items jammed onto shelves, packed into glass display cases, hanging on the walls or from the ceilings, and loaded into crannies. For people who wanted real choice in groceries or tools, there was the town of Rusty Nail, which had a grocery and hardware store in separate buildings. Aaron ran the store alone because people that far out at the edge of the earth were honest. The rule of the mountain was “Never piss off the people you may need to save your life down the line.” Due to grudges, hungry animals, the weather, and particularly unfriendly geography, people who went out their doors didn’t always manage to get back in.

Aaron watched the men out of the corner of his eye as he sorted the mail. The larger of the two had jet-black hair, a high forehead, and eyes the color of topsoil. The other was five seven or so and looked to Aaron to be wound up tight as a truck spring. They were physically different as a dime and a dollar, but they could have grown up sucking at the same hind tit for all the real difference there was between them. They were tough characters, no question about that, and IRS serious.

The big one ambled over, leaned against the counter, and smiled, showing a line of even teeth. He must do the talking for the pair. The shorter man was looking around, fingering the stock without seeming to take any interest. “Hello there,” the big man said. “Nice place you got here.”

“I help you fellows?” Aaron asked.

“Well, I hope so. We’re looking for a man,” he said. “An old friend of ours.”

“Well, there ain’t as many men around these parts as bears. Have a name, your friend?”

“Paul Masterson.”

Aaron swallowed hard but kept on sorting without looking up. He remembered what Paul had said. A man might show up some day. He’ll probably be alone. He might say he is an old friend. He might have an official vehicle or identification. He might not be armed, and he might seem friendly. He might ask nicely, or he might remove your skin with a straight razor while he asks. He’ll be here to kill me.

Aaron tried to mask the reaction. In the past five years not but one person had asked for Paul Masterson, and the request had caught him off guard. “Paul Masterson, you say? Masterson’s a common enough name. Lots of Mastersons in Montana. Fellow name of Henry Masterson founded this burg.”

“Paul Masterson gets his mail here, doesn’t he?” the larger man said.

“I sort a right smart amount a’ mail. Paul Masterson, you say? What’s he look like?”

The large man shifted against the counter and spread his hands apart, palms down. Aaron could almost feel his breath. “He’s about five foot ten, hundred and seventy pounds give or take. Limps a bit favoring the left leg and has this nasty scar the shape of a horseshoe on the side of his face. He likely wears a patch over his right eye. Be hard to miss.”

Aaron continued to sort through the letters. “Horseshoe shape you said? Horse kick him?”

“A nine-millimeter horse,” the smaller man said.

“Sissy gun. Give me a two hundred forty grain forty-five, preferably long Colt. That’s a bullet you can be proud of.”

“Where is he?” the big man pressed.

Aaron said, “Blond-headed cuss, built like a boxer? Nasty-ass disposition? Hermit.”

“Can you tell us how to find him?”

“I ain’t certain that it’s my place to sell maps to people’s houses. He might not take to having company.”

“Well,” the man said, “can you tell me how often he gets his mail?”

“He comes in for it once a week. Sometimes every two to three weeks. You fellows have business with him or just want to be catching up?”

“Touching base. We’re good friends, like I said.”

“You can prove that?”

Aaron pressed his leg against the stock of the gun and measured in microseconds the time it would take to get it up. It was loaded and the safety was off. He made his hand tremble as he handled the mail. Don’t fret me, you stupid son of a bitch… I’m old and I’m feeble… He figured they’d both be road stiff and wouldn’t think the old man a danger. And they’d have to get their hands into the coats. If push came to shove, the men would eat up three to five seconds getting the handguns out and in operation. By then they’ll be stumbling around dead, looking for the gates a’ hell.

The big man sighed too loudly, lifted his right hand, and slipped it toward the jacket. Aaron moved with the reflexes of a freshly wet cat, bringing the gun up and sticking it under the man’s chin with enough force to draw blood and put him on his tiptoes. The man’s face was pointed up at the rafters even though his eyes were still aimed at Aaron’s. “Don’t you pee on my floor, bub,” Aaron said. Haw’s that for feeble?

The shorter man froze, slowly brought his hands up, palms out, but Aaron didn’t want him to think he could go for it. “You move and I’ll turn his head to jelly,” Aaron said.

“Take it easy,” the smaller man pleaded.

“I was going in for my identification,” the larger man said, speaking without moving his jaw. “Federal officer.”

