Cold Wind - C. J. Box [118]
Joe considered smashing through one of the windows with the butt of his shotgun and crawling inside, but decided to try any other doors first. There had to be one in back. He retrieved his shotgun—man, his shoulder hurt—and paralleled the front of the house to get to the corner. He glanced again through the slit in the curtains, saw the boot hadn’t moved, and ducked a cottonwood tree branch. His boots sounded loud on the concrete driveway, and as he walked past, he grabbed the handle and jerked, even though he assumed it was powered by an electric garage door opener.
It gave. Joe stopped, surprised. Then he rolled it all the way up.
Bud Longbrake’s F-150 pickup was inside. Joe looked up and saw that the manual catch on the garage door opener had been clicked back, and it made sense. Bailey had given Bud a key to the house, but the remote control for the garage was probably in Kimberly Alice Skilling’s car, wherever that was. In order to hide his vehicle, Bud had had to disengage the opener and slide the door up and down the old-fashioned way. After parking inside, he’d forgotten to slide the bolt home.
Joe swung his Maglite up and held his breath as he reached for the knob of the door to enter the house.
Unlocked as well.
Nate shouldered through thick, seven-foot-high mountain juniper bushes until he stood on the manicured grass of the club lawn itself. He stopped for a moment with his back to the brush to see if there were any vehicles on the roads or obvious cameras or sensors ahead of him.
Satisfied, he crouched down and crab-walked from tree to tree toward the homes in front of him. The one he was looking for was right there ahead: a three-story Tudor with a couple of guest cottages.
He approached the main house and went straight for the back of the garage. No one ever put curtains on garage windows, and he peered inside. Five stalls and not a single vehicle inside. The floor looked polished and it reflected a beam of moonlight.
He stepped back and assessed the main house. It felt big and empty to him. All the curtains were closed tightly and there wasn’t a single leak of light from inside. He turned toward the guest cottages and moved from tree to tree, bush to bush, until he was behind them. As he’d moved, he’d noted the outline of a pickup truck parked in the driveway of the first structure, and now as he paused, a light clicked on inside at the far-left window, closest to the garage.
Nate slid his .500 out of its holster, hoisted it up near his right ear, and as he leveled it his left thumb cocked the hammer back. The scope gathered all the available light, and Nate rested the crosshairs on the center of the window.
Joe couldn’t help but think that Bud should have taken better care of a house in which he was a secret guest. Like in his apartment above the Stockman’s Bar, wrappers, empty bottles, reeking cartons, and bits of debris were everywhere. The door from the garage led into the kitchen, and Joe noted the stack of dirty dishes in the sink and the overflowing garbage can against the wall across from the stove. A scrawny gray cat fed among a pile of chicken bones it had pulled from the garbage can. The cat looked up at Joe with no fear at all.
“Bud, are you here?” Joe called out. “It’s me, Joe.”
As he passed the kitchen window, Joe leaned over and patted the cat on the head.
Nate saw a glimpse of a head and a hat through the window. He put the crosshairs on it, and as he began to squeeze the trigger, the head was gone, as if the man inside had fallen through a trapdoor. He cursed, kept his weapon up, and waited for the target to reappear.
But it didn’t, and another light clicked on behind the curtains of the middle window. He’d moved on.
Nate wondered how he’d known to duck at that precise moment, but dismissed it as happenstance.
And now Nate would have to go inside. It would be better that way, he thought, as he jogged toward the back door. Face-to-face would be best.
He wanted Bud to see his face, know Nate Romanowski had found him, before Bud’s head exploded.