Nothing Short of Dying (5 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

“C
an I get that burger now?” I asked, holding my hand out to Allie. We'd been driving for about twenty minutes, in and out of clearings, winding our way farther up the mountain and away from Rifle. I'd left the main road, turning instead onto a series of two-tracks that led farther north into the trees. Allie had sat mostly in silence as we bounced and jostled up the narrow roads.

“Sure,” she said, handing me the congealed lump. “It's cold.”

I took it from her and finished it in three big bites.

“Why are we still driving?” Allie asked.

“In case they kept following us somehow. If they make it as far as we're going, they won't be able to get back off the mountain. They didn't stop anywhere to get gas.”

“Oh.” The sun was much lower now. The lengthening shadows from the trees stretched across the road and into the open areas on the right. “Are we going back to town now?”

“Nope. Thought we'd camp up here for the night. Give everyone a chance to cool down.”

“Camping?” She frowned. “You're serious, aren't you?”

“You
have
camped before, right?” I asked.

“I grew up in Mack, Barr. Camping was the only thing to do on the weekends after we finished chores. That and drinking.”

I smiled and found the spot I was looking for. Stopped the truck in a narrow part of the road, jammed it into reverse, and backed into a clearing. The tailgate battered its way through branches until we were in the middle of a sunny, early-flower-filled park. I pulled underneath a tall ­ponderosa pine at the edge of the clearing and shut off the truck. Once I'd climbed out of the cab, I put my outstretched hand below the sun, thumb up, fingers parallel with the horizon, index finger sitting directly below the sun. There was room for another hand, so at least two hours until sunset. Fifteen minutes per finger, one hour per hand.

Allie got out, grabbed her backpack, and set it on the ground next to the mud-encrusted tires. She rummaged inside, found a hooded sweatshirt, and put it on.

“Aren't your legs cold?” I asked, as she zipped up her pack and slung it on her back.

“No. I'm fine.”

I opened the back of the truck and pulled out one of the camping bags. “I've got extra pants, extra long johns, even a couple of coats if you want, though they'll be big on you.”

She stared out from her hood, sour-faced. “Stop fussing over me. I'm fine.”

I felt the cool breeze blowing off the snow-topped mountains, looked at the falling sun. “It'll drop twenty, thirty degrees tonight. You'll need pants.”

“Not if you start a fire and give me something to do. I'll stay warm. Really, Barr, I'm not an idiot. I've done this before.”

I shook my head. There was no arguing. If she got cold,
she'd shiver and suffer before she asked for any help. “Okay.” I pulled the tent from the bag and tossed it to her. “Here. If you're such an expert, set this up.”

She caught the small bag filled with the flimsy fabric, twirled it around, and opened the drawstring.

As I started walking away into the forest, I called back, “I'm getting firewood. See if you can figure that out before I get back.”

Before I was more than a couple feet into the trees, I heard the poles hit the ground, then Allie responding, “It's not rocket science, Barr. Try not to get lost.”

Deeper into the forest, I could hear occasional swearing from Allie as she attempted to set up the crazy configuration of tent poles inside the tent. I smiled as the clean spring wind blew by me and rattled the aspen leaves. I picked up fallen limbs until I had a good armload, then headed back, my boots sinking deep into the black loamy soil.

As I retraced my steps, my mind started drifting to Jen and what kind of trouble she might be in. Did it help or hurt that my nosing around had probably alerted Lance that I was coming? I hoped the former. Maybe word would get back to Jen, give her hope. But I forced myself to push those thoughts away, focusing instead on this new traveling companion I'd acquired and how I was going to get rid of her. Allie was tough, smart, and resilient, but I was trying not to fall into the old habits. I feared the danger I'd put her in if we stayed together.

“Took you long enough,” Allie said as I finally returned to our campsite. The tent was set up, the fluffy sleeping bags were laid out, and the camp chairs and coolers were set in a semicircle around a freshly dug pit. “Right there,” she said, pointing at the hole.

I nodded, impressed. Not to be outdone, I dropped the pile by the hole and went back to the truck. I reached into one of the duffels, found a small leather bag, and brought it over to the pit. After pulling out the contents and placing them by the firewood, I jogged into the clearing to strip a big sagebrush of its outer bark. Once I had a bird's-nest-size ball, I loped back into camp, made a tepee and log cabin with the firewood in the pit, and put the kit together. Allie sat down in one of the camp chairs and watched, amused.

