Cold Wind - C. J. Box [26]
“Maybe it’s a symbol,” she said.
“Maybe. Let’s eat.”
“Please remove your weapon,” she said. “Civilized people don’t eat breakfast wearing guns.”
“First time you called me civilized.”
“You aren’t there yet. It’s something to aspire to.” She looked up and smiled coyly. “Maybe when you don’t feel the need to live in a cave.”
As they finished breakfast, he thought of something. He said, “You didn’t mention seeing Large Merle last night.”
Large Merle was a fellow falconer and member of the underground resistance. He was a huge man who had known Nate in the old days but had moved west and had gone to fat. He wore a full beard and stained clothing from his job as a cook in the restaurant in Kaycee. Large Merle rented a ramshackle home up on the south rim of the canyon. The only established road to get to Nate’s stretch of the Hole in the Wall passed through Large Merle’s property, and his friend would clear or shoo away visitors. Either way, Large Merle would call Nate on his satellite phone and let him know who had been there at his place and who might show up in the canyon. Since Nate had been expecting Alisha, he hadn’t realized until now there had been no call.
Alisha took her last bite of the trout and closed her eyes as she chewed it. She loved the fresh fish, and he loved watching her eat it. She said, “Merle wasn’t home.”
“Maybe he was cooking,” Nate said, unsure.
“The restaurant wasn’t open when I drove by,” she said. “I was thinking of stopping in for a cup of coffee.”
Nate sat up. “Large Merle has never left without letting me know,” he said.
She shrugged. “Maybe it was an emergency. Doesn’t he have a sick dad somewhere?”
He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes.
“He’d let me know if he drove to Casper. He always does.” Then, pushing quickly away from the table: “Alisha, I can’t explain it, but something’s wrong. Let’s pack up.”
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Are we coming back?”
“No.”
8
Nothing spells trouble like two drunk cowboys with a rocket launcher.
That’s what Laurie Talich was thinking as she drove them down the rough two-track toward Hole in the Wall Canyon.
Not that they were real cowboys, sure enough. They wore the requisite Wranglers, big Montana Silversmith buckles, long-sleeved Cinch shirts, and cowboy hats. Johnny Cook was a silent strapping blond from upstate New York near Albany, and Drennen O’Melia, chunky and chatty and charmingly insincere, was a Delaware boy. But they were young, strong, dim, handsome, and eager to please. Not to mention currently unemployed since that incident on the dude ranch from which they had recently been let go.
The AT4 shoulder-mounted rocket launcher, still in the packing crate in her rented pickup, was as real as it came, though.
The night before, Laurie Talich had found Johnny and Drennen playing pool for drinks in the back of the Stockman’s Bar in Saddlestring. The bar was dark, cool, long, narrow, and iconic in a comfortably kitschy Western kind of way. She’d been advised this would be the place to find the right kind of men for the job, and her adviser had been exactly right. She’d sat alone on her stool at the bar for three straight nights, long enough to learn the name of the bartender—Buck Timberman. She was coy and hadn’t revealed hers. He’d called her “little lady,” as in “What can I get you, little lady?”
“Another one of these, please.” Meaning Crown Royal and Coke, even though her husband used to chide her and say she was ruining two good drinks with that combo.
She’d paid in cash so there would be no electronic receipts, sipped her second drink of the night, and shot furtive glances at the two dude ranch cowboys. They chalked their sticks, called the pockets, mowed down all comers—tourists, mainly—and collected their drinks. They noticed her: slim, jet-black short hair with bangs, and light blue eyes the color of a high-noon sky. She dressed the part in form-fitting Cruel Girl