As he rocketed through the meadow he tipped his hat at each and every client, and most of them grinned back.
He knew he looked pretty damned dashing.
* * *
Gracie had to relieve herself but was not interested in locating any far-off portable toilet so she stepped into a thick copse of pine trees to find James Knox there zipping up. He was as startled as she was.
“You don’t want to go all the way up the hill either, I take it,” he said. “Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know you were here.”
He waved her concern away. He said, “When you were looking at us last night, what were you thinking?”
She was surprised how direct he was. She stammered, “I don’t know. I’ve just never met anyone from New York City before, I guess.”
Knox flashed a quick grin. “We probably disappointed you.”
“Not really.”
He put his hands in his jeans pockets and leaned against the trunk of a tree. He was looking at her but he seemed distracted. “It would probably surprise you to know in real life the three of us are pretty serious people. People think we’re just a crew of cutups, but that’s just one week a year. We’re hard workers and we don’t screw around. What happened with Tony and-that woman, Donna-that was unusual. I’m sorry it happened, and I know Tony is busted up about it.”
She nodded. He seemed to be talking to himself as much as to her. His skin looked waxy and drawn as if it had been drained of blood. He looked older than she’d thought before.
“We’ve been good buddies for almost fifteen years,” he said. “The three of us. We all started together on the Street. We’ve been in each other’s weddings, helped each other out. Tony was supposed to have been in the World Trade Center that morning on 9/11 to meet a client, but he didn’t make it because he was hungover from my bachelor party the night before. That just goes to show you how fate works, you know? You’re young, but you know about 9/11, right?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Our wives always say be careful on these trips. They say don’t do anything stupid. We tell them we don’t. This kind of stuff never happened before. That’s not why we go on these adventures, to screw around. Now my friends aren’t here and I get this sick feeling,” he said as he gestured toward his heart. “I get this sick feeling…”
Then it was as if he woke up. He looked at her, shook his head, and flashed his smile again. “Why am I telling you this?”
“I don’t know.”
“What I’m trying to say, I guess, is friends are important. You’ve got to stick by them, even when they screw up.”
As he left the copse he reached out and patted her on the shoulder.
After a half hour of lone riding, Cody pulled up at a clean small stream that crossed the trail and painfully climbed down to let his horses drink. He hated depending on two animals he neither knew nor trusted, but he had no choice and his thought was to treat them well and maybe they’d reciprocate.
As both horses lowered their heads to suck up the cold water, he went a few feet upstream to fill his own bottle. He’d purchased a water filter kit, but it, like his cigarettes, had been in the duffel that burned up. Giardia contamination was the least of his worries. He thought if he got it, it would at least take his mind off no cigarettes or alcohol. To drive the point home, he drained a quarter of the icy unfiltered water and topped his Nalgene bottle and sealed it.
While the horses rested-oh, how he admired their dumb animal ability to grab a nap whenever they could-he sidled up to Gipper and withdrew the satellite phone again.
The first of Larry’s messages was blunt:
“Partner” was said with heavy sarcasm.
Cody said, “You’d like me to do that, wouldn’t you,
Then the second message:
His voice was urgent and elevated. Cody fought his instincts to return the call. Larry sounded excited. Cody said, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
But he retrieved the third message:
