Spider mountain

10

They marched me down the hill to the cabin, Nathan leading, the other two gunmen behind me. They’d patted me down and relieved me of my field belt, the cell phone, and my weapon up at the cave. The man with the dogs was way ahead of us, being practically dragged back to the dog pen by those two big brutes. None of them had gone into the cave, which was a good thing because I don’t know what would have happened if they had. They’d have probably shot the shepherds and then fed them to the big dogs. If they’d seen me coming back up the hill from the cabin, they weren’t letting on.

Grinny wasn’t sitting in her chair on the front porch like the last time. They took me to one of the side barn buildings and locked me into what had been either a horse or cow stall, I couldn’t tell which. They chained a steel cuff to my right ankle and then barred the wooden stall door. The other end of the chain was made fast to a wooden beam that had to be twelve inches square. The floor was covered in dense straw that smelled of old manure. There were no windows and no lights. I could hear some kind of animals shuffling around in other stalls, but it was too dark to see what they were. The walls of the stall were about seven feet high, rough oak, and harder than any nail. The barn roof beams were a good fifteen feet above my head.

I sat down in a corner of the stall with my back to the plank walls, my leg extended to accommodate the chain. I could hear some of the dogs in the big pen, but no human sounds. The back of my neck was on a low burn.

I was in deep shit any way you looked at it. The shooter earlier had not been firing warning shots, which meant he’d been told to take care of business. I was now locked up in the enemy’s camp. The fact that there was a chain shackle permanently mounted in a stall meant that they’d held people here before. And there was a fair possibility that my only contact with the outside world had also been compromised. Greenberg’s crew had been pulled off to a project well south of the area, and no one in the SBI would be especially concerned that they weren’t hearing from Carrie.

I had to get out of there. I began with the shackle. Like most cops, I carried two knives, a big one on the field belt and a much smaller penknife sewn into a pouch in the back of my trousers’ waistband. I fished that out and went to work on the shackle’s lock. The shackle was actually a work shackle, the kind used on prisoners in a chain gang to keep them from running. It was not tight at all. The lock was an old-style, bar key series lock, but the steel was as strong as ever and my knife not strong enough to make the mechanism move. I took off my field boot and sock and tried to pull my foot through the shackle. I have smallish feet for a guy of my size, but the ankle was a mite too big. If I had some grease it might just work, but I was fresh out of grease guns. I sat back and rubbed my neck. Where there was a thick smear of greasy ointment.

I wiped as much of the smelly stuff as I could on my bare ankle and heel and then pulled the chain out to its full length. I knew I’d have one shot at this, because the tissue would swell immediately when I really forced the issue. I set my foot at as flat an angle as I could, closed my eyes, and exerted a steady pull. It hurt, but it was very close. I took a deep breath, set my jaw, and then yanked hard on my left leg. The rim of the shackle felt like it was planing off the top of my foot, but the heel finally slipped through and I was free of the chain.

I opened my eyes. My instep felt like it was on fire, and I could feel a weep of blood starting up. The rest of my foot did not want to straighten out just yet. I could actually feel the ankle starting to swell. I rubbed more ointment on the raw, abraded skin, then put my sock and boot back on while I still could. Standing was harder than I had expected, and running was clearly out of the question for a while. What I needed was a nice cold creek, preferably a few miles from Grinny Creigh.

Now for the walls.

The stall walls were stacked oak boards, but they had warped over the years and there were finger and toeholds all the way up. I wondered if a one-footed guy could do it. Depends on how bad he wanted out of here, I told myself. I started up the wall, which wasn’t that hard except for my left wheel, which could take almost no weight. At the top of the wall I found out that there were two rows of stalls facing each other across a narrow aisle. There was absolute darkness at one end and the barely visible outline of a set of double doors at the other.

The doors were not locked. They’d assumed that the chain would keep anyone from getting out of that stall. I could hear the noises of the dog pen to the right of the barn and knew that opening that door would rouse at least some of the dogs. That would bring Nathan or one of his helpers. Then I noticed there was a small room at the end of the aisle nearest the door. I opened that door and found a smelly freezer running quietly underneath a window. So they did have electrical power up here. I wondered how-maybe a hidden generator?

The window was dusty, but I could make out the open dog pen and, beyond that, the end of the porch on Grinny’s cabin. There were no lights on in the cabin, and the dogs were lumps of shadow on the dirt floor of the forty-foot-square pen. I opened the freezer and found unwrapped chunks of frostbitten red meat, probably deer, stacked inside. I tested the window. It opened freely. I saw a couple of the dogs look over to the window with sleepy interest. I opened the window wide and threw out a lump of meat. Two dogs got up immediately and went for it. This awakened some of the other dogs. I began throwing meat to the far side of the pen, away from the side I’d be traveling. Soon the whole pack was up and chasing rock-hard pieces of meat around the pen. There was some snarling and growling, but I threw so much out there that pretty soon every dog had something. Then I slipped out the front door and limped toward Grinny’s cabin porch. I was hoping that the noise from the dog yard would bring Nathan to the door, and I was determined to get there before he did.

It was close. I was up on the porch and sneaking as fast as my bum foot would allow, trying to get next to the cabin’s front door. It opened and Nathan stepped through, trusty double-barreled shotgun at port arms. He was wearing long Johns and was obviously not quite awake. I stepped in front of him, grabbed the barrels, and pushed them hard back into his mouth. He was stunned, both to see me standing there and by the sudden pain of getting hit in the mouth. Feeling the barrel still slack, I hit him again, this time on the bridge of his nose. He yelled in pain and tilted to one side, which is when I jerked the shotgun out of his hands, reversed it, and jabbed with the gun butt, the first time between his legs followed by a thump to his forehead as he doubled over. He collapsed with a whoof onto the porch, blood streaming out of his nose and mouth and his hands clutching air, not knowing what to grab hold of first because everything seemed to hurt. Hopping on one foot to get a few feet away from him, I then took a golfing stance and teed off on both of his shins with the gun butt, curling him into a grunting, gasping ball of agony on the porch. You want to keep a really tall guy down, the shins are always the best place to work.

Then I pointed the shotgun into the dark interior of the cabin and discharged both barrels, aiming high in case there were kids in there. I mostly wanted to keep any reinforcements from charging the door. The ten-gauge kicked like a mule, and the noise was terrific. The dogs, frozen meat forgotten, set up a barking frenzy when the gun went off. I heard breaking glass inside the cabin and something solid falling onto the floor. I glanced at Nathan, but he was still curled on the floor, mewling through bloody lips. I spotted the box of shells on the little table by the door and grabbed a handful. I stepped away from the door and over to one of the windows while I jacked out the empty hulls and reloaded. I fired two more rounds through the left-hand window and heard more debris flying around inside the cabin’s front room.

I reloaded one more time and this time blasted two holes into the porch floorboards, one by Nathan’s feet and the other right next to his head. He screamed in terror and scrambled through the front door back into the gunsmoke-filled cabin. I stuffed another handful of shells into my pockets and limped off the porch, reloading as I went. The dog pen was insane at this point, so I fired two more rounds into the enclosure, which sent most of the dogs yip-ping for cover. Then I hobbled my way down the front field toward the woods, using the warm shotgun to balance myself.

My ears were ringing with the sound of the heavy gun. I wondered if I should have killed Nathan, because if he ever caught up with me, he was going to want me dead. At the edge of the woods, maybe fifty yards from the cabin, I fired two more rounds up at the porch. At that range, I knew they wouldn’t do any real damage, but the rattle of ten-gauge pellets on the front wall ought to encourage anyone inside to stay inside. Then I pushed into the trees and headed downhill for my favorite river road.

I wasn’t afraid of Nathan coming after me, but Grinny, assuming she was there, might loose the dog pack. A tactical police shotgun could keep them at bay, but not an old double-barreled model, so I kept an eye and an ear over my shoulder for canine pursuit as I made my way awkwardly down the dirt road. There was just enough moonlight for me to make pretty good time, especially since I was going downhill. As the adrenaline from the fight with Nathan crashed, I realized how tired I was and that my foot was really hurting now. It was well after midnight, and I hadn’t had any sleep since that brief nap in Laurie May’s hideaway.

Laurie May. Had she told them where I was hiding? And where Carrie was probably staying in Marionburg? Nathan and his dogs had probably come through that crack, so they may have tracked me to the cave. On the other hand, what scent article did they have to set up the dogs? Something I’d left behind in her daughter’s cabin? The blanket on the bed?

The jury was still out on Old Lady Laurie, although I had a hard time featuring her as being an ally of these bad guys.

