“Love you,” he said, rising from the table.
She kissed him one last time. “Love you too.”
He went into the garage and she heard his truck start and then she pulled open the front door and stood in the howling wind so she could wave good-bye. He tapped the horn twice, the Road Runner good-bye-beep-beep-and was gone. She shut the door feeling both annoyed and guilty, as she always did when he went out in weather like this, torn between the fear of what waited out there for him and the knowledge that she should be proud of the work he did.
She was proud too. She really was. This winter had been worse than most, that was all. The pain of losing Tim compounded by the tumult of moving-those things were to blame for her discontent, not Red Lodge. The snow would melt and summer would come. The coffee shop she’d owned in Billings wouldn’t have lasted anyhow. The landlord had been ready to sell, Sabrina hadn’t found a good replacement location, and so summer in Billings had loomed ominously. Now summer was promising; she’d already found good real estate for a new location, and she had the peace of knowing that, whatever happened out there today, her husband would stay on the ground.
Red Lodge was a fresh start.
He called the first time at noon. She was outside shoveling the walk, out of breath when she answered.
“We lost a sixty-nine kV line just off the highway,” he reported.
That translated to 69 kilovolts, which meant 69,000 volts. A standard home ran on 110 or 220 volts.
“The work is going fast so far, though, and the forecasts are good,” Jay said.
She’d seen that. An Alberta clipper was blowing down out of Canada, drying out the air. The snow had tapered off and the roads were passable. At least up to Red Lodge, they were passable. Beyond, as the highway snaked toward eleven thousand feet, the pass had been closed for six months and would be for another two.
“Maybe there’s a chance of a normal dinner,” she said.
“Maybe.” His voice held optimism.
A few hours later, it didn’t.
The call at five was shorter than the first, and he was distressed.
“Definitely going to be a late one.”
“Really?” She was surprised, because the storm had died off around one, and their power was back on.
“Never seen anything like it. Somebody’s cutting trees so they fall into the lines. We’re getting faults farther and farther up into the mountains, and they’re cut trees, every time. Chain saws and some asshole on a snowmobile having himself a hell of a time, dropping trees onto the lines, keeping just out in front of us like some kid playing tag. We put one up, he cuts one down.”
“Are the police there?”
“Haven’t seen them yet. I’d tell you I’m almost done, but right now, I don’t have any idea. They’re fresh cuts; I could still see the sawdust in the snow on the last one. It’s the damnedest thing…they’ve got a pattern, pulling us farther out of town. Whoever’s doing it is probably watching me send my crew up on the poles and having a laugh.”
Fatigue was often a factor in deaths on the lines, and the idea of Jay’s team, men like her brother, climbing pole after pole in a snowstorm, gradually wearing down, all because of someone’s vandalism was infuriating.
“I’ve got to go,” he said. “Hopefully this asshole’s chain saw is about out of gas. Actually, I hope his snowmobile is. I’d like to meet this guy.”
She wished him luck, hung up, and, sweaty and tired, went upstairs to take a shower. At the top of the steps, she turned and looked back at the mountains, wondering where in them he was. They were already dark.
What’s the point? she thought. Mindless behavior, drunk boys with powerful toys. But dangerous.
She wanted it to be mindless, at least. But as the water heated up and the room filled with steam and she stepped into the shower, she found that Jay’s words were unsettling her more than the actual facts. It was how he’d described the fallen trees as pulling us farther out of town.
When she came out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a nightgown, a cloud of steam traveling through the door with her, she understood in an immediate, primal way exactly why it had disturbed her.
There was a man sitting on her bed wearing snowmobile clothes, goggles hanging around his neck and a pistol in his hand.
Sabrina didn’t scream, just reacted without thinking, recognition at warp speed-Threat is in the bedroom, phone is in the bedroom, escape is through the bedroom, so retreat is the only option-and she stumbled backward and slid the door shut. It was a pocket door, most of the interior doors in their new home were, and when they’d viewed the house she’d told the real estate agent how much she liked them. Now she hated them, because the pocket door had no real lock, just a flimsy latch that her frantic hands couldn’t maneuver, and she could hear the sound of the man leaving the bed and approaching. She barely got her hands out of the way before he kicked the door, and the lock turned into a twisted shard of metal as the door blew off its track and the frame splintered. A large, gloved hand reached in and grasped the edge of the door and shoved it backward and now Sabrina was out of options. Everything that could save her was beyond him, and she wouldn’t get beyond him. He was so large that he filled the door frame, and even though his clothing was unusually bulky, she could tell that he was massive beneath it. He had dark, emotionless eyes and his hair was shaved down to stubble against his thick skull.
“Who are you?” she said. It was the only question that mattered to her in that moment. His identity, not his intention, because the gun announced his intention.
“My name is Garland Webb.” His voice was deep, and the words came slow and echoed in the tiled room. “I am very tired. I had to make a long journey in a short time for you.”
“What do you want?”
“We harnessed air for this,” he said, as if that answered her question. “That’s all we need. People think they need so much more. People are wrong.”
Then he lifted the pistol and shot her.
There was a soft pop and hiss and then a stab of pain in her stomach. She screamed, finally, screamed high and loud and long and he let her do it, never moving from the doorway. He just lowered the pistol and watched with a half smile as she fell back against the wall, and her hands moved to her stomach, searching for the wound, the source of the pain. Her fingers brushed something strange, soft and almost friendly to the touch, and she looked down and saw the arrow sticking out of her belly just below her ribs. No, not an arrow. Too small. It had a metal shaft and a plastic tube that faded to small, angled pieces of soft, plastic-like feathers. A dart.
She felt warmth unfolding through her body and thought, Something was in that and now it’s in me, oh my God, what was in there? and she tried to pull it free from her stomach. It didn’t come loose, just stretched her skin and increased the pain and drew the first visible blood. The thin blue fabric of her nightgown kept her from seeing the point of the dart clearly, but she could feel what it was-there was a barb on the end, just like a fishhook, something to anchor it in her flesh.
“Air,” the big man with the dead eyes said again, sounding immensely pleased, and the unfolding warmth within Sabrina reached her brain, and her vision swam and there was a buzzing crescendo in her ears like the inside of a hornet’s nest. She looked up from the dart, trying to find the man, trying to ask why.
She slid down the wall and fell against the toilet, unconscious, with the question still on her lips.
2
The man who’d been accused of murdering Markus Novak’s wife was in prison for the sexual assault of another woman when a talented young public defender won his freedom by pointing out a series of legal errors that had robbed Garland Webb of his right to a fair trial.