The Disappeared (Joe Pickett Book 18) Read online

  Eli Jarrett sat alone, revving his engine. He was bookended by two deputies on their snowmobiles.

  Joe had spent hundreds of hours patrolling on sleds and although he wasn’t an expert, he considered himself competent. He could tell when he watched the deputies, by the way they took in the gauges and got the feel for their hand throttles, that they were far from experts themselves.

  Sheriff Neal rode up beside Joe and raised his face shield.

  “Keep a close eye on Jarrett,” he said. “Keep right on him. This might be a ruse to get us up here where he knows the mountains and the trails so he can get away from us and hightail it out of here. I don’t think my guys could keep up with him, and I damn well know I can’t.”

  “Gotcha. What is our plan when we get to the cabin?” Joe said.

  “I’m workin’ on that,” Neal said, and slid his mask down.

  19

  AT THE SAME TIME, WYLIE FRYE ARRIVED AT THE ENCAMPMENT LUMBER mill for his overnight shift wearing insulated coveralls, Sorel pac boots, and his wool rancher cap. It was eight below zero and falling by the minute. He parked his pickup facing the warm wall of the conical burner to keep the motor warm through the night, and he grabbed his “lunch” from the passenger seat to take inside so it wouldn’t freeze solid.

  As he lumbered toward the burner shack, he felt his phone vibrate in his shirt breast pocket and he stopped to check the screen.

  UNKNOWN NUMBER.

  The second time that night. He ignored it and quickly put his phone back and zipped up the coveralls so the temperature wouldn’t make the zipper lock up.

  Even though management would disapprove, Frye wanted to start up the front-end loader as soon as he could after he arrived to transfer the waste and sawdust from the mill itself and shove it into the burner all at one time. Management had told him to feed the fire incrementally every couple of hours throughout his shift. But it was a pain in the butt to put on his coveralls and walk up to the mill itself three or four times a night when he could do it all at once. This way, he had more leisure time in the shack and he could maybe even get in a nap, he figured.

  Sure, the temperature of the burner might exceed its recommended threshold. Frye knew that. But he also knew it was supposed to get to twenty-five below after midnight and some extra heat probably wouldn’t damage the inner workings of the structure. And it would keep the shack toasty warm.

  He placed his lunch on a shelf next to the steel burner wall so it would keep warm. As he did so, his phone went off again.

  He cursed and chose to punch it up. If nothing else, he could tell the UNKNOWN CALLER to fuck off.

  “Who is this?” he asked.

  “Answer your phone. You know who it is.” The gravelly voice was unmistakable.

  “I didn’t answer because I didn’t recognize the number.”

  “I’ve got a new phone. I’d suggest you get one, too. In fact: do it. Get more than one.”

  “I’ve got a phone,” Wylie said.

  “Jesus, you’re dense. What I’m saying is I want you to get a couple of prepaid disposable phones to have on hand in the future. We can’t have anyone pulling up a record of calls from me to you, got it? So go out and get a new phone and text the number to me. I’ll call that number the next time.”

  “You want me to get a burner?” Wylie asked.

  “Yeah. I didn’t say burner because I didn’t want you to get it confused with where you work.”

  “I’m not stupid.”

  The man chuckled at that. Wylie ignored it.

  “Where am I supposed to get burners?”

  “Try the Kum-N-Go. They’ve got a rack of them. If you don’t want to do that, go to the Walmart in Rawlins.”

  Wylie hesitated, said, “I guess.”

  “Do it.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  After a beat, the man said, “We’ll be ready to make another delivery run tomorrow night, so have that new phone handy.”

  “Tomorrow?” He asked only to stall for time and screw up his courage for what he was about to ask.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Well, I wanted to talk to you about that. I think I need more money if we’re going to keep doing this.”

  The silence on the other end made the hair on the back of Wylie’s neck prick up.

  Wylie said, “I’m running a big risk here. I’ve got kids with medical bills.”

