Big Sky Showdown

“Anything you can find will help.” He drew his knife off his belt. “I can split it. The wood on the inside is dry.”

“I’ll go find more.” She turned and dashed toward the trees.

Using one log as a baton and his knife as a hatchet, he split several logs. His vision blurred as water dripped off his hair. He squeezed his eyes shut then opened them.

Dear God, help us stay alive.

He could feel the strength draining from his body and his mind fogging. Heather returned with more wood.

“I’ve got enough here to start the fire.” He pointed at the fire starter. “Do you know how to use that?”

She nodded. “We go camping in California, too, you know.”

She knelt down beside him, gathering the kindling into a pile around the dryer lint. She shaved off some magnesium flakes and then slid the scraper across the rod until she made some sparks. Her hands were shaking, too, as she used them to protect the fragile flames. Once the fire consumed the kindling, Zane placed larger pieces of wood on the fire until he could feel the warmth.

He slipped out of his wet coat. “You might want to take yours off. Lay it across those rocks so the fire will dry it out. You’ll need to sit close to me...for warmth.”

She gave him a momentary stare before stripping her coat and gloves off and scooting beside him.

“All right if I wrap my arms around you?”

She nodded. He took her into an awkward hug. Her body was rigid in his arms, unmoving except for the shivering. Both of them watched the flames as they warmed up and dried out.

“Will they come looking for us?” Her voice sounded very far away and weak.

He lifted his head to look around. Their would-be captors had been tenacious up to this point. There was no reason to think they would just give up now. “Probably.” The fire was small, and they were hidden by the rocks, but they couldn’t stay here for long without running the risk of being found.

“Who are they?”

Her question fell like a heavy weight on his chest. He took in a breath as the past rushed at him at a hundred miles an hour. This wasn’t the first time she’d asked the question. He needed to finally give her an answer. “There’s a man who used to live in these mountains. He’s a doomsday-conspiracy kind of guy who thinks that the authorities are out to get him. So he lives out in places like this, in the middle of nowhere. He recruits boys and young men who need a father figure, indoctrinates them to be just as wild and lawless as he is. They’re his own personal army, committing whatever crimes he plans. This area was his territory for a long time. He left almost seven years ago. He must be back here for some reason.”

“How do you know it’s him?”

“The way those boys acted. And then I heard them mention Willis’s name,” he said.

“How do you know all this about him and his boys?” She brushed a strand of wet hair off her neck.

He took a moment to answer. “I used to be one of them when I was a kid. I was just as wild, until I met your father.”

The stiffness of her body against his softened a little. She took a moment to ask her next question. “My father helped you get away from this Willis guy?”

He nodded. Seven years ago, Willis had made the mistake of telling Zane he needed to get a job in town to bring in money. It was something Willis demanded of many of his followers whose loyalty he thought was without question. But Willis hadn’t known that Zane would bond so deeply with the man who hired him. Stephan’s love for God and His creation and unconditional love for Zane had been such a contrast to Willis’s harsh world of punishment and rewards.

She seemed to relax even more in his embrace. “Why do they want you—or me, for that matter?”

“I don’t know.” He had cut all ties with Willis and anyone who knew the man or held similar views.

“Maybe they’re looking to punish you because you didn’t want to be with them anymore,” she said.

“That was years ago. Willis is a little crazy, but he’s also very calculating. The law was breathing down his neck when he left here. He wouldn’t risk returning just for revenge.” Something had drawn Willis back here.

She slipped from his embrace, stood up and moved closer to the fire. “So what do we do?”

“We need to get across that river so we can get to town, contact the authorities,” he said. “There’s another crossing ten miles down.”

Her expression didn’t change. She held her hands closer to the fire. “They’ll be looking for us there, don’t you think?”

“Probably. Willis knows these mountains better than I do.” Though he didn’t want to scare her, he couldn’t lie to her.

“It’s never easy, is it?” She crossed her arms over her body. “I just wanted to spread Stephan’s ashes, do the right thing.” She turned slightly away from him.

