War has many rules, but only two are critical to your survival. The first one is that you live behind your rifle and your pistol and your bullet-proof vest, the last protecting your heart, which is pumping blood into your vital organs. The second is that you use everything at your disposal to protect yourself, to keep you safe and, God willing, deliver you back home to your family.
He wasn’t at war right now – at least not the kind where he had groups of people, sometimes an entire city, wishing him dead. He didn’t have IEDs hidden in the road he was driving on or inside a parked car or in a heap of trash as high as a wall and stinking like a morgue stuffed floor to ceiling with corpses, the air-conditioning and refrigeration units turned off. He didn’t have to worry about some barefoot or sandal-wearing Iraqi boy coming toward his Humvee, smiling nervously and holding dripping slices of watermelon the colour of blood, a suicide vest strapped underneath his robes.
When he pulled into the driveway belonging to the Green Valley Motor Lodge – a group of low brown buildings made of dark timber stacked together and looking like a pile of shit with windows in it – he was seized with panic, imagining people rushing out from behind the buildings and through the doors and from behind parked cars, all of them brandishing guns, readying to fire. When that didn’t happen, his brain told him to search the area for hidden IEDs, while the voice he had relied upon in Iraq, one that had saved his life several times, too many times, told him to throw the car in reverse and get the hell out.
Darby was staring at him. He could feel the sweat popping along his forehead.
‘You feel okay?’ she asked.
‘Tired. No, exhausted.’ He smiled wearily. ‘Second rule of combat is to grab sleep whenever you can. I want you to take the car and drive back to Big Sky.’
‘I’ll crash here.’
‘This place is an absolute shithole.’
‘I’ve stayed in plenty of shitholes.’
‘My FOB – Forward Operating Base – I lived in while I was stationed in Iraq was cleaner. And I never found pubic hairs in my towel.’
‘You’ve got me beat there. I’ll head to Big Sky.’
Noel threw open the door and got out. As he made his way round the front bumper he imagined not his head locked in crosshairs but hers, someone ready to pull the trigger. He knew he was being foolish and irrational, but the feeling didn’t go away. Dug its roots in and sharpened its pointed teeth, to get ready for fresh meat – his. This thing in him only wanted to feast on him, his brain.
There’s only one way out, the thing said. Grab your gun and stick it in your –
‘I’ll be there when the dogs arrive,’ he said.
She stood in front of him, her gaze searching his face.
‘What?’
‘You’re sweating,’ she said. ‘And your left eye is twitching.’
‘I had malaria. It acts up every now and again when I’m tired. It’ll pass.’
Her eyes were as cold and unforgiving as the winter morning. He was about to run through the rehearsed script he told everyone when this moment happened, when she brushed past him and walked around the car.
Noel wanted to run back and tell her to get out, have her stand inside the motel while he examined the SUV, searching it for an IED. Again, he knew he was being irrational – most of all because if an IED had been planted in it, it would have already gone off. But the Red Ryder didn’t deal in bombs, he dealt in guns – handguns, which he fired up close, creating a canvas that he could watch and admire, like a painter who had finished administering the final masterful brushstroke.
Noel was about to open the front door to the motel and step into the lobby, with its shaggy carpeting and panelled walls displaying cheaply framed pictures of grizzly bears and hunting parties, when he inhaled the cold morning air smelling of pine and suddenly felt invigorated, the way he did back in Iraq when he was in his early twenties, all balls and will, ready to take on the world and fix it. He let go of the door and then ambled toward the parking lot, which was mostly empty.
A home at the end of the world, he thought, reaching into his pocket.
Vivian was used to answering her phone at all hours of the night. ‘Noel,’ she said, her voice clear and strong even though it was shortly before 5 a.m. in Virginia.
He told her about how Darby had discovered the hidden chamber inside the home Karen had rented, the skeletal remains he’d seen, the hacked baby monitor.
‘The sheriff,’ Vivian said after he finished speaking. ‘You think he’ll change his mind?’
‘I don’t.’ Noel told her about the young woman’s telephone conversation at the real-estate office.
‘Okay,’ Vivian said after he finished. ‘I’ll see what I can do on my end, see who she called.’
‘I’m more concerned right now about the sheriff.’
‘We can offer our help. He doesn’t have to accept it.’
‘Or we can take over the investigation.’
‘I’d rather not go down that road.’
‘Two dead women.’
Vivian said nothing.
‘Darby thinks there could be more inside the chamber area, whatever it’s called,’ Noel said.
‘Buried in candy wrappers.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did she take a look inside?’
‘No. Darby didn’t want to go in there, disturb any potential evidence.’
‘Smart girl.’
‘And one of the best in her field.’
Vivian said nothing.
‘I think the Red Ryder is here,’ he said.
‘I think you mean was. If that was him you heard in the woods last night – if he’s somehow linked to that house your sister was renting – don’t you think he’ll go underground or, better yet, take off somewhere?’
‘Maybe. But I’m not running.’
‘I need to put an end to this,’ he said.
Vivian’s voice was so low, almost a whisper: ‘I know you do.’
‘So help me.’
Vivian sighed.
‘One condition,’ she said.
‘No.’
‘You don’t know her.’
‘Darby stays.’
‘She’ll throw you to the wolves without a second thought if it means saving herself or Cooper.’
No, he thought. That’s what you would do.