  It was a lie. If his kids got sick, his ex took them to the free county clinic. But Wylie had his eye on a new long-distance rifle: the HAMR. Chambered in .375 CheyTac and manufactured by Gunwerks in Cody, Wyoming, it weighed nearly twenty-one pounds and could hit a target over two thousand yards away. Wylie had watched the video on the Gunwerks site dozens of times and it gave him an erection. Plus, the look of the rifle itself with its bipod, Nightforce scope, and folding stock was completely badass.

  And it cost over twelve thousand dollars.

  “You don’t know who you’re dealing with, do you? I’m not a man who negotiates after we have a deal,” the man said finally. “That’s not how I operate.”

  “I thought at first it was a onetime thing,” Wylie said, his voice rising in register. “You didn’t tell me you’d be calling me every ten days to two weeks.”

  More silence. It made Wylie nervous. He realized he was sweating inside his coveralls.

  “Look,” he said, “how about we go with what you’ve been paying, but just for tomorrow night. After that, if we go forward, we need to have better terms.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Just think about it, okay?”

  Wylie knew how lame he sounded.

  “We’ll be there between two-fifteen and three-thirty as usual,” the man said. He didn’t even address Wylie’s proposal. “In the meantime, delete your phone records and my old contact number from your phone.”

  “Seriously?”

  “And not just that. I need you to reformat your phone completely so it looks like it did when you took it out of the box.”

  “I’ll lose everything,” Wylie complained. “All my contacts and my game apps...”

  “Do it or you’re gonna wish you did. And leave your old phone on your desk tomorrow when we show up. I want to make sure you did everything right.”

  “What’s going on? Why are we going through all of this if you don’t have hazardous materials?”

  “Shut the fuck up, Wylie,” the man snapped. “Just do what I tell you.”

  “I’ll text you my new number tomorrow,” Wylie said with a sigh of resignation. He could put up with the abuse if it meant he could get closer to that HAMR.

  The call dropped and Wylie stared at his phone for a moment. He took his hat off and ran his fingers through his hair. His scalp was moist.

  He didn’t have a good feeling about the conversation.

  From behind him, Jeb Pryor said, “I overheard some of that, Wylie. What the hell do you have going on the side at my mill?”

  Wylie turned slowly. Pryor, the owner, had come into the shack and shut the door behind him. Wylie hadn’t noticed him because he’d been so focused on the call itself. He didn’t know how long Old Man Pryor had been there or how much he’d heard.

  “Nothing,” Wylie lied. “I’ve got nothing going on.”

  Pryor looked him over. Wylie just stood there, his sphincter contracting. He knew his face was flushed.

  “I think you and me need to have a little talk,” Pryor said.

  20

  THE SUN DROPPED BELOW THE SUMMIT OF THE SIERRA MADRE RANGE at their backs as the snowmobiles tore across a long meadow toward the forest. Joe glanced at his watch—a half hour left of daylight. He wished it didn’t get dark so early in the winter.

  Eli Jarrett roared up an untracked logging road on his snowmobile followed by the two deputies assigned to him, then Joe and Nate. Sheriff Neal and his undersheriff trailed them all and fell farther and farther behind. The two deputies behind Jarrett were struggling to keep up with him on t
he flats, Joe thought. Once the old road started to climb and twist through the forest, he didn’t know if they could stay with him. Joe goosed the Polaris and it responded with a leap forward to close the gap.

  Jarrett was an aggressive snowmobile driver who knew how to use his weight and the power of the machine itself to get farther and farther ahead. Joe didn’t see the man look over his shoulder once to see if the others were still with him.

  “Stay in his track,” Nate shouted from behind Joe.

  Joe knew what he meant. Jarrett had been up the road the weekend before and had packed down and groomed a path. Although that path had been obscured by several recent snowfalls, it was still down there as a base for the snow machines. Just a few feet to either the right or the left was several feet of pure powder snow. The hidden but groomed path served as a kind of land bridge through the fluffy snow. Joe hoped the deputies knew that.

  The deputy directly behind Jarrett apparently didn’t, though, and when he took a turn too wide, he went flying off the road into the meadow, where his snowmobile immediately bogged down. The front sleds of his machine nosed into the sky and the back sank down.

