Chasing Fire
Page 92

She only grinned as she sat down with a full plate. “Not much appetite this morning?”
“I woke up on the floor with Stovic. I may never eat again.”
“How’s Stovic?” Gull asked.
“Last I saw him, his eyes were full of blood, and he was crawling toward his quarters. If I ever pick up a glass of tequila again, shoot me. It’d be a mercy.”
“Drink that,” Rowan advised. “It won’t make you jump up and belt out ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,’ but it’ll take the edge off.”
“It’s brown. And I think something’s moving in there.”
“Trust me.”
When he picked up the Tabasco Lynn kept on the table for him, Rowan started to tell him he wouldn’t need it—then smiled to herself as she cut into a sausage.
Dobie doused the concoction liberally, gave a brisk, bracing nod. “Down the hatch,” he announced. Closing his eyes, he drank it down fast.
And his eyes popped open as his face went from hangover gray to lobster red. “Holy shitfire!”
“Burns like a helitorch.” Struggling with laughter, Rowan ate more sausage. “It may scorch some brain cells while it’s at it, but it fires through the bloodstream. You’ve been purified, my child.”
“He’s not going to speak in tongues, is he?” Gull asked.
“Holy shitfire. That’s a drink. All it needs is a shot of bourbon. Man, makes me sweat.”
Fascinated, Gull watched sweat pop out on Dobie’s red face. “Flushing out the toxins, I guess. What the hell’s in there?”
“She won’t tell. She makes you start with the M-and-M Breakfast—Motrin and Move-Free—with a full glass of water, then drink that, eat toast, drink more water.”
“Said I had to do my run, too.”
“Yeah.” Rowan nodded at Dobie. “And by lunchtime, you’ll feel mostly human and be able to eat. Somebody ought to drag Stovic down here—and Yangtree. Hey, Cards,” she said when he walked in. “How about hauling Stovic’s and Yangtree’s pitiful asses down here so we can pour some of Marg’s hangover antidote into them?”
He said nothing until he’d taken the chair beside hers, angled it toward her. “L.B. just got word from the cops. The rangers found a gun, half buried a few yards from where they found the preacher’s car. They ran it. It’s one of Brakeman’s.”
“Well.” Deliberately she spread huckleberry jelly on a breakfast biscuit. “I guess that answers that.”
“They went to pick him up this morning. He’s gone, his truck’s gone.”
Jelly dripped off her knife as she stared at him. “You don’t mean as in gone to work.”
“No. It looks like he took camping gear, a shotgun, a rifle, two handguns and a whole hell of a lot of ammo. His wife said she didn’t know where he’d gone, or that he’d packed up in the first place. I don’t know if they believe her or not, but from what L.B. says, nobody seems to have the first goddamn clue where he is.”
“I thought—I heard they were going to take him in after the funeral yesterday.”
“For questioning, yeah. But he has a lawyer and all that, and until they had the gun, Ro, they didn’t have anything on him for this shit.”
“For Christ’s sake,” Gull exploded. “Didn’t they have him under surveillance?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know dick-all about it, Gull. But L.B. says he wants you to stay on base, Ro, unless we catch a fire. He wants you to stay inside as much as possible until we know what the f**k. And he doesn’t want to hear any carping about it.”
“I’ll work in the loft.”
“They’ll get him, Ro. It won’t take them long.”
“Sure.”
He gave her arm an awkward pat. “I’ll roust Yangtree and Stovic. It’ll be fun watching the smoke come out of their ears when they drink the hangover cure.”
In the silence that followed Cards’s exit, Dobie got up, poured himself coffee. “I’m going to say this ’cause I have a lot of respect for you. And because Gull’s got more than that for you. If I took off into the hills back home, if I had the gear—hell, even without it, but if I had the gear, a good gun, a good knife, I could live up there for months. Nobody’d find me I didn’t want finding me.”
Rowan made herself continue eating. “They’ll find his truck, maybe, but they won’t find him. He’ll lose himself in the Bitterroots, or the Rockies. His wife’ll lose her home. She put it up for his bond, and he just f**king broke that. I didn’t believe he’d done it—or not Dolly. He’s running, and left his wife and granddaughter twisting in the wind. He abandoned them.
“I hope he screws up.” She shoved to her feet. “I hope he screws up and they catch him, and they toss him in a hole for the rest of his life. I’ll be in the loft, sewing goddamn Smitty bags.”
As she stomped out, Dobie dumped three heaping spoons of sugar into his coffee. “How do you want to play this, son?”
“Intellectually, I don’t think Brakeman’s coming back around here, or worrying about Rowan right now.”
“Mmm-hmm. How do you want to play it?”
He looked over. Sometimes the most unlikely person became the most trusted friend. “When we’re on base, somebody’s with her, round the clock. We make sure she has plenty to do inside. But she needs to get out. If we hole her in, she’ll blow. I guess we mix up the routine. We usually run in the mornings, early. We’ll start running in the evening.”
“If everybody wore caps, sunglasses, it’d be a little harder to tell who’s who at a distance. The trouble is, that woman’s built like a brick shithouse. You just can’t hide that talent. I don’t guess she’d transfer to West Yellowstone, or maybe over to Idaho for a stretch.”
“No. She’d see that as running. Abandonment.”
“Maybe. But maybe not, if you went, too.”
“She’s not there yet, Dobie.”
Dobie pursed his lips, watching Gull as he drank coffee. “But you are?”
Gull stared down at his half-eaten breakfast. “Fucking lupines.”
“What the hell’s lupines?”