I stumbled over something in the dirt road and went sprawling, doing my injured foot no good at all. Time to take a break, I thought. I was at least a quarter mile down the hill from Grinny’s place, so I should be able to hear anything coming through the woods after me. I sat down on the ground with my back to a fallen tree trunk. My neck was still hurting, but it didn’t feel like I was battling an infection. My foot had been rubbed raw by my boot, and I wasn’t looking forward to seeing my sock. The ankle was definitely swollen, so I wasn’t about to take that boot off, either. I reloaded the shotgun and counted my remaining shells. Nine. At least I was armed again, as any human pursuers would find out if they crowded me.

After ten minutes, I hoisted my weary ass off the ground and began a highspeed hobble down the road. Getting off my feet for a few minutes may have been a mistake; my left ankle was bigger than it had been and very definitely not happy. I consoled myself by thinking about how Nathan felt right now.

Then I heard something coming fast through the woods behind me, and it wasn’t of the two-legged variety. I swung the shotgun around and took a shooting stance, and then relaxed when Frick and Frack burst out of the trees. I chastised them for waiting to reappear until I’d escaped from the clutches of the Creighs. They went into heavy licking and panting mode anyway. As usual I felt a whole lot safer with my two furry friends alongside. They’d detect anything else coming through the woods long before I would.

In fact, they heard the vehicle coming up the dirt road before I did. My fatigued brain had been on the lookout for headlights, but this vehicle wasn’t showing any. All three of us scuttled off the road and into the underbrush. I put the dogs on a down and hunched behind a briar bush until I finally saw Rue Creigh’s pickup truck grinding up the road in second gear. There appeared to be two people in the truck’s front seat. I couldn’t make out their features but assumed one was Rue and the other-Carrie?

Yes, by God, it was Carrie, and she looked a lot like a prisoner. When the truck was not quite even with my hiding place, I stepped out of the bushes to the side of the road and pointed the shotgun at Rue’s face. She stopped almost immediately, her brake lights painting the woods behind her with a red glow. Her window was open.

“Police officer,” I shouted, out of habit, I guess. “Shut it down, step out, and let me see your hands!”

Rue surprised me, and she might have succeeded had not Carrie yelled a warning. Rue produced a shiny handgun seemingly out of nowhere and pointed it right at me, obviously preparing to shoot right through her own windshield. I pulled both triggers on the ten-gauge, and Rue’s face and head disappeared in a bloody explosion of skin, bone, brains, and windshield glass. I felt something snap by my own head as the big shotgun bucked in my hands, and realized she’d actually gotten off a shot a millisecond before I sent her to see her Maker.

I slowly lowered the shotgun and saw Carrie piling out of the pickup truck, her face ashen and the left side of her blouse and jeans stained with gore. Her wrists were cuffed in duct tape and she was barefoot. Bits of windshield glass glittered on her clothes.

“Sorry about that,” I told her, trying not to look at the practically headless torso canted over to one side in the driver’s seat. “Cop training. See the gun, pull the trigger. Answer questions later.”

“Jesus Christ!” Carrie gasped. “What a mess!” She was trying not to stare at the truck’s bloody interior. My ears were ringing again, and the woods seemed to have gone very quiet after the double blast of the shotgun. I wondered if they’d heard that up at Grinny’s cabin.

“I was hoping to spring you and take the truck,” I said. “Now I think I’d rather walk.”

“Got that right,” Carrie said, a hand over her mouth. “Talk about wet work. Goddamnl”

“Was she the ‘oh, shit’ I heard you say before we got cut off?”

Carrie nodded. “I turned around and there she was, gun in hand. I hadn’t locked the screen or the front door, and I was fresh out of shepherds. She had a roll of duct tape on her wrist like a bracelet and a look of pure, evil pleasure on her face.”

Now she had no face at all. First Nathan and now Rue. Grinny Creigh and what was left of her clan would declare war over this. “We have to get out of this county,” I said. I told her what I’d done to Nathan and how I thought he and his boys had been able to find me.

“Laurie May?” Carrie said. “No way.”

“Either blood’s thicker than water, or they may simply have scared it out of her. Or hurt her, for that matter. Nathan may have used those two dogs to make her talk, not find me.” I took out my penknife and hacked away at the duct tape. Carrie’s clothes smelled of the blood and bits splattered all over the inside of the truck.

“Where’re your shoes?” I asked.

She nodded in the truck’s direction. “In there, in the backseat,” she said. It was obvious she wasn’t going anywhere near the truck, and she was licking her lips as if she were fighting down nausea.

I felt about the same way, but she had to have shoes, and I also wanted that gun. I had to hold my nose and my gorge while I retrieved Carrie’s shoes and socks from the floor of the back seat and also Rue’s handgun, a stainless steel. 357 Magnum. Big gun for a woman to handle, but she’d still managed to get one off and damned hear hit me with it. She hadn’t hesitated one second, either, even while staring at eternity down the barrels of a ten-gauge. I saw her cell phone lying on the seat, but she’d bled all over it, and I wasn’t about to touch it. There were two unopened and unsullied bottles of water on the floor in the back, and I did take those. The smell in the truck was horrible, and suddenly I just had to back out of there.

I called the shepherds while Carrie got her shoes on, and then we got going down the dirt road. I figured it’d be daylight in three hours or so, and we needed to put as much distance as possible between us and the Creighs while we could.

“You okay?” Carrie asked me after five minutes.

“I’ll live,” I said. “I’ve shot one other perp during my career, and I’ve witnessed a few more.”

“Is it always that bad?” she asked.

“There’s always a lot more blood than you’d expect,” I replied, not really wanting to talk about this just now. I knew it had been purely a self-defense shoot, but I still had this cold pit in my stomach. It wasn’t like on the television, where there was a medium bang and a foreboding stain. One moment I’d been looking at and talking to a living human being and, in her own blowsy fashion, an attractive young woman. The next second there was nothing but a pumping stump where her head had been.

She got one off, I kept telling myself. Close enough for you to hear it go by, too. The question was-had she been thinking self-defense, too? Or had she just been that hard-boiled? Someone else in my shoes, without police training and reflexes, might still have hesitated when she produced that gun. That. 357 would have had about the same effect on my face.

“Don’t torture yourself,” Carrie said, as if reading my thoughts. “She told me Grinny had sent her into Marionburg to get close to you and then put a knife in your ribs-her words-but the shepherd alerted and you turned her down. Said you hurt her womanly pride. That most men most definitely did not turn her down.”

“Her mother’s daughter,” I said, calling the dogs in closer now that we were getting nearer to the paved road. “How far is it to the Carrigan County line?”

“Eight, nine miles on the river road,” she said. “What’s the matter with your foot?”

I told her about getting out of the shackle in the barn. As we reached the pavement, I looked at my watch. Three thirty.

“Right is southeast, toward Marionburg. The road follows the river. I was going to suggest we start jogging, make better time, but if your foot’s injured-”

“It’s not like we have much of a choice,” I said grimly. “Let’s boogie.”

We made pretty good time, but only because we were going downhill for most of it. We walked the few upgrades we encountered and stopped often to listen for vehicles. My foot made it clear that it was going to get even with me. At times I wished it would just go ahead and fall off. My main concern was that once Rue’s body was found, they’d definitely get those dogs out. We’d left a clear track down that dirt road, and the pavement wouldn’t disguise the scent very much. I thought about crossing the river to interrupt the scent trail, but the stream was getting wider as it flowed downhill, and I was afraid we’d lose too much time. We badly needed to get out of Robbins County.

About an hour before sunrise, we came upon a whitewater rafting outfitter’s place situated between the road and the stream. There was a log lodge building, which advertised tickets and supplies, and a dirt parking lot with chains across the entrance and exit. We stopped to catch our breath and then looked at each other. A raft ride would be a whole lot easier than jogging down the road. And it would eliminate our spoor.

We snuck around to the back of the place and found canoes hanging upside down on racks and a row of inflatable rafts stacked on their sides, big ones, medium ones, and even two-man jobs, all attached to a large oak tree by a cable with a padlock. The wire and lock were mostly there for show, because the wire ran through individual rope handles on the rafts. I cut out one of the medium, eight-man rafts, and we pushed it down to the ramp. There were paddles strapped inside as well as life vests. We unstrapped two paddles, put on some damp life vests, loaded the shepherds, and pushed out into the stream.

“Ever done this before?” I asked.

“Once,” she said. “In Colorado. Much bigger raft, with professional guides. I was just along for the ride. Never felt so helpless in my life.”

“Those are big rivers. This stream shouldn’t be too bad. I think we can mostly drift with the current.”

