Dark Sky (Joe Pickett #21)(57)

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—

Joe clamped his hat on tight, zipped up his parka to the throat, and went out into the night with his hands stuffed into his pockets to keep them warm. It was still and very cold, and the snow crunched under his boots. Price was easy to follow because he’d left fresh tracks around the lean-to and into the lodgepole stand where they’d come.

He almost walked past Price, who was sitting on a downed log at the edge of a small clearing. He was leaning back, gazing at the creamy wash of stars overhead. The starlight was so bright Joe could see his face glowing with it.

“This is better than I thought,” Price said. “There are more stars even than in Tibet. Is that possible?”

“Probably a different set of stars,” Joe said, sitting next to him.

“Did you come out to find me?”

“Yup.”

They sat in silence. Price stared at the sky and Joe looked out across the meadow. Condensation from their breath hung around their heads and filled up with diffused starlight.

“This is the biggest and darkest sky I’ve ever seen,” Price said. “It makes me feel really small. I feel like a single human heartbeat in the middle of the wilderness.”

Joe didn’t point out that he had a heartbeat as well. So did Boedecker.

“I keep reaching for my phone,” Price said. “I want to share this. I want to share my thoughts. But it isn’t there when I pat myself down. I’ve never felt so alone before.”

“Maybe everything doesn’t need to be shared,” Joe said.

“What he said inside, it makes me think,” Price said. “He’s a prick, but not everything he says is shit. The fact is, I don’t know the solution. We create this technology thinking it will do great things, but we can’t predict what people will do with it. He has to understand that.”

Joe grunted a nonresponse.

“There might be a lot of people out there who hate me and what I represent,” Price said. “If I listen to them and let them go on and on, I won’t be able to create. I have to think big, without distractions. Would great men like Thomas Edison or Steve Jobs have been able to do what they did if they listened to all the disgruntled people out there? Anyone can bitch and complain. But only a few of us can invent cool things.”

Joe thought he heard something in the distance and he sat up straight. Price began to talk again and Joe reached over and clamped his mouth shut.

“Shhhh,” Joe whispered. “Listen.”

Price’s eyes got wide, as if saying, Listen to what?

Joe let go. He closed his eyes and strained to hear. He knew that even on a bitterly cold night without wind the forest could be a noisy place. Trees froze and split open, captured snow dropped from branches to the ground below, wildlife moved restlessly through the trees.

Then he heard it again: a whinny.

“That’s a horse,” Joe mouthed. He pointed to the south where he thought it had come from.

Price shook his head. He hadn’t heard it.

Joe gestured that the two of them should go back inside the cabin. He thought that since the stove had been doused and there were no interior lights, it was very possible the Thomases might simply pass by in the timber. If it was the Thomas clan out there, and if what he’d heard was indeed a horse.

He knew for sure that it wouldn’t be a good idea to sit any longer and listen to Price talk. Sound carried on cold, still nights.



* * *



—

Because it had been so dark outside, Joe thought the interior of the cabin seemed more lit up from the glow of the heating coil than when he’d left. He ushered Price through the door and closed it behind them.

Boedecker still sat at the table. There was maybe an inch of whiskey left in the bottle. The speargun was reassembled and armed with the short projectile.

“You found him,” Boedecker slurred. “Too bad.”

Then he raised the speargun and pointed it at Joe and Price. It went off with a metallic thunk.

The spear tip embedded in a log over the doorjamb, a foot above Joe’s head. He looked over his shoulder at it and saw the shaft quivering.

“Damn,” Boedecker said. “It works.”

Joe growled, “Point that at me again and things are going to get real western, Brock.”

Boedecker giggled and waved his left hand around in the air to indicate he meant no harm.

He stopped laughing when Joe said, “I think I heard a horse out there.”





EIGHTEEN


Are we safe?” Price whispered an hour later. “Do you think they’re gone?”

“For now, maybe,” Joe replied.

“Or maybe you didn’t hear anything at all in the first place,” Boedecker said to Joe.

“That’s possible, too,” Joe said.

The three of them were huddled together in the dark around the hissing orange glow of the heating coil. Their knees were nearly touching. They’d tamped down the flame so there was just enough heat but not enough light from it to be seen from the outside. It was getting colder by the minute, and Joe feared the propane would run out and leave them with only bad options.

“Maybe we’re okay,” Price said.

Joe hoped that was true. But if the Thomas clan had passed by the cabin a few hundred yards below in the timber and hadn’t cut their tracks, his guess was they’d double back at some point until they found the cabin.