Back of Beyond

“Don’t yell,” Cody said, and left him there. “Let me do my work here.”

* * *

Jed tried to stifle the grin that pulled on the sides of his mouth. Rachel Mina didn’t respond. In fact, the glint in her eyes and the set of her face said trouble.

He ignored the teenagers even though he wasn’t sure why they were there. They didn’t seem to know what was going on, the way their eyes shot back and forth from Rachel to him as if watching a tennis volley. Still, he felt responsible for them. They were his clients.

“Rachel,” Jed said, “there’s been a big misunderstanding, obviously. We can work this out. A couple of nights ago Dakota handed me some printouts she said she found in Wilson’s tent, but she must have been in the wrong damned tent. She must have been in your tent.

“I got curious as hell and wanted to see what he was looking for, so I rode up here tonight. How could I know there was a plane crash, or what was in the plane? Come on.”

Gracie thought, He’s lying.

Dakota had said Jed had some kind of scheme going. This was it.

Jed had fed them a story to convince them all to take an alternate route that would get him closer to the location.

He’d left Camp Two to try and find his missing clients, he’d said. So why was he up here on the side of a mountain, at least a mile off the trail?

She stole a look at Rachel Mina. She didn’t buy it, either.

So why did he keep smiling?

* * *

Cody’s sight lines were blocked by the horses and he couldn’t get a bead on Mina. He could clearly see her forearm and hand gripping the pistol, but the heavy front shoulders of a horse blocked the rest of her. Shooting guns out of hands was reserved for old Western movies. He needed a bigger and better target.

Feeling his way, he shinnied along the lip to his right. As he did so he got brief vignettes of Justin, Mina, and the girls through the horses’ legs, like viewing a set piece through the blades of a slowly spinning fan. He could see Jed clearly now, lit up in Mina’s headlamp. Jed seemed surprisingly relaxed, smiling even. Cody had a thought: were Jed and Mina in it together? Was this a falling out among conspirators?

But when he got a quick glimpse at Rachel Mina’s face and posture, he concluded it didn’t matter. The woman was cold as ice, and determined.

* * *

Jed said, “You need to let me crawl on up out of here, Rachel. I’ve got one foot on a ledge of the crevice and the other on a piece of metal. Either one might give the way I’m balancing myself. If you want, you can come over here and shine your light down this hole. You’ll see what I saw: dead guys, and a whole shitload of shredded cash. Below that, it drops down farther than hell. I couldn’t even see the bottom of this crevice, even before it got full dark.”

Mina didn’t budge. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. He was getting tired of looking straight into the wide O of the muzzle of her revolver.

Finally, he said, “Rachel, there’s something you’ve got to know because this is getting old. When Dakota went to the wrong tent the other night she found that gun. Here, let me show you something. Don’t worry, I’m not armed.”

He slipped his right hand along the rock and cautiously dropped it down out of view, never taking his eyes off her. Wondering if she’d pull the trigger before he could show her.

* * *

Gracie braced for an explosion while Jed took one of his hands out of view. The man, she thought, was incredibly brave or foolish. Or he knew something no one else did.

Then she thought she heard something-a grunt or moan-from back beyond the horses and broken trees where the trail came up to the rock ledge. Had someone followed them?

She looked at Rachel out of the corner of her eye to see if she’d heard it as well. If she had, Gracie concluded, she showed no reaction. Gracie guessed Rachel was so focused on Jed and what he was doing she’d blocked everything else out.

* * *

Cody wanted to holler to Ted Sullivan to get the hell back. The man had crawled up the trail and was at the lip, peering across the rock toward the scene. He’d grunted in pain as he hefted himself to see.

Cody tried to get Sullivan’s attention by waving at him. But Sullivan couldn’t or wouldn’t look over.

Instead, Cody turned his attention to the plane. One of the horses had shifted slightly to the left and he could see the side of Mina’s face clearly. The background was good; the teenagers were to the sides and wouldn’t be hit by an exiting bullet or a possible miss.

Cody lowered himself to the rock and pulled the rifle butt to his shoulder and leaned in to the peep sight. Forty yards. An easy shot if his sight lines were clear.

The side of Rachel Mina’s face filled the tiny metal ring hole of the back peep sight. He noted her high cheekbones and attractive profile, her smooth skin, the glint of her eye.

His insides churned. He’d never in his life pointed a gun at a woman, much less shot one in the face. The realization and revulsion came out of nowhere.

* * *