Chapter 22
The trail after the dam was the reverse of what I’d done earlier in the day. It climbed up, heading toward the Shuckstack Fire Tower, a gain of about two thousand feet in a little over three miles.
There was a metal box to the side of the trail demanding that AT thru hikers deposit their permit. I found that amusing. As if. I could just see myself getting tracked down by some National Forest cop and thrown in the clink with Bigfoot.
Like most of the Trail in this part of the country, numerous roots and stones poked up along the dirt path so I had to keep my focus in order to prevent falling.
Maybe I was feeling good, knowing that Claire, at the very least, would take care of Maggs, which meant she would take care of herself.
I should have focused more on that because I’m sure the Entity controlling my life was quite fascinated by this unique feeling I was experiencing and determined to nip it in the bud.
About a half mile from the top, I reached a place where the trees to one side were cleared out and there was a view with a sharp drop-off on the side of the trail.
One thing about the AT in these mountains is that such views were relatively rare.
You were almost always in a tunnel of vegetation inside the forest with limited visibility.
It was spectacular. Since I’d gained elevation, a blanket of fog was below my altitude covering the low ground and the lake and dam which I’d left behind. This was why the Smokies had their name. Fog and mist. Primordial. It was—
“Keep your hands clear of your side and turn around. Do anything dangerous and I will kill you.”
The surprising thing wasn’t that someone had snuck up on me since I didn’t have Maggs as my outer protection. It was that it was a man’s voice. One I recognized.
I slowly turned, keeping my hands clear as ordered. “Louis?”
“Where’s your dog?”
“At the dam. I gave her away.”
“Where’s Pike? The boys?”
Louis didn’t have his big backpack, but he did have a pistol with a suppressor on the barrel. The tiny black dot on the end was centered on my head. Just fucking great.
“Who are you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “You don’t ask questions.
You answer. Or I start with one knee, then the other, then elbows.
” He shifted the aim to my right knee. He was standing far enough away, professional distance, so that I couldn’t get to him before he fired.
“Let me start this slowly for you,” he said. “Why do you have Pike’s Satphone?”
“He wasn’t using it.”
His eyes hardened. I know that sounds cliché, but the bumbling guy with the big pack had been replaced by a stone-cold killer. How the hell had I missed that?
“You know, you could make a living as an actor,” I said.
“Is Pike dead? Three seconds.”
I knew he would shoot me in the knee if I didn’t answer. He was a professional. They can be, unfortunately, predictable about some things.
“No.”
He nodded. “And the boys? Are they with him?”
“They were,” I said.
“Where are they now?”
“One is in New York City. The other in Asheville.” I was answering because if I didn’t, I was going to lose use of a leg and then the situation would be hopeless.
As long as I was intact there were possibilities.
Not many. I’d been around killers before and I had no doubt that’s what Louis was.
There was no emotion involved in what he was doing right now. Just a mission.
He considered that answer. “What are their new names? We know they aren’t going by their old ones.”
“Who is we?”
His eyes narrowed. “This is the last time I remind you. You don’t ask questions. You answer. What are their new names?”
“Reggie and Marley.”
“Last name?”
“Pike adopted them. They have his name. Bernard.”
Louis nodded, filing that away. I wondered how many more questions he needed answers to because that was also my life expectancy. I made the decision that I would go for my gun when he ran out because I was going down fighting.
“And Pike? Where is he? Everyone thought he was dead.”
I felt a spark of hope. Because he’d just made his first mistake. He’d told me information he didn’t need to. Granted, he was planning on killing me, but it was still a mistake.
“Asheville,” I said. “He’s old and he’s hurt.”
Louis shrugged. “He’s alive. That’s the problem.”
I wanted to ask why he wanted Pike. And Reggie and Marley.
But I believed his threat about no more questions.
This wasn’t one of those movies where the bad guy spilled everything to the good guy in a conversation while holding a gun on him.
The end of this scene was coming soon. I was glad I’d left Maggs with Claire because I have no doubt Louis would have shot Maggs immediately from wherever he’d been hiding.
Louis frowned as something occurred to him. “Why did you give your dog away?”
“Someone needed her more than me.”
I could tell he couldn’t process that.