“Real slow I want you to pinch out whatever you were reaching for,” Aaron said. “It’s a gun, I want it held by the tip of the handle and dropped on this counter.”

The man reached into his jacket slowly, pulled out a small black wallet, and flipped it open on the counter. There was an ID with the man’s picture on it that identified him as a special agent of the Justice Department. Aaron relaxed the gun so the man could come down onto the flats of his feet. “Well, Joe McLean, why didn’t you say? Paul’s told me about a Joe McLean.”

“We were in the DEA together,” Joe McLean said.

“Justice,” Aaron said as he inspected the ID. “DEA get too hot?”

“Left for Justice three years ago. That’s Thorne Greer,” Joe added, jerking his head at the shorter man behind him.

“Thorne Greer? Thorne Greer retired,” Aaron said. “Minding Hollywood pussy, Paul said.”

“We were with Paul in Miami,” Thorne said. “He was our regional director.”

“Then you’ll know what happened to him? Exactly, I mean.”

“We were both there.”

“Tell me the story.” Aaron maintained the grip on the shotgun.

“Man might want us to keep that to himself. If Paul Masterson wants to share the details…”

“I know Masterson’s story. You tell me what happened and I’ll get you to him. Warned me fellows might come after him carrying phony badges. How would I know it for real and true? I never met either of you, and I never saw a Justice Department ID before either.”

Joe McLean looked over his shoulder at Thorne Greer, who nodded.

“Ambush on a Miami pier. There was a shipping container we were told was loaded with four tons of cocaine. It wasn’t. It was loaded with three hundred pounds of plastic explosives, and three machine pistols held by three Colombian gentlemen who had pledged their own lives. In return their families would be looked after, so to speak, by their drug cartel.”

“An ambush,” Aaron added. “Go on.”

“Two of our agents cracked the doors and were killed outright. Booby-trap detonator failed when the doors were forced. The killers were behind three tons of sandbagging. Paul was standing just behind the two agents who opened the doors. The Colombians fired armor-piercing KTW that passed through those boys like they weren’t even there. Thorne here, a fellow by the name of Rainey Lee, seven locals, and I filled the container with holes and took the shooters out, but we were too late. Paul was hit… five times, I think it was. One bullet entered his right eye at the bridge of his nose and exited his temple. Took two in the leg that shattered the big bone-hence the limp. Two through his guts and one passed through his hip. Thorne drove him to the hospital while I held the brains in his head.” Joe held a large palm up to Aaron’s face. “This hand.”

“Steel plate in his head?” Aaron asked.

“Yeah.”

Aaron tensed, tightened his grip. “Stainless or carbon?”

“Plastic,” Thorne corrected. “Some sort of space-age NASA junk. They were only planning to do the final cosmetics if he lived.”

“Why don’t he wear his glass eye?” Aaron asked, knowing the reason wasn’t common knowledge.

“I heard it kept falling out. Socket was all wrong, but he left the hospital soon as he could stand up to get his pants on.”

Aaron remembered well enough. His trip to Miami to see Paul had been the only time he had closed the store in decades. He could ask them how Laura and the kids took it, but he didn’t need to. Reb, at three, had been horrified by the altered face. Erin as well. Laura… Well, they’d had problems they couldn’t deal with. Or wouldn’t. Aaron hadn’t involved himself in the details of the split because Paul had never opened a discussion of it. Aaron believed in leaving people with their own private thoughts.

“That’s pretty nigh on perfect. If you ain’t who you say, I reckon I’m a goner.” Aaron smiled and put the gun away under the counter. “He lives simple up here.” Aaron reached down and placed a wire basket on the counter. “Don’t be offended if he ain’t dancing glad to see you. He don’t always remember people, but I imagine he’ll know you two. Leave your guns here. You’ll find he’s not the same Paul Masterson you used to know.”

“I’m not carrying,” Thorne said, opening his jacket to prove it. Joe McLean handed Aaron his shoulder rig, and Aaron put it in the basket and the basket under the counter.

“Can we drive to him?” Joe asked.

“You can walk. Go out this back door and follow the trail through the pines right on along. You’ll run smack into the back door of the cabin. A half mile. Stay to the right forks or you’ll be cougar food.”

Thorne smiled. “You know him real well?”

“Raised him from a pup.”

