Chapter 9: Monday Afternoon, Palo Duro Canyon
Annie pressed her palms to her temples, squeezed her eyes shut, willed the swirling fear and self-recrimination to stop. Focus, focus. Don't think about how we got here; think about how we're going to get out. Do what your training and experience tells you to do. Be the professional you know how to be. Gradually the nausea ebbed, her mind calmed, and the facts of their situation settled into place. The small ravine had steep walls on three sides, but was open to the main canyon: exposed to an attack from above or through the open canyon mouth. She had her gun and ammunition; Jimmy's gun and ammo were gone. She had – she lifted the bottles and shook them – about a quart and a half of water, three energy bars.
She was fine, unhurt except for some scrapes, but Jimmy, Jimmy... The fear and guilt rose again as she looked at him , his head propped on her bag, unconscious beside her. She watched his chest rise and fall, still too fast, still too shallow. What if he didn't wake up? She'd said, pleading with him as he had with her after the bomb, "Keep your eyes open, Jimmy. You know what happens if you don't." But he'd slipped into unconsciousness and had been that way ever since.
Most perplexing was the whereabouts of William Frost. In the moment after she had seen Jimmy fall backwards into the canyon, she'd glanced back towards the cliff, and she was sure she hadn't seen him. She hadn't looked again before going over the edge to find Jimmy, but the shooting had stopped, and Frost had not pursued her. Had Frost been hit? She wasn't sure either she or Jimmy had had a clear enough shot to stop him. Had he run? He might have done, especially once he realized the people who had surprised him were unable to follow. Perhaps he thought they were already dead. Was he stalking them? Watching from above to see where they'd gone in the small ravine, or working his way around to the mouth of the little canyon to approach them from that direction?
She could leave Jimmy where he lay and go for help, hoping neither Frost nor Jimmy's injuries would kill him before she got back; or she could stay with him, guard against Frost and monitor his condition, while they waited for help that might never come. The second option was, of course, not really an option at all: Jimmy might die if she went for help, but he would surely die if she didn't. Her mind was made up.
Annie scrounged through the things that had been in her bag and found a pen. Writing on the back of the wrapper from one of the gauze pads she'd used for his bandages, she scrawled a quick note in case Jimmy woke while she was gone: "14:20. Gone for help. Back ASAP, Annie." She placed the note by his hand and weighted it down with one of the water bottles and a couple of energy bars, before turning to the slope above them to climb out of the ravine.
While it had been easy to slide down the scree slope, it proved impossible to climb back up; each rock she touched skittered out from under her and slid back down the slope. Rather than go up, she was forced to work her way across the slope at the level of the big rock slabs and boulders. She slipped from one to the next, maintaining as much cover as she could from the threat of Frost above, although there was no sign of him.
They had entered the box canyon at the end, more or less immediately behind Frost's tent, and her traverse of the end wall carried her beyond that point to the corner where the side wall of the canyon met the end. In that corner, a narrow gully, free of the scree that had hampered her climb, rose to the top of the ravine. If she climbed it, she would, she thought, come out behind Frost's camp and the area where he had been digging and have an advantage over him if he were, in fact, still there. It was very steep, and there were a couple of dicey moments, but she came to the rim of the ravine without incident and was able to peer warily over the edge towards Frost's camp.
As she had hoped, she had come around behind him, and he had his back to her maybe twenty yards away. She had been below the rim of the box canyon for perhaps an hour, and in that time it appeared he had found the horses, finished his digging and packed up his prize; he was packing his things into the saddlebags of the horse that had been Annie's, both hands busy. He was getting ready to run, but whatever it was, he had been unwilling to leave behind the secret he'd buried, camping with his young daughter, twenty years before.
Annie seized the only chance she was likely to get, easing over the rim of the canyon she unholstered her gun. Gun held steady in front of her she stepped forward and yelled, "William Frost! This is Annie Frost, US Marshal. Put your hands on top of your head an' turn around."
Frost froze, but did not raise his hands, did not turn. His daughter took another step towards him, yelled again. He finally turned, and as she saw the gun in his hands come up, all her ingrained instinct and training coming to the fore, Annie Frost shot her father.
Annie ran forward and kicked the gun away from the fallen man's hand, then stooped to check for the pulse at his throat. There was none. She had killed her father.
She stood over his body, anger and regret playing alternately on her face. He had not really been an old man - only fifty-five - but he looked older, aged by a life lived too hard and too fast, marked by both poverty and excess. She had shared parts of that life and put them aside. He had not, clearly he had not. If there had been any remnants of affection for his daughter, they had not been enough to overcome the selfishness and violence of the man. She shook her thoughts away. Swallowed hard and wiped at her eyes and nose with the back of her hand. Holstered her gun. There would be time for making sense of her father's death after she had gone for help for Jimmy.
The horses had startled at the sound of the gunshot, reared and darted away, but hemmed in by the cliff on one side and the ravine on the other they had not gone far. After collecting both animals, Annie went through the saddlebags, discarding Frost's clothes, ammo and anything else that would weigh down the horses, keeping the water and what food there was; it would take her several hours to return to the trailhead.
In the bottom of one of the bags was the small leather satchel William had carried with him twenty years previously, dusty and scratched. Inside, rolled in a towel, a tangle of jewellery, rings, necklaces and brooches jumbled together. Annie closed her eyes and sighed; her father had come back for these things, had shot Jimmy, had been prepared to shoot his own daughter to protect these things. Just things. She packed the jewellery away again and tucked the satchel back in the saddlebag.
Annie had covered Frost's body with his sleeping bag, tied the second horse to her own and swung into the saddle to ride back to the trailhead when she heard the distinctive sound of a helicopter and a USMS chopper flew over the cliff at her back and circled above her, Reigert and Marco, Daisy and Luke scanning the ground from the open sides.