“Lucky dog,” Louis said and I could see the slightest of shifts in his stance and knew he was going to fire so I went for my gun just as I heard two muffled shots from behind me and felt as much as heard the rounds go right by my head.
The first one hit right in the center of Louis’ forehead, a small black dot. The second just below that, right on the tip of his nose, punching the cartilage in. His eyes framed both impacts and they showed the first, and last, emotion of the encounter.
Surprise.
Then the blankness of death.
He crumpled to the ground.
I stopped pulling my gun out and took a long, relieved breath. Then turned to see what fresh hell had come up behind me.
Tattoo Woman stood there, classic shooter’s stance, at the turn in the trail, at least thirty feet away. That was some damn good shooting at that range. I pulled my hand, sans pistol, out of the pocket and held both hands up.
She lowered the gun and walked forward. Past me, which indicated she wasn’t interested in killing me.
She put another round into the back of Louis’ head.
I was swimming with professionals today.
Then she knelt and ripped open his shirt, revealing a large tattoo of a skull and crossbones on his chest with some writing in Spanish.
Just great.
“We need to get him off the trail,” she said to me.
I dumped my ruck and helped her. Luckily, we were at the edge of the steep drop-off. We dragged him over, then gave a shove. He tumbled down and out of immediate sight, unless one came to this edge and looked down. He’d be found eventually, but not today.
She used her boots to kick dirt over the small amount of blood on the trail.
When you die that fast, there isn’t much blood since the heart stops almost immediately.
Then she picked up the one expended cartridge for the last shot, went back to her original position for the first two and collected them.
She walked up to me and just said, “Come on. Talk as we walk. We need to get clear of here.”
I didn’t feel like this was open to discussion.
The fact she had her back to me as she headed up trail reinforced my suspicion she wasn’t planning on killing.
At least not at the moment. And she was trusting that I wasn’t going to kill her, which I actually considered for a moment, but then realized I had to figure out what the hell was going on given Louis’ questions.
She walked fast, with a smaller pack, so I had to hustle to keep up with mine. We moved out of the immediate area in silence, just putting distance between us and the body.
We went at least two miles, past the Shuckstack Firetower and onward.
Finally, she signaled for a halt at another nice spot with a beautiful view of the surrounding mountains.
“Who are you?” I asked as I dumped my ruck.
She pulled her sunglasses off. That scar was wicked; the result of a blade wound not being treated either properly, or in time, or both.
She’d once been beautiful, but the scar and hard living had lined her face.
Her hair was cut short, functional, styled not to get in her way, rather than for looks.
She shook her head. “You owe me your life, so you answer first. Who are you?”
“Max.”
“I heard what you said to that—” she paused, searching for the word in English—“assassin. You know Pike and the boys.”
Her voice. She was the one who’d made that first call on the satphone and asked for Pike.
“I know them,” I said. “Who was he? Louis. The assassin.”
“FARC.”
“I heard FARC disbanded.”
“It splintered,” she said. “He was from a group that seeks revenge on Pike. Because he was part of the crackdown that broke it apart. And to kill the boys so they will never seek blood revenge.”
“And you?” I asked.
“Also one of the splinters. Bloque Frontera.”
She must have seen the look on my face; I wasn’t current on the cartels.
“The Border Block.”
“What are you seeking?”
She ignored that question. “How do you know Pike?”
“We live in the same town. Not too far from here. But it flooded out, so he’s in Asheville—he broke his leg. Reggie is with him and Marley is with friends in New York City.”
“Reggie and Marley,” she said, testing the names. “Who is the older?”
“Reggie.”
She nodded. “He would be a young man by now. Marley too. It has been a long time since they left.” She shifted, perhaps relaxing. “I am Salome. I need to find the boys. And Pike.”
“Why?”
She pointed back down the trail. “There is a contract out on them. That son of a puta was hoping to make some money.”
“Why do you care?”
“Their mother was my sister.”
I blinked. That I hadn’t expected. “Your sister?”
“Maria.” Her voice softened on the name. “She was two years older than me. When she married Carlos, they worked together on the joint drug task force. Pike was part of it, through a tasking from a man only known as Herc. My sister and her husband trusted Pike.”
