Copper River

48

Dina turned the Pathfinder onto the rutted lane leading to the cabins. Ahead was a long stretch of gray growing dimmer as the daylight faded. She switched on her headlights, and immediately a figure leaped from the trees.

Dina braked and said, “Charlie?”

The girl rushed to the vehicle. Dina opened the door.

“Ren,” Charlie gasped. “He’s got Ren.”

“Who’s got Ren?” Jewell said from the passenger side.

Charlie caught her breath. “I don’t know. A stranger. A dude. He came after you guys left. He was, like, hiding in the woods.”

“How do you know that?” Dina asked.

“I was hiding, too, watching for Ren to come home. After you left, this dude comes out of the trees. He’s got a gun. He’s all, like, creeping around, checking everything out. He looks in Thor’s Lodge, then Cork’s cabin. Then he checks out the car behind the shed with all the bullet holes in it. Finally he goes back to the trees and waits and when Ren comes home he follows him, brings him out, and hangs him up in the woods.”

Jewell leaned across Dina. “Is Ren okay?”

“Yeah, when I sneaked away he was. But we have to get him back.”

“You don’t know this guy?” Dina said.

“No.”

Dina looked confused. “Gary didn’t say anything about anybody else.”

“Maybe this isn’t about the kids,” Cork said from the backseat. “Maybe this is about me.”

“The hit?” Dina thought it over and nodded.

Jewell stared desperately down the lane. “Ren,” she said fearfully.

Cork swung his door open and clambered out. “Jewell, get on your cell phone and call Hodder. Tell him the situation. Charlie, can you show us where this man has Ren?”

“Sure.”

Dina was out, too, and checking her carbine.

“I’m coming,” Jewell said, climbing out her side.

Cork took her by the shoulders firmly. “You have to stay here, Jewell. When Hodder shows up, or anybody else, they need to understand the situation. They can’t come barreling in. Dina’s going to give you one of the Motorolas. When we know what’s going on, we’ll contact you. You have to do this. You have to do it for Ren.”

“I can’t just wait here.”

“I know how hard that is, but you have to. Dina and I do this for a living. We’re good at it. We’ll get Ren back safely, Jewell, I promise you.”

He could see how torn she was and he understood completely. Finally she nodded and said, “All right.”

She reached for her cell phone. He reached for the Glock Dina had given him earlier.

Cork and Dina followed Charlie. They cut through the woods west of the lane until they came to the Killbelly Marsh Trail. Charlie moved quickly-too quickly for safety, Cork thought. Dina must have thought so, too, because she touched the girl’s shoulder and spoke close to her ear. After that, Charlie led the way more cautiously.

A quarter mile up the trail, she stopped and pointed toward the trees that hid the cabins. “A hundred yards in,” she whispered.

Dina nodded and whispered back, “We’ll take it from here.”

Charlie shook her head vigorously and started ahead. Cork reached out to stop her but was too late. Dina held up her hands in frustration, which was all she could do, because any verbal objection now, any undue disturbance, might alert the man who’d taken Ren. There was nothing but to follow Charlie.

Cork brought up the rear, his wounded leg ready to buckle. He concentrated all his efforts on moving the leg forward, carrying him carefully and quietly toward Ren. They had no plan, which was a problem, but there was no time for planning. The light was fading and dark was the worst enemy of all. They had to rely on Charlie to guide them, and then they would have to improvise. In this, he trusted Dina. At that moment, there was no one he would rather have as a partner.

Charlie raised her hand and stopped. Her head turned slowly right, then left. Had she made an error? Were they off track? Charlie turned to them, a pained expression on her face. She was uncertain.

They were near where the trees edged the old resort. If the man’s plan had been to shoot Cork, then he’d probably set himself up just inside the tree line. This was a delicate moment. They were close enough to give themselves away easily, but still not certain of the exact location of Ren.

He touched Dina’s shoulder and pointed for her to move right. He indicated he would go left. She nodded and signaled for Charlie to come with her. They separated and crept away twenty yards, then waited. Cork slipped left the same distance. On his signal, they moved forward again. With luck, he hoped Ren and his captor would be caught somewhere between them. Cork walked on the outside of his soles, an old stalking technique he’d learned hunting that allowed him to move silently. All his senses were focused on the woods around him as he sought to pick up anything out of place. A trickle of sweat crawled down his face like a spider. Suddenly he walked into the unmistakable aroma of barbecued meat. There was almost no wind, just enough to carry the tangy scent. From which direction? He bent and cracked open a milkweed pod, plucked a piece of fluff from inside, let it go. The fluff drifted lazily northwest. The man and his barbecue were somewhere southeast. Cork adjusted his line and crept ahead.