He wondered what she was thinking. She must be afraid, yet she hadn’t fallen apart, and she hadn’t blamed him for the violence she’d been dragged into.

“We’re pretty well hidden here. Once we’re dried out, we’ll put the fire out and wait until dusk. The darkness will provide us some cover.”

She turned back toward him and nodded. Then she sat down beside him again, watching the glow of the fire. He kept thinking that she would cry or get angry with him, but she didn’t. Brave woman.

“This fire saved us,” she said.

“Yes, it did.” He studied her profile as the firelight danced on her pale skin. This was way more than she had bargained for. “I’m sorry. When all this is over and done with, I’ll take you back up to that mountain so you can do what you came here to do.”

A faint smile crossed her lips and she nodded. But something in her expression suggested that she didn’t believe him. Did she think they were going to die out here? “Was it really because of my father that you were able to leave Willis?”

“With Willis you were always scrambling for his approval, trying to accomplish things so he’d pat you on the back. Your father’s love was filled with grace. His support gave me the strength I needed to get away from that life.”

“I wish I could have known that Stephan.” She shook her head, and her voice faltered. “I wish I could have known him at all. If he loved me, why didn’t he try to get in touch with me when he was alive? I couldn’t have been that hard to track down. His lawyer found me easily enough.”

“Maybe he did try once he stopped drinking. Did your mom ever say anything to you about that?”

She shook her head. “Mom died a year ago, so I can’t even ask her now.”

He stood up beside her and touched her shoulder lightly, knowing that there were no words that would take away her pain and confusion.

They waited until the light faded. Hunger gnawed at his belly as they headed back toward the river. He’d grabbed protein bars from the saddlebags. Since that was their only food, he didn’t want to eat them until they had no calorie reserves left. They might be out here for a long time. He needed to be smart about when they ate their only food.

Behind him, Heather’s footsteps stopped. He turned to face her, barely able to make out her features in the fading light.

“Something wrong?”

“Thought I heard something.”

He studied the landscape, tuning his ears to the hum of the forest. He understood her jumpiness. He felt it too. Willis taught all his protégés tracking skills, so he had to assume that sooner or later they would encounter one or more of the followers who had been assigned to bring Heather and him in.

As he listened, nothing seemed amiss and nothing sounded human. Still, better safe than sorry.

He turned and headed back down the hill. He heard Heather’s footsteps behind him but nothing else. The silence was unnerving as they moved through the forest.

A flood of memories of his time with Willis came back to him with each step he took. He’s been barely seventeen when Willis had caught him breaking into his car to sleep. Jordan—Jordie—had only been thirteen when they decided a few months earlier that living on the run was better than foster care. His little brother had been even more impressionable than he had been.

So many of Willis’s antiestablishment rants hadn’t rang true or lacked a certain logic, but that was easy to overlook when Willis’s ragtag community finally gave Zane a place where he felt like he belonged. It was the pats on the back and the way Willis would take the time with him to teach him to shoot, build a lean-to and hunt that had made him want to stay in the wild. The camaraderie with the other boys and men filled a void for him, too. It had been hard to leave that behind, even when he’d known it was the right thing to do. The hardest part had been parting from Jordie, who’d refused to leave with him.

His brother would be twenty now, a man. Jordan had gone with Willis and the others when they left the area, but had he stayed with him all these years?

Zane stuttered in his step. Heather came up close to him. Her shoulder pressed against his as he heard her sharp intake of breath. To the east, the river murmured.

Though he heard nothing amiss, his heart beat a little faster. “You hear something?”

After a moment, she shook her head. “I guess not. I’m just a little nervous.”

His warning system was on high alert as well. Now that they were out in the open, he had to assume they were being tracked.

“Stay close,” he whispered.

He moved slower, choosing each step with a degree of caution, not wanting a single sound to alert anyone tracking them to their location. Heather seemed to instinctually know that she needed to be quiet. Her steps were almost lighter than air.

