Free Pronghorns of the Third Reich by C. J. Box Page A

want?”
    “What’s coming to me,” Lyle said. “What I deserve and you took away.”
    A mix of recognition and horror passed over Parker’s face. Lyle could see the fear in the lawyer’s eyes. It was a good look as far as Lyle was concerned. Parker said, “Lyle? Is that you?”
    What could Lyle want, Parker thought. There was little of significant value in the house. Not like Angler’s place out in the country, that book collection of Western Americana. But Lyle? He was a warped version of Western Americana …
    “Get up and shut the hell up,” Lyle said, motioning with the Colt. “Let’s go in the house where it’s warm.”
    Next to Parker, Champ squatted and his urine steamed in the grass.
    “He don’ even know we’re here,” Juan said. “Some watch dog. I ought to put it out of its misery.” Meeserie.
    “Please don’t,” Parker said, standing up. “He’s my bird dog and he’s been a great dog over the years. He doesn’t even know you’re here.” Lyle noticed Parker had dried grass stuck to his bare knees.
    “You don’t look like such a hotshot now without your lawyer suit,” Lyle said.
    “I hope you got some hot coffee, mister,” Juan said to Parker.
    “I’ll make some.”
    “Is your wife inside?” Lyle asked.
    “No.”
    Lyle grinned beneath his mask, “She left you, huh?”
    “Nothing like that,” Parker lied. “She’s visiting her sister in Sheridan.”
    “Anybody inside?”
    “No.”
    “Don’t be lying to me.”
    “I’m not. Look, whatever it is …”
    “Shut up,” Lyle said, gesturing with his Colt, “Go inside slowly and try not to do something stupid.”
    Parker cautiously climbed the step and reached out for the door Lyle held. Lyle followed. The warmth of the house enveloped him, even through his coat and balaclava.
    Behind them, Juan said, “What about the dog?”
    “Shoot it,” Lyle said.
    “Jesus God,” Parker said, his voice tripping.
    A few seconds later there was a heavy boom and simultaneous yelp from the back yard, and Juan came in.
    Paul Parker sat in the passenger seat of the pickup and Lyle sat just behind him in the crew cab with the muzzle of his Colt kissing the nape of his neck. Juan drove. They left the highway and took a two-track across the sagebrush foothills eighteen miles from town. They were shadowed by a herd of thirty to forty pronghorn antelope. It was late October, almost November, the grass was brown and snow from the night before pooled in the squat shadows of the sagebrush. The landscape was harsh and bleak and the antelope had been designed perfectly for it: their brown and white coloring melded with the terrain and at times it was as if they were absorbed within it. And if the herd didn’t feel comfortable about something—like the intrusion of a 1995 beat-up Ford pickup pulling a rattletrap empty stock trailer behind it—they simply flowed away over the hills like molten lava.
    “Here they come again,” Juan said to Lyle. It was his truck and they’d borrowed the stock trailer from an outfitter who got a new one. “They got so many antelopes out here.”
    “Focus,” Lyle said. He’d long since taken off the mask—no need for it now—and stuffed it in his coat pocket.
    Parker stared straight ahead. They’d let him put on pajamas and slippers and a heavy lined winter topcoat and that was all. Lyle had ordered him to bring his keys but leave his wallet and everything else. He felt humiliated and scared. That Lyle Peebles and Juan Martinez had taken off their masks meant that they no longer cared if he could identify them, and that was a very bad thing. He was sick about Champ.
    Lyle was close enough to Parker in the cab that he could smell the lawyer’s fear and his morning breath. Up close, Lyle noticed, the lawyer had bad skin. He’d never noticed in the courtroom.
    “So you know where we’re going,” Lyle said.
    “The Angler Place,” Parker said.
    “That’s right. And do you know what we’re going to do