A small, split branch of cottonwood with holes on the top and notches on the side went on the ground. Underneath this I put a small, flat piece of bark below a notch. A foot-long round cottonwood stick went into the hole with the notch and bark below. With what looked like a small, three-foot bow, I wrapped string around the round stick. After that I picked up a shot-glass-size piece of wood and rubbed it on my hair, making sure that the grease from the long day would lubricate the socket.

Then it was all just basic movements: kneel down, place a foot on the split cottonwood, stick the socket on top of the round stick to hold it in place and apply pressure, then use the bow like a crosscut saw, spinning the stick like a drill. In less than ten sweaty minutes, I had smoke. I kept going a few minutes longer and had a coal, which I dumped onto the little piece of bark and carefully moved to the bird's nest. Then I blew, soft at first, then longer and harder until the nest burst into flames. I placed those into the prepared firewood and pampered my baby until the flames were right.

Normally, with a Bic and dry wood, I could get a fire roaring in a minute or two. This took a little longer, but I hoped it would be more impressive.

“Not bad,” Allie said.

I shrugged, secretly very proud of myself. The sun had started to set by the time my fire took hold, its flames waving frantically up toward a sky the same red-and-orange color.

From my big bag I pulled out some cans and the small ziplock containing spices. When the fire burned down enough to add more wood, I put a little Dutch oven onto the coals and built the fire up behind it. Then I threw into the oven some pumpkin puree, chicken stock, and a little thyme as Allie sat in a chair across from me and watched intently. She looked relaxed, her chin in her hands, elbows on her knees. The fire turned her bare legs the color of Cheetos. “What are we having?” she asked, her nose wrinkled.

“Pumpkin soup.” I looked into the cooler, grabbed out two bottles. “You want wine or whiskey?”

“I'm not a slam-back-the-hard-stuff type,” she said, her gaze lost in the flames.

“Wine it is, then,” I said, digging in the bags for my long-lost wine tool. I found it, opened the bottle, and poured some into a plastic cup. I poured whiskey into mine.
Why not
, I thought. I really should cut down on the stuff myself, but this didn't seem like the time. I handed Allie her cup, which she accepted with a smile, then I stirred the soup and added dried onions. We both sat and sipped quietly for a while, watching the fire and listening to the birds sing and the air swish through the pines.

We ate the soup as the moon rose in the east. Then we both finished our drinks. There were no sounds except the crackling and popping of the fire.

“Lance won't like that you're looking for him,” Allie said, watching sparks drift into the dark sky. “He'll be even madder when you lead the Feds to him.
If
we even find him.”

“About this ‘we' . . .”

“You need me, Barr.”

“I need to find my sister. You're not going to help me do that. You're just going to give me one more person to worry about.”

Allie stopped poking the fire and gave me one of those
stop treating me like a child
looks. “I can handle myself, Barr.”

“Uh-huh.”

We both stared at each other, two equally stubborn people agreeing on a stalemate. A few seconds passed, then Allie broke the silence: “What did your sister say to you anyway? To make you so worried?”

I looked up from the flames. “She made me promise to come get her. Said some guy was trying to kill her. When she's high she can say anything, but she didn't
sound
high. Anyway, the call ended before I could find out more.”

“And you're pretty sure it's Lance who has her?”

“Either he has her or he knows who has her. Same difference.”

“We'll find him,” she said. “We know where to start.”

I grunted. There it was again, more “we.”

Allie seemed to sense my skepticism. “I know what Lance looks like. Most people don't. That's why he uses so many middle men. If you find him without me, and he has Jen hidden somewhere, how are you going to know you've got the right guy?”

I nodded, took another slug. “Point for you,” I said. “But what happens when this gets nasty, like I'm afraid it's going to? People will get hurt. A
lot
of people if they keep getting between me and my sister. Are you okay with that?”

She sipped her wine and waited a long time before answering. The flames were down to half their original size when she said, “I'm okay with it. Brent and Lance are ass
holes. I've known a lot of assholes in my life. Too many. They always seem to get away with it. Except this time I have a feeling they won't. I'm coming with you. It's final.”

I didn't put up any more resistance. We sat in silence for another hour, each lost in our thoughts, listening to the crickets and the night wind. I was about to pour another cup when I looked over at Allie and finally saw her shivering. Without thinking, I rose, took off my coat, and put it gently over her legs. For the first time that day, she didn't argue. Instead, she looked at me closely—eyes scrunched, the way I'd scan the sky for weather.

A few minutes later she rose abruptly from her camp chair and I smelled wine and pumpkin on her sweet breath. “I'm going to sleep, Barr. We'll talk in the morning.” I heard her rearranging things in the tent; then she tossed my sleeping bag out the door and into the brush. After that, the tent's zipper closed tight.