  The second deputy saw what had happened to his colleague and slowed to assist him.

  Joe whipped by him and closed the gap behind Jarrett. He couldn’t tell if the man was intentionally trying to leave the others behind, as the sheriff had suggested, or if he just naturally rode like a bat out of hell.

  Jarrett had to slow down once they were in the shadows of the lodgepole forest, because the narrow road took several sharp turns. Joe stayed with him, aided by Nate on the back, who also knew when to use his weight to keep the machine on track. The high-pitched whine of the snowmobiles was muted by his helmet, but it reverberated through the crowded trees and enveloped him in a halo of motorized buzz.

  The forest was dense on both sides, with baseball bat–like trunks so close together Joe wasn’t sure he could leave the road and maneuver his machine through the trees even if he wanted to. He knew that if he tried to do that, he’d need to relocate the shotgun that straddled his seat. There wasn’t enough space between the trees for the length of the weapon from muzzle to butt.

  The beam of the headlamp on his Polaris strobed through the trees with each turn and he caught glimpses of Jarrett’s red taillight up ahead of him.

  Despite the suit and helmet, he could feel icy fingers of cold creeping in through his collar and cuffs. The heated handles of the machine beaded with melted snow that had sifted down through the branches like fine flour.

  Before they broke out of the thick stand of trees, Jarrett decelerated suddenly and Joe nearly ran him over. He was able to turn slightly at the last moment so that his left ski missed the back of Jarrett’s machine by inches.

  “What?” Joe asked him after he turned off his motor. Jarrett had as well. It was so cold that when Joe breathed the raw air in, he felt ice crystals form in his nostrils.

  After being pummeled by the high-pitched whine of the Polaris and the reverberation in the trees, the sudden quiet seemed awesome. But it wasn’t totally silent. Joe could hear the remaining machines getting closer.

  Jarrett lifted his face shield and pointed a gloved finger a half mile ahead through an opening toward where another dense pine forest began. The light was so low that the tree wall to which he was gesturing looked black.

  “The cabin I saw is right in the middle of that timber,” Jarrett said. “Straight up the road we’re on.”

  Joe couldn’t see any lights from an occupied structure, but he thought he caught a whiff of wood smoke, and perhaps a cooking smell.

  “Let’s wait until the sheriff gets here,” Joe said.

  “If he ever does,” Nate grumbled.

  *

  WHEN NEAL FINALLY joined them, he pulled in behind the other five machines and killed his motor. The snow was so deep on both sides of the trail that no one had climbed off their machines for fear they’d sink down past their thighs and have to climb back on.

  “What do you think?” Neal asked Jarrett. “Are we close enough to walk in if we stay on the groomed part of the trail?”

  “I guess.” Jarrett shrugged.

  Joe thought he didn’t seem very enthusiastic about the idea.

  Joe said, “Sheriff, these sleds are loud. If he’s still up there with her, he’s likely heard us coming. I think we can assume we’ve lost the element of surprise.”

  Neal nodded in agreement. He said, “Let’s bull-rush the son of a bitch.”

  His deputies all seemed to agree.

  Neal said, “Safety first, gentlemen. I don’t want anybody getting hurt—including McKnight. He’s armed because everybody is, but we don’t know if he’s desperate or dangerous. Remember—we have probable cause to ask him some questions, but we don’t have a warrant for his arrest. Got that?”

  “Got it,” his men grumbled, even though Joe could tell they were spoiling for a confrontation after coming all this way up the mountain to rescue Kate.

  Neal said, “We want to avoid a standoff or a hostage situation if we can. But I don’t want him getting away, either. Just remember your training, officers. We don’t want an incident.”

  He rose on his machine so he could see Jarrett in the dying light.

  “Eli, is there a door in back of that place?”

  Jarrett took a minute to think. “I don’t think so. Just windows. But don’t hold me to that.”

  Neal pointed to one of his deputies and said, “You go around back when we get there and make sure no one comes out and runs.”

