Those Who Wish Me Dead Read online

“I’ve made a promise,” he said. “Made a lot of them. I’ll see to his safety. Whether you find him first or not, you don’t do a thing before you check with me, understand? Not a thing.”

  Roy tilted his head and glanced away. “You got anything I should know about this kid?”

  Ethan said, “I need to head to the hospital now. I need to see her. But I’ll be back.” He repeated it again, louder, and this time he was looking at the boys. “I’ll be back, guys.”

  They all looked at him, and some of them nodded, while others already seemed to accept what he didn’t—he would never see them again.

  The Blackwell brothers watched through rifle scopes as the group emerged at the trailhead, watched with fingers on triggers. They were in the woods opposite the road, a higher elevation, a fine vantage point. It had not been hard to find the boys. The police activity ensured that.

  “If you take the shot,” Jack Blackwell said, “you better make sure it’s good.”

  “I’m aware of the stakes.”

  “I’m reminding us both. One clean shot, and then it’s all about speed. We better move fast when it’s done.”

  “We will.”

  “They don’t know who he is yet,” Jack said. The left side of his face was badly burned. High red blisters forming.

  “You don’t think?”

  “Not much interest being shown in the boys. More in Serbin. And these are all local police. I don’t see a fed of any sort, do you?”

  “No.”

  “So then they do not know the value of young Jace.”

  Together, lying prone in sniper stances with twenty feet separating them, they watched the boys take shape. Adjusted scopes for clearer looks at faces. Six boys. Six fatigued faces.

  “I don’t see him.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “They’re acting as if that’s all. Nobody else coming.”

  “They moved him already, then. Got a step ahead.”

  “No. Too fast for that.”

  “Then he was never here to begin with.”

  “You heard the Serbin woman. She knew why we were here.”

  They watched for a long time. Two uniformed police and a man in an orange vest and camouflage distributed radios, checked them, and then walked away from the boys and up to the trailhead. Disappeared into the woods.

  “What are they going back for?” Patrick said.

  “I’m wondering the same thing.” Jack looked away from the scope and met his brother’s eyes. “Interesting.”

  “Indeed. One missing, you think? Young Jace is very smart. Very resourceful.”

  “And maybe very alone in the woods.”

  “Maybe.”

  “If they find him first, it’s trouble.”

  “We find him first, it’s easy.”

  “That is what we were promised from the beginning. So far, nothing has been easy.”

  “So it goes with some quests, brother. We must earn our reward today.”

  “How I treasure your bits of wisdom. Let me never say otherwise.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “Serbin’s leaving.”

  Jack turned back to the scope. One of the police SUVs was pulling away. Serbin riding out. The six boys and the rest of the police remained behind.

  “She’s alive,” his brother said. “I told you.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do. You watched him. You think that was the reaction of a man whose wife was dead? Pretty calm. And in a pretty big hurry now. Going to see her.”

  “We need the kid.”

  “Need them both now.”

  Jack sighed and lowered the rifle. “I suppose it’s good that there’s two of us.”

  “It always has been. Who do you want?”

  “If she’s alive, she’s in a hospital. Figure I’ll blend in pretty well in an ER right now, don’t you think?”

  “So I’m into the woods, then.”

  “You’re better at that than me.”

  “Yes.”

  “And I won’t be long.”

  “We’ll see. It’s been longer than I wanted already.”

  “Sometimes that’s the way of the world, brother. I prefer speed as much as you do. I just understand patience a bit more.”

  “The men who went in after the boy know more than we do about his location.”

  “I’d imagine.”

  “So I follow. And if I see him, I take the shot.”

  “If you see him, you make the shot. Taking it isn’t worth much.”

  “Have you seen me miss?”

  “No.”

  “There you go, then. How do you intend to get me back out of the mountains?”

  Jack Blackwell’s only response was a smile.

  19

  He wanted to cry again but didn’t have the tears left, or maybe the energy. The woman was scared of him, and he felt bad about that, but he wasn’t doing anything scary anymore. He didn’t even have the hatchet; it was right there on the floor.

  “Pick it up,” he said.

  “What?”

  He waved at the hatchet. “Go ahead and take it. Use it on me if you want.”

  “I’m not going to use a hatchet on you,” the woman said. “And you’re not going to use it on me. Are you?”

  Jace shook his head.

  “Then put it back where it belongs,” she said.

  He was surprised that she was encouraging him to touch it again. When he looked up, she seemed firm about it, though. Her arms were crossed over her chest in a protective fashion but she wasn’t trying to run.

  “Put it back, Connor,” she said.

  That tone of voice sounded so much like his mother’s. His mother wasn’t a yelling type. She was used to being in charge—in her job she had to be calm and in charge, she told him that all the time, calm and in charge, calm and in charge. So when she got mad at him, she kept up the same attitude. Just like this woman now. She didn’t look very much like his mother, though. She was shorter and younger and thinner. Too thin. Like she had an eating disorder.

