Stone Cold

31

“It seems like a month since I’ve seen you,” Joe said to Marybeth. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

“It does seem like a month,” she said from behind the wheel of her minivan, “but it’s only been a few days.”

“Still,” he said.

“I agree.”

“That poor boy on the roof,” she said. “I feel sick just thinking about it. I wish we could have saved him somehow, or connected with him. Was he really just hunting pigeons?”

“Yes,” Joe said. “He never stole the missing guns — their so-called friends did it to punk them. No, Young bought the pellet gun that morning at Walmart.”

“If his mother would have taken my call, maybe…”

“It’s not your fault what happened,” Joe said. “You did what you could to prevent anyone getting hurt. Don’t beat yourself up.”

“I can’t help it,” she said. “It was such a huge overreaction.”

“By everyone,” Joe said. “Including us.”

“Sheridan is doing a lot of soul-searching and second-guessing herself right now. She’s devastated. I told her she’d done nothing wrong, but still…”

“She’s not the only one,” Joe said.

She’d picked him up in Gillette after his truck broke down on the way home. Shrapnel from the explosion at the Black Forest Inn had apparently penetrated the engine and had poked tiny pinprick holes in the coolant and hydraulic hoses. He hadn’t noticed the damage until he was halfway to Saddlestring, although he’d have to admit later that his gauges were trying to tell him about it. His only excuse for not realizing what was happening was exhaustion from lack of sleep and the fact that he was overwhelmed by what had happened both in Medicine Wheel County and Laramie.

Joe left his vehicle at the state highway shop outside of Gillette, where Marybeth had agreed to pick him up. The vehicle maintenance man looked at Joe’s pickup and simply shook his head.

“Another one,” the man had said.

“Another one,” Joe echoed.

Joe planned to spend the time filling her in on their drive back to Saddlestring, when he was interrupted by his cell phone.

He looked at the screen. “Rulon,” he said.

“It sounds like you did it,” the governor said, “but you weren’t supposed to leave so many bodies behind.”

“That wasn’t all my doing,” Joe said.

“Tell me everything,” Rulon said. “I’ve got a press briefing in half an hour. They might ask me some questions about what happened up there, but I have a feeling the only thing they care about is what happened in Laramie this morning. There are already idiots calling for gun control. Ha! That poor bastard had a pellet gun!

“Anyway,” Rulon said, cooling down. “Tell me what happened up there from the beginning. It sounds like a pretty wide-ranging criminal enterprise — even bigger than our federal government. And don’t leave anything out — especially any details that might come back to bite me later.”

Joe did. Marybeth listened as she drove, sometimes shaking her head. Finally, Rulon told Joe the “hounds were baying in the next room for his head” and hung up.

“You just can’t do it, can you, Joe?” she asked when he was through.

“What?”

“Keep your distance. You just feel compelled to get into the middle of things, don’t you?”

“They came after me,” Joe said defensively. “Remember the part about the bomb under my truck?”

“And they forced you to put it in the wall of that building, too,” she said.

He conceded the point by not responding. He was too exhausted to mount much of an argument. He envied Daisy, who was sleeping the sleep of the dead in the backseat.

“Is he going to be okay?” she asked after a few moments of silence.

“Nate?” Of course she meant Nate, he thought. “I don’t know. If he plays it right and gives them enough information, he should get a good deal. But you know how the Feds are.”

“They can be vindictive,” she said. “He might have to go back to federal prison. But at least we’d know where he was and we can work on getting him out again. You working for the governor has its perks.”

“Maybe,” Joe said. Then: “I was proud of Nate today. He stepped back over the line and did the right thing. He’s likely to have plenty of time to think about the direction he took.”

“Will they allow visitors?” she asked.

They were discussing the horrifying return of Missy when Marybeth pulled up in front of their house.

“That’s odd,” she said, nodding toward April’s Cherokee, which was parked near the detached garage. “She shouldn’t be home now. School isn’t out.”

Joe wearily swung out of the van. He would take his weapons inside but leave his gear bag for later. All he could think about was taking a shower and getting into his bed. He hoped that when he closed his eyes he wouldn’t see the last moments of Erik Young play on the inside of his eyelids on a continuous loop.

Before Joe could enter the house with his holster and shotgun, Marybeth burst out of it. Her eyes were wide and panicked.

“She’s gone, Joe. April packed up and left while I was driving you back.”

He stopped, stunned at the news. “But her Jeep is here,” he said.

“She didn’t leave in her truck,” Marybeth said, suddenly angry. “She left with him. They’ve been planning this and waiting for the right time.”

Joe was bone-tired but he reached up and clamped his hat on tight as if he were about to climb aboard a bucking horse in the chute. He said, “This rodeo just never stops, does it?”