  Then, to the rest: “We’ll all fan out when we get to the cabin. Remember to get behind your snowmobile and use it as cover or find a tree or something. I’ll do the talking.”

  To Jarrett, Neal said, “Stay here and don’t even think about running. If you do, we’ll track you down like a dog.”

  Jarrett nodded.

  Neal looked at everyone else to make sure they were paying attention, then tipped his head forward so his face shield slid down. Then he unzipped his snowmobile suit so he could access his weapon.

  The deputies unsheathed M4 rifles and shotguns and armed their weapons. Joe racked a shell into the chamber of his Remington Wingmaster 12-gauge and checked to make sure the safety was engaged. Behind him, Nate drew his .454 and placed it casually on his thigh.

  “Start your machines and mount up, boys,” Neal said. “Go, go, go.” His voice was muffled and tinny because of his closed face shield.

  Joe tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry with anxiety.

  *

  SINCE JARRETT HAD been ordered to stay back, Joe led the charge to the cabin. He kept his front skis squarely in the middle of the old road where the trail was and hoped the others behind him stayed in the track he made.

  His headlight lit up the trunks of the stand of trees and he plunged into them. The road started a slow bend to the right.

  “They’re still all with us,” Nate shouted.

  Joe didn’t know how far the cabin was within the forest but he felt its presence dead ahead.

  And it was. He saw it all at once: a small dark box-shaped structure opening up on a clear meadow that glowed with ambient moon- and starlight. There was a dim yellow light in one of the front windows and a curl of smoke from the top of a stone chimney. Snow was tramped down around the cabin itself and a path with three-foot walls led to a detached outhouse.

  Joe shot by an open loafing shed filled with animal hides stretched and mounted on plywood sheets and on the interior walls. He thought, A trapper lives here.

  When he turned straight toward the cabin his headlight swept across the front window. He got a glimpse of blond hair near the bottom of the sill. Just like the photo, he thought.

  Exactly like the photo.

  “See that?” he hollered over his shoulder to Nate.

  “Saw something,” Nate responded.

  Then he felt Nate’s hard grip.

  “There he goes,” Nate yelled.


  Joe looked to the right in time to see the headlight of a snowmobile flashing through the stand of trees headed the direction from which they’d all just come. He couldn’t get a good look at the driver.

  There were two orange star-shaped flashes followed by sharp cracks. McKnight was firing at them as he fled. Joe had no idea where the rounds had ended up.

  Nate’s weapon thundered and Joe felt the recoil rock the Polaris. The slug missed the driver but smacked into the trunks of several trees and a shower of snow from the branches turned the grove into a man-made blizzard.

  “Missed that bastard,” Nate hissed.

  Suddenly, Neal was beside Joe as his men raced around them toward the cabin as ordered. Two of the deputies bailed off their snowmobiles and hunkered behind them as they aimed weapons toward the structure. The third raced around back to make sure no one escaped through a window.

  “What the hell happened?” Neal asked Joe.

  Joe nodded to the grove of trees. “McKnight heard us coming and took off. He shot and Nate returned fire.”

  “It sounded like a cannon.”

  “McKnight is behind us,” Joe said. “He’s headed back down the mountain.”

  “Did he have Kate with him?”

  “Not that I saw. I think she’s still inside.”

  Neal reached into this saddlebag and withdrew an extra-long five-cell MagLite. He flashed the beam on the front of the window and choked it down to reveal the back of a blond head.

  “She’s not moving,” Neal said.

  “Not good,” Joe said.

  Neal accelerated past him and ordered the two deputies in front to chase McKnight and arrest him. Joe couldn’t hear the words over the burbling snowmobiles, but he could tell by the sheriff’s actions and the reaction of his men what had just occurred. The deputies climbed back on their machines and drove them across the meadow. They entered the stand of trees where McKnight had fired at them to cut McKnight’s track.

  *

  GUNS DRAWN, Joe and Nate followed Sheriff Neal and his undersheriff onto the rough wood porch of the cabin. They covered him as he shouldered through the front door.