“So is there a reason that place called itself a whitewater rafting outfit?” she asked pointedly.

“Probably in the spring when this thing is up and running,” I replied, with more confidence than I actually felt. I’d been out a couple of times but would have to admit I knew next to nothing about navigating real rapids. Fortunately, it was late summer and there shouldn’t be enough water in the stream to build any real rapids ahead. If there were, we could always get out and resume our cross-country marathon.

“Do you think this will slow up the pursuit any?” she asked, again mirroring my own thoughts. I was dragging my left foot, sock and all, in the cold water. It felt wonderful. Getting the boot off had not been wonderful. I’d cut away the laces and then let the weight of the water pull it off.

“If they use dogs, they’ll know we hit the river with a raft. Then they’ll have to search both sides to find us, and the dogs won’t be of much use.”

“Is that a yes?”

My mind was foggy, and my foot was getting a good start on becoming a block of ice. I realized that getting into the raft was mostly going to be a comfortable break in an otherwise precarious escape plan. Once M. C. Mingo got a look into Rue’s truck, every cop in the entire country and all the black hats would be on our trail. And getting into Carrigan County wasn’t necessarily going to solve our problems. Mingo could fax over some crime-scene photos to Sheriff Hayes’s office and we might get rounded up and handed right back over to our nemesis. I ducked her question.

“What else did Rue reveal on the way to Grinny’s cabin?” I asked. “She say what they planned to do with you?”

“Mingo knows I’m not with the SBI anymore,” she said.

“Which meant he was worried enough to check.”

“Yes, I suppose. I tried to bluff her, tell her there’d be consequences when I got back.”

“And?”

“And she said something along the lines of ‘Honey, it ain’t like you comin’ back.’”

“Well, there you are,” I said. “Now she’s dead instead of you.”

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, right,” I said wearily. “It was still pretty awful.”

“Worse because it was a woman getting shot?”

I had to think about that for a moment. “Yes, I think so. That’s probably not PC, and I know she was a snake, but…”

She moved closer to me in the back of the raft. Under other circumstances it would have been a very pleasant ride through the soft night. The stream was about sixty feet wide, and the raft was just sailing along peacefully. We were both in the back, and the shepherds were at our feet. The raft would bump into the occasional rock or one of the banks, spin lazily, and rejoin the current. We’d stowed the two sweeps, and I’d shoved the shotgun into two nylon safety harness loops on the side. Large trees overhung the banks, and the dim moonlight peered in and out of the leaves. We’d seen no vehicles on the road above, and after ten minutes or so I think we both fell asleep.

Which is how the waterfall surprised us. I awoke to feel the back end of the raft coming up and the front tipping down dangerously. By the time I got my wits about me we were over the edge and dropping like the proverbial stone. I grabbed a safety loop with one hand and Carrie with the other about the same moment that we hit the water below with a surprisingly painful thump. Both shepherds slid forward to the bow of the raft and were catapulted back to the middle when the raft folded up into an inflatable sandwich for an instant. I think the only reason we all hadn’t gone into the water was that we had been grouped back at the stern of the raft.

Carrie swore as the raft did a giddy three-sixty and we got a look at the falls, which fortunately were only about six feet high. But now we found out why they called themselves a whitewater rafting company. The river’s banks were closing in, and the current was beginning to really assert itself.

“Reveille, reveille,” I said, reaching for one of the paddle sweeps. I hauled the dogs back to where we were, and Carrie pulled out a sweep.

“What do we do?” she said, shouting because the water was getting noisy. The raft hit a big boulder and whipped around, sending us backward down the increasingly turbulent stream.

“Not this,” I yelled, and began to sweep with the paddle to get us going bow first before we hit something again. Carrie copied what I was doing, and we fought each other for a minute before we realized what was happening.

“Get up front,” I called. “Try to keep us from hitting anything dead-on.”

She scrambled to the front of the boat as I finally got the damned thing across and then aligned properly in the current. The dogs were staying low and giving me reproachful looks. I wondered if shepherds got seasick.

Ahead was a long, straight channel of high, slab-sided rocks and whitewater. This stretch must be really something in the spring, I thought, as we went over another low waterfall neither of us had seen in the darkness. Carrie gave a whoop and then disappeared in a blast of spray and bad language. If it had been daylight this might have even been fun. The good news was that we were making good distance in the suddenly strong current. The bad news was that we were effectively out of control, since neither of us knew what we were doing. And it was starting to get light, which meant that soon there would be eyes on the shore trying to find us.

We were shoved sideways to one side of the main stream, and the boat hung up on something, which resulted in cold water pouring over one gunwale in alarming quantities. The dogs scrambled instinctively to the other side, and the weight shift dislodged the boat before either of us was ready. Once more we were rolling downstream backward. I didn’t know much, but I knew that was a prescription for disaster, and I yelled at Carrie to pull hard on her sweep. She called back that she was trying, and then the damned boat lunged sideways and settled into a whirlpool, spinning us sickeningly in three complete circles before spitting us out into the main channel again.

And then it was over. The river catapulted us out of one final, narrow stone chute into a broad expanse of black water and went back to sleep. I didn’t know how long we’d been in the rapids, such as they were, but it had seemed forever. The river widened out again and entered a long, deep curve, once more embraced by large trees on either bank. We were both wet and, even in the late-summer dawn, cold. Frick and Frack were disgusted at our ineptitude and wouldn’t look at me.

The shotgun was sloshing around in about three inches of water, so I shipped the oar and extracted the heavy gun. I ejected the two sodden cartridges, reloaded with semi-dry ones from my pockets, and put the gun across my knees. Carrie crawled toward the back of the raft, laying her oar down in the bottom, but the current had thrown us to the outside of the big bend, and the raft crunched to a halt in some gravel. Carrie grabbed her oar, got up on her knees, and tried to push us off the gravel bar. I shifted to the port side to unload the part that was aground, and she got up into a crouch to put her body weight into the push.

Just as she succeeded in pushing us off, she grunted painfully and pitched headfirst out of the boat as the echo of a long gun came booming across the water. A second round slashed the air in front of my face, and then a third smashed a big waterspout at the bow of the raft as we swung back out into the current. I flung myself flat into the bottom of the raft and tried to see where the fire was coming from. Two more rounds came in, both raising waterspouts in the middle of the raft, which I realized was now filling with water and starting to sink. The shepherds were scrambling around in the rising water right beside me.

Then I saw them: two vehicles parked nose out on a high bank on the road side of the river, about fifty yards ahead. One a civilian van, one a cop car. I caught a muzzle flash from between them as another round ripped all the way through the fabric of the raft. The raft’s forward motion had stopped. I couldn’t see what had happened to Carrie and desperately wanted to roll out of the raft, but didn’t dare expose myself. Then I realized I was still gripping the shotgun. I tipped the barrels to make sure there was no water inside and then fired both in the general direction of the vehicles. Even partially wet, both cartridges functioned as advertised, and the shooting stopped long enough for me to roll sideways out of the raft. The dogs jumped in with me, and we started swimming awkwardly toward the same bank the shooters were on. When my knees banged on some bottom rocks I realized I could make better time by scrambling through the shallows, which were now out of the line of fire from the vehicles.

I searched back upstream in the morning twilight for any signs of Carrie but couldn’t see anything, and I knew it wouldn’t take those guys long to figure out where I’d gone to ground. I crawled up the low, stony bank with the dogs, fumbling for more shells while staying low enough not to make a good target. I didn’t like the idea of firing on police officers one bit, but had to assume that these were Mingo’s people and that they had orders not to bring back any prisoners.

We crashed into some low bushes and reeds near the top of the bank. I downed the shepherds and reloaded the shotgun. My clothes were soaked, and the hulls of the shells were definitely wet. I could only pray that they would fire if I needed them. The raft had disappeared out in the river, either sunk or floating just beneath the surface. I had one boot on, one boot gone, and no longer cared if my foot hurt.

Carrie had been hit and was probably bleeding in the shallows back upstream. I had to decide: try to get back to her or deal with these guys first. Easy decision: I had to neutralize this threat before I’d be able to help Carrie. I decided to do the unexpected and started crawling toward the two vehicles. It was tough going through all the riverbank debris. I couldn’t see the shooters, and there’d been no more rifle fire since the ten-gauge had spoken, but I knew that it was highly unlikely I’d done any real damage from that range. The shepherds came with me, staying right by my legs and crouching low.

When I’d gone about thirty feet the bushes started to thin out, and I lay down behind a hollowed-out sand embankment for a minute to see if I could hear the shooters. Then I realized they were just on the other side of the same snag-mound. I thought I heard one of the vehicles start up.

