Jamie Bennett said, “Where is Patrick?”
Allison had been wondering the same thing. One of them was horror enough, but there should have been two.
Jack Blackwell did not speak for a moment. He was facing away from Jamie, his eyes on Jace Wilson, when he said, “Our brother is dead.”
Jamie didn’t seem to believe him. Didn’t answer, just gave a little shake of her head.
“Mrs. Serbin’s husband,” Jack said, “was not the aid I had hoped he would be.” He looked back at Allison and said, “He is dead too, but you understand that is not a fair trade to me.”
Ethan was dead. He had been in his mountains, and it hadn’t seemed possible that he would die in them.
Jack Blackwell looked away from them now, stared down into the fire that feasted below. For a time he just stood there, as if he were alone in the world and no troubles weighed on his mind.
“Look at it go,” he said, almost to himself. “That was Patty’s, you know. That was his idea. And it may yet be effective, though he won’t know it. There are bodies to hide and stories to silence and it might be his fire that will do the trick.”
He swiveled his head abruptly, faced the woman who’d guided Jace Wilson this far, and said, “Who are you?”
She didn’t answer.
“I know your role,” he said. “You’re supposed to keep watch. You’re supposed to keep something like that”-he indicated the fire-“from being allowed to spread. But I’d like to know your name. Would you share that much, please, before we proceed?”
She hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Hannah Faber.”
Jack Blackwell nodded and mouthed the name once without speaking it aloud. A slow, thoughtful gesture, as if he were striving to commit her to eternal memory.
Then he lifted his pistol and shot her.
Allison had never before heard a sound like the one that came from Jace Wilson then. Something between a scream and a howl, and he scrambled toward the woman as she fell, and bright blood cascaded between her fingers while she held the wound, which was centered in her right knee. Jack Blackwell lowered the pistol and said, “Have a minute with her, Jace. Go on and take a minute. We’re pressed for time, but I’ll not rush this. Not after so long a journey.”
“Hurry,” Jamie Bennett said. “Hurry or we’ll never get out of here.”
“You’d like to finish it?”
“I can.”
“No.” He shook his head, watching Hannah Faber, whose feet were still moving on the rocks as if she intended to find a way to stand. “No, the work that remains is mine alone. And, Patty, he’ll get them in the end. He lit the match, you know. I’ll let them wait on his work now.”
He tilted his head to study Hannah’s face. He watched with great interest, and then he said, “Jace, please step aside.”
Jace Wilson didn’t move, and Jack Blackwell sighed and then lifted the pistol and fired again, and this time it was Allison who screamed.
He’d fired around the boy, just inches to the side of him, and put another bullet into Hannah Faber, this time in her left foot. Blood ran out of her boot and her head dropped back and her mouth opened but no scream came. She just writhed in silence.
“I believe she’s good to wait on our brother’s work now,” Jack said. “I think that’s a fine way to bring it all to a close.”
“Hurry,” Jamie Bennett said again. She was looking down at the oncoming fire and her face was wet with sweat. Jack Blackwell ignored her and turned to Allison and lifted the pistol, then lowered it and shook his head.
“For you and me, things should be a bit more intimate, don’t you think?” he said, and then he flipped the gun in a smooth twirl so that he was holding it by the barrel, like a club, and advanced on her.
“I’m glad he killed your brother,” Allison said. Her voice was shaking.
“Are you, though?” he said. “Is that pleasing to you?” The soft, musical tone was gone. “I’m going to-”
The rest of his words and most of his face left him then. His head burst in a red cloud and he dropped sideways and didn’t even roll when he hit the rocks.
For a few seconds, Ethan had no idea what had gone wrong. His skull was ringing and blood was pouring out of his face, soaking his cheeks and coating his lips in coppery warmth and dripping into the rocks where the rifle lay.
Was I pointing the son of a bitch backward? he thought, and then he lifted his right hand to his forehead and brought back a palmful of blood and thought, You are one dumb bastard.
He’d had his eye pressed to the scope. Right up against the metal ring of it, of a scope with high eye relief that allowed the shooter to keep his face away, because guess what, boy, there was some serious kick when you shot a bullet the size of your index finger a thousand yards.
But he’d shot it. And where had it gone?
The QuikClot bandages were dark with blood, and he knew how bad that was, but right then, right there, sitting on top of the world, Montana and Wyoming spreading out for miles in all directions around him, he couldn’t bring himself to care. He just needed to know what his shot had done.
He sat against the rocks where it had all started, where the fall had begun, and he got his breath back as sweat ran salty into his open, gasping mouth, and then he turned and looked down to the place from which he’d come, and he started to laugh.
It was not so far. From up here, it did not look so far. A man with a strong arm would probably believe he could hit it with a baseball, and maybe he wouldn’t be wrong.
But that man wouldn’t have climbed from there to here, bleeding and broken. You didn’t know the distance until you’d done that.
He rolled onto his stomach and found the rifle where it had fallen, and he brought it up again. Put his eye to the scope-same dumb mistake, but he wasn’t shooting this time-and realized he couldn’t focus. He had to pull back and wipe at the blood in his eye; he was awash in it. When he looked again, all he saw was smoke and fire. The forest was burning hot now, the wind carrying the fire up toward him, but it would never reach him, not across all of that stone. Then he moved the scope a touch and he was looking at his wife again.
The first time he’d seen her through the scope, he hadn’t believed it. He’d heard enough stories of the things men thought they saw when death was near, and this one fit, a mirage of his wife, but then the rest of them had taken shape, his wife and Connor Reynolds and Jamie Bennett and another woman, one he didn’t know. The fire lookout, he supposed. All alive. All with Jack Blackwell.
He hadn’t had time to wonder over it, the way they’d all met there, the paths they’d taken. Not when Jack Blackwell started shooting. Ethan had wanted to fire fast then but knew that he couldn’t, because, just as Jack had warned his now-dead brother, a miss at this distance would be costly. This was no AR-15; he wasn’t going to be able to fire a burst of shots and adjust along the way. Shoot once, and shoot true. He’d forced himself to aim and think, trying to remember the basics of shooting at a target that was so far downhill. He’d been taught these things once and all that stood out was something that seemed counterintuitive but was the reality: Whether you were shooting uphill or downhill, the bullets would always pull high. Slightly higher on a downhill shot, for the simple reason that gravity was less of an enemy to the bullet’s path when it was already headed down.
He’d aimed at Jack Blackwell’s waist first and then decided that wasn’t low enough. It was a damned steep slope and the bullet would be climbing above his aiming point, and it would be better to hit him in the hip than not at all. He lowered his aiming point to the knees, moved his finger to the trigger, and let out a long, slow breath. Tried to let everything within him go loose and liquid. A tense shot was a missed shot. His father had taught him that. Tense muscles jerked on the trigger. Jerked triggers produced wild bullets.