The two men went behind the store, where they found the trail. They took it through the woods. There were three forks in the trail and they followed Aaron’s directions. A porcupine lumbered across the trail ahead of them, and the two men joked about being watched. They wound around the side of the mountain, and just about the time their ears picked up the sound of water moving, they came upon the rear of a cabin. It was a log affair set in a clearing. A sheer wall of dark rock curved out fifty feet above the roof and sheltered it from the sky. Smoke rolled up the wall from the chimney.

The view was staggering, a panorama of steep blue mountain walls under a cobalt sky and a stream of clear water turned to rapids where rocks broke the surface.

“My God,” Thorne said. “Takes your breath.”

“Do make a man feel small,” Joe said.

They turned the corner, and as well as they knew Paul Masterson, they would not have recognized the man who stood on the porch in faded jeans, his right eye covered by a patch of black glove leather. The military buzz cut Masterson had always worn had grown into a flowing mane that cascaded helter-skelter over his shoulders. The unkempt beard was long and shot through with white hairs. The only thing that was familiar to the agents was the left, undamaged side of his face. The horseshoe-shaped scar that touched the edge of the eye patch looked like a piece of twine that had been stitched under the skin. Despite the surgeons’ best efforts, the skull was indented on the side where the round had shattered the bone. His left arm hung at a strange angle, the hand trembling like a grounded fish.

“Hi, boys,” Paul said. “You want to come in?”

“Paul. You’ve changed a little,” Thorne said.

“You look like a mountain man,” Joe said. Grizzly Adams scrambling out from under a derailed train.

“Don’t get many visitors up here,” Paul said.

The men shook hands.

Thorne said, “Wondering why?”

“First time I had a twelve-gauge tucked under my chin in years. Then we had to walk through the haunted forest unarmed. That old coot’s some guard dog,” Joe said.

“My uncle Aaron. I got some coffee on. Might as well warm up for the trip back out. And hope Aaron hasn’t got an offer on your pistol. Said you were carrying a forty-five. That impressed him.”

The cabin was larger than it looked from the outside, but the door was barely tall enough to allow Joe to pass without having his scalp nicked. It was built of square logs and hand-hewn beams with large windows in the kitchen and the den that framed the breathtaking view. The furniture was covered with Indian-style wool blankets. The walls presented dozens of Indian artifacts and antique weapons from the 1800s: bowie knives, skinning knives, a few Henry and Winchester rifles, twin Colt Peacemakers. There was a bow and a quiver of arrows with feathers that looked ready to disintegrate. The bedrooms were in a loft over the kitchen and the bathroom. The den’s ceiling was vaulted, and one wall was covered by a bookcase, filled to bursting.

There were three coffee cups on the kitchen table, which Paul began to fill with black coffee from a fire-blackened coffeepot that looked as if it belonged on a Great Plains campfire.

“How’d you know we were coming?”

“Radio.”

“How do you pass the time?” Thorne asked, sitting at the table.

“Read. I write a few articles on bear behavior, elk hunting, and fly fishing.”

“I didn’t know you were a hunter,” Thorne said.

“I’m not a trout fisherman either. But I get exposed to a lot of sportsmen, and they talk a lot. I listen and write a lot down.” Paul treated them to a ruined smile. The muscles moved slowly, testifying that it was a foreign maneuver. “Novel in progress… for three years.”

“About the agency?” Thorne smiled.

“No, about a boy growing up in the mountains of Montana. Ought to try it sometime. Great for the soul. I write awhile and tear it up and write it again.”

For a few minutes they made small conversation. Then Paul asked Joe McLean about his family.

“Dead,” he replied. “All three.”

“Jesus, Joe. I didn’t know.”

“My wife, Jessie, died of a heart attack almost four years back… Least I thought heart attack then. My son Robert died the following spring wiring a two-twenty line. A month later my daughter Julie bled to death in her kitchen. Looked like she cut her ankle open with a jar she’d dropped. Looked to be a freak accident. Just sat there and died. It didn’t make sense. Robert was a master electrician and Julie was a psychiatric nurse, trained for emergencies. I never believed they were accidents, but try and convince the cops of that unless there’s a trail a four-year-old could follow. The FBI boys looked real hard but found nothing.”

“Christ,” Paul said, shaking his head slowly.

“Thorne’s, too,” Joe said.

“What?” Paul looked at Thorne Greer.

“Ellen and my boy Scott were killed when their car went into a canal in Deerfield Beach two years back. Drowned. Someone spotted a tire protruding from the canal next day,” Thorne said.

