Stone Cold

21

With a pair of snips from his tool bag, Joe clipped the holding wires of the three taut strands of barbed wire on the steel T-post that delineated the western border of the Sand Creek Ranch. He’d strapped on a headlamp to be able to see what he was doing. The ATV idled in the trees behind him.

After flattening the loosened barbed wire to the ground with two downed logs, he climbed back on the four-wheeler and drove the vehicle over the top, then rolled the logs away. He loosely restored the fence behind him with baling wire he always carried with him.

Joe glanced around at the terrain and hoped he’d be able to find the entrance he’d created on his way out. There were no landmarks or characteristics to the endless pine forest all around him except for the faint old logging road he’d taken to approach the ranch from the west. He’d decided early on he couldn’t risk driving through the entrance gate again where the closed-circuit cameras were located.

Over the years, Joe had rarely trespassed on private property. But the few times he’d had to — to find a wounded animal or rescue a hunter or fisherman — were the reason he always carried cutters and wire for a quick repair.

Nevertheless, his conscience nagged at him. There he was, out of uniform and trespassing on a private ranch without invitation and with only the vague authority of the governor of Wyoming — who would likely plead ignorance if Joe was caught or arrested. This was after he’d registered under a false name at a hunting lodge.

As he picked his way up the mountain on the ATV, he kept the speed low and his eyes wide open so he wouldn’t overrun the pool of yellow light from the four-wheeler’s headlights. The old road he was on hadn’t been maintained and at times was blocked by brush and fallen logs. Several times, he looked ahead to see twin sets of green eye dots in the blackness ahead — deer or elk eyes reflecting back. For a mile or so, he followed fresh elk tracks and pellets on the two-track ahead of him until the herd eventually broke off and plunged into the forest.

He had no idea where the old road would end, but it was going where he wanted to go: east and up. Joe hoped that when he found the spine of the local Black Hills he’d be able to get his bearings, see below into the timbered valley, and possibly get a cell phone signal to check messages and communicate.

The department had never replaced the handheld GPS he’d left in his old pickup on the top of the mountain in the Bighorns, and until this moment, Joe hadn’t missed it. Judging by the rounded peaks ahead under the star-washed sky, he thought he was headed in the right direction. If he was correct, he should be able to see the ranch headquarters below him through his binoculars and get a better understanding of the layout.

When he crested the ridge, a line shack appeared in his headlights so suddenly Joe didn’t have the opportunity to kill the motor or douse his lights before he was upon it. Instinctively, he braked and froze while a swirl of dust from the knobby tires of the ATV curled through the beam.

Joe recovered from the surprise of seeing the structure fifty feet in front of him and snatched his shotgun out of the saddle scabbard. He dismounted and took several steps to the left into the trees and waited for the door of the shack to open or the curtains behind a window to rustle.

What would he tell the occupant about why he was there? Joe was a poor liar. He could only hope he’d be instantly mistaken for a lost hunter.

He cursed to himself as he pressed the slide release of his Wingmaster, ready if necessary to defend himself by racking in a 12-gauge shell filled with buckshot. He could feel his heart whump in his chest, and he tried to hear over the roar of blood in his ears.

Nothing happened.

The shack looked occupied: there was fresh lumber and building materials stacked on the side of it, there were tire tracks in the ground on the edge of the cut grass, and bright multicolored electrical wires were stapled to the exterior logs. A new galvanized tin chimney on the roof didn’t even have soot on it yet, and it gleamed in the lights from his ATV.

After a few minutes of waiting, Joe cautiously approached his four-wheeler and shut it off and killed the headlights. Was it possible, he wondered, that whoever was inside hadn’t heard him coming in the dead of night? He considered rolling the ATV back down the hill until he was far enough away to start it and retreat off the mountain, but instead he was drawn to the shack first. Did a Templeton ranch hand stay there? Was anybody home?

