Slowly, Joe raised his eyes to the window over the sink that overlooked his back lawn.
Nate cocked his eyebrows at him from outside. Through the glass, Nate mouthed, “Hey.”
Joe grinned. It had been a long time.
17
JOE AND NATE WORKED TOGETHER ON DINNER. JOE HAD pronghorn antelope backstraps in the freezer from the previous fall, and Nate rubbed the meat with sage, garlic, salt, and pepper and prepared it for the grill. Joe roasted green beans in the oven and boiled potatoes on the stove for mashing later. Nate said, “This is uncomfortably domestic.”
Said Joe, “This is the least I can do since I’m rattling around the house all day. At some point in the very near future, though, I may need to learn how to do something besides grill red meat every night.”
Nate cocked his head to the side the way a puzzled falcon did. “Why?”
Joe chinned toward the kitchen window where Nate had stood earlier and said, “Why’d you scare me like that?”
“I couldn’t let anyone see me come in the front door,” Nate said, shaping a long sheet of foil to wrap around the meat to catch the drippings. “I’m still a wanted man, remember? I saw your neighbor out front, and by the look of him he seems like the type of guy who would call the cops on me because I look suspicious.”
“You’re right about that,” Joe conceded. “But haven’t things cooled down now since Coon took over the FBI field office?” Joe asked. Coon had replaced Special Agent Tony Portenson, who’d finally gotten his wish and had been reassigned to the East Coast as a reward for breaking the Stenko case the fall before. Although Nate was officially still a fugitive, Coon had told Joe that he planned to redirect the agents previously assigned to capturing Nate to other cases. The same way prosecutors had discretion, bureau chiefs had some leeway on the priorities of their offices, Coon had explained with a slight wink.
“Let’s just say I haven’t heard of any intense efforts to find me lately,” Nate said. “I’ve got a friend or two in the federal building who keep me informed on things like that.”
Joe said, “I don’t want to hear any more.”
Nate smiled and winked. Nate had connections everywhere, and Joe didn’t want to know who they were or how they knew Nate. The less he knew about Nate’s background, means of support, or day-to-day life, the better, he thought. As it was, he knew he could be brought up on charges for harboring a fugitive.
While Joe plucked the potatoes out of the pot to cool, he told Nate the story of what had happened in the Sierra Madre. Nate was intensely interested, but listened in silence while nodding his head. Finally, he said, “I’ve got a couple of questions.”
“I’m sick of answering questions about it,” Joe said. “Nobody seems to believe me, anyway.”
“I can see why,” Nate said, raising his eyebrows. “So I’ll boil them all down to one.”
Joe nodded.
“When are we going up there to find those bastards?”
Before Joe could answer, the front door opened and Marybeth stepped in, trailed by April and Lucy. All three froze when they saw Joe and Nate in the kitchen.
“Oh, my,” Marybeth said, her eyes wide.
“Who is that?” April asked Lucy, taking in Nate from his ponytail to his scuffed boots. Joe saw Marybeth grimace involuntarily at April’s reaction. And he saw April’s face harden into a mask when Sheridan ran across the room and hugged her master falconer.
AT THE TABLE LATER, Joe listened as Nate and Sheridan, who’d arrived late due to basketball practice, debated what kind of falcon should be her first to fly. Although she’d lost her passion in the sport for a while because she was angry with Nate, his presence seemed to have rekindled her interest. Sheridan thought she should start out with a prairie falcon, while Nate suggested she get and fly a merlin.
He said, “Merlins are pretty little falcons, and they don’t get enough credit. They’re small but fast and surprisingly strong.”
Sheridan shook off the idea. “merlins are birds for beginners. They have short wings and they just kill small things.”
“You are a beginner. Besides, Merlins can be trained quickly and flown within a few weeks. They’re more loyal than long-winged falcons.”
Sheridan made a face. “You told me once loyalty had nothing to do with it. You said it was about creating a special partnership between falconer and falcon. You said if one needs the other one too much, the special partnership is ruined and the falconer might as well get a dog.”
Nate looked to Joe for help. Joe shrugged. It was usually him on the receiving end of Sheridan’s arguments, and he enjoyed seeing Nate become prey to his own words.
“Well, I’ve got a dog,” Sheridan said, gesturing at Tube. “Now I want a falcon. A real falcon. You said yourself a prairie is second only to a peregrine as far as you were concerned.”
Nate said, “But a merlin . . .”
“Forget merlins,” Sheridan said. “Can you help me get a prairie falcon?”
Nate sighed.
“I thought so,” Sheridan said.
Joe noticed the amused look on Lucy’s face. Lucy had been following the exchange, as well as carefully observing April stare at Nate the whole time. Lucy said to April, “Be careful your eyes don’t pop out and fall on your plate. You wouldn’t want to accidentally eat them.”
April, the spell momentarily broken, flushed red and hissed, “Shut up, Lucy.”
“Girls,” Marybeth said, and smiled a quick smile at Nate and Joe.
Joe thought, There is a LOT going on here.
AFTER THE DISHES were cleared and cleaned—it was the first time Joe could remember all three girls helping without being asked, apparently to impress their guest—Joe went out on the front porch. The sun had slipped behind the Bighorns an hour before, and because of the elevation, the temperature had already dropped twenty degrees. Although it was barely September, there was already a fall-like snap to the air. He’d noticed earlier that fingers of color were probing down through the folds of the foothills, and the leaves on the cottonwoods of the valley floor were starting to cup. V’s of high-altitude geese soared south along the underbelly of a moon-fused cloud. All were signs of an early winter. Nevertheless, he thought he’d suggest to Nate and Marybeth that they sit outside in the back. He knew Nate had more questions and he wanted to answer them out of earshot of the girls. Marybeth should be there because she so often provided insight he never considered, plus she said she’d spent a few hours earlier that day doing Internet searches trying to locate what she could online about Terri Wade, Diane Shober, and the Grim Brothers.
Joe went back inside the house to check the humidor in his office, hoping he still had some smokable cigars. But because he hadn’t filled the humidor well with water for months, the two cigars that remained crackled drily between his palms and were irredeemable.
He nearly ran into Lucy in the hallway when he came out. She was in her nightgown, and he anticipated a complaint about April when she said, “I think I saw someone in the backyard.”
“Was it Nate?”
“No, Nate’s in the kitchen talking with Mom.”
As she said it, there was a heavy thump against the siding outside, as if someone had tripped in the dark and reached out to prevent a fall. Joe continued down the hall with Lucy padding in bare feet behind him. Sheridan stuck her head out of her bedroom doorway and said, “What was that?”
“I’m not sure, but I’m going to find out.”
There were a number of possibilities. Maybe Nedney had seen Nate and called the feds or the sheriff; one of Nate’s friends or enemies had followed him here; a reporter from the National Enquirer investigating the Terri Wade story had located the witness; Camish and Caleb had tracked him down to finish the job. Or maybe something more innocent: high-school boys trying to spy on his daughters. The last possibility made Joe angrier than any of the previous theories.