Paul stared at the two men in turn. The color was a few seconds returning to his face. “God, I don’t know what to say. It’s terrible.”

“Gets worse,” Joe said. “Last week.”

Thorne said, “Doris, George, and Eleanor Lee. Eleanor burned up four months ago. Other day George went off a cliff, and Doris was overdosed. Same day, same guy. Disguised professionally.”

Paul felt a hot flash sweep over him. “I don’t get it,” he said. “How could”-he counted the passing faces in his head-“eight people die like that? Eight out of the one group. The odds of that happening are insane. Didn’t anybody notice?”

“The agency should have caught it sooner, but we’re all spread out since the Miami days, Paul. Thorne retired to Los Angeles doing bodyguard work. I’m with Justice as a field investigator,” Joe said. “The deaths all took place over a period of time scattered across the country. We honestly thought the first couple were accidents. Couldn’t prove anything at all until the killer showed his hand with Rainey. Then we knew… because he wanted us to know.”

“He wanted you to know?” Paul repeated. “Some nutcase murdered eight innocent people and bragged about it? Why?”

“To punish us, obviously,” Thorne said. “He hates us that much.”

“We came all this way because we need you to help us get this guy, Paul,” Joe said as he stood up and washed his cup in the sink using an ancient handle pump.

“You need to get the FBI involved. Come on, guys. This calls for a major effort by the authorities. If you have the proof…”

“We’re dealing with different jurisdictions… be a red-tape nightmare,” Thorne said. “No federal crimes involved unless we can prove state lines were crossed. By the time we get the deaths reclassified, if we can, and get the proper authorities working to solve this, it’ll be too late. He knows that. In ten years we’ll be on that Unsolved Mysteries program asking for people who might have seen someone driving away from the scene.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“We want to get this animal and we need your help.”

“Want me to call someone and-”

“Physically, Paul,” Thorne said. “We need you to be involved.”

“Me? Jesus, guys.” He laughed nervously as he shifted his head from one to the other slowly. “Look at me. I got one eye, I have epileptic seizures sometimes, and if I walk without my cane for long, I fall over and flail like a belly-up turtle. Half of my body is stainless steel or plastic, my left hand shakes like a Mixmaster, and I’m carrying an extra thirty pounds of flab from sitting here and watching that creek wear the rocks down. Plus there’s things I can’t remember at all, and I can’t smell gun oil without breaking out in a cold sweat. There isn’t a weapon in here that’s been fired in my lifetime.”

“It has to be you, Paul. No one else has got the thunder it would take. Senators and congressmen know you. If it hadn’t been for the shooting, you’d be the DEA or FBI director by now, and they all know it.”

Paul walked to the door, his shoulders rolling from side to side as he went. “I can make some calls. Think it’s someone we hurt in Miami?”

“It’s Fletcher,” Joe McLean said.

“Martin Fletcher?” It was as if Paul had been kicked in the chest. He all but staggered back against the doorjamb. His lip quivered and he blinked rapidly. “God, I had hoped he was dead.”

It all came to the surface in a flash of pain. Martin Fletcher was the man who had had him shot. Fletcher had escaped from federal custody and vanished even as Paul had fought for his life in a Miami hospital’s trauma unit. He had masterminded the hit on Paul’s team from his prison cell and then had escaped the same day, before anyone could put it together.

“Far as I can find out, nobody’s ever come close to catching him,” Joe said.

Thorne sighed. “The family killings started four years back. That gave him a good two years from his prison break to plan it.”

“I don’t remember all of it. It’s kind of fuzzy. I remember he escaped. If he was retaken, I never heard about it.”

“Remember when he said he’d eat our hearts out?”

“Sort of. Yes. I know he was berserk last time I saw him. At the trial.”

“What is this if not a way to eat our hearts out?”

“I remember sitting on the stand and his eyes as I testified. And the outburst when he was sentenced.”

“He set us up, remember?” Thorne turned and looked out at the stream. “You know what he did to you… tried to kill all of us.”

“I know what he did to me.” Every time I look in a mirror or try to use my left hand or gauge depth.

“It’s retaliation, Paul,” Joe said, breaking in. “The ultimate twisting of the blade. Better than blowing our brains out.”

“I’ll make some calls,” Paul said. “Some people still owe me, I guess. Maybe I can do something.”

“I’d trade my life for two minutes alone with him,” Thorne Greer said. “Look what he did to you, for Christ’s sake. How long has it been since you left this goddamned cabin? Look around. You’re stuck in a calendar shot. The closest town is a cluster of log huts. He’s already fuckin’ killed you, you just ain’t noticed yet.”