A wolf howled somewhere in the distance. Zane’s heart hammered out a steady beat. He pushed through trees, seeking more cover. The gray dusk light turned charcoal. Stars glimmered above them, but he could not take the time to notice their beauty. He dared not let himself relax or let his guard down.

“I’m thirsty,” whispered Heather as she came up beside him.

She was probably hungry, too.

He just wasn’t sure if stopping to eat the protein bars was a good idea right now. “Don’t eat the snow. We’ll drink from the river.”

He followed the sound of the water rushing over stones. He crouched low and chose a sheltered spot where the cottonwoods grew close to the water.

Heather knelt beside the river.

“It’s cold. Drink just enough to keep you going. I have food. We’ll eat in a while.”

He positioned himself beside her and cupped his own hands and placed them in the icy water. After several handfuls, he stood up and tugged on Heather’s coat. She rose to her feet and they slipped back into the shelter of the forest.

The canopy of the trees and the encroaching darkness made it hard to see. He heard a yelp that was clearly human off to his side, maybe ten feet away. He grabbed Heather’s hand and pulled her to the ground.

Both of them remained still as the footfalls of a human being overwhelmed the other forest sounds. Heavy boots pounded past them.

One guy alone. Zane should be able to take him and get a weapon. Zane leaped to his feet and jumped on the teenager. The young man turned out to be the size of a football player and with the same strength. They wrestled, crashing against the brush. The teenager flipped over on his stomach in an effort to push himself to his feet.

The shouts of the other boys filled the forest. Their position had been given away by the noise of the fight, and reinforcements were closing in.

Zane kept a knee in Football Player’s back as he felt along his waistband for a gun. He retrieved a small pistol.

Now the whole forest was full of the noise of their pursuers edging closer. He saw bobbing lights. The mechanical thunder of ATVs coming to life surrounded them.

Heather pulled on his shoulder. “Hurry. They’re coming.”

She let go of him and turned to head away from the bobbing lights. He stuffed the gun in his waistband and took a step toward her. From the ground where he lay, Football Player grabbed at his ankle. Zane stumbled, nearly falling on his face.

Heather swung around and landed a kick to the kid’s shoulder so he let go of Zane’s foot. The crashing and breaking of branches alerted them to the closeness of their pursuers. They shot through forest and back up toward a sloping hill. The roar of ATVs pressed on them from all sides. When he glanced over his shoulder, he saw three sets of glowing white headlights. They’d never outrun these machines.

He rerouted toward a cluster of trees. Heather followed him. Once they were deep into the forest, he stopped.

He pointed at a tree. “Climb.”

Heather must have realized hiding was their only option. Without a word, she dashed toward the tree and grabbed a low, sturdy branch. She climbed with agility and ease. He ran to a nearby tree and jumped up to grasp one of the lower branches. The ATVs grew louder. Headlights cut a wide swath through the trees. As artificial light filled the forest, he could make out the silhouette of Heather resting her belly on a stout branch and holding on to the smaller limbs of the tree. Evergreen boughs partially hid her, but wouldn’t provide enough protection if someone looked her way. He could only hope their pursuers kept their eyes on the ground.

The machines surged by beneath them. He spotted two riders by themselves. A third ATV with a driver and a passenger zoomed by. The ATVs scooted up the hill, the noise of their engines growing faint. The bobbing flashlights told him there were some trackers on foot, as well. These searchers approached at a slower pace, shining their light over the brush and trees. The orange glow of the flashlights landed on the tree where Heather was hiding. Zane tensed. If they were spotted, they’d be shot like coons out of their trees even if it was just to injure them.

In the distance, the ATVs slowed. They must have figured out they’d lost the trail and now they were backtracking. There were three young men with flashlights on foot. One of them lingered beneath the tree where Heather was hiding.

He’d counted seven boys and young men chasing after them in all. As far as he could tell in the dark, none of them were Jordie. Though the passing of time would make it hard to recognize his brother even in daylight. He could only hope that his brother had escaped the control Willis had had on his life.