“Lucas got the woman,” a voice said. “Got her good.”

“What the hell do we do now?” a second, younger voice asked nervously. “I don’t hold with shootin’ no women, and besides, ‘at bastard’s got him a Greener.”

“We wait,” the first cop said. “Mingo’ll be comin’ on with the rest of Grinny’s boys. Then we’ll do a find-’em line and roust his ass out. He ain’t goin’ far, and she ain’t goin’ nowheres.”

“Mingo gonna take ’em in?”

“Shee-it,” the first one spat. “Mingo’s gonna take care of business. You seen what they done to Rue?”

“I heard,” the younger one said.

I could hear him adjusting his position. The embankment was at least five feet high. I was beneath it; they had to be crouching just on the other side. I settled down even deeper into the sand. These guys were deputies. Lucas, whoever he was, must be one of Mingo’s “unofficial” deputies. I was tempted to just stand up and blow them away. Tempted, hell-they’d shot Carrie without compunction or warning.

But then I hesitated. I was assuming the shotgun’s shells would work, and they’d been awfully wet going into the barrels. And where the hell was Lucas? Had that been him going to fetch Mingo? Or was he circling behind my landing spot?

I eased the heavy shotgun around from underneath me and pointed it upward. Still I hesitated. They were cops with their blood up. As far as they were concerned, they were chasing two stone-cold killers, and God only knew what Mingo had told them. It was Lucas who’d shot Carrie, not these two. At this range, any part of a ten-gauge blast would be fatal. But I needed to do something, especially if I was mistaken about Lucas leaving.

I took a deep breath, gathered myself into a one-legged crouch, duckwalked up the embankment until I saw the top of a deputy’s hat, stood up, let go both barrels into the space right between them, and then set the shepherds on them.

They both went down in a tangle of yells and snarling German shepherds. I let the dogs do their thing for a few seconds while I reloaded, and then I called them off. The two deputies were in Robbins County uniforms, and they were utterly terrified. The dogs had scared the living shit out of them without taking very much meat, and now their worst nightmare was standing over them with a ten-gauge in their bleeding faces.

“Got her good, did you?” I yelled at the older one, a black-haired man with a square, scowling face. I pointed the shotgun down into his crotch, and he started whimpering like a puppy. The younger one had pissed himself and was trying to hide his face behind his hands while backing away from the gaping barrels of the ten-gauge.

I herded the both of them down into the river after relieving them of their handguns, which I threw into the river. I told them to start swimming and they did a vigorous job of it, splashing through the shallows and out into the deeper channel. I really did want to blow their damned heads off but then heard sirens in the distance. I looked again upstream, trying to see any sign of Carrie, but the curve in the river still blocked my view.

Got her good, the man had said about Carrie. That meant he’d hit her in the core, and she was probably already gone. Shit.

The two deputies were scrambling through the shallows on the other side. I pointed the shotgun at them and they dived for cover, so I called in the shepherds and hobbled over to where the cruiser was parked. The other vehicle was gone. Fortunately, they hadn’t followed procedure and locked the doors or taken the keys, which were right where I needed them to be. I roared out of the overlook area where they’d set up their ambush and headed south down the river road as fast as I could make that puppy go. Two miles later I sailed into Carrigan County, wondering already if I’d done the right thing by not going back for Carrie. The tactical situation clearly dictated otherwise, but still…

I came into Marionburg fifteen minutes later and headed right for Sheriff Hayes’s office. No point in letting Mingo tell his side of the story first. I was too early; the sheriff wouldn’t be in for an hour, and the look on the sergeant’s face when he got a gander at me wasn’t reassuring. I went back to my abode of marital bliss, fed the shepherds, took a shower, and got some dry clothes. I bandaged my foot as best I could and put a slipper on it. Then I found a diner back in town and had breakfast. As I came back out to the Robbins County cop car, I noticed two holes in the left front fender and a star in the left rear window. Go, ten-gauge.

Sheriff Hayes looked his usual weary self. I wondered again if he wasn’t dealing with a heart condition or some other serious illness. Certainly the stress and strain of the job up here in the western mountains could not begin to approach that of his urban brethren, but he sure had the look. He listened in increasingly concerned silence as I told my story, including my confrontation with Rowena Creigh. When I was finished he buzzed his secretary and asked for more coffee. I thought it was for him, but he said it was actually for me. I guess I didn’t look so hot, either.

“This is what, the third time you’ve butted your fool head against Robbins County and bounced off?” he asked.

“In a manner of speaking,” I said.

“In a manner of speaking,” he repeated sarcastically. “And each time, there seem to be more goddamned bodies. What are you, some kinda angel of death?”

I just sat there, not knowing what to say. He had a point.

“You came up here originally because Mary Ellen Goode asked you for a favor. You obliged and, in fact, broke that little mystery wide open. Got the little girl to talk. Established that two guys were involved, and that they were probably both deceased by now. Good work. End of story. Except it wasn’t. Why the hell didn’t you just go home? You do have a home, don’t you? You’re not homeless or anything, are you?”

I shook my head. The secretary came in with the coffee. He stopped talking while she set things down and then left.

“Rue Creigh is going to be your problem, not mine,” he said. “M. C. is going to want your scalp for that, even if she did throw down on you, which I absolutely believe. That girl was all grit, clit, and bullshit. But Carrie Santangelo? That’s very different. I’m going to have to notify the SBI, and they’re gonna send a posse, and those boys will want to talk to you. At fucking length, if you catch my drift.”

“It was her beef that I was working,” I said, using her expression. “She’s convinced Grinny Creigh is selling children into some porn or slave market, probably in Washington. She felt strongly enough about it that she resigned. Took early-out from the SBI to go work it on her own, knowing what that meant, too. Financially and otherwise.”

“And now? Where is she now?”

I hung my head. “I don’t know. She went off the side of that boat like she’d been hit by a board. By then I was ducking rifle rounds and trying to hide behind an inflatable boat. I had to deal with them before I could help her.”

“You say you didn’t kill them when you had the chance. They were sure as hell trying to kill you two. So why not?”

I explained about overhearing them talk about “Lucas” doing the actual shooting. “I couldn’t know what Mingo had told them about us. They were a couple of deputies, probably doing what they thought was right.”

“That’s bullshit. Deputy sheriffs arrest perps and bring them to justice. They don’t shoot them down like wetbacks in a fucking river.”

“Like I said, I think it was the other guy who did the shooting. I believe emotions are running high up there. If they saw what remained of Rue Creigh, and Mingo spun them up, well… cops. What can I say.”

He looked at me the way a drill sergeant looks at a recruit who’s shown up with a pink Mohawk. That was a look I remembered from boot camp.

“And now I suppose you think you’re going back in.”

“Thought crossed my mind,” I said. “Carrie’s still out there.”

“So’s Mingo and his mafia,” the sheriff said. “This time they’ll get you. You’re in no shape to go anywhere. You look like you’re ready to fold up right there in that chair.”

He was right. I was suddenly very tired. My bones ached, I didn’t want to look at my foot, and I was worried sick about Carrie. It had been her crusade, but I was the guy who’d made it out of the kill zone. I didn’t look forward to the kinds of looks I’d be getting once the SBI crew showed up.

“You need to go offline for a while while I get some adult supervision into this mess,” he said. “Go back to that French boudoir of a hotel room and wait for me to tell you what you’re going to do next.”

“I mostly need some sleep,” I said. “That’s what Carrie was trying for when Rue Creigh waltzed in and took her prisoner. Right here in beautiful downtown Carrigan County, now that I think about it.”

He gave me a sour look. “Okay, okay, I’ll put some people on your hotel. You still have that Creigh shotgun?”

“It’s out in that Robbins County cruiser,” I said. “I’d like to keep it, though-Nathan took my SIG.”

He thought about it for a moment, then realized the shotgun would provide little ballistic evidence.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll have a deputy follow you back to the hotel. Then I think we’ll park their cruiser back out by the county line.”

“What if Carrie was right?” I asked. “What if Grinny Creigh’s got a clutch of kids in a cave somewhere and is preparing to transport them to God knows what?”

“First things first,” he said. “Let’s find out what happened to Carrie. You’re positive it wasn’t the deputies who did the shooting?”

“They had handguns, the shooter had a rifle of some kind. I definitely heard one of them say, ‘Lucas got her good.’ Don’t know who Lucas is. That’s all I’m sure about.”

“But they didn’t prevent it, either.”

“No, they did not. And at least one of them was looking forward to phase two.”

“That’s what makes this thing so tough,” he said. “I have zero jurisdiction or authority over there, or I’d take a crew in and look for Carrie. So now I’m going to call in some cavalry. Like I said, they’ll want to talk to you.”

