Marybeth hesitated for a moment, then said, “Just one.”

“You forget I’m in college.”

“Yes, I do,” Marybeth said softly, placing another glass on the table. Sheridan filled it halfway.

“What’s going on?” Sheridan asked. “Is Dad home?”

Marybeth spilled, telling Sheridan about Butch and the hostages, the collapse of the Saddlestring Hotel, the arrival of Pam Roberson. She didn’t want to speak loud enough to wake up Pam in the next room.

“It’s been a bad day,” Marybeth said, not yet sure whether she regretted saying so much to Sheridan.

Sheridan simply nodded and sipped at her wine. Although Marybeth knew it wasn’t Sheridan’s first drink—she was soon to be a sophomore at the University of Wyoming, after all—it was the first time they’d shared wine together.

“I’m worried about your dad up there,” Marybeth said. “And I’m worried about what will happen to Butch, for Pam and Hannah’s sake.”

—

MARYBETH’S PHONE LIT UP, and she glanced at the display. The call was being made by an unknown number. She hesitated.

“Might as well take it,” Sheridan said.

She did.

“It’s me,” Joe said.

Marybeth said to Sheridan, “Well, speak of the devil.” To Joe: “Where are you calling from?”

“I borrowed a satellite phone from a guy and I don’t have much time before he wants it back. Do you have something to write down a couple of names? I really need your help with some research.”

“The girls and I are fine,” Marybeth said, motioning to Sheridan to hand over the pad and pen she used at the Burg-O-Pardner for taking orders. “Thanks for asking.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said, clamping the phone to her shoulder with her cheek and flipping the pad open. “Okay.”

She wrote down Juan Julio Batista.

“Got it.”

“I really appreciate it,” Joe said. “Find out everything you can about him and call me back at this number. See if he links up somehow with the Sackett case. I won’t be home tonight, and who knows when tomorrow. But this may be important.”

“You said ‘names,’ plural.”

“The second is Pate. John Owen Pate.”

“Gotcha,” Marybeth said. “By the way, I looked up the Sackett case today, and it’s exactly like you said. I can’t find a connection, though, with Pam and Butch. So maybe it’s this Batista.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“I have the time to do this,” she said, “since I don’t have to spend any more on that stupid hotel.”

Joe said, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get ’em next time.”

She could tell by the way he said it there was something else.

“Joe?”

“I got offered a new job today by the new director.”

As he described it to her, Marybeth jotted down Cheyenne, desk, and $18K.

“I’d become a bureaucrat,” Joe said sourly.

Before she could ask for more detail, she could hear another voice in the background.

“The guy wants his phone back,” Joe said. “He’s waiting for a call.”

“Have you found Butch?”

“Not yet.”

“Is it true about the hostages?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“What happened to him, Joe?”

“He broke. Now I’ve gotta go . . .”

—

AT FIVE TO MIDNIGHT as she got ready for bed, Marybeth remembered the call from Matt Donnell on her phone. She sighed, then punched it up to listen.

Matt said, “Marybeth, I may have a line on something. We might be able to unload that piece of crap after all. I’ll give you a call tomorrow and tell you more. I just hope you don’t completely blame me for what happened. It’s just this damned fire marshal. There’s too many of those types out there. They want to be involved in every aspect of what we do . . .”

So, she thought, they’d gone from building something good to trying to “unload it.”

He went on, but she didn’t want to listen to the rest.

—

INSTEAD, SHE PADDED downstairs in her bare feet in the dark. She could hear rhythmic breathing all around her—a house filled with anxious, sleeping females.

Marybeth slipped into Joe’s tiny office off the living room and closed the door and turned on his desk lamp. She sat down and opened the browser of his computer and called up a website called themaster falconer.com.

It was an old site, and rarely used. She was surprised it was still up. Joe and Nate had used the comment threads to communicate surreptitiously the previous year. She knew Joe still checked it from time to time to see if there was any word from Nate, but he reported that there had been nothing.

She called up a discussion thread on the training of kestrel hawks, which was the thread they had used. There had been no new comments posted for months.

When she’d been doing her inventory of her family and where they were at that time, she’d also thought of Nate. He wasn’t related to them by blood, but he’d certainly been an oddball part of the family for years until all of the violence had happened and he’d gone away. She knew federal law enforcement was still looking for him, and that Joe occasionally got calls or visits to ask if he’d heard anything.

On the end of the thread, she wrote:

This is Marybeth. Do you still check this site? If so, please tell me you’re doing okay, wherever you are.

She waited for a moment to see if there was a reply, then castigated herself for it. Did she really think Nate Romanowski was hovering by a computer somewhere, just waiting for her to post something?

And if he was, what would she ask him? He couldn’t bail them out of the hole she’d dug, and Joe wouldn’t want him around in a county filled past capacity with federal law enforcement officers.

She thought herself foolish for even posting the question, and shut down the computer.

But tomorrow, she knew, she’d check it.

—

AS SHE CLIMBED the stairs to her bedroom, she heard a faint sound outside that was unusual. They were used to natural sounds: the cries of coyotes, the huffs of elk and moose from the willow-choked riverbed across the road, and assorted whistles and screeches from falcons and owls. And certainly the roar of a vehicle using Bighorn Road.

This was different. It sounded like a pair of lawn mowers in the distance. But they came from the sky.

Marybeth slid out of bed and parted the curtains, but she couldn’t see what had made the noise. Then she pulled on her robe and went downstairs, back to the computer.

25

IT WAS PAST MIDNIGHT WHEN JOE REACHED THE summit of the mountain and turned to look back. He could see for miles and even locate the distant thread of highway because of the lights on the few vehicles using it. Twenty-five miles away was the tiny cluster of lights from the headquarters of Big Stream Ranch. The FOB was obscured from view by the ocean of trees below, but he knew approximately where it was by a faint glow of lights powered by generators.

The mountaintop was bare of trees or any kind of vegetation except stubborn lichen holding on to granite for dear life, and it was illuminated by moonlight and millions of pinprick stars. Underwood and his team were behind him, their horses picking their way up through the icy granular crusts of snow and loose dark shale. The wind blew from the west into Joe’s face, and he kept the brim of his hat tilted down so his eyes wouldn’t tear. The wind was surprisingly cold for August and numbed his face and hands.

Joe checked his cell phone for bars because sometimes he could get a wayward signal on the top of a mountain at night, but there was no reception. He was glad he’d made contact with Marybeth before, so she knew he was all right. He hated to have left her alone.