After checking his watch one last time, Paul decided to walk back over to his pickup. He’d just stepped out of cover when a blue truck pulled up to the curb and the driver leaned toward the passenger’s side window. As a brilliant flash of lightning lit up the night sky, he saw the pistol in the driver’s hand.
Paul dove to the ground just as two loud gunshots ripped through the air.
Paul rolled to his right, and using a tree trunk as cover, he rose to one knee, pistol in hand, but it was too late. The truck was already speeding away. Making a split-second decision, he ran after it, hoping to read the plates.
He hadn’t gone fifty yards when he heard the wail of an approaching siren. A heartbeat later Preston rounded the corner and pulled to a screeching stop beside him.
“You hit?” Preston asked, leaning over and shouting out the passenger’s side window.
“No.” Paul opened the door of his brother’s unit and jumped in. “Blue pickup, turned south down Applewood.”
“Make and model?”
“Ford 150, I think,” Paul said, reaching for the shoulder belt as Preston hit the gas. “Or maybe a Chevy. The tailgate was down and it happened in a flash.”
“Let me guess. No Yolanda?”
“I never got a look at the driver. All I saw was the pistol sticking out the passenger’s window. If that lightning flash hadn’t lit up everything at just the right time, I would have been on the ground right now, a soon-to-be chalk outline.”
“You were set up, bro.” Preston turned the corner at high speed, yanking Paul to one side. “The shooter can’t be far. Keep an eye out for taillights on the side streets.”
Paul kept a close watch on the area as his foster brother raced down the street. Traffic here was light. Hartley was barely a city. Most downtown businesses were closed before six, and the area restaurants and bars were all farther east or west.
“In your gut you knew all along that this wasn’t just another domestic abuse situation. I’m right, aren’t I?” Preston said as he took another left, then slowed down and directed his spotlight into the darkened alley they passed.
“I didn’t know, but I had a feeling something wasn’t right,” Paul said. “I’d just decided to call it a night when it went down.”
Preston slowed as they passed a bank parking lot, giving them time to study every inch of the well-lit area. “I think we struck out. The pickup’s gone.”
After another ten minutes, Preston picked up his radio and called off the other patrol cars in the area.
“So, you gonna report this to the marshals service?” he finally asked Paul.
“Yeah. I have to because Miller is still at large.” Paul understood his brother’s lack of enthusiasm. Local departments hated dealing with the feds. But locating Chris Miller, the man who’d killed his partner and wounded him, was a priority. “It’s been ten months since the shooting, so this is probably unrelated, but no matter. I still have to report an incident like this.”
Silence stretched out between them.
“What’s eating you?” Preston finally asked.
“What happened tonight matches the prediction Hosteen Silver left for me,” Paul said. A traditionalist medicine man, Hosteen Silver had respected his culture by avoiding the use of proper names. Instead, he’d gone by a nickname that fit him perfectly. Hosteen meant mister and Silver alluded to the color of his long, shoulder-length hair.
“You’re talking about the letters we all got after his death?”
“Yeah.”
Preston nodded thoughtfully. “The old man...he knew things. At first I thought it was just tricks, him picking up on subtle clues, like some savvy street hustler. But it was more than that. He had a real gift.”
“Yeah, he did, and whatever he foretold was usually right on target,” Paul said.
“So what did he say would lay ahead for you?”
Paul recited it from memory. “‘When Dark Thunder speaks in the silence, enemies will become friends, and friends, enemies. Lynx will bring more questions, but it’s Grit who’ll show you the way if you become his friend. Life and death will call, but in the end, you’ll choose your own path.’”
“You saw the pistol because of the lightning, that’s what you said, right?” Preston said, then seeing him nod, added, “And the business district was pretty quiet.”
“Yeah, but this time, our old man’s prediction is going to be somewhat off the mark. Face it, the day Grit greets me as a friend will be the day after never.” Hosteen Silver’s horse hated him.
“Yeah. Whenever he hears your name his ears go flat and his eyes bug out.”
Silence stretched out again.
“I’ll call the marshals service as soon as I get home,” Paul said. “A landline will get me a better connection, particularly on a night like this.”
“Better not wait or go home either, if it’s really Chris Miller. You should stay at a secure location with backup nearby. Let me get hold of Daniel and Gene and have them meet us in Copper Canyon. For us, that’s the most secure place on earth.”
Paul nodded. All five of his brothers knew that formation like the back of their hands and, there, in a narrow, dead-end canyon, the tactical advantage was theirs.
Paul thought back to the phone call from Yolanda that had led up to this. He had no regrets. He’d been growing restless these past few months, eager to do something more than watch surveillance monitors, the bulk of his business these days.
Now, maybe, fate was finally giving him a chance to get back to the work he loved and pay his debt to the past. Throughout those long months of rehab, he’d kept going by telling himself that someday he’d find Miller, that it was inevitable their paths would cross again.
The possibility that Chris Miller had actually come after him now seemed almost too good to be true.
“Don’t expect me to hide out,” Paul said, then after a second added, “If it’s Miller again, our face-off is long overdue. This is personal. Come morning I’m heading back to town.”
* * *
U.S. D EPUTY M ARSHAL Kendra Armstrong was nearly exhausted after another eighteen hour day. It was two o’clock in the morning, pitch-black outside, and she was alone in a remote corner of New Mexico’s badlands. The headlights of her tiny rental car were the only illumination within miles.
She should have been back in Denver, in on the takedown of the fugitive she’d been after for the past six months. With effort, she pushed back her anger.
According to reports, it was possible that Chris Miller, a high-threat outlaw, had finally surfaced here. Her record for tracking down and capturing runaways fugitives was second to none, so she’d been immediately ordered to New Mexico. Still, the sudden reassignment had taken her by surprise. She hated surprises.
As she eased the tiny rental sedan along a dried-up stream bed, the car’s tires began to lose traction. Feeling the sedan bogging down, she decided to leave the soft, sandy track.
She’d traveled less than one hundred yards when the undercarriage scraped loudly, the screech so loud it hurt her teeth. The car suddenly stopped, her tires spinning from lack of grip. The wobbly tilt of her vehicle told her she’d high centered on bedrock.
Kendra