WEDNESDAY, 9:47 A.M.
BRIDGER-TETON NATIONAL FOREST
At home, it was time to take a closer look at the items he’d collected. The judge browsed the few images he’d found on the woman’s camera. Images of a hunter. The photographs had been taken by a deft hand and an exceptional eye. A professional. Not a portrait photographer. No. Not that for her. Nature, maybe—for nature enthusiast websites or magazines.
She’d caught him as he moved in on his kill. He’d been smart to wear that cap and keep the rifle close.
Even with her exceptional photography skills, he wasn’t identifiable.
But this was a memory card with few photos. Did she have another one on which she’d captured more images of him and the woman he’d shot? One thing he did know—she’d seen enough to drag law enforcement out to search.
She was a distraction to him because he’d had to make sure she didn’t have a leg to stand on. No body. No evidence. No charges. He’d evaded the law long enough to know how it worked.
He shifted his focus back to the map spread out on the table.
This . . . this deserved his full attention. It would be his legacy. He had to carry it out before it was too late. He had a feeling this time would be different.
Decades ago, he’d come close to getting caught, but instead he holed up here in Jackson Hole, not far from where his great-great bank-robbing grandpa had hid out in the “hole-in-the-wall”—where all the outlaws had come to hide in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming over a century ago.
A historical museum in downtown Grayback had relics and articles about the Old West on display. There was even a mention of his outlaw ancestor. His great-great died—and with a chest full of bullets, of course—making a name for himself, but not before he fathered a child. And the rest was history, as they say. But it was all a complete fabrication to sensationalize the story. In truth, the outlaw had died years later from consumption. Tuberculosis. He’d had a family. All that money he’d stolen hadn’t done him any good.
Another laborious cough racked through the judge, a raucous sound that felt like a spike driving through his whole body. Like his great-great grandpa, the judge didn’t have his health either, but he didn’t care about the money.