He muted his headlamp down to a faint glow and carefully circumnavigated the structure while staying in the trees. There was no doubt the old cabin was under construction, but no way to tell from the outside if anyone was inside. He found no vehicles in the timber beside it, but he did see a crate-sized box raised on stilts just inside the tree line. There was rustling from inside.

Joe approached the construction and leaned into it. The front was open and covered with wire mesh, and when he twisted slightly on the lens of his lamp the three hooded falcons came into view. They were perched on dowel rods and facing him, aware of his presence. A redtail, a prairie, and a peregrine that looked startlingly familiar. He recognized the tooled leather hood and leather jesses from the last time he’d seen the bird in person.

“Nate,” Joe whispered.

And he turned back to the line shack.

Joe took a deep breath, approached the closed front door. He stood to the side of the doorjamb and rapped on it with his backhand knuckles, in case Nate instinctively grabbed his weapon inside and decided to fire through the door.

“Nate. It’s Joe Pickett.”

There was no reaction from inside. He knocked again — harder — and said: “Nate. Let me in. We need to talk.”

Nothing.

Joe thought the likelihood of Nate blasting him was remote. Nate wasn’t one to panic. Even so, he wasn’t the kind of man to surprise, either.

Joe reached down and turned the knob. Unlocked. He pushed the door open and entered, using his headlamp to see inside like a Cyclops.

After thirty seconds, Joe had no doubt who lived in the line shack. Falconry gear — hoods, jesses, bells, lures — was scattered on the tabletop. Ancient books on falconry were stacked on a single bookshelf next to volumes on war, military tactics, and Special Operations. And in a small frame on the end of the bookshelf was a five-year-old photo of a young girl with a falcon on her arm. Sheridan, fifteen years old, grinned awkwardly at the camera with strands of her blond hair whipping across her face in the wind. The photo tugged at Joe’s heart: both that it was a younger and more awkward Sheridan, and that Nate displayed it.

Joe took a deep breath and tried to regain control of his heartbeat and breathing.

He’d found him. But now what?

Nate was obviously gone, but who knew how long? His weapon and hat were missing, and there was no vehicle outside. Folded clothes on the bed indicated he was around, and fresh-skinned grouse marinating in the refrigerator indicated he was coming back soon.

His friend lived in his own world, Joe knew. Nate was prone to midnight sojourns, sitting naked in a tree for hours, and sometimes submerging himself entirely in a river or pond with a breathing tube just to experience what it was like to be a fish. Nate didn’t keep regular hours, and except for feeding and flying his falcons, there was no routine. He could show up at dawn, or within the minute.

Or he could be outside, watching silently to see what Joe was up to.

Now that he’d found Nate’s location, Joe wasn’t sure he wanted that conversation after all. If his friend was at Sand Creek Ranch, it confirmed to Joe that Nate was hooked up with Wolfgang Templeton. And if what the FBI suspected was true, the surveillance video from the Scoggins compound in Montana might turn out to be enough to place Nate at the scene. Kidnapping and murder were crimes Joe couldn’t overlook.

He stood in the cabin for ten more minutes, running scenarios. He could slip out, wait, or set up an ambush. None felt right.

In the end, Joe extracted a single shotgun shell from his pocket and stood it brass-down on the table. Nate had once left a .50 round in Joe’s mailbox to signal he was in the area. Nate would recognize the shell and know he’d been there, and draw his own conclusions.

Maybe, Joe thought, Nate would come to him.

At the edge of the clearing, with the line shack behind him and an access road cut into the hillside below, Joe set up a short tripod and mounted his spotting scope. Lights from the ranch compound winked below. In the star- and moonlight, Joe could make out the silhouette of the lodge itself — it indeed resembled a country castle with turrets and peaked roofs — as well as an assemblage of outbuildings, barns, sheds, and guest cabins. The entrance road to the compound was illuminated by soft yellow pole lights. The dark ribbon of Sand Creek itself serpentined through the valley floor.