Ten seconds later the silence around him was shattered by a scream that was followed by a thrashing in the underbrush and the grunting of a desperate struggle. Cork abandoned stealth and rushed ahead, afraid for Ren.

In the dim evening light, Cork stumbled onto a nightmarish scene. On the ground a man wrestled to free himself from the grip of a cougar, whose powerful jaws were locked on the back of his neck. The man flailed and screamed, but the cougar, larger and heavier, held tight. A few yards away Ren hung from the branch of a tree, his wrists high above his head, his feet just inches off the ground, his eyes wide as he watched the horror of the attack.

Cork swung the Glock toward the struggle on the ground, but the two figures were so tightly enmeshed, he couldn’t risk a shot.

Dina and Charlie appeared beside Ren. Dina sighted down the barrel of her carbine but didn’t fire.

The cougar, intent on its kill, hadn’t seen the others arrive. Cork raised his Glock and fired into the air, hoping to distract the beast, to startle it into breaking off its attack. The cougar spun, teeth bared.

Cork, Dina, and Charlie all held dead still, but at the sound of the gun, Ren had begun to kick his legs wildly, crying out through the tape over his mouth a muffled “No!” It was a plea, Cork understood, not to kill the animal.

All that movement, which Ren meant to save the wild cat, in the end spelled its doom. The cougar, confused and threatened, focused on Ren and his wild legs. The animal’s ears lay back. As it gathered on it haunches, Dina moved instantly between Ren and the cat.

The animal launched itself and Cork fired twice.

The cougar cried out like a kicked housecat, turning awkwardly in midair as if its internal gyroscope had been destroyed. It fell far short of Dina and Ren and lay on the ground, stunned. After a moment, it tried to struggle to its feet but, failing, became still. For a minute, the quiet of that small circle of woods was broken only by the animal’s labored breathing.

The man groaned and rolled onto his back. “Help me,” he rasped.

“Keep him covered,” Dina told Cork.

She wrapped her arms around Ren and lifted him free of the branch. Charlie already had her pocketknife out and she cut the tape from his wrists. He pulled the strip off his mouth and the first thing he said was “We’ve gotta save the cougar.”

“I’m hurt,” the man on the ground pleaded.

“Cover me,” Cork said to Dina. “I’ll pat him down.”

“Fucking gun’s in my belt,” the man said. “Take it. Just get me to a hospital.”

Cork pulled the gun, a nine-millimeter Ruger, from the man’s belt and ejected the clip. He went over the rest of his body but found no other weapon and stepped back.

“The cougar,” Ren repeated, edging near the downed animal.

“Stay back,” Dina said firmly.

“But it’s going to die.”

Dina put the Motorola to her lips. “Jewell, do you read me?”

“I’m here. What’s going on? What were those shots?”

“Ren’s safe, but we need you up here and bring your medical kit.”

“It’s not Ren?”

“No. A couple of wounded animals. A cougar and a rat.”

“Ned’s here. He’s coming with me.”

“I’ll meet you at the cabins and guide you over.” She lowered the walkie-talkie.

“I’ll go,” Charlie offered. “I’m faster.”

“All right,” Dina said. “And, Charlie? You did a good job today.”

The girl flashed a big smile and was gone, bounding swiftly and gracefully toward the distant cabins.

“You okay, Ren?” Cork put his arm around the boy’s shoulders.

“Yeah, I guess.” He sounded distracted, his attention focused on the wounded wild cat.

Dina walked to the man on the ground, looked down at him, and shook her head. “Vernon Mann.”

“You know him?” Cork asked.

“ ‘The Mann who would be king,’ we used to call him when I was with the feds. He was DEA back then, full of delusions of grandeur. Went private like me. Not nearly as good or as principled, however. Still overachieving, Vern? You’re way outside your comfort level here, schmuck, but I bet for five hundred thousand dollars you’d slit your own grandmother’s throat.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mann said.

“On second thought, you’d probably do it for a lot less. Who clued you in, Vern?”