“Ducky.”

I slept right through to five o’clock, even though I’d set a clock for three. I fed the dogs again and then limped up to the main lodge to get something to eat. My ankle was coming down a little bit, but my instep still hurt and I couldn’t get a shoe on yet. When I got back to the cabin I found three large men with North Carolina SBI windbreakers waiting for me. The shepherds were watching them from inside the screen porch. They weren’t barking, but they hadn’t let them in, either. They showed ID, and I told the dogs that it was okay. I led the threesome into the living room.

The man who appeared to be in charge introduced himself as Senior Supervisory Special Agent Carl Gelber. He was not a happy camper. He looked like an enforcer for a mob loan shark, minus the big pasta belly. Of his two associates, one was young, maybe twenty-five, and the other was in his late forties. Both of them were big boys, too. The SBI must have a goon squad hidden somewhere, I thought, as I watched them try to fit into the cabin’s lavishly upholstered chairs.

Gelber said he’d been briefed by Sheriff Hayes and now he wanted to hear it from me, beginning at the beginning. I asked them if they wanted a drink. Gelber just sat there looking like he was barely in control of his temper, and, no, they were not here to socialize. This was definitely a business call. His expression said that I was lucky not to have been hauled down to a dungeon for this little consultation.

I took them through it from the beginning, or at least from the point where Carrie had gotten involved. They did not take notes-they just listened. Gelber watched me the way a hawk watches a little bunny hopping across a big field, waiting for it to get equidistant from any possible cover. His stare was sufficiently hostile that I called in the shepherds and made them lie down next to my chair. If he got the message, he didn’t let on. Finally, when I was finished, he told me to go through it again. That pissed me off-he was in fact treating me like some kind of suspect.

“No,” I said. “I’ve told you what I know. I’ll answer questions if you have some.”

Gelber’s face froze and he balled his hands into fists. Big fists. Frack sat up, staring at him. “Not your call, cowboy,” Gelber said, leaning forward in his chair as if he were getting ready to come at me. Frick sat up now, and both shepherds were locked on, without a word or signal from me. Gelber finally noticed what was happening.

“You sic those dogs on me and I’ll shoot both of them before they get off the first bark,” he spat.

I sighed. “You make any sort of move just now and you’ll lose both your hands and your face,” I said quietly. “You need to settle down, Special Agent.”

Gelber got very red in the face, and for a moment I thought he was going to try it. It would have been interesting. Bloody and noisy, but definitely interesting. Then the older agent intervened.

“Carl,” he said in a voice of calm authority. “Get ahold of yourself. You’re being unprofessional.”

Gelber blinked, turned around to look at the older man, and then deflated. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Sorry, sir.” He relaxed fractionally in his chair, opened his hands, and put them on his knees. Both shepherds relaxed along with him.

“Lieutenant Richter,” the older man said to me. “I’m Sam King, and I’m the western district manager for the SBI. As you might imagine, everyone’s pretty upset right now. Why don’t you and I have that drink. We’ll just let these gents go outside for a cigarette.”

It was my turn to blink, but I agreed immediately and told the dogs to lie down and watch. Gelber didn’t much care for that word “watch,” but he and his buddy stepped outside. Both shepherds followed them to the door and then sat down on the porch. Gelber’s anger seemed to have been genuine, so I didn’t think they were playing the bad cop, good cop game, but I decided to be on my guard. If this guy was the western district manager, he’d be looking to make sure that this situation didn’t get any serious mud on the SBI’s shoes.

“We went into Robbins County,” King said once we sat back down. “I had one team looking for Carrie Santangelo, or her remains, in the area where you said the shooting went down. No sign of her, unfortunately.”

“Maybe fortunately,” I interjected. “No body might mean she’s still alive.”

“Or drowned and not coming up for the usual two more days,” he said gently. “We did find the remains of the raft, hung up on a snag. Complete with bullet holes. And someone’s nasty toy.”

The mamba stick. One point for me, I thought.

“I took another team into Mingo’s office in Rocky Falls,” he continued. “We were rather, um, belligerent. But Mingo was prepared for us. According to him, two of his deputies were cruising the river road, looking for an escaped prisoner.”

“That would be me,” I said.

“Yeah. Anyway, the gospel according to Mingo: They heard shooting, stopped to investigate, saw a man they say they didn’t know shooting at two unidentified people in a raft. They thought they saw one of said people get hit and fall out of said raft. When the shooter saw the cops, he took off. They called it in and went down to the riverbank to investigate because they thought there might be someone injured in the river. While they were down there, somebody grabbed their cruiser and also took off. Here endeth the lesson.”

“The two vehicles were parked together when the shooting started,” I said. “Side by side. The rifle shooter was firing from between the vehicles. Those cops are complicit in this. They knew the shooter’s name.”

“And we’ve asked Mingo to get them in for a lie detector test.”

“He agree to that?”

“Hell, no, he wouldn’t even ID them. I’m guessing they’ll get their union rep in and then stonewall. Assuming they’ve advanced to that point in Robbins County. We looked at the site, and, yes, there are vehicle tracks all over it. Too many, unfortunately. We did find a couple of fresh-looking cigarette butts, which might indicate someone had been staked out, waiting. But we also found used condoms, beer cans, fast-food wrappers, so it’s probably also a make-out spot. We’ve sent the ciggy-butts to our lab for a DNA take.”

“Did they say anything about Rue Creigh getting her head blown off?”

“Not a word,” King said.

“That’s very interesting,” I said. “I can show you where that happened. I’ll bet there’s some blood evidence on that dirt road. No mention of my taking Nathan Creigh down and ‘borrowing’ his shotgun?”

He shook his head and consulted his notebook. “They did say that the raft had been stolen earlier in the morning, so they suspected the guy in the raft might be their fugitive. They said you burned the jail and possibly killed two jailers during your escape. Anything on that?”

I told him of the events at the jail and that the Big brothers were here in Carrigan County under Hayes’s protection and could back up my story. He nodded and made a note, which is when I realized he had been putting stuff into his notebook the whole time we’d been talking. Smooth western district manager.

“Mingo say anything to indicate that he knew it was Carrie who got shot?”

“News to him,” King said. “He did make an oblique reference to the fact that technically, anyway, she didn’t work for us anymore.”

“Sending you a little message, maybe?”

“Maybe,” King said. “We’ve been looking at Robbins County for a long time, but it’s always been in connection with Mingo and his crew of ‘unofficial’ deputies protecting the meth trade.”

“That’s not what Carrie was after,” I said.

“Yeah, I know. And you’re probably wondering why we didn’t go with it.”

“I assume it was the same problem everyone has in Robbins County: no hard evidence.”

“That’s right,” he said. “And there was a personal, somewhat obsessive angle, which tended to taint any theories she might have advanced. When she quit, I had some second thoughts, so I went to the Bureau in Charlotte and asked them what they had on any child trafficking going on in western Carolina.”

“And?”

“And that got me an invitation to drive down to Charlotte for a face-to-face conference with their intel people. I was supposed to be there today, but then Sheriff Hayes called.”

“What’s Gelber’s problem?” I asked.

“He was Carrie’s immediate supervisor,” King said. “He thinks she resigned because you talked her into it, and then you got her killed.”

“He’s got it exactly backwards,” I said. “I was all done up here. She’s the one who wanted me to go back in, to chase this kid thing.”

“Well,” King said, closing his notebook, “you’re welcome to try to convince him. He might just be feeling a little guilty for not taking her theory seriously, too.”

I sighed. I was still tired. “Look,” I said. “I can’t produce any evidence of children being abducted and transported for sale. I overheard a conversation that confirmed that theory for me, and we had one old lady say that there seemed to be a lot of kids who ran away up there, but there are lots of other possible reasons for that.”

“What’s your point?”

“These guys were chasing me because I know what happened at the jail and I’ve become a thorn in their criminal hides. But why did Grinny Creigh send her daughter to abduct Carrie here in Marionburg? For that matter, how did they know where she was? Why’d they want her?”

“Because she was getting close to something?” he asked. “Something more important than their drug operation?”

“That’s my take,” I said. “They’ve held off the DEA for some time now, with Mingo’s help, of course, but suddenly they have two strangers causing problems.”

“But how would they know Carrie was looking at this new angle?” he asked. “Did either of you talk to them or anyone else about selling kids?”

“No,” I said, but then remembered that, yes, we had. “Wait-we did. We were helped by the old lady I mentioned, named Laurie May Creigh. Carrie did tell her about what she suspected.”

“Creigh? You guys talked to one of them?”