Paul looked out the window. “Five years since I came back here. Month since I even went to Aaron’s store. I’m no good outside here. I just can’t… you got to understand…”

“Goddamn it,” Joe exploded. “You owe us. He fuckin’ did it because of what you did. You nailed his ass to the cross. You set him against us.”

“Come on, Joe. Fletcher’s nuts,” Thorne said.

“What?” Paul stammered. “I just arrested him.”

“Nobody bothered to tell Martin it was merely an arrest and that you didn’t mean anything by it,” Thorne said.

“Martin left a note on Doris’s body. Wanted you to know it was him. Said he’d leave you alone if you’d leave him be.” Joe realized Paul was confused and frightened. But they had to have Paul to get Fletcher. Paul was once powerful stuff at DEA. At the time of the ambush he had been a heroic figure in the agency, a leader who went into the field and faced danger with his men. The files bulged with citations and press clippings on his career.

“I’m sorry… God, I’m sorry. I was doing my job. If I had known-” Paul hung his head.

“Fletcher wants us to blame you. But we don’t. Do we?” Thorne looked at Joe. Joe nodded slowly and slammed the flat of his hand against a beam. “Martin Fletcher’s crazy as a shithouse rat.”

“Crazy as a shithouse fox,” Joe said.

“Couldn’t it be anyone else? We made some people mighty unhappy. Maybe it’s someone wanting us to think it’s Martin. Hiding behind his mystique.”

“The players we chased around after are mostly washed up-kids who were in diapers then are leaders now. Ochoa, Lopez, Perez,” Joe said. “The ones that are still alive are in hiding in Spain, in jail, dead, or so deep in the jungle they’re making monkeys.”

“He butchered our families. He has to be stopped. You have to come out and help us,” Thorne said.

“I’m sorry,” Paul said. He looked out the window and took a deep breath and exhaled it. “I can’t… can’t think about going out there again.”

“What the hell do you mean?” Joe snapped. “Haven’t you been listening? Our families have been fucking wiped out! What makes you think he’s finished?”

“Finished?”

“There’s only one family left, Paul. Yours.” Thorne frowned.

Joe started. “You think because you left them and took up with the fucking trout they aren’t targets? He may have disliked us, but, Paul, he hates your fucking guts. He said he was finished in the letter he left for you, but you believe for one second he’ll let your family live?”

“Dear God,” Paul said. “It didn’t occur to me.” Laura, Erin and Adam-Reb.

Thorne washed out the coffee cup. He watched as Paul tried to use the weakened left hand to get a cigarette from the pack, failed and used the right.

“It’s better,” Paul said defensively when he realized they were watching the hand. “I’m still doing my therapy. I’m supposed to squeeze a tennis ball. I forget.”

“We’ve got people in New Orleans watching Laura and your children, but we can’t keep them there long without T.C. getting wind of the expenditures. We’ve got a twenty-four seven in place, but we need cops and all sorts of help down there.”

T.C. Robertson’s face crossed Paul’s mind. He was the acting director of DEA, and he and Paul had never been friends. They had been rivals for the position T.C. now held. He was acting director because the presidents couldn’t find an excuse to push him out, but they didn’t want to make him director either. The new president was no different. But T.C. Robertson was popular with the average man on the street because he was always showing up on the evening news making tough statements about drug cartels.

“Okay,” Paul said after a long silence. “I’ll think it over. In the meantime let’s talk about what you’ll need.”

Thorne and Joe watched in surprise as Paul slowly began to pull himself together and take control again. In the few minutes they’d been in the cabin, Thorne had actually forgotten that Paul’s face was so fiercely fucked up. Now he could see that under the ill-fitting flannel shirt and beneath the beard and scraggly hair, well, Paul Masterson was still in there after all. This was the man that he and the other men would have followed through the gates of hell. Now Thorne and Joe both had actually begun to believe they could take on Martin Fletcher. Believed that they would do it. And they could see in Paul’s face that he knew it as well. After three cigarettes and a few cups of coffee he had written down an outline for capturing Martin Fletcher. Then he stood, stretched his arms, opened the refrigerator door, and stuck his head inside. “You guys up for elk steaks and bourbon?”

“I could eat a horse,” Joe said.

“You choose, I got both,” Paul said.