  “Connor,” she said again, and this time he listened. He picked up the hatchet by its handle and returned it to the woodpile. She never moved, never even tensed up. When he’d set it down, she said, “Let’s talk. Hon? We need to be honest with each other. It’s just the two of us now. You made damn sure of that.”

  “I had to,” he said. “I know you don’t believe that, but it’s true.”

  “Tell me why.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “It’s the least you can do,” she said. “You walked in here and destroyed my radio, and I’m in serious trouble now, do you understand that? There’s a fire burning out there, and people are counting on me to help, and I can’t.”

  “It was for you,” he said. “Not just me. It’s to keep you safe.”

  “Tell me why,” she repeated.

  He was exhausted, physically and mentally, but he knew he couldn’t tell her. They’d hammered that into his brain long before he arrived in Montana. No one can know…

  But what was the point of keeping it a secret now? The men from the quarry were already here. Telling someone the truth wasn’t going to make it any worse.

  “Hon,” she said, “this isn’t fair to me. I can see that you’re scared, and I believe that there’s a reason. I know there must be a reason. But if somebody is going to hurt you or something, and you’re with me, then I deserve to know. Don’t you see that?”

  “You have no idea,” he blurted.

  “Go on.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You have to. Damn it, I deserve to know what’s out there!” She waved her hand at the world around them, which was just beginning to brighten. It probably looked darker down on the ground, but when you were up here in the tower, reaching into the sky, the light came early.

  “They’re coming to kill me,” he said.

  She stared at him. Started to say something and then stopped, took a breat
h, and finally said, “Who?”

  “I don’t know their names. But there are two of them. They’ve come a long way.”

  He could see that she was trying to decide whether to believe him. Wondering if he was some sort of crazy kid who’d imagined a wild story. Why wouldn’t she think that? The truth was harder to believe.

  “You think I’m making it up.”

  “No,” she said, and maybe she wasn’t lying. “Who’s coming? And why? Tell me why.”

  “I can’t.”

  “If I’m in danger because you’re here, I at least need to understand it.”

  She was right, and he felt bad refusing to tell her the truth. If they were close—and he knew they were, they had to be—then she was in danger too. It wasn’t just him.

  “I think they killed his wife,” he whispered. “Or hurt her really bad. Burned his house down, all because of me.”

  “Hang on,” the woman said. “Hang on. A house fire? I heard a house-fire call earlier tonight. You were there?”

  For the first time, it was clear that she was absolutely willing to believe him. Or at least to listen. The fire had convinced her. Fire had that kind of power.

  “I wasn’t there,” he said. “But…I’m not supposed to tell anybody anything. I’m not supposed to trust anyone. They made me promise that.”

  “Connor, you can trust me. And I need to know.”

  He looked away and said, “I saw a murder. They brought me up here to hide me. I guess they didn’t do a very good job.”

  She looked at the door and for a minute he thought she was going to walk out of it, just leave him here and not look back. He wouldn’t have blamed her. Instead, she took a deep breath and said, “Where did you see a murder?”

  “Indiana. I’m supposed to be a witness. People thought I was safe here, but…but I think they found me.”

  “Who are they? Not their names, but…”

  She didn’t know how to phrase the question, but he knew how to answer it.

  “They’re evil,” he said. “That’s all they are. They were dressed like police, but the people they killed were police. They kill people for money, and it doesn’t even…it doesn’t even stress them out. I watched them do it. They were relaxed the whole time. People don’t matter to them.”

  He told her all of it. All the important stuff. The plan his parents had agreed to, the way he was supposed to pretend to be a bad kid, the way he was supposed to fit in with the group and hide in the wilderness and there would be no cell phones to trace or cameras to spot him; he would be off the grid, that was the whole point. He told her about Ethan and the way he’d woken them all in the night and how they’d been walking back down the Pilot Creek trail when he turned off his headlamp and let them go on. When he was finished, he added, “I’m sorry it had to be you.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry you had to be here. I don’t want anyone getting hurt because of me.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Nobody will get hurt. We’ll figure it out.”

  It seemed like she was trying to convince herself, not him, and that was fine, because Jace didn’t believe it.

  “We can see them coming,” she said. “If they’re really out there, and they head up here, we can see them coming for a long ways.”

  He looked at the windows and nodded. “I guess we’ll know when they get here, at least.”

  “You’re sure they’re coming?” she said.

  “I’m sure.”

  “How long did it take you to get here?”

  “A little more than an hour.”

  “So they could be here any minute.”

  “I don’t know. They weren’t with us. If they were, I’d be dead by now.”

  “I think we should leave,” she said. “If we can get back to the road, then we can—”

  “It’s a long walk to the road.”

  “Yes, it is. Seven miles. But we can do it. We’ll be fine.”

  “You can stay here,” Jace told her. “I’ll run for it. You don’t need to try to make it with me. Or I can stay and you can run.”

  She said, “Let’s stick together. Whatever we decide, let’s both do the same thing.”

  He nodded. He didn’t want to see her get hurt because of him, but he didn’t want to be alone either. “What’s your name?” he said.

  “Hannah. Hannah Faber.”

