Fear No Evil(Alex Cross #29)(86)

And then I saw why through my binoculars. Beyond the ravine several hundred yards and pulled up on the far bank of the river, there was a blue raft just like ours, probably Durango’s. Butler was headed straight for it.

He was a solid two hundred and fifty yards from me when he disappeared over and into the draw. With no idea how deep or how brushy the ravine might have been, I kept my focus on the far side of it in direct line with the river and the raft.

Twenty seconds went by and then, to my shock, I saw M’s man sprinting up the other side of the draw, moving even faster than he’d gone down into it.

He got halfway up and twisted to look over his left shoulder, not back and up at me but down into the ravine.

I could see terror weave through every inch of him.

My own emotions shifted from puzzlement to horror when a massive silver-backed bear charged up out of the draw.

Butler ran even harder.

But the big male grizzly made up the ground between them with blinding speed. He lunged at Butler’s back and knocked him to his knees.

M’s man tried to scramble away, but the bear was on him now, cuffing him about the back and neck with his front paws and claws.

Even from that distance, even through the rain and the wind, I could hear Butler screaming as the bear flipped him over and went for his stomach.





Chapter





103


Washington, DC



Nana Mama lowered her head and said grace before Sunday dinner.

“Heavenly Father, we thank You for this meal and our family and our friends,” she said. “We are grateful for the lives and gifts You’ve given us and most of all for the love we have for each other and for You. We are blessed, Lord. Truly blessed.”

“Amen,” I said.

“Amen,” said Bree and the rest of our family, plus Sampson, Willow, and Ned Mahoney.

Bree squeezed my hand and I squeezed back. We’d been doing a lot of that since I’d come home from Montana.

Between what she’d gone through in Paris and what Sampson and I had endured in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, we were highly aware of the thin line between life and death and how arbitrary that line could sometimes be.

“Dad?” Ali said. “Did the biologists find the bear yet?”

“Not yet,” I said, stabbing a thigh from a roast chicken in mustard sauce from a platter.

Sampson said, “And I kind of hope they don’t.”

“Me too,” I said.

“Even if he’s a man-eater?” Ali asked.

“Even if he’s a man-eater.”

My grandmother put her knife down hard on her plate. “No more talk about man-eaters at Sunday dinner, please.”

We all shrank back a little. Hell hath no fury like Nana Mama when she thinks one of her meals is not being fully appreciated.

I looked at John, then her, and nodded sheepishly before digging in. As usual, the food was excellent, and we all fell silent as we ate except for a few moans brought on by the perfect tang in the mustard sauce and the sweetness of the saffron rice Nana had made to go with it. But I could not keep my thoughts from drifting back to the aftermath of our trip into the Montana wilderness.

After seeing the bear kill Butler and drag him back into the ravine, I signaled to Sampson to head for Durango’s raft a half a mile beyond it.

I made a long circle around the ravine to get to the raft myself. Along the way, I found a sniper rifle stashed by the trail along with two electric bikes and evidence of a third one missing. I marked the spot on my OnX map and left it all where I’d found it.

Sampson and I were off the river three hours later and hustling down the path to the trailhead to report what had happened. The first Flathead County Sheriff’s deputies were already on the scene when we finally got to the parking lot.

The family we’d seen run the rapids had already called to report the gunfire. We told the deputies to bring in the Montana Bureau of Investigations and the FBI and to be looking for a woman riding an electric bike coming off the trail system.

On our way to Kalispell to make formal statements, we called home to tell everyone we were safe and out of the woods two days early. Mahoney came out on the very next flight to oversee the investigation and the retrieval of the various bodies strewn along both sides of the river. The three of us went back in by helicopter the next morning. A larger team rode in on horseback.

The narco I’d left bound at the wrists walked right into them. He was suffering from dehydration and terrified of bears, and he was immediately taken into federal custody.

A group of U.S. Fish and Wildlife investigators came in later that day. Armed with high-powered rifles and dart guns, they’d gone into the ravine to retrieve Butler’s remains. They found what was left of him buried under a pile of dirt and rocks near another pile of dirt and rocks the grizzly had put over a rotting mule deer carcass. The Fish and Wildlife investigators believed the tracks I’d seen well south of the ravine belonged to the same bear on his way back to eat the mule deer, which he’d probably buried days before.

They also believed Butler had charged right into the draw where the grizzly was preparing to feast. The bear went territorial on him and attacked.

“Alex?” Nana Mama said.

I looked up at her. “Nana?”

“She asked you three times if you liked the meal,” Bree said.