In Plain Sight

She said the sheriff’s office had just called and they were sending the helicopter out. It should be there any minute.

“Is Nate still there?” she asked.

“Yes, but I haven’t seen him recently.”

“You might want to tell him the sheriff is coming,” she said.

Joe agreed and hung up.

JOE COULD HEAR the distant approaching thump of the helicopter as he walked the ranch yard. The smoke from the fire stung his nose and made his eyes tear up.

Nate was gone. So was a drift boat Joe had seen earlier leaning against the barn. And so was J.W. Keeley’s body. Joe guessed it was in the fire, where it would be discovered with the others. Neat and clean.

Joe drew his weapon and threw it as far as he could into the river. His holster followed.

It was crashing in on him now: what had happened, what he’d done, how J.W. had forever welded the fates of the Keeley, Scarlett, and Pickett families together by death.

As he saw Sheridan and Lucy walking toward him from Wyatt’s shack, he thought: But we are the ones who are left standing. Unlike Keeley or the Scarletts, Sheridan and Lucy are still here.

And that was all that mattered.

Sheridan stood close to him and asked, “Are you okay, Dad?”

“I’m fine,” he lied.

“What happens now?”

He could have said, “Everything will be different.” But he didn’t. Instead, he pulled his daughters close to him and waited for the helicopter.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author, who has read too many overlong acknowledgments in novels lately, would like to thank those who significantly contributed to the research and writing of this book, including Sergeant Nadim Shah of the Wyoming Department of Corrections in Rawlins; D. P. Lyle, M.D.; Jim Hearne of MHP in Cheyenne, who went through hell on earth in an actual ranch dispute much like the one described in the book; Wyoming game warden Mark Nelson and his lovely wife, Mari, who read the book and offered suggestions and corrections, as always; and Mark Weak-land, who was my partner in an inadvertent drift-boat rocket ride down the North Fork of the Shoshone River near Cody, much like the one depicted in the novel. Thanks also to Don Hajicek for cjbox.net.

Special thanks to the publishing pros, especially my editor, Martha Bushko, who makes every book better than it ever was imagined; Michael Barson and the Putnam team, who have supported every novel when they didn’t have to; and my agent, Ann Rittenberg, who dives deep in the murk of submerged wreckage and surfaces holding up answers.

Turn the page for a preview of

FREE FIRE

The next Joe Pickett novel

by C. J. Box

Available in paperback

from Berkley Prime Crime!

1

Bechler River Ranger Station Yellowstone National Park July 21

A HALF HOUR AFTER CLAY MCCANN WALKED INTO the backwoods ranger station and turned over his still-warm weapons, after he’d announced to the startled seasonal ranger behind the desk that he’d just slaughtered four campers near Robinson Lake, the nervous ranger said, “Law enforcement will be here any minute. Do you want to call a lawyer?”

McCann looked up from where he was sitting on a rough-hewn bench. The seasonal ranger saw a big man, a soft man with a sunburn already blooming on his freckled cheeks from just that morning, wearing ill-fitting, brand-new outdoor clothes that still bore folds from the packaging, his blood-flecked hands curled in his lap like he wanted nothing to do with them.

McCann said, “You don’t understand. I am a lawyer.”

Then he smiled, as if sharing a joke.

2

Saddlestring, Wyoming October 5

JOE PICKETT WAS FIXING BARBED-WIRE FENCE ON A boulder-strewn hillside on the southwest corner of the Longbrake Ranch when the white jet cleared the mountain-top and halved the cloudless pale blue sky. He winced as the roar of the engines washed over him and seemed to suck out all sound and complexity from the cold midmorning, leaving a vacuum in the pummeled silence. Maxine, Joe’s old Labrador, looked at the sky from her pool of shade next to the pickup.

Bud Longbrake, Jr., hated silence and filled it immediately. “Damn! I wonder where that plane is headed? It sure is flying low.” Then he began to sing, poorly, a Bruce Cock-burn song from the eighties:

If I had a rocket launcher . . .

I would not hesitate

The airport, Joe thought but didn’t say, ignoring Bud Jr., the plane is headed for the airport. He pulled the strand of wire tight against the post to pound in a staple with the hammer end of his fencing tool.

“Bet he’s headed for the airport,” Bud Jr. said, abruptly stopping his song in midlyric. “What kind of plane was it, anyway? It wasn’t a commercial plane, that’s for sure. I didn’t see anything painted on the side. Man, it sure came out of nowhere.”