Page 12 of Hell and Gone
“We ain’t foalin’ horses on the ranch. All our work horses are full grown. And big. We got hard country and we need sturdy horses to handle it all.”
“Then we have found a clue.” Everett smiled, small and tight. He didn’t feel it, though. He smiled because it was expected of him at times like this.
He hadn’t felt like smiling for years.
Lawrence stared at the horse print, silent and still. Half the print was laid in a moldering yellow leaf, left lying in the mud from autumn, and half was laid in black earth. Three delicate pine needles had broken when the horse stamped off the ants. Their wreckage lay in the print, a whisper in the darkness.
“In this whole forest, you found one li’l print,” Lawrence breathed. “I lived here for almost twenty years and I don’t think I coulda done that.”
“I can track.” Everett stood, brushing his hands against his thighs.
“I can see that.”
Was that a measure of respect in Lawrence’s voice? “I’ve hunted men my whole adult life.” He turned back for the horses, for the backpack he’d left by Lantana. Lawrence waited, seemingly not wanting to lose the print now that it had been found. He stared at it, as if he could burn it into the backs of his eyes, memorize the fold of leaf and dirt and broken pine needle, the imprint of the shoe, the arch of the hoof.
He was still there, hovering, when Everett came back. He dropped his backpack and unzipped it, flattening out an evidence kit. He’d figured out through trial and error what worked best for him in the Army. Whether it was tracking the Taliban or processing an on-base crime scene, the techniques were generally the same. Track, locate, secure, preserve.
Prosecute. Through the law or through a bullet.
He tasted dust, chalk that filled the back of his throat. Copper tinged his tongue, seemed to wet his lips. His hands, wet, slimy, soaked to the bone—
Everett pressed his eyes closed and exhaled hard.
The taste, the feeling of blood coating his skin, vanished.
“What’re you doin’?” Lawrence jerked his chin to the kit. “What’s all that?”
“Now that we’ve found the print, we need to preserve it. Bring it back to Sheriff Braddock. Hopefully we’ll find a trail out here, and if we do, we start following it, see where it leads and what we can find.”
He saw the hunger in Lawrence’s eyes, a fire igniting in his soul. If they found a trail, and if they found a man at the end of it, one who had done Carson Riley wrong, holding Lawrence back from the justice of a bullet would be the Devil’s work. He could read the thirst for vengeance in every line of Lawrence’s body, from his curled fists to his taut shoulders, the way his muscles trembled when he thought Everett wasn’t looking.
Everett knew—fuck, he knew—what that felt like.
That was another time, another life. Another world away. He grabbed a ruler from his pack and laid it out next to the shoe print, then pulled out his cell phone. His battery was draining, searching in vain for signal. Like Sheriff Braddock had said, reception in the mountains was nonexistent. He turned his cell signal off and pulled up the camera. Snapped pictures of the print, the ruler measuring every side, every angle.
Then he grabbed a bag of dental stone—casting material that was a fine white powder—and a bottle of water. He poured in the water and massaged everything together until he had a paste like pancake batter in the bag.
Lawrence watched every move he made as he poured the casting material slowly over the print, covering the edges, extending the cast into the dirt and leaves surrounding the horse’s print. “That’ll work?” Lawrence sounded skeptical.
“I’ve lifted from harder.” He bagged the leftover casting material in a trash bag and shoved it in his kit, then took a knife and etched the date, time, and location into the plaster as it dried. He took another photo, this time with his bifold credentials above the drying cast.
“While we wait, we search for a trail.”
* * *
They wereat it for over an hour, moving carefully through the trees, tracking up and down every game trail and path through the brush. In the end, all they were doing was chasing their own shadows. They came up empty-handed.
“Damn,” Everett cursed, his face sweat-stained and lined with dust. “That rider was careful.”
“Means he had somethin’ to hide,” Lawrence growled.
“Maybe.”
“I’m damn sure of it,” Lawrence snapped. “So what’s next, Army? We got his print. You lifted that sucker right out of the dirt. You found his horse all right, but that ain’t him. That ain’t the killer. So now what?”
“It’s a process. We work through the evidence piece by piece.”
“How long is that gonna take? Maybe you got all the time in the world, but I got a ranch bleedin’ men and cattle! How much more you want me to lose?”
