Dark Sky (Joe Pickett #21)(33)

“Go, go, go, go,” Joe barked at Price, who sprinted past him. Joe followed.

As they penetrated the tree line, Joe heard another boom and the angry whap of buckshot pellets tearing through pine boughs and smacking into tree trunks behind him. He wasn’t hit, and Price, who was ahead of him, didn’t break stride.



* * *



—

The two of them ran until Joe’s lungs were on fire. Price had fallen back, but he stayed with Joe every step of the way. He was in good physical shape, Joe was pleased to find out.

Tree trunks shot by them and Joe made no real attempt at stealth. They ran generally west, but not in a straight line. All he cared about was putting as much distance as possible from the Thomases. He assumed Brad was back in camp trying to help his dad and brother, and wasn’t pursuing them at the moment.

That would come later.

Joe had to finally stop and catch his breath. Price seemed grateful as well for the pause. They again exchanged glances, but no words were said. Too tired, Joe thought.

They’d chosen to rest on the cusp of a vast stand of aspen. The forest floor was colored gold and vermilion with fallen leaves in various stages of death.

Heaving for air and with his hands on his knees, Joe thought:

No horses.

No weapons.

No food.

No way to communicate.

Leaving an easy-to-follow trail in the dirt.

Finally, Price recovered enough to say, “Are we fucked?”

“Yup.”





ELEVEN


Marybeth was in a feisty mood and she tried to work her way out of it by concentrating on the budget presentation she’d have to deliver to the county commissioners in two days. She’d started the morning by having a tense exchange with Evelyn Hughes, the front desk librarian, for forgetting to make sure the exit doors had been locked the night before, which they hadn’t been. It was Evelyn’s responsibility to check them.

“I thought I had,” was Evelyn’s response.

“Please make sure you do so in the future,” Marybeth had snapped.

“I really thought I had,” Evelyn said before looking away.

So Marybeth scrolled through the spreadsheets and graphics on the monitor of her library computer and tried to anticipate not only the questions they’d ask her, like, Do people even go to the library anymore? and Do you have porn filters on the computers available to the public? but what her answers would be.

There were five commissioners. Two were reliably pro–library funding. Two were adamantly against any taxpayer expenditures that weren’t devoted solely to infrastructure, although they had pet causes such as funding the county fair and spending money on lawyers to advance a county-wide wolf eradication policy in opposition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The fifth commissioner, Laura Beason, could go either way. Beason was the swing vote, and Marybeth had learned to tailor her answers to her. Beason had married into a third-generation ranch family, and although her husband was squarely with the two anti-spending commissioners (except for his pet projects, of course), Laura enjoyed defying him when she could. Marybeth would play to Beason’s soft spot for culture and the arts in the community. It had worked in previous years.

Satisfied that she could respond to even the most hostile questions from the commissioners in a cheery and informative way, Marybeth saved the presentation to her laptop so she could go over it at home, then cautiously opened the ConFab app on her phone.

Since she hadn’t heard anything from Joe the night before, which was the reason she was in such a foul mood to start the day, the only way she could assure herself that he was still alive and well up in the mountains was to monitor Steve-2’s posts.

The last post he’d made was from late the night before. Obviously, someone else had taken the shot and had posted it on Steve-2’s behalf. It was a photo of him sitting on a log in the firelight looking satisfied and very content as he gazed at the campfire near his feet. The caption simply read:

    Home, home on the range,

Where the deer and the antelope play.

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word . . .



What she’d noticed, though, was that to the side of Steve-2, leaning back out of the firelight, was Joe. His head was turned away, but she knew the profile. He obviously didn’t know the photo was being taken at the time.

She scrolled through Steve-2’s previous posts and photos to find there were many discouraging words aimed at him. There were a number of user threads denouncing Price and threatening to delete the app because he was in the act of hunting. Others defended him, but they were overwhelmed by animal rights activists and others who thought a man of his wealth and intelligence should be spending his time on more beneficial pursuits. Marybeth thought several of the users made very good points.

She wondered if Steve-2 cared either way what some of his users thought. She sensed that he had such supreme self-confidence—and so many millions of users around the world—that their arguments would wash right over him.

But there was Joe, she thought. He looked fine. So why hadn’t he called her as promised and filled her in? And why did she have to resort to checking social media to know that he was still alive and well?

Marybeth was mulling this over when Evelyn Hughes stuck her head through the open door and cleared her throat.

“Yes, Evelyn?”