Although he’d viewed the satellite photos of the ranch compound on Google Maps back in his cabin, the shots displayed on his screen had been taken in midsummer, when the main lodge and outbuildings were obscured by trees. Now that the leaves were clearing from the branches, he got a better idea of the layout.

He was no expert at night photography, but he was surprised by the clarity of the digital photos he took of the compound below under the lights. He doubted at that distance he’d be able to capture individuals, though, especially if they were moving. But he used the camera display and the long lens to zoom in on the vehicles parked on the side of the castle and snap uselessly away at them in the hope that a computer whiz at the state crime lab could determine license plate numbers.

More important, for Joe, was simply understanding the large scale and scope of the ranch headquarters itself. He’d been to many in the past, but never one as regal or elegant in design and construction.

Joe’s ears pricked when he heard a shout from below, then a slammed door. Floodlights came on and illuminated the huge lawn in front of the castle and a paved circle drive Joe hadn’t noticed previously in the dark. The back of the castle blocked his view from whoever had shouted and come outside, and he crawled the scope along the edges of the structure to try and catch a glimpse of who was there.

He could only hope that the reason for the sudden activity was not his presence above them at the line shack. Then, in his peripheral vision, he saw oncoming headlights flashing through the trees on the road to the headquarters. Someone was coming, and it seemed whoever had hit the lights knew of their imminent arrival.

Joe rocked back from the camera and lens so he could see the whole of it. He caught a glimpse of a woman in a white shirt or jacket emerge on the lawn for a moment, gesticulating to people out of sight. He leaned in and rotated the focus ring and saw her clearly and briefly for a second before she walked out of view toward the front of the building, but it happened too quickly to take a shot. She was young, attractive, black — the woman Latta had mentioned. She waved her arms at someone with the authority of a woman in charge.

A long white SUV with the SAND CREEK RANCH logo on the front doors cleared the trees on the road and turned onto the circular driveway. Joe swung his lens over and shot several rapid photographs as the vehicle approached the castle and went out of view in front of it, blocked by the building. A few words of greeting — happy in tone — floated up from the valley.

Whatever was happening, whoever had arrived with such fanfare, couldn’t be discerned. He checked the display on the camera and moaned. The shots of the vehicle under the floodlights were blurry and pixelated. From that distance and in the poor light, he couldn’t tell who was in the SUV — or how many.

“I,” he said to himself in a whisper, “am a lousy spy.”

Three-quarters of a mile away, on the bank of Sand Creek on the valley floor, in a stand of thick river cottonwoods and red buckbrush, Nate Romanowski watched it all. He clutched a writhing burlap bag filled with pigeons he’d trapped in the loft of an unused barn farther down the river to feed to his birds.

He had no reason to expose himself, and had stopped cold when the floodlights went on in front of the castle. Instead, he’d stepped farther back into the shadows.

He’d watched as ranch staff poured out of the front door, directed by Liv Brannan. She made them stand shoulder to shoulder along the edge of the circular driveway like a scene out of an English drama. Seeing her in action caused a tug in his chest. As she assembled them, Wolfgang Templeton appeared. He was framed by the huge double doors and backlit from inside for a moment before he stepped outside on the portico.

Nate could see Templeton’s starched white open-collared shirt, his silver-belly Stetson. He looked stiff and formal, as if he were about to receive royalty.

The white Suburban slowed as it took the circular driveway and stopped in front. A staffer Nate didn’t recognize opened the driver’s door and strode back to open the door for his passenger.

Because the SUV was between Nate and the front steps, he couldn’t see the woman when she was escorted out, but he did see Templeton’s reaction. After a momentary pause, he skipped down the steps to greet her. The staff offered their welcome and parted, and Nate watched as Templeton escorted his new woman up the stairs. Templeton towered over her, and guided her up the steps with his hand on the small of her back. She wore a dark skirt and matching jacket and had shiny dark hair.

At the top, the woman turned to thank the staff, and Nate saw a wide mouth and glint of perfect white teeth and her porcelain doll — like face in the porch light.

It was as if someone had punched him in the stomach.