Vernon Mann didn’t answer. Dina bent down, drew him up roughly into a sitting position.

“Let me take a look at those cougar wounds,” she said.

Mann leaned forward slightly.

“A couple dozen well-placed stitches and you’ll be fine, Vern.”

Cork couldn’t see exactly what Dina was doing, but Mann suddenly arched his back and screamed in pain.

“So how ‘bout it, Vern? How’d you find us?”

“All right, all right,” he cried. “I got a buddy at the Sun-Times . Somebody called him from up here looking for information about O’Connor. He called me. I did some digging, came up with a relative, Jewell DuBois.”

They heard the vehicles rumbling up the lane to the cabins. Through the trees, Cork saw the Pathfinder and Hodder’s Cherokee stop where Charlie waited. Jewell jumped out, ran to her Blazer, and grabbed her medical bag from inside. Hodder joined her. They spoke briefly with Charlie, then followed her at a jog toward the trees.

The moment she saw Ren, Jewell wrapped him in her arms. The boy didn’t pull away from his mother’s public display of affection.

“Can you save it, Mom?” he asked, nodding toward the downed cougar.

“Hell, what about me?” whined Vernon Mann.

“Relax,” Dina told him. “You’ll live. And, Vern, I heard Michigan prison food isn’t all that bad.”

Ren started toward the cougar, but his mother put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m going to try to sedate him. Then we’ll see.”

As Jewell opened her bag, the cougar’s rasping breathing ceased and a terrible moment of quiet followed.

“No,” Ren cried. He tried to move toward the animal, but Dina held him back.

“Don’t go near him, Ren,” his mother ordered. “Don’t anybody go near him. Let me check him first.”

Cork watched Jewell approach carefully. He still had the Glock trained on the animal. It was a beautiful creature of sand-colored fur and strong muscle. Its eyes were open. Cork, who’d hunted all his life, knew the dead look in them, but he found himself hoping he was wrong, that Jewell would discover some sign of life.

She stayed clear of the big paws and the long teeth and gingerly touched the animal’s side near its haunch. Her hand drifted slowly up the sleek body, pausing here and there to feel. She drew a stethoscope from her bag, slipped it under the front leg, and pressed it to the cougar’s chest.

Cork glanced at Ren. The boy stood rigid, waiting. His eyes, which had already seen so much horror, were half-closed in anticipation of the truth.

“He’s dead,” Jewell pronounced at last.

The boy broke.

It wasn’t just the cougar, Cork told himself. It was the strain of all that had gone before. Ren knelt and sobbed bitterly over an animal he’d never seen before.

“You killed it,” he accused, his dark eyes attacking Cork. “You murdered it.”

Cork lowered the gun that had been trained on the cougar. “I’m sorry, Ren.”

“It’s not right,” Ren insisted. “It’s not right.”

“He didn’t have a choice,” Jewell said.

“Dude,” Charlie jumped in, “that thing was going after you and Dina. I don’t care how beautiful it was, I’d rather have you alive any day, dork.”

Ren gently stroked the still, tawny body. “It’s so beautiful.” He shook his head. “Everything dies.” It sounded like a hopeless truth.

“You didn’t,” Charlie told him. “And here I am.”

Ren stood up, tears trailing down his cheeks. He turned away and ran toward the cabins.

“Ren,” Charlie called.

“Let him go,” Jewell said. “He’ll be all right.”

Cork watched him stumble away. “Jesus, I feel like a murderer.”

Jewell put her hand on his arm. “Give him some time. He’ll understand.”

Ned Hodder said to Charlie, “Where were you hiding?”

“In one of the summer homes on the river. I broke in. I guess I’m in trouble, huh?”

Hodder gave it almost no thought at all. “Under the circumstances, I think we can square things pretty easily.”

Jewell closed her medical kit. “Ned, would you call DNR and let them know what we’ve got here. Have them pick up the cougar’s body.”

“And how about getting a fucking ambulance for me?” Vernon Mann cried.

Cork’s leg finally gave out. He sat down with his back against the tree where Ren had hung. Dina sat beside him.

“I guess we’re even,” she said.

“Even?”

“I saved your life, now you’ve saved mine.”

Cork heard sirens coming from the direction of the Copper River Club: the state police responding to Hodder’s call.

“We’re not done yet,” he said.

Dina closed her eyes and tilted her head as if listening to a distant song. “I know.”