I could hear the weight of what was coming. “What happened to them?”
“Maria was killed first. The cartel found out she was passing intelligence. They disappeared her.” Salome’s jaw tightened.
“Carlos went looking for her. He had a good idea what had happened, but he had to try. And if he could not find her, he would make them pay. Before he left, he called Pike. Asked him to take the boys if he did not come back.”
“He didn’t come back.”
“No. The cartel killed him too. My father took the boys north, to Pike’s address in Rocky Start.
I understand he died after crossing the border.
” She looked out over the Smoky Mountains.
“I was in Bogotá when all of this happened. By the time I learned my sister and Carlos were dead, the boys were gone. My father was gone. Everyone was gone.”
Her hand drifted up to the scar on her face. “The cartel came for me next. Not to kill me. They had other uses.” She paused. “They used me in one way at first. Then they learned I had skills and used me in another.”
I could hear the weight of those terrible things in her voice. “Why now?” I asked. “What’s changed?”
“The cartel is broken. The DEA, the Colombian military—they destroyed the leadership three months ago. The remnants scattered. When it fell apart, I was finally free. For the first time in twelve years, no one owned me.”
She pulled something from her pocket. A photo, creased and worn. She held it out.
I moved closer, took it. The photo showed a young woman holding two small boys. She was laughing, one boy on her hip, the other tugging at her hand. The resemblance to Salome was unmistakable, minus the scar, minus the years of hard living. Maria.
“That is the only thing I have left of her,” Salome said. “I have carried it for twelve years. Through everything.”
I handed it back carefully. “So you’ve been looking for them.”
“Since the cartel broke apart. Three months of searching. I knew Pike’s name.
I knew he was somewhere in the States. But I had nothing else.
Then his satphone came alive.” She met my eyes.
“The cartel had also been monitoring it for years, hoping Pike would surface. They still want revenge for his part in the crackdown. And the boys are a loose end. When the signal went active, their assassin came for blood.” She pointed back down the trail. “I came for something else.”
“You came for the boys.”
“I came for my family. What is left of it.” Her voice cracked for the first time. “They are all I have. They have lived all these years thinking everyone is dead. I need them to know that is not true. That their mother’s sister is alive and has been trying to find them.”
“Why didn’t you just approach me like a normal person?” I asked. “Instead of stalking me with the sunglasses and the mysterious vibe?”
“I did not know who to trust. I was surprised that Pike’s phone was suddenly active after so many years. I did not know if it was a trap. If someone was using it to draw me out. Then I saw you talking to that son of a puta. Perhaps you were working with him?”
“So you got my picture and tracked me.”
“I paid the woman at the trail start. She was easy to convince.” Salome’s mouth twisted. “People will do many things for money. Or fear.”
“The trail angel who took my photo.”
“Do not worry. She is fine.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a photo. There I was, with Maggs. Not looking particularly thrilled to start the trail. In my memory I’d smiled. If I had, the camera had ignored it.
She looked down the trail, then back at me.
“I watched you. I saw you help people. That wounded Marine. The woman running from her husband. The man with the knife. I saw you give away your dog to the woman who lost everything.” She met my eyes.
“I decided you were not a threat. That maybe you were someone who would help. And, of course, when the assassin started questioning you, that confirmed it.”
I studied her. The scars, visible and invisible. The tattoo that marked her as something most people would run from. And now just someone trying to find the only family she had left.
“We need to get to Asheville,” I said. I nodded up the trail. “Two days’ walk to Kuwohi. I can get someone to pick us up there.” It would also be the completion of my through hike. Which seemed pretty insignificant at the moment.
“And then?” Salome asked.
My Spanish was rusty but I sort of remembered Salome being something like peaceful. “And then we talk. With Pike. And Reggie and Marley.” They deserved to know they still had family. After years of believing everyone was gone, they deserved at least that.
She nodded. “I agree.”
“Give me a second,” I said.
“I will wait.”
I walked over to the edge and stared out. Then in a low voice, I recited the names that were etched into my memory. The men, and women who I’d served with and who were no longer with us. And then I ended with “Ken, Danny and Mary. Gone but not forgotten.”