Paul was in Miami. He didn’t know that because of anything he could see-the world was a seamless wall of white, thick fog-but from a feeling he had. But his face was healed and he was seeing out of both eyes. There were two men standing a few feet away in the fog, and as Paul approached them, they turned toward him, their movements jerky, machinelike. But he knew them. Paul turned at the sudden sounding of a freighter’s horn, and when he looked back, the men had disappeared. He was alone. “Joe Barnett? Jeff Hill?” he called.

He walked after them, and the ground grew soft, spongelike. Then suddenly there was pressure on his ankle, and he looked down to see that skeletal hands were gripping his legs. He shrieked and awakened to the familiar dark of his bedroom. He listened and realized that the two men in the cabin were not awake. So he must not have called out in his sleep. He was thankful for that.

Paul was not often seized by the horror anymore, had few dreams at all, thanks to the pills he took before he went to sleep. But the combination of Irish whiskey and the thought of leaving the mountains and of his family’s danger at the hands of Martin Fletcher, fell over him like a net. His mind froze in fear, his chest constricted, and the room seemed to enlarge. His life was an obvious mess held together by twisted, frayed threads, and he felt small and powerless. He wanted to roll under the table or the bed and make these men leave him alone. But he knew he couldn’t. He had to be able to face his image in the mirror. He had to realize that leaving wasn’t death, that he wasn’t inadequate in the eyes of others. They didn’t know how terrified he was, how his soul cried out in pain, and how fear had become something that he could taste and almost feel with his fingers. He would be vulnerable out there. He was afraid, so afraid. He began to breathe deep breaths. He didn’t want the anxiety attack to continue, but it was beyond his control.

The grandfather clock chimed three times. Paul could hear either Thorne or Joe snoring. It was a bizarre feeling having people in his cabin, but he didn’t dislike it. Aaron visited on rare occasions, usually on his way to fish Paul’s stream, but had never spent the night. The men had stayed because Joe was too drunk to navigate the trail back to Aaron’s.

Paul got out of bed and made his way quietly to the bathroom. He looked into the mirror above the sink, studying the hair and the beard. The familiar mountain man stared back at him. The hair didn’t really hide the damage but certainly cut down on the number of people who engaged him in idle conversation when he was in town. He readied the scissors but hesitated before attacking the beard. It was like losing an old friend. A warm friend.

He had to go out there and help them. He hoped there hadn’t ever been any real question of its being otherwise. Even if his own family had not been endangered, he hoped that he would have gone to help his friends find their tormentor. Martin would be all but impossible to find and even more impossible to take alive. That was just as well. Martin was the mad dog people spoke of when they used the term. Martin Fletcher had been taken alive once… and it hadn’t panned out.

The fact that his family was threatened required his attention. How could he live knowing that he had turned his back on them and allowed harm to befall them? Maybe they were safe, maybe not. He couldn’t gamble on it. He could protect them here, but they would not come to Clark’s Reward. This way he could do what needed to be done from a distance and get back up on the mountain, and they wouldn’t even have to know he had been down. He would insist that they not be told he had been out in their world. He loved them with everything he was, but he couldn’t face them again. The very idea caused his chest to tighten.

He looked at the man in the mirror and tried to remember what that face had looked like before it had been altered. He had looked at this other face so long that it was Paul Masterson’s smooth, unmarked face that was all wrong. His old face reminded him of another time, another life, and of Martin Fletcher. He realized that Fletcher had never been completely out of his mind.

He had met Fletcher because the expert on terrorism was training the DEA’s elite force when Paul came into the organization from Justice. Fletcher was a corn-fed, military-trained CIA asset who enjoyed inflicting pain. He had remarked once to Paul that interrogation was rarely about gaining information. He had explained that it isn’t what you learn that matters but what the person you’re working on lives to tell others. Torture one, and let his contemporaries see what you’re capable of.

Paul had never liked Martin Fletcher. Not that he wasn’t charming when he chose to be. But there had been something missing from the man’s personality that had bothered Paul from the get go. He lacked compassion, for one thing. He also lacked the ability to shoulder responsibility. But the main thing he lacked was real emotion. It was as if he mimicked emotions-acted them instead of felt them. And then there were the man’s eyes. His eyes were flat, lifeless.