“She lives in the adjoining cove. Hates Grinny Creigh. Related, but has nothing to do with her. Hid us from the black hats when we had nowhere else to go. Showed me the best place to set up a watch on the Creigh compound. I think she’s all right.”

But even as I said all that, I still wondered. Nathan had known exactly where to find me, and they had somehow found out about Carrie’s quest. King saw my sudden doubts. Laurie May had either set a trap or was maybe now lying injured or worse in her cabin after a beating at the hands of Nathan.

“What?” King asked. I laid it out for him.

He sighed and made some more notes. “Well,” he said, “our problem is just what you said. I’ve got an asset inside Mingo’s office, but so far all we have is a bunch of stories backed up by zero physical evidence. Even now, all we got is a raft with some holes in it. We can’t legally go busting in on any of the Creighs without court paper, and I don’t think we’d get the paper.”

“How about conducting a general, wide-area search for Carrie, then?” I said. “You have a credible report that she’s been shot. Even Mingo says so, and I sure as hell say so. Search the whole damned county, and make sure you get into Grinny Creigh’s compound while you do it. Urgently. That’s what I’m going to do.”

“You have no authority to do anything, here or over there. You know that. And Mingo would love to get his hands on you again. And if he does, this time you won’t make it to any damn jail.”

“I’ll take my chances,” I said, with more confidence than I really felt. “I’ll get the Big brothers to help out. Carrie may be out there in the woods right now, waiting for help. And you can be damned sure Mingo will have people looking just as soon as he thinks you guys have given up.”

The phone rang. King asked me who had this number, and I told him lots of people. I picked it up. It was the front desk in the main lodge. “Taking calls now, Mr. Richter?” the operator asked. For a moment I didn’t understand him, then remembered that I’d asked them to block all calls earlier while I got some sleep.

“Yes, I am-who’s calling?”

“No name, sir, but he’s local and I’d guess he’s been up in them thar hills for awhile.”

“Give me ten seconds,” I said, nodding with my head toward an extension phone on the kitchen counter. King understood immediately.

“On three,” I said after hanging up. The phone started ringing again, and we picked up simultaneously.

“I gotcher woman,” a rough voice declared.

I was about to say she wasn’t “my woman,” but finally my feeble brain engaged. “Prove it,” I said.

“Prove it? Awright, I will.” King had the handset jammed under his ear while he worked his cell phone frantically, probably trying to set up a trace.

I heard shuffling noises in the phone, the man’s voice barking some orders, and then Carrie was on the line. “Hello?” she said in a weak voice.

“Carrie? This is Cam Richter. Are you injured?”

“Head hurts,” she said. “Hair’s all sticky. Hurts.”

She wasn’t entirely there for the conversation, which confirmed a head wound. I wanted to ask her where she was, but she’d have no idea and was probably wearing a duct-tape blindfold anyway. There was more noise on the phone, a grunt of pain from Carrie, and then Mr. Personality was back.

“Satisfied, are ye?”

King was making keep-him-talking gestures. “Actually,” I said, “I’m not sure who that was. It might be her, but she’s out of her head.”

“Yeah, she is. Got her a real nasty hairdo, she does. By rights, she oughter be dead.”

“And you would be-Lucas?” I asked.

“Ho-o-o-o!” he exclaimed, making an owl noise. “How d’ye figger that?”

“Your deputy buddies told me you shot her and you’d gone to find her body.”

There was just a fractional pause before he responded to that. I saw King mouth an expletive and shake his head.

“I ain’t Lucas and I ain’t shot nobody and I don’t have no truck with no damn deputies,” he said. “You want yer woman back or not?”

“If it’s her, yes, I want her back.” And I want you dead, I thought. “What’s the deal?”

“Deal? I ain’t proposin’ no deal. I’m a’tellin’ ye what yer gonna do, you want this woman back alive.”

“Okay, then, shoot,” I said amicably. I didn’t need to challenge this guy. Remember the objective, I told myself. Get her back, then you can take other action. King had closed up his cell phone. No go on a trace, but he continued to listen in.

“You’n me’s gonna meet up,” he said. “You gonna bring a bag’a money. Cash money. Five thousand greenback dollars, cash money. I get the money, I’ll tell you where she’s hid at. No money, I leave her there to die. Plain as that.”

“Okay,” I said. “That’s plain, all right. I can do that. Meet where?”

“Where you was this mornin’,” he said. “Where them cops was parked, a’waitin’ for ye.”

“So you are Lucas,” I said. “You missed me this morning. How do I know you won’t be sitting in the trees with that rifle, waiting to try again?”

“ ’Cause I want that damn money. I was s’posed to git paid for killin’ the both of ye. Y’all got lucky. Then I figgered, hell, more’n one way to skin this here cat. But you gotta come alone, now.”

He’d given up pretending he wasn’t Lucas. “I don’t know, Lucas,” I said. “I come up there alone, carrying a bag of money, you shoot me down from ambush, then kill the woman, you get my money and your paycheck. Now why should I take chances like that?”

King was giving me a strange look, but he was back on his cell phone, trying something else.

“You looky here, lawman,” Lucas said. “I don’t need to go puttin’ you down, or this woman, neither. Didn’t know she was a cop, awright? Nathan and them’re gonna git you for what you done to Rowena. Far’s they know, this here woman’s puffin’ up in the damn river, but they ain’t payin’ me nothin’ without no body, an’ the way I figger it, they’s all so stirred up right now, I take them a body and then it’s gonna be me in the damn river.”

“That doesn’t solve my problem, Lucas,” I said. “How about this-I come in one vehicle, my backup comes in a second one. We get there together, in the dark. The place where you said. Can she walk?”

A pause, as if he were thinking about it. “Maybe.”

“Then we’ll arrive together, two cars. One plain car, one cop car. You send her out of the woods, she gets in the plain car. My partner then gets out, puts the money out on the ground, opens it up in the headlights so you can see it’s really there, and then we both drive away. You come out when you want to and we’re done with it.”

“How do I know ye ain’t trickin’ on me?”

“Because we want her back, Lucas. And we can get the five thousand-we’re the cops. Five thousand doesn’t mean squat to us. And we don’t have to go to any bank to get it. Besides, our fight’s not with you-it’s with the Creighs. We’re gonna have us a war, Lucas. You want to be part of that, or do you want five thousand bucks, cash money, right now, and the chance to get out of Robbins County for good? Who else but the cops can do that for you?”

There was a long silence on the line this time. I decided to wait him out. It was a simple enough proposition, and we each stood to gain.

“Midnight tonight,” he said. “Mess with me, I’ll cut her damn throat. Best believe that.”

“I do believe it, Lucas. Like I said, our fight’s not with you. You were just paid to do a job of work. Didn’t pan out. So now we both get to make it right and get on with business. Midnight. We’ll be there.”

“Awright then,” he said and hung up.

“Damned hotel PBX system,” King growled. “Blocked the trace. Good work on your end, though.”

“We can get the money from Sheriff Hayes’s office,” I said. “He’ll have a buy-money stash. Then-”

“‘We’ is not the operative word,” King said. “‘We’ means us, not you. It’s our girl missing, and we will go meet this guy and get her back or bring him back in a rubber bag. You are still beat to shit from the morning, so you are going to stay put.”

I sat back in my chair and just looked at him. I knew that what he was saying made sense. He had the authority to execute the swap, and the means to put up the proper surveillance and backup nets.

“You know I’m right on this,” he said with a weary smile.

“Yeah, but.”

“I understand. But let us do our jobs. We know she’s alive, for the moment anyway, and if we can get her back for five grand, we will have dodged a large bullet. You stay put. We don’t need any stray operators in the mix right now. We get her back, we’ll call you and you can go see her in the hospital, okay?”

Much as I wanted to go along, Lucas wouldn’t know me from Adam. He wanted his money, and probably wanted to put some distance between him and his prisoner now that he knew she was a cop. I agreed. “Can she have her mamba stick back?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“That belongs to the state; she no longer does.”

King left to round up his team and make arrangements. I went out front and took the shepherds. We watched them go. Gelber still looked angry, but I now suspected he was one of those guys who always looks angry. I spotted the county cruiser Hayes had promised sitting out in a corner of the parking lot and walked over to shoot the breeze with the deputy. To my surprise, it turned out to be one of the Big brothers.

“I see you’ve got a new job these days,” I said.

Bigger John grinned and stubbed out his cigarette.

“Does M. C. know you hired on over here?”

“Don’t reckon,” he rumbled. “But he will.”

“I never thanked you guys for saving my bacon the other night,” I told him.