  “I’m sorry, Hannah. I really am. But they’re very good. They found me even when I was off the grid. If you had said anything on the radio, I know they would have been here. They would have heard it, somehow. They hear it all.”

  “Well,” she said, bending to pick up a broken fragment of the face of the radio, “that doesn’t seem to be a problem anymore, does it?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. You’ve taken care of one problem. But now we need to figure out how to take care of the rest. Any ideas?”

  He was silent for a minute, and then he said, “I had an escape route.”

  “Pardon?”

  “We all did. Ethan makes us plot one before we set out. This time it was going into Cooke City. But not using the trail. If we’re going to leave, we probably shouldn’t use the trail. That’s what they’ll take to find me.”

  “Fantastic,” Hannah Faber told him. “Just you and me and the wilderness? No, let’s wait here. Nobody knows where you are. You’ve seen to that, thanks to your work on the radio. But eventually, they’re going to notice that I’m off the air. And when they do, they’ll send help.”

  “So we just wait?”

  “Right. We wait it out where we can see people coming a long time before they get here. That’s the best thing about this place.” She was pacing and nodding to herself the way you did when you were trying to talk yourself into being brave. Jace recognized the behavior. He’d done it on the quarry ledges.

  “We can just wait here, like it’s a fortress,” she said. “It’ll be like the Alamo.”

  “Everybody died at the Alamo,” Jace said.

  She stood with her back to the window and looked at him as the world of shadows gave way to daylight behind her.

  “Probably because they had no damn radio,” she said.

  20

  Allison’s face was all but hidden from him. Bandages covered the skin he’d touched with his lips countless times. Only her closed eyes were visible, and her mouth, dark with swelling and laced with black stitches. Hand and forearm wrapped in heavy gauze. Ethan touched her unbandaged hand and said her name, soft as a prayer. Her eyes opened and found his.

  “Baby,” she said. The word came clumsily from her broken mouth.

  “I’m here.”

  “I did the best I could,” she said. “Maybe not so good. But the best I could.”

  What was left of her hair had been cut down to jagged clumps by the nurses. The rest had burned away. He used to run his hands through it before she slept, or when she was sick, or anytime a comforting gesture seemed in order. One was in order now but he knew better than to touch.

  “You did amazing,” he said, and his words came out clumsily too. That was no good. One of them should be able to speak. “I’m so sorry. It’s on me. They came because of—”

  “No,” she said. “They came because of her.”

  “I made a mistake. Should never have agreed to it.”

  “She made the mistake. You were just part of it.”

  He wasn’t ready to blame Jamie Bennett just yet. He couldn’t say that he was ready to forgive her either. She rushes, and she makes mistakes, Allison had said. Not wrong, that assessment. Not wrong at all. The one hundred percent guarantee that the men would not get to her witness, her promise that if they even moved toward Montana, she’d know about it? So much for that. Ethan hadn’t heard a word. He wondered for the first time if she was still alive.

  “Do the police know about her?” he asked.

  “Not yet. I was…struggling. Thoughts not clear. Everything was on fire.”

  “I know.”


  “What about Tango? I was thinking…” She started to cry then, tears leaking down only to be absorbed immediately by the bandages. “I was thinking that Tango couldn’t even try to run. The way we’ve got him standing, he couldn’t even try to—”

  “The horse is fine.”

  “You’re sure?”

  He nodded.

  “The house?”

  He didn’t answer. Just held her hand and looked into her eyes. He hadn’t seen it yet, but he’d been told. The Ritz was destroyed. Their promised land, built together, their little triumph in the world, reduced to cold ashes and dripping water.

  “Why’d she have to pick you?” Allison said.

  “Don’t blame her. Blame me. She asked; she didn’t order. I should have said no. I should have done a lot of things different. But I’ll make right what I can, Allison. I’ll get the boy and—”

  “Wait. Wait. What do you mean, you’ll get him? Where is he?”

  Smart woman, his wife. Beat her, burn her, sedate her. Then slip up and hope she didn’t catch it. Good luck with that.

  “He’s missing,” he said. He made himself continue to look into her eyes when he said that. It wasn’t easy.

  “What?”

  “Ran off in the night. When we were hiking down.”

  “Which one was he?”

  “Connor. I suppose I could be wrong. But I doubt it. The boys knew that…that someone had arrived, and trouble was here, and he was the one who ran.”

  She looked away from him and down to the heavy wrapping around her wounded hand. All for nothing, she was surely thinking. All she’d gone through, and still the boy was gone. Ethan had promised to protect them both and had failed to protect either.

  “Where do you think he went?”

  To hide, Ethan thought, to run and hide because he was afraid of not only them, but me. He has no friends left in this world, or at least that is how he feels now. But he said, “Maybe the escape route. He seemed to pay a lot of attention to those. He was the best one with the maps. With land navigation. Maybe the best with everything. So when he left us on the trail, he might have doubled back and tried to come down the other side of Republic.”

  And into the fire, he thought. He had no idea how much of it had burned. Maybe they’d gotten it under control by now. But with the way the wind was blowing…he had his doubts.