CHAPTER NINE

T
he robins woke me up at false dawn. I slithered out of the sleeping bag, found fresh clothes, and changed in the pale morning light, under the trees. I assumed Allie was still sleeping and knew that it would be in my best interest to let her stay that way. I packed the bag, grabbed my rifle, and went on a little patrol that mimicked one I'd done last night before turning in. I didn't think there was any chance of a new threat; I just wanted to smell the piney air and think.

Gawain, Perceval, Lancelot, and all the other knights I'd read about as a kid would have been proud of me. I'd defended the beautiful maiden, hadn't taken advantage of her, even made her a partner of sorts. What could go wrong?

Making my way back to camp, I remembered the answer to that question.
Everything.
Everything could go wrong. Like when Jen and I were little, after Dad had run away, and Deb was living in Aspen and Angie was in college. It was bad enough Dad was gone, leaving Mom to try and take care of us by herself. It was worse when Mom started dating again. The first couple of guys weren't too bad. Just drunk.

The third guy, whom we called Ski because we couldn't pronounce his last name, was worse. He and Mom would go
to the bar and leave Jen and me to cook and clean and put ourselves to bed. Later that night they'd come home and the inevitable fight would start; they'd knock over pans, break glasses, wake the neighbors. I sneaked out of my room after one of their fights and have regretted it ever since.

Mom was facedown on the kitchen table, her bruised and bleeding eyebrows dripping onto the Formica. Her shirt was torn and hung off one of her arms, revealing her large breasts. Behind her, Ski stood with his pants down, yelling that she was a slut.

At the time I was a scrawny eleven-year-old. So when I raced across the room and started pounding on Ski—who must have weighed 250 pounds—with my little fists, it took only a backhand from him to knock me into the wall and unconscious.

In the morning Mom was bandaged and cleaned up and trying to make breakfast while still drunk. She said that nothing had happened—that I'd had a bad dream. But bad dreams don't leave huge knots on skulls. And two weeks later Jen told me about
her
bad dreams. In hers, Ski was visiting her in the night and touching her.

I pushed the memories back into the badger hole in my brain and went back to the tent.

Allie was up when I returned, sitting in a camp chair next to a small fire. She'd found a box of Pop-Tarts and had put a couple in a frying pan to warm over the flames. She'd changed into blue jeans and a pink sweatshirt. Her hair was loose and mussy, but her face was glowing in the bright sun as she looked up at me and asked, “Hungry?”

“Famished,” I said. I stared at the crosshatch of branches blazing in the fire pit. “Nice fire.”

She grinned. “I discovered this thing called matches. You should try them sometime.”

“Maybe I will,” I said, realizing that I actually liked it when she needled me.

As I flopped into a chair next to her, she handed me one of the warm pastries. I was still licking the lemony goo off my hands when I saw her expression darken.

“Do you think we're in trouble, Barr?”

“For what?”

“For running from the Feds. Isn't that some kind of felony?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “I don't think we're the ones they're interested in, or they would have pulled me over a long time before. We were supposed to lead them to Lance.”

“You sure?”

“No.” And I wasn't. I was just working on educated guesses.

WE WERE LOADED UP AND
on the road in less than an hour. I was impressed with Allie's packing skills. We worked as a wordless team, putting everything back in its proper place in the bags and into the truck. She smiled a little more today, as if our partnership was the beginning of something great. I hoped it would be.

She sat in the passenger seat enjoying the view as the truck rumbled down the gravel road on its way off the mountain. We rambled to a flat intersection where the drainage we'd been following connected with a larger creek that led back to Rifle. I pulled over at a wide spot and shut off the truck, then called Juan in Riverside. He wasn't too happy about helping again, but he told me about some of his connections in Rifle. He also said that he'd send Chopo my way.

“Now I need
you
to make a phone call,” I told Allie.

“To whom?”

“Spike. Tell him I dropped you off in Rifle, and you want your job back. You're sorry, you're scared, and you don't know what to do.”

“Why?”

“Neither of us knows what the Rifle boys look like. I figure Spike will recruit a few to come pick you up. We'll set up a meeting place. Once the welcome wagon arrives, I persuade one or two to talk.”

Allie shook her head. “I could call Brent, make that little speech, but he won't buy it. It'll work better if you call, tell him you're sick of me and you're going to dump me out in Rifle if he wants to come collect me. Frame it as a double cross, as me believing I'm waiting for you to get back but actually I'm an offering to him to get the heat off you.”

I laughed. “You have a devious mind, Ms. Martin.”