“That done it for us,” he replied. “Them Creighs is outta hand. They find that Harper girl?”

I had to think for a moment before remembering Harper was Carrie’s maiden name. “SBI’s got an angle, going to work it tonight,” I said. “Did you know her before she left for Charlotte?”

He shook his head. “Wasn’t born yet. But Mingo-he knew her. Said her old man had been a problem once upon a time, but not no longer.”

He lit up another cigarette and blew a big cloud of aromatic smoke out into the night air. It momentarily made me want to go back to the noxious weed. A car came by us going into the parking lot, and two kids in the back were staring at us as they went past.

“We have a pretty good line on Agent Santangelo,” I said. “Some guy named Lucas wants to trade her for cash money.”

“Might be Lucas Carr,” John said. “He’s done some stick work for M. C. from time to time.”

I didn’t have to ask what stick work was. “Have you ever heard any rumors about Grinny Creigh and children in the county?” I asked him.

“Other than she cooks ’em and eats ’em?” he asked.

“Yeah, besides that. Something maybe worse.”

He didn’t say anything for a long minute, just kept puffing on his cigarette. It looked like a white toothpick in his massive paw.

“We did a road scrape once,” he said finally. “You know, one’a them real messy MVAs? Old boy had drove himself into a tree on a bad curve. His bottom half was puddled up a coupl’a feet from his top half. The top half was still alive, talkin’, like nothin’ had happened.”

“Adrenaline’s amazing stuff,” I said.

“Mm-hmm,” he agreed. “So’re seat belts. Boy couldn’t see he’d done been cut right in half. He was goin’ on, mile-a-minnit, sayin’ he had to do surgery, that he was a doc, and he was late. He didn’t look like no doc, more like one’a them ay-rabs. Wasn’t no way we could move’m or help’m, so we let him talk, just kinda waitin’ for him to bleed down. Couldn’t’ve got’m out without a backhoe, you know what I mean? I asked him where he was goin’ in such a damn hurry.”

“And?”

“Said he had to git to the county hospital here in Marionburg. Kept jabberin’ on about how late he was. Other boy with me, he asked’m who was he cuttin’ on. Said he had to do surgery on a kid. By now, he was nose down and goin’ fast. Other boy asked him, what kid. Said one’a them kids over to Miz Creigh’s place.” John glanced up at me to see if I’d heard the important bit.

“Kids? As in plural?”

He nodded. “Kids. At Grinny Creigh’s place.” He ruminated on that notion for a moment before continuing. “Now, there ain’t been no kids to go anywhere near that Grinny Creigh’s place for some time, not after hearin’ the old folks around Robbins County talk about her boilin’ babies by moonlight an’ all. Anyway, M. C. shows up. Wasn’t unusual-he always comes out when we get a bad MVA.”

He took a final drag on the hapless cigarette and pitched it. “You know what?” he continued. “I b’lieve he knew that fella. M. C. got there just about the time this so-called doctor crossed Jordan. M. C., he tells us to go back on patrol, he’s takin’ over the scene. Called some other deputies in, called the funeral home over here in Marionburg. Last we heard of it.”

“When was this?”

“Three years back,” he said. “If there’s any paperwork, M. C.’s got it in them private files of his.”

“Fatality on the highway, the state cops do the investigation,” I pointed out. “The state police reconstruction team comes in. They close the road, make a big deal.”

“Not if they don’t hear nothin’ about it,” he said calmly.

I leaned back on the left front fender of the cruiser and thought about this little story. One among many about Robbins County.

Stories. Unfortunately, that was about all we had. Stories and flashes of mortal violence in the night that seemed to evaporate in the cold light of day. What in the hell would a foreign doctor be doing up here? I’d seen one last night, but no locals would want an Asian or any other kind of foreigner working on them-they’d call in a woods healer first. But kids, plural, at Grinny’s place? This would interest Carrie, along with what I’d overheard, a lot. I told him that Sam King would want to talk to them both.

Bigger John was watching two teenaged boys lounging around an expensive German car, trying to pretend they weren’t checking out something interesting inside. John turned on the cruiser’s headlights and caught them square. They put their hands in front of their faces, moved away from the car, and then sauntered back toward the main lodge as if nothing had happened. I heard the radio crackle into life inside the cruiser. John bent forward to listen and then grunted.

“Gotta go back in,” he said. “You okay here for a little while?”

“I think so,” I said. “I’ve got my buddies in the cabin. And Nathan Creigh’s ten-gauge.”

“How’d you get ahold of that?” he asked. I told him, leaving out the part about Rue Creigh.

“Hope you whaled on him real good,” he said. “ ‘Cause that old boy won’t rest till he gets it back. And you with it.”

“I’ll be happy to face him again if he’s really interested,” I said.

“Not his style,” he said. “Think big-caliber ball, Reb rifle.”

After he left I walked across the parking lot and up to the main lodge. I’d left the shepherds in the cabin, along with the ten-gauge. I might get away with carrying a handgun into the hotel, but a shotgun would definitely make the waitstaff nervous. For that matter, the remaining shells were now thoroughly soaked and probably useless.

The lodge had a nicely appointed cocktail lounge. I limped in and ordered a single malt and a hamburger, in that order, and tried not to think about long guns. It was ten thirty, and I was disappointed at not being able to go along on the ride to recover Carrie Harper Santangelo. Special Agent King was right, of course, but I was also ashamed of having just left her there. The hamburger came; if the bartender thought it was strange to be washing down this culinary extravaganza with twelve-dollar scotch, he certainly didn’t say so.

The lounge was full and humming. They had a fusion blues trio in one corner, a small dance floor that allowed for as close a dance as you might want, and the usual collection of mildly desperate men and women looking for love or at least some company. Including one Moses Walsh, who was ensconced at a corner table with a woman in her late forties trying hard to look thirty-nine. He was dressed in a long-sleeved white shirt and clean, faded jeans and had some kind of Indian decoration in his hair and at his throat. With that face, he had the part covered in spades.

The woman got up to visit the powder room, so I grabbed my scotch and sauntered over.

“Big Chief on the road to glory?” I asked.

I got a sonorous western movie grunt and a squinty-eyed sideways look. “Big Chief on short final,” he said. “He hopes.”

“I think I would need some more scotch for that one,” I said, watching her walk away from us. “Not sure that would be a good wake-up.”

“Ain’t never gone to bed with no ugly woman,” he quoted. “But I have woke up with some. Where’d you hear about Big Chief? I haven’t heard that since high school.”

I told him and he smiled. “Didn’t know her,” he said. “She pretty?”

“Very,” I said. “And a senior internal affairs inspector in the SBI.”

“Oh,” he said.

I laughed. We talked for a few minutes, and then the woman came out of the bathroom, headed back toward the table. She stopped to talk to another woman of a similar stripe.

“You gonna introduce me? See if she has a friend?”

“Paleface blow Big Chief’s cover, he’s gonna die.”

“No worries,” I said. “And what kind of Indian are you supposed to be tonight?”

“Chippewa.”

“I don’t believe they were ever in these parts,” I said.

“No, but everyone’s cherokee’d out up here, so Chippewa it is.”

I got up, trying not to laugh out loud, and walked away, nodding at the returning lounge queen. Fifty trying for forty was more like it, but Mose was obviously a practitioner of the Go Ugly Early rule. He was also probably getting lucky a whole lot more than I was these days.

I went back to the bar and signaled for a refill. I was enjoying said refill when Sam King slid onto the adjoining bar stool.

“Those shepherds of yours aren’t always friendly, are they,” he said.

“Depends on what their orders are,” I said. “They’re German shepherds. Partial to clear orders. You guys all set up?”

“Better than that,” he said, signaling the bartender for a whiskey. “We got her back. A motorist found her standing in the middle of the highway on the Carrigan County side of the county line. She was dazed and wearing duct tape across her eyes. Guy called 911 and then brought her into the sheriff’s office. They took her to the county hospital, and they’re holding her overnight for observation.”

“How bad?”

“Big, ugly gash across the top of her head. Gonna be some stitches there. Possible concussion. Gonna have a sideways white streak in her hair for life, probably. Otherwise, unharmed. Filthy dirty, really damp around the edges, a lot of blood on her clothes, but it looks like she dodged a big one.”

“I’ll be damned,” I said. “Just like that.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Just like that. No signs of Brother Lucas, either, which is a shame. We were looking forward to getting up with him.”

“With luck he might even have resisted.”

King nodded and sipped his whiskey.

“This cannot have happened without you-know-who being in the mix,” I said. I was keeping my voice low as the bar was starting to fill up. “And I heard another story tonight, from one of the deputies who used to work over there.”

