Page 73 of Dark Sky

As he said it, a dark form emerged from the corner of the cabin and separated from the structure. Joe could see him only because his body blocked the starlight on the snow in the immediate distance.

The unidentified man walked silently and with caution. He was no doubt hunting down the source of the noise from the back of the cabin.

Joe searched for the .22 and realized he’d landed on it. He was able to roll his butt cheek and extract the rifle just as the form turned toward them. He hoped the muzzle wasn’t jammed with soil from being tossed outside. Joe didn’t aim but generally pointed the muzzle of the rifle to center of mass.

The sharpcrackof the shot illuminated Kirby’s surprised face for less than a second. He was just ten feet away.

Kirby said, “Ow,” and turned away. But he didn’t go down.

“Go,” Joe barked to Price. He knew he couldn’t see well enough to reload, and he didn’t know how badly Kirby was hit.

Joe rolled to his feet and joined Price, who was running wildly ahead of him through the snow toward a dark wall of timber.

“Where are we going?” Price asked over his shoulder.

“Just run,” Joe said, trying to keep up.

There was a heavyboomfrom behind them, followed by two more. Joe heard a rifle round smack into a tree trunk to his right. The impact sent a shower of snow cascading down all around him from branches that had been cradling it. Within a few steps, they were in black timber.

As he ran, sidling around trees and trying not to trip over downed logs or exposed roots, Joe recalled what his middle daughter, April, had said to him a year before when she came to visit him in his hospital bed:

You need to quit getting shot.

Tuesday

Slippery Son of a Bitch

A man’s dying is more the survivors’ affair than his own.

—Thomas Mann

The MagicMountain

NINETEEN

At 2:45 in the morning, Marybeth parked her van in front of Sheriff Scott Tibbs’s rental home on South Nebraska Street and killed the engine. She was furious.

Sheridan sat in the passenger seat, her face illuminated by the glow of the screen on her phone.

“Do you want to come in?” Marybeth asked.

“No, I’ll wait out here unless you need me. Maybe I can get some more intel on Steve-2.”

“I shouldn’t be long.”

Marybeth kept the van running so it would stay warm inside and left Sheridan in it with her device.

While driving there, she’d noted that the digital temperature gauge on the dashboard read twenty degrees. It was unseasonably cold out, and she could only guess how much colder it was in the mountains. She knew Joe had packed winter clothing and gear—he always did, no matter the month inWyoming—but he couldn’t have fully prepared for this kind of weather. It wasn’t even winter yet.

Light snow fell and haloed around the streetlamp on the corner. It was the only light on for the entire block, although there was a dull glow behind the curtains in one of Tibbs’s windows.

She strode up the broken walkway and rang the doorbell. It chimed inside, but she couldn’t hear any activity. So she banged on the aluminum storm door with her gloved fist and it made an impressive-sounding racket.

“Sheriff Tibbs, I need to talk to you.”

A minute later, she saw the curtain shimmy from the room with the light on. Someone had peered out to see who was at the door. Then she heard shuffling inside.

Finally, a bolt was thrown from the inside and the door cracked open a few inches. Tibbs was short and stout and he sported a thick white mustache that obscured his upper lip. He had deep-set brown eyes and his uncombed hair stuck straight out to the side a few inches from over his left ear. He was bald, and she realized she’d never seen him without his comb-over. He was dressed in an oversized white T-shirt and red flannel pajama bottoms. His bare feet were nearly as wide as they were long on the hardwood floor. They looked like paddles.

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