Dark Sky (Joe Pickett #21)(54)

Boedecker located a single spear in the pile. “It’s one of them pneumatic ones,” he said while inserting the spear and attaching a hand pump into the back of the receiver. He tried to charge it with compressed air.

“Be careful, for God’s sake,” Price warned.

“Shut the fuck up,” Boedecker replied.

Even across the room, Joe could hear air leak out of the device.

“Shit,” Boedecker said. “I bet the O-ring dried out. But maybe I can fix it.” He sat down at the table and started disassembling the speargun.

“You do that,” Joe said, turning back around to his roasting grouse. He approved of the fact that Boedecker had something to do other than root around the cabin and bait Price.



* * *



—

That was magnificent, Joe,” Price said as he licked the tips of his fingers. “You can taste pine nuts in the breast meat. These birds are fantastic.”

After a few tentative bites, Price had devoured the grouse on his plate and left a pile of thin bones. Since they couldn’t find any utensils, they’d torn the birds apart with their hands and scooped steaming green beans from the pot into their mouths with cupped fingers. There was nothing left to eat.

A single candle provided some light from the center of the table.

“It’s amazing how good things taste when you’re in the mountains and you’ve been on the run all day,” Joe said. He knew the meat had been slightly underdone, but it had been juicy nevertheless and the skin was browned and crispy. He’d been in a hurry to finish it up on the stove so he could douse the fire within it and eliminate the smoke boiling outside from the chimney.

“It’s not just that,” Price said, sitting back and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “This is as basic as it gets, isn’t it? This is what I came here to experience. Those pine grouse gave their lives for us, and I, for one, appreciate it.”

Boedecker moaned and rolled his eyes. He’d finished before Joe and Price and had pushed his plate aside so he could continue to work on the speargun. Joe noted that Boedecker had removed the black rubber O-ring from the receiver and was rubbing it around in the sheen of grease on his plate from the grouse.

“You might not appreciate it the way I do,” Price said to Boedecker, “but I consider this meal a small miracle. This is what I thought about last year when the whole world first self-quarantined because of the coronavirus. I thought: What would I have to do to survive if it really came down to it? Could I provide for myself? Now I know the answer—that it’s possible. I consider the fact that we’re even alive after the day we had to be a small miracle, and I’ve never been religious.”

He turned to Joe. “What about you?”

“I’m a believer,” Joe said.

“It must be of some comfort.”

Joe said, “Yup,” but he knew his face flushed while he said it.



* * *



—

After clearing the dishes, Joe returned to the table. Since Boedecker and Price had taken the only two chairs, Joe sat on an upturned stump he’d found outside near the woodpile. The heater on the propane tank glowed red and cast their faces with a light pink hue. The candle flickered. Although the heat from the unit kept the temperature above freezing in the cabin, it couldn’t keep up with the cold that was seeping inside through the cracks and gaps in the logs. Anything in shadow was cold, Joe noticed. They’d all put their coats back on after they’d eaten and the stove was doused.

“Okay,” he said to the two of them. “Now that we’ve finally stopped running and the Thomases could show up at any time, can you tell me what this is all about?”





SEVENTEEN


I’d like to find that out myself,” Price said. “All I know is that Tim turned on me and Rumy ran away. I’ve never felt so betrayed in my life. I still can’t really wrap my mind around it. We start the day getting set up to hunt elk and end it like refugees in a crappy little cabin.”

“Bullshit,” Boedecker said with a snarl. He reached out and grabbed the whiskey bottle by the neck and took another long pull. The Ancient Age was half gone.

“Really,” Price said, appealing to Joe. “I created this platform that has millions of users. All I can guess is that the Thomases took offense to something posted on it. It happens all the time, but people don’t start trying to kill the founders because of it.”

“You’re so full of shit I can’t believe it,” Boedecker scoffed.

“Brock, what do you know about it?” Joe asked.

“Plenty. And this man is a murderer just as much as anyone who aimed a gun and pulled the trigger.”

“That’s insane,” Price said. “It’s just insane. We can’t police everything that’s said on our platform. That would be impossible. Think of ConFab as a public bulletin board. If someone posts a flyer on it that someone else finds offensive, do you attack the person who hung up the bulletin board? Do you chase them down and try to kill them?”

“Hopefully not,” Joe said.

“He’s a hypocrite and a fucking liar—” Boedecker said, but Joe held his hand up to silence him.

“Let him say his piece.”