CHAPTER 36

brEE AND SAMPSON WERE up before sunrise and left Reno, Sampson driving, heading east on I-80 in a white Jeep Cherokee they’d rented at the airport. Several hours later, they switched, and Sampson drank gas-station coffee while Bree drove into a glary winter sun.

“I should have bought a protein bar or something back there,” she said.

“I have one, I think,” Sampson said, reaching into his pack. He rummaged around in it. “What’s this doing here?”

Bree glanced at something in his hand. “What?”

“Willow’s little Jiobit, the GPS beacon I used to keep track of her in Disney World.”

“Maybe your little girl’s trying to keep track of you,” she said.

Chuckling, John dropped the fob back in the pack, found a Clif Bar, and handed it to Bree.

She took a few bites, washed it down with water, and looked out to her left across a high desert landscape with peaks beyond. “Look at that!” she said. “Those mountains out there with the snow dusting the top. You don’t see that in DC.”

“I think I said something like that when Alex and I rode on horseback into the Bob Marshall Wilderness,” Sampson said, craning his neck to see the mountains and smiling. “I think we’ll go up into something like that to see the ranch Malcomb wanted.”

“Oh,” she said. “I don’t think I brought boots.”

“Neither did I,” he said.

They refueled and bought insulated rubber boots in Elko before heading north up Nevada 225 toward the Independence Mountains. Both of them wanted to see where Ryan Malcomb had died before they did anything else.

Shortly after noon, they turned off the highway and headed west through dry, rugged sagebrush terrain toward the trees and the edge of the national forest, where the road became a series of tortuous switchbacks. They encountered no one else.

When they got above four thousand feet, flurries fell. At forty-five hundred feet, the road was covered in an inch of snow, and Sampson put the Jeep in four-wheel drive.

“There it is,” Bree said. “Has to be.” She pointed to a steel guardrail that was badly bent. Seeing no one behind him, Samson pulled over and parked.

They got out, went to the rail, and looked over. Far below, they could see the burned skeleton of the van Ryan Malcomb had been driving.

“They should have brought that up,” Bree said.

“How?” Sampson said. “A construction helicopter?”

“Why not?”

“Cost, I’d imagine. But what do I know?”

“Should we keep going up?” Bree said. “See this ranch he was all hot to buy?”

“We’ve got the boots. Might as well use them.”

By the time they reached the locked gate to the Double T Ranch, the snow was falling steadily; it was already five inches deep. They got out and saw no tracks on the other side of the gate. Signs flanking it read NO TRESPASSING . Sampson ignored them and started climbing the gate.

“John?” Bree said.

“I’ve come a long way,” he said. He straddled the top and then jumped down to the other side. “We haven’t seen anyone since we left the highway. I’m going to see why Malcomb was so interested in this place, and the snow will cover my tracks.”

Bree debated with herself and then followed him. They trudged up a two-track lane through stands of pine.

A mile in, they emerged into a spectacular series of alpine meadows surrounded by forested ridges frosted in the snow. In the distance, they saw a big log house.

No lights were on. No smoke curled from the massive stone chimney.

Bree said, “You can see why someone with as much money as Malcomb would want to own something like this.”

“Maybe,” Sampson said. “But maybe it was just a cover. I mean, c’mon, the guy was in a wheelchair most of the time. How would he enjoy this?”

“I don’t know. A big ATV?”

“Could be,” he said. “Let’s go to Elko and ask questions.”

They started back through the thick stands of pines, and when they rounded the first corner, a grizzled creature of a man stood there.

He ran the action on his pump shotgun, snapped it to his shoulder, and aimed right at them.