Page 66 of Battle Mountain

“I’m well aware of that. I planned this all in the first place, if you’ll recall.”

She went silent. Even without looking, Eisele could tell she was seething.

“But you don’t have to worry,” Soledad said, moving close toher and lowering his voice. Eisele imagined him putting a hand on her shoulder. “I’ve got a plan B. I’vealwaysgot a contingency plan.”

“Let’s hope it works,” Double-A said.

“Oh, it’ll work. If I need to, I’ll pull the trigger on it and Nate Romanowski will suddenly have much bigger things to worry about than me or us. I know how to rock his world to the core. I’ve done it before.”

“Does it involve innocent people?”

“Don’t you worry about that,” Soledad assured her. “That’s my concern.”

Eisele heard Double-A breathe out a long sigh. Whatever Soledad’s contingency plan was, she didn’t want to know. Eisele did, though. He wanted to know as much as he could about these people and what was going on, in order to increase his odds to escape with his life.

What was the “operation” they were engaged in? Who were the anarchists and who was on Double-A’s team? Why was it so important that they’d kill Spike Rankin and stuff his body into a meat cellar? Or keep Eisele literally in the dark in a smoky old room in an abandoned hotel?

“I think I need to get back,” Double-A said to Soledad. “I don’t want anyone down there to miss me.”

“Give them my regards,” Soledad said. “And please don’t fret. Everything is falling into place just like we talked about. And you, my dear, are the key to it all.”

“Thank you,” she said. “But just so you know, I’m doing this for me. Not for you and your cause.”

“It’s all the same,” he said.

He felt the sheet being pulled up and tucked under his chin as Axel Soledad left the room. Then he felt her warmth as she leaned in over him and whispered into his ear.

“You’dbetterbe sleeping,” she hissed. Then he heard the now-familiar sounds of her preparing the next dosage of morphine.

Within two minutes of her leaving the room, Eisele drifted back into darkness as Double-A started up her ATV outside the hotel.

Chapter Sixteen

A t the sametime, back in the city of Cheyenne, Geronimo Jones sat behind the wheel of his idling SUV in an alley off Randall Avenue, waiting for Nate to return. Geronimo was alert and anxious, and he kept an eye out for vehicles or movement both in front of him and via the rearview mirrors. The houses on the street were single-family homes that were older and constructed with red brick. The block was tree-lined with old cottonwoods and Austrian pines that had held up over the years despite the notorious blizzards and summer windstorms in Cheyenne. He’d seen activity in at least two of the houses as people moved past windows. One older white woman in an apron appeared to be constructing a multitiered cake.

No one entered the alley while he sat and waited, but he knew it would be only a matter of time. Time they didn’t have.

They’d looked up the address for Joann Delaney on Geronimo’s phone, and had parked in the alley behind her house. The posted office hours for the Tuck-Smith Law Office went from ninea.m. to four p.m., so they’d hoped she’d come straight home, alone.

They hadn’t had to wait long for the receptionist to return home. She drove a blue compact Ford sedan, and both men had slunk down in their seats and watched her pull into her driveway, emerge with a white plastic sack of groceries, and go inside. Soon after, a pair of drapes were closed on a side bedroom window, followed by a light switching on in the kitchen at the back of the house. Nate had given her five minutes to put away her items and get settled inside before saying, “Keep it running. This shouldn’t take long.”

Which is what Geronimo was doing. He also spent the time mulling a plausible cover story just in case the Cheyenne PD descended on him because one of the residents on the block reported seeing a Black man in a military-looking type of vehicle with bullet strikes in the windshield loitering in their alley. He had yet to come up with one, especially one that explained the three hooded falcons perched behind him and the semiautomatic combat shotgun in the front seat.

To pass the time, Geronimo clicked on the dashboard radio and let it scan through local stations. There weren’t many. His anxiety increased when he heard a news broadcaster for a local AM radio station announcing that authorities had been called to the scene of what was described as an “alleged gun battle at a rural location west of Tie Siding, where three fatalities have been reported.”

That made him sit up and squirm in his seat. The broadcaster added that the Wyoming Highway Patrol could not yet confirm if the shootout was “gang- or drug-related” at this time.

“Stay tuned to KGAB for further updates,” the announcer said, before moving on with the news about a new grizzly bear sighting in the Bighorn Mountains.

“I’ll stay tuned, all right,” Geronimo said aloud. If law enforcement at the scene was looking for a specific vehicle or suspects seen leaving the area, it hadn’t been mentioned.

Thatwas a relief. He and Nate hadn’t seen any other vehicles in or around Tie Siding as they exited the area, and the report seemed to indicate that. Still, it was possible that every trooper in the state of Wyoming was on the lookout for a matte-black Suburban with Colorado plates.

“Come on, Nate,” he whispered, looking at the back of Delaney’s house. “Move it along. What are you doing in there?”

—

The question wasanswered two minutes later, when Nate pushed through the back screen door of Delaney’s home. He made his way across the backyard toward the alley. His shoulder holster was exposed beneath his open jacket, and he carried something small in his right hand, held down low at his side. Geronimo leaned over and opened the passenger door as Nate closed the gate behind him and slid inside the vehicle. He held something oblong and translucent in his bloody right hand, and he flipped it on top of the dashboard, where it stuck.

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