Nothing.
Joe thought the likelihood of Nate blasting him was remote. Nate wasn’t one to panic. Even so, he wasn’t the kind of man to surprise, either.
Joe reached down and turned the knob. Unlocked. He pushed the door open and entered, using his headlamp to see inside like a Cyclops.
After thirty seconds, Joe had no doubt who lived in the line shack. Falconry gear — hoods, jesses, bells, lures — was scattered on the tabletop. Ancient books on falconry were stacked on a single bookshelf next to volumes on war, military tactics, and Special Operations. And in a small frame on the end of the bookshelf was a five-year-old photo of a young girl with a falcon on her arm. Sheridan, fifteen years old, grinned awkwardly at the camera with strands of her blond hair whipping across her face in the wind. The photo tugged at Joe’s heart: both that it was a younger and more awkward Sheridan, and that Nate displayed it.
Joe took a deep breath and tried to regain control of his heartbeat and breathing.
He’d found him. But now what?
Nate was obviously gone, but who knew how long? His weapon and hat were missing, and there was no vehicle outside. Folded clothes on the bed indicated he was around, and fresh-skinned grouse marinating in the refrigerator indicated he was coming back soon.
His friend lived in his own world, Joe knew. Nate was prone to midnight sojourns, sitting naked in a tree for hours, and sometimes submerging himself entirely in a river or pond with a breathing tube just to experience what it was like to be a fish. Nate didn’t keep regular hours, and except for feeding and flying his falcons, there was no routine. He could show up at dawn, or within the minute.
Or he could be outside, watching silently to see what Joe was up to.
Now that he’d found Nate’s location, Joe wasn’t sure he wanted that conversation after all. If his friend was at Sand Creek Ranch, it confirmed to Joe that Nate was hooked up with Wolfgang Templeton. And if what the FBI suspected was true, the surveillance video from the Scoggins compound in Montana might turn out to be enough to place Nate at the scene. Kidnapping and murder were crimes Joe couldn’t overlook.
He stood in the cabin for ten more minutes, running scenarios. He could slip out, wait, or set up an ambush. None felt right.
In the end, Joe extracted a single shotgun shell from his pocket and stood it brass-down on the table. Nate had once left a .50 round in Joe’s mailbox to signal he was in the area. Nate would recognize the shell and know he’d been there, and draw his own conclusions.
Maybe, Joe thought, Nate would come to him.
At the edge of the clearing, with the line shack behind him and an access road cut into the hillside below, Joe set up a short tripod and mounted his spotting scope. Lights from the ranch compound winked below. In the star- and moonlight, Joe could make out the silhouette of the lodge itself — it indeed resembled a country castle with turrets and peaked roofs — as well as an assemblage of outbuildings, barns, sheds, and guest cabins. The entrance road to the compound was illuminated by soft yellow pole lights. The dark ribbon of Sand Creek itself serpentined through the valley floor.
Although he’d viewed the satellite photos of the ranch compound on Google Maps back in his cabin, the shots displayed on his screen had been taken in midsummer, when the main lodge and outbuildings were obscured by trees. Now that the leaves were clearing from the branches, he got a better idea of the layout.
He was no expert at night photography, but he was surprised by the clarity of the digital photos he took of the compound below under the lights. He doubted at that distance he’d be able to capture individuals, though, especially if they were moving. But he used the camera display and the long lens to zoom in on the vehicles parked on the side of the castle and snap uselessly away at them in the hope that a computer whiz at the state crime lab could determine license plate numbers.
More important, for Joe, was simply understanding the large scale and scope of the ranch headquarters itself. He’d been to many in the past, but never one as regal or elegant in design and construction.
Joe’s ears pricked when he heard a shout from below, then a slammed door. Floodlights came on and illuminated the huge lawn in front of the castle and a paved circle drive Joe hadn’t noticed previously in the dark. The back of the castle blocked his view from whoever had shouted and come outside, and he crawled the scope along the edges of the structure to try and catch a glimpse of who was there.
He could only hope that the reason for the sudden activity was not his presence above them at the line shack. Then, in his peripheral vision, he saw oncoming headlights flashing through the trees on the road to the headquarters. Someone was coming, and it seemed whoever had hit the lights knew of their imminent arrival.
Joe rocked back from the camera and lens so he could see the whole of it. He caught a glimpse of a woman in a white shirt or jacket emerge on the lawn for a moment, gesticulating to people out of sight. He leaned in and rotated the focus ring and saw her clearly and briefly for a second before she walked out of view toward the front of the building, but it happened too quickly to take a shot. She was young, attractive, black — the woman Latta had mentioned. She waved her arms at someone with the authority of a woman in charge.
A long white SUV with the SAND CREEK RANCH logo on the front doors cleared the trees on the road and turned onto the circular driveway. Joe swung his lens over and shot several rapid photographs as the vehicle approached the castle and went out of view in front of it, blocked by the building. A few words of greeting — happy in tone — floated up from the valley.
Whatever was happening, whoever had arrived with such fanfare, couldn’t be discerned. He checked the display on the camera and moaned. The shots of the vehicle under the floodlights were blurry and pixelated. From that distance and in the poor light, he couldn’t tell who was in the SUV — or how many.
“I,” he said to himself in a whisper, “am a lousy spy.”
Three-quarters of a mile away, on the bank of Sand Creek on the valley floor, in a stand of thick river cottonwoods and red buckbrush, Nate Romanowski watched it all. He clutched a writhing burlap bag filled with pigeons he’d trapped in the loft of an unused barn farther down the river to feed to his birds.
He had no reason to expose himself, and had stopped cold when the floodlights went on in front of the castle. Instead, he’d stepped farther back into the shadows.
He’d watched as ranch staff poured out of the front door, directed by Liv Brannan. She made them stand shoulder to shoulder along the edge of the circular driveway like a scene out of an English drama. Seeing her in action caused a tug in his chest. As she assembled them, Wolfgang Templeton appeared. He was framed by the huge double doors and backlit from inside for a moment before he stepped outside on the portico.
Nate could see Templeton’s starched white open-collared shirt, his silver-belly Stetson. He looked stiff and formal, as if he were about to receive royalty.
The white Suburban slowed as it took the circular driveway and stopped in front. A staffer Nate didn’t recognize opened the driver’s door and strode back to open the door for his passenger.
Because the SUV was between Nate and the front steps, he couldn’t see the woman when she was escorted out, but he did see Templeton’s reaction. After a momentary pause, he skipped down the steps to greet her. The staff offered their welcome and parted, and Nate watched as Templeton escorted his new woman up the stairs. Templeton towered over her, and guided her up the steps with his hand on the small of her back. She wore a dark skirt and matching jacket and had shiny dark hair.