Fletcher had joined Paul’s group as an adviser and had pulled strings to do that. Paul hadn’t felt comfortable with it, but the argument was that the group needed an objective observer, someone who knew the ropes and had experience dealing with Latin American drug cartels. He had pulled his weight, certainly hadn’t done anything overtly suspicious. But things started to happen. Deep-cover agents started disappearing. Most of them were working close to the two main cartels based in Colombia. Two had been in Mexico, working to uncover corrupt government officials.

Martin Fletcher had been getting sensitive intelligence somehow. Paul was certain he had purchased it, or possibly used blackmail to get it. Paul committed his theory to a report and passed the word upstairs. They knew that the cartels had a man on the inside of the DEA but couldn’t seem to get hard evidence. Paul knew it was Martin. Knew it in his heart. But proof was never forthcoming. So word had come down that the leak had to be plugged. Paul had plugged it by having evidence planted. Martin had been arrested, tried, and convicted. Paul had somehow believed that would be the end of it. With most men it would have been.

So Martin Fletcher hated Paul because Paul had been personally responsible for his arrest, his fall from grace. Death was unimportant to Fletcher, because in the world Martin inhabited, death was always a choice, a slipup or a few seconds away. Martin was an animal who operated near the top of a complex feeding chain-eat or be eaten. It was a life that depended on knowledge, sharp reflexes, planning, lack of conscience, and flawless intuition. Paul had defeated him and humiliated him. Killing him, the alternative, would have been understandable, even forgivable, in Martin’s mind.

Paul had known that Martin would come for him one day unless he was, as rumor had it, dead. He thought it was possible that the others had been killed first and the confession made so Paul would be forced to come out to play. Because the fact was Martin could have killed Paul at any time over the past years. Maybe he planned to kill the Masterson family while Paul watched from the sidelines, helplessly. He would enjoy that. If it was Martin, Paul was no match for him. A team might beat him, if it was the right group.

Paul closed his eyes and imagined Martin as he had known him. In Paul’s mind Martin had grown to mythical proportions. He was ten feet tall, had the instincts of a cougar, and was as strong as something hydraulic. Has a day ever passed that Marty didn’t cross my mind, soil some pleasant thought? Paul was afraid of him-deeply afraid. Maybe that, more than the other reasons, was why he had really hidden himself here. Paul felt as if Martin Fletcher were working the strings and they were leading from his hands to Paul’s life.

Paul looked at the wild beard one last time. He pressed the scissors against the jawline and squeezed. The first cut is the deepest, he thought as a bird’s-nest-sized clump of beard floated down to the basin.

Sunlight was-just beginning to sear the bottom of the sky with a light crimson band. Aaron was dressed and standing in the kitchen brewing coffee in an electric aluminum percolator. Something moved in the window, and as the back door opened he turned and was face-to-face with a beardless Paul Masterson. His nephew’s hair was combed back against his head, and the beard had been replaced with a large handlebar mustache. He opened the kitchen door and Paul stepped inside.

“Paul. Hell, son, I’ve seen happier faces in a proctology ward.”

“Coffee smells good,” Paul offered.

“I reckon you want some of it?” The old man frowned. “Never see you unless you want something. Bet you want the top of the brew?”

“Give me some of that burned syrupy stuff off the bottom, like you usually do.”

“Where’s your pals? Shit-faced I bet. Look like serious whiskey drinkers to me. Looks like you had a few yourself.” The old man poured two cups of coffee, replaced the pot on the stove, and sat. “Now, that’s hot.”

“Good, the heat’ll take the top layer off my tongue, cover some of the taste,” Paul said, taking a tentative sip. “Joe McLean does a right good jig with the bottle. Thorne’s a teetotaler. Alcohol doesn’t agree with his personality.”

They were silent for a long time as they sipped, steam rolling up over their cheeks.

“Never fails to amaze me what you can do to perfectly good coffee beans.”

“It’s free, ain’t it? You can get a twenty-five-cent cup of muddy water down the street anytime.”

“Too far to walk.”

“So when you pullin’ out?” The old man cocked his eyes up into Paul’s and frowned.

“Because I cut that beard off? You think I’m leaving because I shaved?”

“Well, ain’t you?”

“Couple of hours.”

“Knew them fellows showing up was bad news. It’s that guy you warned me might come looking for you, ain’t it? He’s up to somethin’?”

Paul took another swallow of coffee and nodded. “Killed eight women and children. The men who were in here-it was their families. Plus Rainey Lee’s two kids and wife, too.”

“Someone thinks you can catch him? Probably right.”

“Fact is I don’t think I can. But I have to try. He’s gonna go for Laura and the kids.”