“Another Robbins County story,” he said. “Terrific.”

“It supports Carrie’s theory that Grinny Creigh is doing some damn thing that involves children.”

“Would a judge act on it?”

“Probably not.”

He looked at his watch. “Then I don’t want to hear it. We came here to get her back. She’s back.”

“You didn’t get her back. They gave her back.”

“Whatever,” he said. “She doesn’t work for us anymore, and she’s back. That’s what we came out here to do. Forgive me, but I’m a linear sort of guy, kinda like those shepherds of yours.”

“So now what-you guys just gonna back out?”

“Wouldn’t you, if you were still a lieutenant in the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office? Or did you people run around expending scarce resources on colorful rumors?”

King took my frustrated silence for assent.

“Look,” he said. “We’re the SBI. You know we never get too far out ahead of the line departments. We come in when there’s a solid case to be built, and then only when we’re asked in and we have assets to offer that a local sheriff’s office doesn’t.”

“And you never run your own ops?” I asked.

He studied his whiskey.

“How much smoke do you need before you go looking for a fire?” I asked. “You know you have a problem with Mingo, and that’s something the SBI does do on its own. DEA knows they have a problem with the Creigh clan and Mingo. You said that even the Bureau had something for you when you broke off to come look for Carrie. I’ve been shot at, jailed, kidnapped, and rescued by two of Mingo’s own deputies, who then jumped ship and are working for Hayes now. Your own ex-agent was kidnapped and got away only because her kidnapper stumbled onto me on a dark road, threw down on me, and got her head blown off. Then Carrie gets shot and kidnapped again? And then mysteriously released? What the fuck does it take, Special Agent?”

My voice had been rising, and some people were looking at us.

“Outside,” he said, throwing some money on the bar. We walked through the main lobby in silence and out into the parking lot. His official car was parked out front, with my very good friend Storm Trooper Gelber in the driver’s seat. I got the familiar glare when he saw me. The man was nothing if not consistent.

“Here’s some advice, Mister Richter,” King said. “This is western Carolina. Eastern Carolina is mostly horizontal, densely populated with lawyers, and urban-minded. Western Carolina is mostly vertical, sparsely populated altogether, and bloody-minded, especially when it comes to strangers poking around in the woods. Now, here comes the advice: Go home.”

I just looked at him. He must not have cared for the expression on my face, because he became angry.

“We know there’s something wrong in Robbins County,” he said. “Believe it or not, we might even be working on it, but since you are an ex-lieutenant, emphasis on the ‘ex’ part, I’m not inclined to share, okay? Same thing goes for ex-special agent Carrie Santangelo. Emphasis once again on the ‘ex.’ Chances are, you stay out of Robbins County and you’ll both be a whole lot better off. Go the fuck home. Trust me, I’ll be telling her the same damn thing in the morning.”

Gelber, who’d been listening, had a nasty smile on his face and was exuding agreement from the car. King gave me a curt nod and went over to get into the car. I tried to think of some really clever retort, but by the time I did, they were down the road and gone. As usual.

I walked back to the cabin. It was a pleasant night, although there was a hazy ring around the moon presaging rain later. The shrubbery around the creek smelled of late summer, and the pea gravel along the walk crunched respectfully under my feet. A zillion insects were communicating in the woods in the rising humidity. The shepherds were waiting by the front screen door, so I let them go water the grounds for a few minutes. I sat down on the front steps while they ran around and thought about what King had said.

Go the fuck home. Basically, this is our game and we’ll play it out the way we want to. Retirees, agents who resign, and other undesirables, especially ones who blunder into one fix after another and who believe in rural legends, need not apply. He’d been pretty convincing. M. C. Mingo and the Creighs hadn’t gone into business yesterday, and it would probably take years of careful and methodical police work, as usual, to roll them up in a way that would stand up in our wonderfully liberal court system.

Much as I hated to admit it, Special Agent King might just be right.

Then the shepherds returned. They were escorting one bedraggled-looking Carrie Harper Santangelo. I sighed. From the grimly determined look in her eyes, I knew there was no way in hell that I was going to get home any time soon.

“Breakout?” I asked her as she shuffled up to the cabin.

She nodded and then staggered just a little. I realized she was probably still under the effects of sedation. Her balance was off, and she was having trouble forming words. I helped her into the cabin. It being a bridal suite, there was only one real bedroom and one enormous bed, and that’s where I took her, the shepherds following with lots of concerned interest. She’d apparently found her dirty clothes and put them on over her hospital gown.

I sat her down on the edge of the bed and examined the top of her head. She rested her forehead on my chest patiently. Her scalp was a mess, albeit a professionally sutured and disinfected mess. She looked up at me, and then one eye wandered just a bit. Whatever pain meds they’d given her were definitely still onboard. I wanted to get her a bath, but right then and there she was bound for the arms of Morpheus.

I stretched her out on the bed and, as gently as I could, relieved her of her shoes, jeans, and shirt. The hospital gown did little to protect her modesty, but there was nothing sexy about undressing a woman who’d had the top of her head sliced open by a rifle. She made a halfhearted attempt to cover herself and then gave up when I rolled her into clean sheets and pulled up a light coverlet. Her body was slim, trim, and athletic, lovely and round where it should be, yet surprisingly light. Some genuine joy there for the right guy, I thought.

I went into the bathroom and returned with a warm washcloth. I washed her face as gently as I could and then her hands. She made little mumbling sounds. I brought her some water and she drank an entire glass. She said something about scotch and I smiled. Not tonight, dear heart. I fluffed up her pillows, made sure her arms weren’t contorted, and turned out the lights. I think she was asleep before I got out of the room.

I thought about one final scotch and then decided to pass. I was turning out lights and appraising the couch when there was a quiet knock on the door. It turned out to be the other Big brother, Luke.

“She okay?” he asked. He was twisting his deputy’s hat in his hands, and I could tell he was somewhat embarrassed to be there.

“Lemme guess: You failed door duty.”

He nodded. “Big time,” he said. “She pops out into the hallway, bottom in the breezes, says she has to get out of there. I tried talkin’ her back in, but she wasn’t havin’ any. Said she’d seen Mingo. Said she’d go out the window, she had to. Said people die in hospitals, she was leavin’, and she had a gun.” He grinned, despite himself.

“She get herself dressed, did she?” I asked.

He blushed harder. “Um, no, sir, I had to help her with that, too. Couldn’t see lettin’ her go half-nekkid down the damn hall. Said she had to get up with you. Said I had to spring her, that they was people comin’ to get her, same people as what cracked her head.”

I had to wonder where the hospital staff had been for this little drama, but I was glad he’d gone along. “You did the right thing,” I told him. “I think.”

“She gonna be okay?” he asked. “I can take her on back, you say so. Them nurses is gonna be havin’ themselves a hissy by now.”

“They know you aided and abetted?”

“No, sir, don’t believe so. They was busy bein’ distracted, sorta.”

I didn’t want to know any more. I told him it was okay and that he should go back to the hospital and tell them she’d checked herself out. “If she seems off in the morning, I’ll bring her back, but she’s probably safer here than in the hospital. There still a county vehicle out in the parking lot?”

“One comin’,” he said. “John was here, but he got called out. You got you a gun?”

I told him I had Nathan’s ten-gauge, and then remembered that I hadn’t baked out the shells. He grinned.

“John said you kicked his evil ass.” Then his face sobered. “He’s gonna do somethin’ about that, you know. They’re gonna do somethin’, best believe it.”

“So I’ve been told. Make sure the deputy in the parking lot knows about that possibility. In the meantime, it’s been a long damn day and night. I’m going to bed. She’s safe here with the shepherds. We’ll reevaluate tomorrow morning, okay? If there’s any shit, they can come see me. I’ll keep you out of it.”

He nodded, looking relieved, and left.

I secured the cabin, put the ten-gauge and the least soggy shells near the bedroom door, and then went in to check on Carrie. She was sleeping, or so I thought. I adjusted her covers, and then one small hand came out of nowhere and grabbed mine.

“Hold me,” she said.

I considered it and then said okay. I got undressed and slid into the bed with her. She rolled onto her left side and I put my arm around her. She took my right hand and pressed it to her left breast and then began to snore quietly as her body relaxed into mine and she dropped off into real sleep, probably for the first time in forty-eight hours.

I hadn’t been in bed with a woman since losing Annie Bellamy to the cat dancers mob. Carrie’s hair smelled of Eau de Betadine and hospital soap. Still, it was a nice feeling. The wind came up outside, and a rain squall pattered on the windows. The shepherds abandoned their porch and snuck into the bedroom. I pretended not to notice.