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“I knew I’d make it back here,” the fugitive said.
Gus could hear the wind whipping through the valley, up onto the open ridge. He shivered. He preferred to keep moving.
But he followed the fugitive’s gaze to a mound of dirt and rock between the base of the rock formation and the knoll.
A shallow grave.
“Who’s buried there?” Gus asked.
“Smuggler. He tried to cheat the wrong man.”
“Meaning you.”
The fugitive didn’t answer, his eyes gleaming with excitement as, with a burst of fresh energy, he got onto his knees. The rain let up now, too, and he set the Smith & Wesson next to his right knee and started moving baseball-size rocks with his red, frozen hands.
“You’ve stopped shivering, but it’s not because you’re warm,” Gus said. “Your core temperature has dropped to the point that your body is focused just on keeping your vital organs working.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you? You’re slurring your words. As hypothermia worsens, you get more and more confused. Your mental state—”
“Shut up.” The fugitive glared up at Gus. “I’m digging for gold.”
Was he digging for gold, or was he hallucinating? Despite his slurred speech, he sounded perfectly lucid. He continued to grab rocks and toss them aside, keeping his gun close by as he worked.
Gus stood back. He became aware of another presence up on the knoll in the wind and gray. His teeth were chattering now. His hands were shaking. He wasn’t sure if he could trust his senses. Was he so far gone with hypothermia himself that he was imagining things?
“My coat’s not enough. You’re wet,” he said. “I’ve rescued a lot of people off the ridge who were in better shape than you are now.”
The fugitive looked up at him. His eyes were still, focused, even as he struggled to speak. “You’re not the marshal.”
Gus shrugged. “Never said I was.”
He kicked the fugitive’s pile of wet rocks, creating a distraction, and a man swooped down from the knoll.
Nate.
He leveled a gun at the fugitive.
“Hands in the air. Now.”
“Do it,” Gus told the fugitive. “Don’t make him use deadly force.”
The fugitive raised his hands, and Gus grabbed the Smith & Wesson.
He thought he saw a flicker of fear in the fugitive’s eyes and shook his head. “I’m not going to shoot you,” he said, handing the gun to his nephew. “The situation doesn’t call for deadly force. Not anymore.”
Two more men appeared behind the rock outcropping. Antonia’s husband, a U.S. senator and former rescue helicopter pilot, and Carine’s husband, an airforce para-rescueman. They, too, were armed.
Then came Antonia, a physician, and Carine, a nature photographer who knew the White Mountains at least as well as Gus did. Maybe better.
He hadn’t imagined them.
“We weren’t going back down the mountain without you,” Nate said, his voice catching. “I wasn’t losing you before my baby boy gets to know you.”
Gus sank against the wet rock wall. “I’m worn-out,” he said, “and I’m cold.”
Nate nodded to the fugitive. “What did he want?”
“Gold.”
“And a dead marshal. You didn’t tell him he had the wrong guy?”
“You weren’t the right guy, either.”
A search-and-rescue team arrived with stretchers and made Gus get on one, but he climbed off after a hundred yards and walked the rest of the way down off the ridge.
It was dark and cold, the sky clear, when Gus and his nephew and nieces and their spouses and little ones gathered at the Cold Ridge lakeside home of a federal judge. Her name was Bernadette Peacham, and Gus had known her since kindergarten. She hardly spoke as he helped her get a pile of blankets from the shed and spread them out on a tarp laid on the wet ground in front of her big outdoor stone fireplace. A fire was roaring. There were marshmallows and hot cocoa.
Beanie, as Gus had called Bernadette for decades, dried off an old Adirondack chair. “You could have died up there,” she said as she plopped down. “If Nate hadn’t spotted your trail…I don’t want to think about it.”
“All’s well that ends well.”
The fugitive’s name was Frank Leonard. Two years ago, Nate had recognized him at a hardware store in the village of Cold Ridge. His mug shot was on the USMS Web site, and Nate had a good memory for faces. Leonard was wanted for failing to appear in court on a federal drug charge, and ru
Picking the toaster-looking rock formation near the spot where Nate’s parents had died had been Leonard’s idea. On the way down the ridge, restrained in his stretcher, he’d told Gus that even then he didn’t like marshals. “They’d been after me for weeks. They never let up. I thought it was fu
Fu
He and his partner in smuggling argued, and Leonard killed him and buried him as best he could, then hiked back down the ridge to clean up loose ends. The gold bars were heavy and awkward, and he wanted to get his ducks in a row before he went back on the ridge, fetched the gold and disappeared, a rich man.
Only Nate had discovered him first.
When he escaped from prison two days ago, he headed straight to Cold Ridge, but he couldn’t remember how to get back to the spot where he’d buried his colleague and the gold.
And he wanted revenge against the marshal who’d recognized him. He couldn’t believe his luck when he spotted Gus on the trail and mistook him for Nate.
Bernadette picked up a long, sharp-ended stick as Gus settled into the chair next to her. For a while, he’d wondered if he’d ever get warm again. But he was downright hot now, the flames licking up in the black sky.
“Why did you go off on your own this morning?” Bernadette asked.
“I had something on my mind. Beanie, these guys…” He motioned toward Nate, Antonia, Carine, their spouses, their children. “They’re my world.”
“I know, Gus. You’ve been there for them all these years. It was good that they could be there for you today.”
“I’d have nailed that bastard one way or the other, but I was pretty cold. And that’s not what I’m talking about right now.” Gus turned to her, the flames flickering in her eyes. “Beanie, we’ve known each other a long time, you and I, and I haven’t had a romantic thought about you, ever.”
She gave a shocked little cough. “Thanks a lot.”
“Until lately. Now I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“So you went up that trail this morning to get me out of your mind?”
“No. To figure out how to ask you to marry me.”
“Ah.” She picked up a stick and stabbed a fat marshmallow onto the end of it. “You asked me to marry you when we were in the first grade. Remember?”
Actually, he didn’t. “What did you say?”
“I told you to go soak your head.” She smiled and handed him her stick with the marshmallow. “You’re my hero, Gus. You always have been. It’s just taken us a few decades to figure out we belong together.”
“I’m taking that as a yes.”
Bernadette laughed, and Gus leaned forward and dipped the marshmallow in the flames. He was warm in front of the fire with his family and the woman he loved, and life was good.
ROBERT FERRIGNO
Robert Ferrigno has a background that would give him instant credibility with the type of intelligent but questionable characters who populate his books. Armed with a degree in philosophy and a masters in creative writing, Robert left the academic trail to spend five years as a full-time gambler living in dangerous places with dangerous people. Then he became a journalist, but instead of sitting behind a desk typing, he landed a job that had him flying with the Blue Angels, test-driving Ferraris and learning about desert survival with gun enthusiasts. Now a bestselling thriller author, his experiences have clearly given Robert a unique perspective and an unforgettable voice.