“I see. Then there ain’t nothin’ else to say.”

“I wanted to say-”

“Listen, Pauly. Don’t get all teary-eyed like your mama used to. I’ll watch your place. You go on down there and take care of your business without a worry. Not that you ever did much worryin’ on my account. Old man with no one to leave the enterprise to. Go on. But I want your word that when that rat bastard is cold, you’ll come home and bring those kids for a visit. Might be one of them might want to run this place. Never know.”

“Never know.” Paul smiled. “I don’t imagine they want anything to do with me.”

There was another period when the two men were lost in their individual thoughts. Then Aaron stood up. “I want you to take something with you.” He started out into the store, came back five minutes later with a narrow walnut box about three feet long and a small cardboard one. He placed them on the table.

The old man removed the masking tape to free the flaps. He opened the cardboard box and pulled out a black leather shoulder-holster rig. The holster and the belting were hand-tooled in ivy leaves. Paul stared at it without comment. The gun was a Colt Combat Commander with stag grips.

“Remember this?” Aaron asked.

“Yes. I wasn’t sure what happened to it.”

“DEA sent it after you got here. I didn’t know if you’d ever want it back.”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For not selling it.” He stared at the old man for a few seconds before his mouth turned up at the corners.

“Think I wasn’t tempted. Rig like this is worth six or seven hundred to the right fool.”

Paul picked up the weapon and looked at it. He dropped the magazine and inspected the chamber.

“It’s clean!” the old man said defensively.

Aaron turned his attention to the wooden box. He removed a nail from an ancient hasp and slid the top back, revealing a burgundy velvet-lined interior. He lifted a long black cane from inside and handed it to Paul.

“I remember this. Haven’t seen it since I was a kid.”

Paul couldn’t believe the heft of it. The hand grip was L-shaped and made of hand-carved ivory. The base of the cane was black and shone like dark glass all the way to the fancy filigree sterling tip.

“Take it with you,” Aaron said.

“It’s even more magnificent than I remembered,” Paul said. “Must weigh ten pounds. You reckon I’m that cripple, do you?”

“It’s weighty for a reason, and you don’t have to be cripple to need it. Look at the tip.”

Paul admired the cane. The handle told the story, in bas relief, of a gunfight, with one man standing tall and the other falling wounded. Paul flipped the cane and looked at the tip, where carved silver circled a black hole.

Aaron took the cane from Paul and twisted the handle. It opened, exposing a breech. He dropped in a brass shell and closed the breech. Then he raised the cane and pointed at a large wooden beam, and there was a deafening explosion. Paul stood and put his finger on the new hole in the wood.

“This old cane has an interesting history,” Aaron said. “Can’t recall exactly what it was, but it had to do with a gambler. Made by a famous gunsmith from a design the gambler worked out in a dream or some such. Had the handle carved in Frisco by a Chinese artist in 1880. Rod is ebony from Africa, covers a rifle barrel. Silver tip’s from Mexican mines. I traded some stuff for this cane fifty years ago. In time of dire straits it’ll give you the answer to one final prayer.”

“I never knew it fired.”

“No reason to tell you before. Forty-four forties are expensive rounds, so don’t waste ’em. Open the breech and load it. A half twist back on the handle sets the pin and drops the trigger. I’m giving you six shells, and I just hope it don’t blow up on you.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“Don’t shoot your fool foot off.”

“I won’t keep it loaded.”

“Of course you’ll keep it loaded! What the hell good is it gonna do unloaded? Just like your mama. Sayin’ fool stuff.”

Paul shook his head. “Thanks.”

“Worth a fortune, too, I’d wager. I’m just loaning it to you. Give me your word you’ll keep it with you. And that you’ll bring it back to me… personally.”

Paul stood and the two men embraced. “I’ll be back, Uncle Aaron.”

“With the kids? Bring ’em to see me before I die.”

“We’ll see.”

The old man wiped his weathered eyes on the back of his sleeve. “I ever tell you how much you’ve meant to me all these years?”

“No, Uncle Aaron, you never have.”

The old man slapped his nephew’s shoulder. “And I ain’t about to start now. Trim down that fool mustache, you look like a cattle rustler.”

Paul finished his coffee with a swallow and stood. He leaned the cane against the wall. “I’ll pick this up on the way out.”

“Suit yourself,” Aaron said, waving his nephew away with a flick of his ancient wrist. “You always do.”