The lone searcher continued to pace beneath Heather’s hiding place, shining the flashlight on nearby trees. Zane could no longer hear the noise of the other two foot soldiers who had split off and disappeared into the forest.

Zane clenched his teeth. All they needed was for this tracker to leave, and they could scramble down and find a new hiding place or even escape.

It sounded like the ATVs were doing circles, trying to pick up the trail. The man shone his light on the tree where Zane hid. The light glared in Zane’s face. He’d been spotted. Zane’s muscles tensed as the man reached for his gun.

FIVE

Zane jumped down from his hiding place and pounced on the man, knocking the wind out of him. Zane grabbed the flashlight where it had rolled away from the temporarily disabled man. By then, Heather was halfway down the tree. She ran the remaining ten feet to rush to his side.

Between the two other searchers on foot and the ATVs coming back this way, there was only one direction to go. Both of them took off running. Zane led them in an erratic path around the trees, hoping to make them harder to follow.

He caught glimpses of bobbing lights in the forest. They needed to shake these guys before they had any chance of getting back to the river.

He pushed deeper into the forest where the undergrowth was thick. The roar of the ATVs never let up. They skirted around some brush, coming face-to-face with a kid on foot who didn’t look to be more than twelve years old. When he saw them, the kid’s eyes grew wide with fear. He showed no sign of pulling any kind of a weapon on them.

“I won’t tell if you don’t,” said Zane as he darted off in a different direction with Heather close on his heels.

They sprinted through the darkness of the forest, dodging lights and sounds that seemed to come at them from every direction, feet pounding the ground, breath filling their lungs and coming out in cloudy puffs as the night grew colder.

He dismissed any thought of returning to the river just yet. The river was probably patrolled anyway.

They ran until twenty minutes passed without seeing a light or hearing a human noise. Both of them pressed against tree trunks in an aspen grove, the sounds of their heavy inhales and exhales the only noise around.

They couldn’t keep dodging these guys forever. Granted, it looked like Willis had sent the B team, younger men and boys with less high-tech equipment and experience, to track them down, but if Willis was serious about kidnapping Zane and Heather, he’d send the A team or come out himself sooner or later.

Heather pushed off the tree and moved toward him as if to talk to him.

In his peripheral vision, he saw the vapor cloud of someone exhaling by a tree. His heart skipped a beat as he held up his hand, indicating to Heather she needed to stand still.

He watched as the person behind the tree let out another breath from maybe twenty feet away.

Seconds ticked by.

Though her face was covered in shadows, he picked up on the fear in Heather’s posture. Both of them stood as still as rocks. His heartbeat drummed in his ears. Whoever was behind the tree took a single step, feet crunching on snow.

Heather turned her head ever so slightly as if to indicate that she thought they should run. He shook his head. He didn’t think they’d been spotted yet, but any noise at all would alert the stranger to their whereabouts.

The stranger took another step. Through the prism of the narrow white and black aspen trunks, Zane discerned the silhouette of a man, standing still for a long time as though he were taking in his surroundings. Probably listening for any noise that might be out of place.

Zane swallowed as his heart raged in his chest and sweat trickled down his back. His mouth was dry.

With the next footstep, the stranger moved away from where he and Heather stood. The footsteps came one after the other before finally fading into the distance.

When the man got far enough away that they could no longer hear him, Heather let out a breath, and her shoulders slumped, but she didn’t move until Zane took a step toward her.

She closed the distance between them so she could talk in a whisper. “Who was that?”

“I’m not sure,” he said.

Another hunter? Maybe. More likely it was someone in Willis’s crew who was out in the woods for some reason other than capturing them. Or someone who was supposed to catch them but who didn’t want to get into a wrestling match.

Zane ran his hand over the pistol he’d gotten off the teenager, grateful that he hadn’t needed to use it.

“Follow me,” he said.

They walked for a distance through the darkness. It was too much of a risk to turn on the flashlight, and the moonlight provided enough light to see the ground. He stopped at the top of a knoll and stared down at the cluster of trees below. He turned the flashlight on and off just to get a glimpse. Something about the arrangement of the underbrush looked unnatural.

