Dark Sky (Joe Pickett #21)(84)

Then he heard it: the deep bass thump-thump-thump of a distant helicopter. He couldn’t yet see it in the sky.

“That should be the search-and-rescue team,” Sheridan said. “The sheriff finally got things rolling.”

“I need to call them in,” Joe said. Sheridan helped him to his feet and stayed close to him as he limped down the slope toward the grazing packhorses and his satellite phone. It bothered her that he seemed frail. It was a thought she’d never had before.

“You take first class,” Price called to him. “I’ll sit in coach this time.”

“Is he always like this?” Sheridan asked Joe.

“Off and on,” Joe said.

“I can’t believe we’re here with Steve Price himself,” she said with awe. “I mean . . . it’s crazy.”

“It is, I guess,” Joe said, putting his arm around her shoulders. “But I’d rather hang out with you.”

“Call Mom as soon as you can. She’s beside herself.”

“Will do.”





TWENTY-NINE


Steve Price cradled his phone in both hands with the ConFab app open. He simply stared at it as if it were a Christmas package he was scared to open because he didn’t know what was inside. Finally, he looked up to Joe and said, “I don’t even know where to start.”

They were sitting side by side inside the Bell 206B-3 helicopter as it lifted off from the mountain meadow and made a turn over the timber to fly west toward Saddlestring. Joe was entranced by the forest as they rose above it and the trees and clearings got smaller and smaller in view and became scenery. The contrast was jarring. Just a couple of hours before, he thought, he was down there on his hands and knees in the dirt moving in increments of inches.

Kirby was strapped down on a stretcher and laid across the other two seats of the helicopter. His mouth and nose were obscured by an oxygen mask, but his eyes were open. Because he didn’t have a headset on like Joe and Price, he couldn’t follow their conversation. But he watched them as if he could.

They’d left the bodies of Earl and Brad Thomas where they’d fallen. They’d be retrieved on the next flight.

Sheridan, Nate, and two deputies had gathered all the horses and were leading them down the mountain to the trailhead. Sheriff Tibbs and the rest of the search-and-rescue team were still on the ground as well, because they were documenting and photographing the scene of the shootout. They’d be up there for a while, Sheriff Tibbs had said sourly, because Kirby had told them there were more bodies to find: Zsolt Rumy, Aidan Jacketta, Brock Boedecker, and Tim Joannides.

Even though Kirby had been helpful to the search-and-rescue team, Joe had told him as they loaded the gurney into the chopper that he still planned to arrest him for his Game and Fish Department violations—if he survived. Kirby had scowled at him before the oxygen mask was attached to his face.

“What did you say?” Joe asked Price.

Price held up his phone. He said, “I don’t know where to start. So much has happened. It’s like I’ve been up here a lifetime. I’m nervous about my reentry into my world. How much do I post about what happened?”

“Just tell ’em you’re alive,” Joe said. “That’s what I told my wife.”

Price nodded his head, unsure. Then he used his intercom to ask the pilot if his jet would be waiting for him at the airport. The pilot assured him it would be.

“You’re leaving right away?” Joe asked.

“Just as fast as I can. I need to get back to work. I need to put all this behind me.”

“What about some of those things Brock said about ConFab? Are you going to make any changes?”

Price stared at a spot above Joe’s head, then said, “I’ll think about it. I’ll think about a lot of things.”

As Price talked, Joe could see a change in him. The vulnerability and fear Price had revealed in their ordeal was melting away and being replaced by the arrogant and indifferent shell he’d been wearing when he arrived. Even his posture was different.

“I think the sheriff wants you to stick around and give a statement,” Joe said.

Price waved it away. “He knows where to find me.”

“There’s something we never had a chance to talk about,” Joe said, hoping his voice didn’t sound as uncomfortable as he felt.

“What’s that?”

“Governor Allen was hoping you’d be impressed enough with our state that you’d consider locating your big server farms here. He has lots of reasons why it would be a good idea for everybody.”

Price looked at Joe without expression. For a good long time.

“I can’t,” Price said finally.

“Why not?”

Price gestured toward the tops of the mountains out the window as they streaked along. “This,” he said. “All of this. I can never look at this place or think about it again without the image of me smashing that rock into Brad Thomas’s head. I was excited to do that at the time. I wanted his brains to come out of his ears. In three days, I turned into an animal. That’s not how I like to think of myself.”

Joe sat back. The scratches on his back hurt and his brain was numb and fuzzy. The effects of what they’d gone through were starting to overwhelm him, as they obviously had with Price.