Cold Springs(93)

Chadwick didn't bother calling from the security intercom. He knew the code, and he knew the only person at home would be the person they needed to see.

They drove in past acres of meadows studded with cactus, bright yellow stables, a lone ranch hand in the riding circle, morning mist wreathed around his boots as he trained an Arabian for the halter. Next to Chadwick in the passenger's seat, Mallory craned her neck to watch.

Chadwick turned uphill, into the circular drive of the ranch house.

The horse-head door knocker was plated gold. Chadwick had to bang a few karats off it before Joey Allbritton finally opened up, his pale Neanderthal features squinting in the sunlight, his boxer shorts and a tie-dyed T-shirt giving off a stench like day-old pizza boxes.

“It's six in the—” His eyes got wide.

“Hello, Joey,” Chadwick said. “Staying straight?”

“Yes, sir,” he blurted, an old reflex. Then his face broke into a lopsided grin. “Chadwick? Are you really here?”

Chadwick had a momentary fear that Joey was going to hug him. Joey was a bear of a kid—a teddy bear, now, though he hadn't always been so. And his bad breath was the stuff of legends.

Chadwick rethought the word kid. Joey had to be at least twenty now.

“Your parents?”

Joey shook his head. “Kuala Lumpur. Or what day is it? Maybe Singapore. Doesn't matter. Dr. Hunter need another horse?”

“No. No horses.” Chadwick gestured toward the car. “I have a problem. Need your help.”

“Anything.” Joey looked toward the car, saw Mallory in the front seat, Jones and Emilio Pérez in the back—Pérez blindfolded, his mouth duct-taped. “Um . . . what kind of help?”

Chadwick didn't water anything down. He told the story, explained they were baby-sitting a would-be assassin and needed a quiet spot to talk to him.

“This guy shot at you?” Joey asked.

“Yes.”

“He messed with Survival Week?”

“Yes.”

Joey's eyes danced with excitement. “This guy is vulture meat. Let me get my shoes.”

Minutes later, they were following Joey's truck through the back acres of the ranch, past grain silos, fields tall with uncut sorghum. Like many local families, the Allbrittons did some farming, but they had apparently made the decision not to harvest their crops this year. With prices so bad, it was cheaper to leave the corn and sorghum and wheat standing. Chadwick had even heard rumors in town that some locals were plowing out huge mazes through the fields, charging admission for city folk to wander through. The profits promised to be much greater.

Joey's truck turned at the edge of a creek, rumbled down a dirt road to a barn set in a stand of live oaks.

Chadwick remembered the barn from his first trip to the ranch, three and a half years ago, when he'd picked up Joey for Cold Springs. The building was even more dilapidated now. Its roof sagged, and the once red walls had faded to dirty pink, paint peeling off in ugly patches like diseased skin.

Joey checked inside, then waved to Chadwick that the coast was clear.

“Walk with me,” Chadwick told Mallory.

He got her out of the car, leaving Jones to guard their guest of honor.

Inside the barn was a half-collapsed hayloft, a rusted pulley system hanging from the rafters. Spread out on a couple of hay bales was a sleeping bag—Cold Springs regulation issue, the kind white levels were allowed to take with them upon graduation. On the floor nearby was a Cold Springs gear bag. Chadwick guessed that if he were to open it, he would find all the supplies in order, just the way they were supposed to be for dorm inspection.

“Um, I just dump all my old stuff out here,” Joey said. “I don't come out here much.”

“Yeah, sure,” Mallory muttered.

“What?” Joey asked defensively.

“This will do fine,” Chadwick interposed. “Thanks, Joey. Go tell Miss Jones she can bring in our guest. It would be better if you waited outside. Better still if he didn't overhear your name.”

“Yes, sir.” Joey gave Mallory one more look, his eyes lingering on her Black Level shoes.

When he had gone, Chadwick told her, “Now would be a good time.”

“For what?”

“Back at the store, before Pérez came in, you wanted to tell me something.”

She stared at the Cold Springs gear bag, her cheeks turning red. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

Mallory stripped off her stolen quilt-patch jacket, pitched it across the hay bale. In the sleeve was a tear Chadwick hadn't noticed before—a perfect hay-colored circle, just above the wrist. A bullet hole.

“That kid Joey,” Mallory said, “he's a Cold Springs graduate?”

Chadwick nodded.

“That's what I'm training for? To be like him?” Her voice trembled, as if all her fear from their encounter with Pérez was just now coming to the surface.

“Joey runs his parents' ranch,” Chadwick told her. “He manages a five-million-dollar budget, provides the horses for Cold Springs, knows more about animals than most ranchers twice his age. You could do worse than end up like him; you didn't know him before Cold Springs.”

Mallory glanced over, trying to feign disinterest. “Why? What'd he do?”