Free Nowhere to Run by C. J. Box

of flashing knives and strong bloody hands, with no pauses or wasted movement. Within ten minutes, they’d dismembered it.
    All his gear had been gathered and was piled a few yards from the carcass of Blue Roanie. He could see everything he needed but couldn’t get close enough to get it. A hundred yards was too far for an accurate shot with his handgun. If he missed, which he surely would, he would reveal his position and the brothers could make short work of him with the .308 or his shotgun or possibly finish him off with arrows. His Glock had fourteen rounds in the magazine. He wished he had his spare magazines, but they, like the first-aid kit, were in the panniers. Still, though, if he could lure the brothers in close enough and somehow keep them together, he’d have a decent chance of taking them down with the sheer volume of his firepower.
    But how to get them close and unaware?
    He thought again, I’m in trouble .
    And he recalled the day before, when he’d first encountered the brothers. When he’d inadvertently set this ghost train in motion . . .
     
    HE WISHED NOW he had ridden away when he had the chance so he could return with a small army to arrest the Brothers Grim. Because now the wind had reversed—as had his opportunity to get away intact—and Camish stepped away from the carcass of Blue Roanie and sniffed at the air like a wolf. They were trying to smell him. And then Camish suddenly pointed in Joe’s direction in the aspen grove.
    Oh, no , Joe mouthed. He wouldn’t have thought it possible.
    Caleb and Camish wordlessly retrieved their weapons and ran across the meadow in opposite directions. Caleb left with Joe’s carbine, Camish right with his shotgun. They were going to kill him with his own guns. Both brothers were much too far away for Joe to take an accurate shot.
    Instinctively, he scrambled back on his haunches. A hammer blow of pain from his right thigh sat him back down, and he gulped air to recover.
    He glanced up to see Caleb dart into the left wall of trees. Camish was already gone. They obviously knew he’d been hit and they assumed—correctly—he couldn’t run.
    Joe thought they were going to flank him, come at him in a pincer through the trees.
    Gritting his teeth from the sting of his wounds, Joe rose to his knees. The position wasn’t as painful as before. He raised the Glock with both hands, and swung it left, then right, looking over the sights toward the trees, hoping to catch one of them in the open, get a clean shot.
    His training trumped the urge to try to kill them without warning. He shouted, “Both of you freeze where you are and toss your weapons out into the open. This is OVER. Don’t take it any further.”
    He paused, eyes shooting back and forth for movement of any kind, ears straining for sound.
    He continued, “Now step out into the open where I can see you. Keep your hands up and visible at all times.”
    No response, until Camish, a full minute later, said from where he was hidden to the right: “Naw, that isn’t how it’s going to work. Right, brother?”
    Joe was shocked how close the voice was. Just beyond the thick red buckbrush, the voice was so intimate it was as if Camish were whispering into his ear.
    “Fuckin’ A,” said Caleb from the dense juniper and pine on his left.
    Said Camish, “I thought we weren’t gonna use that kind of language anymore.”
    “Yeah—sorry. I forgot. I just got so caught up in the situation . . .”
    Joe was taken aback how once again they were talking above him, as if he weren’t there or he didn’t matter and they didn’t care if he heard them. This scared him as much as anything, how they minimized his presence, depersonalized his being. And he thought how much easier it was to be cruel and ruthless when you didn’t consider your adversary an equal.
    So he cut in to remind them he was there. He did it with a lie.
    “I hate to break it to you boys,” he said, “but you think because you stole my