She smiled. “The only motivations that Brent trusts are selfish ones. And anyway, he knows I'm unwilling to put up with his crap anymore.” She handed me her cell phone.

When I got Brent on the line, he reacted predictably—threatening me with every kind of slow death his little mind could come up with. It wasn't a very long list.

“What'd he say?” Allie asked, smiling.

“Just the usual pleasantries. But he's going to send someone.” I took the keys and handed them to her. “You think you can drive this pickup?”

“Of course. Anything with wheels. Why?”

“From now on we'll be improvising a lot. I may need you to drive. It's good for you to get some experience with this heap.”

She shrugged, agreeing.

“Okay. Just remember, this truck is tricky. The steering is twisted, the shocks are shot, and both the throttle and the brakes are on their way out. Can you handle that?”

“Switch with me, and I'll prove it.” So I did. Once we were back in and buckled, she proved it. She had to adjust the seat first, pull it closer to the wheel, but after that she was almost as good as anyone I'd ridden with. In fact, she raced down a couple of the dirt roads so fast I found myself pulling my seat belt tighter.

“Scared?” she asked.

“Not for me,” I said. “For the truck. You're going to wear it out before we can get back to town.”

She laughed—a little snicker that sounded younger and more feminine than her usual persona—then turned us back toward the pavement. I gave her the directions that would take us to Rifle. She switched from racing mode to casual and we hit the highway and headed south.

We passed a few old homesteads, and then Allie looked at me and asked, “How long has it been since you've seen Jen?”

“Too long.”

“How long since you've
talked
to her?”

“Before that last call? Way too long.”

“Why?”

“I was busy helping a lot of other people,” I said.

“Did you work at a hospital or something?”

I
had
worked in one for a while, the same one that had patched me up in the Mtabila camp in Tanzania, but I didn't tell her that.

“Mostly I just helped to sort out the good guys from the bad—in Africa, South and Central America, then Mexico,” I said.

“What do you mean by ‘sort'?”

“I mean, there's always someone who wants to play the bully—in those places especially.” I didn't like where this
conversation was going, so I told her to pay attention to the road.

WE'D JUST CRESTED A HILL
and started our long descent into the Rifle area when the truck suddenly swung into a sideways slide. I'd been zoned out, adrift in memories of Africa, when Allie gave a shout. I looked at the road ahead and saw two large cow elk standing on the center line, their heads staring straight ahead as the passenger side of the truck screeched toward them. They seemed bewildered and unable to move as the truck slammed into them.

One of the animals was thrown off its feet and launched into the bar ditch, where she lay flopping and kicking. The other's head connected solidly with my window, shattering the glass on impact, her body crumpling the door and side panel before disappearing underneath the truck. I brushed blue glass off my chest and told Allie to pull over. She jerked and lurched the mangled pickup to a grinding halt, far off the pavement.

“Damn it, I didn't see them. I couldn't stop.” She stared straight ahead, hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly I could see the bones. Her eyes were red but she didn't cry.

“It happens,” I said, more worried about what needed to be done than what had just happened. I grabbed the pistol out of the small bag in between us.

“Jesus,” she said, eyes huge and following the pistol. “You going to shoot me for denting your piece-of-crap truck?”

“It's for them,” I said. I pointed through the crumpled window at the two massive creatures wallowing next to the road. One was well into its death throes, feebly kicking the air. The other was trying to get up on broken legs, making
small animal cries with every attempt, head thrashing, mouth foaming. Allie looked away as I got out.

I took ten steps and stood away from the legs to avoid getting kicked. Then I pulled the trigger twice, sending 180-grain bullets into the animals' skulls. Both elk lay still, their broken, mostly headless bodies nothing more than heaps of bloody hide on the pavement's edge.

When I got back into the truck, Allie's face looked flushed. I pulled the magazine, replaced the two spent cartridges, then slammed it back in place with my palm.

“Why?” she asked.

“You mean why did I shoot them? I didn't want to see them suffer—simple as that.” I looked at her closely, concerned by how she was taking this. “You going to be okay?”

She nodded but continued starting straight ahead. Then she turned to me. “Tell me something, Barr. When you do what you do—you know, this fighting and killing thing—does it ever get to you?”

For a second, as I thought about how to respond, I flashed back to when I was twenty years old and came across my first scene of carnage, in the upper Congo—a carnage I had partly caused. So many bloody bodies, piled high in the noonday sun. Birds picking at torn camouflage fatigues. Flies buzzing. A meaty stench in the nostrils.

I looked over at Allie and met her eyes. “Every day,” I said.