Heather followed him down the hill and into the evergreens. Hidden from view from the outside, he saw piles of pine boughs covering some sort of structure. He pulled several of the branches off until he found a small door. The structure was made of heavy duty plastic stretched across PVC pipe and it was not more than four feet high.

“It’s like a hobbit house,” said Heather.

He poked his head in. A gust of warmth surrounded him. “Actually, it’s a little more sinister than that.” He pulled out the flashlight and turned it on. As he’d suspected, they’d stumbled on someone’s pot farm. “Might as well come in, it’s warm inside.”

The plants were spaced to allow a single person to get around to tend them. Heather slipped in after him. “Someone has a serious need to support a habit.”

“This kind of operation isn’t about personal use. Someone is growing this stuff to sell.”

And from the look of the empty shelves, much of it already had been sold. He’d received letters from law enforcement telling him to be on the lookout for the pot farms in the high country because it was such a good place to hide an operation. As much time as he spent up here, he was bound to stumble across one sooner or later. He wondered, too, if the stranger they’d encountered in the woods had just left the little hidden farm. Maybe he was part of Willis’s group but spent most of his time away from the main base and had no idea about Zane and Heather being hunted by the others. An operation like this required daily attention. From the size of the plants, they’d been up here for a while. With the limited number of people who came up here outside of hunting season, Willis might have been here through the spring and summer.

“I guess they’re not likely to get caught this far away from everyone.” Heather scooted in behind him and closed the tiny door.

“Right.” The more he thought about it, the more certain Zane was that no one besides Willis and his little army would be this far up. The little farm had to be Willis’s. Willis had always been against the consumption of drugs and alcohol, but he wasn’t above selling it to others to make money. This was a larger crop than Zane would have expected, though. What exactly was Willis up to anyway? What was he trying to finance?

Once hunting season started in a few weeks, Willis ran the risk of being spotted, so it must be something that would happen soon.

Zane shone his flashlight around, spotting a pamphlet that was authored by Willis. Any doubt that this operation was his fell away. Zane noticed a water container. He lifted it and handed it first to Heather. She took several gulps of water as he skirted around the dirt floor to see what else he could find. He came up with a blanket neatly folded and a heavy-duty sleeping bag on a mat.

“There’s a little stove here and some canned goods.” He heard Heather’s voice but couldn’t see her through the foliage.

When he studied the roof, it looked like there was some sort of solar panel set up to keep the place warm. Whoever tended the plants must stay here for extended periods. No doubt he would be back. But hopefully not before Zane and Heather had a chance to take refuge for a little while.

He worked his way over to where Heather had already fired up the little propane stove and was opening a can of beans.

He patted the protein bars in his pocket, grateful he could save them for later. “Let’s eat and get out of here. I’m sure someone checks these on a regular basis. The ‘farmer’ might be the guy we saw a few minutes ago, just out for a brief walk.”

Heather poured the beans into the metal tin and placed it on the gas flame.

He felt a sense of urgency. “Maybe we should eat the beans cold.”

She cut the flame. “There’s only one spoon.”

“You first,” he said.

She took four quick bites and then handed him the can. He’d finished his third bite when he heard the roar of the ATVs raging down the hill toward them. So much for rest and food. They’d been found again. Time to run.

* * *

Bright lights glaring through the clear plastic nearly paralyzed Heather. Zane clicked off the flashlight. She heard him scrambling toward the door. It took her a moment before her brain kicked into gear, and she followed behind him, slipping through the tiny opening and out into the dark night.

The ATVs loomed down the hill toward them, the engine noises sounding like hungry monsters gnashing their teeth. Her limbs felt heavy and muscles cried out with fatigue from having run so much.

Zane grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the shelter of the trees. The ATV noise fell away by half, indicating some of their pursuers must have stopped to examine the greenhouse. She kept her eyes on the back of Zane’s head as they fled. They ran until the noise died down to a single ATV and then fell away altogether.