Page 10 of The Maverick
The park put up new signs at the trailhead the next morning.Hike at your own risk. Slippery rocks. Strong currents. Cold water exposure.Same warnings they'd had up since 1972, just printed on fresh paper to make the locals feel like something had been done.
I drank my Americano with vanilla and read the paper.
A coded confirmation came through that afternoon from a number that wouldn't exist by sundown.Subject's network active. Movements consistent with elevated alert posture.That was the line. Translated out of the careful language: the Iranians knew.
They'd lost a man in a place they'd believed was safe, in the middle of a country they'd been moving around in for years like tourists at a museum. Their man hadn't been killed in a shadow city in a country that ended in-stan. He'd been killed at one of America's most photographed national parks, in waist-deep water, in broad daylight, by someone who'd left him a sandwich.
That was the message.
We don't care where you go. We don't care who you pretend to be. We don't care if your passport says you sell mid-century paintings or if your girlfriend in Malibu thinks you're finding yourself. You move our enemy's weapons into our enemy's hands, and we will find you in your favorite slot canyon and leave you there.
It wasn't subtle.
It wasn't supposed to be.
I stayed two more days.
I went to Feel Love in the morning and let the girl with the sunburned nose tell me how awful it was, that poor man, his family, can you imagine. I told her I couldn't. I tipped extra.
I rode my e-bike up the canyon and did the lower Emerald Pools trail because I'd been meaning to, and I sat for an hour on a flat rock above the pool with my pack open beside me and let the sound of the falls do whatever the sound of falls does to a man's nervous system. I had dinner at King's Landing both nights. Hannah brought my water before I asked. I tipped her extra, too.
On the last morning, I loaded the e-bike onto the rack at the rental, packed my duffel by the door, and walked four blocks to the riverside park to kill the last hour before my flight.
That's where I was when the shadow fell.
I'd taken off my left boot to dump out a stone—one of those flat little river stones that wedges itself sideways under your arch and turns half a mile of walking into purgatory. I had the boot upside down in one hand and was shaking it over the grass when the shadow came across me, longer than a tree's, square at the shoulders.
"Hello, Tommy."
I looked up.
I didn't put the boot on.
I just stood up barefoot in the grass and grabbed my brother by both shoulders and pulled him into me and held him there for a long second before I let go.
"Holy shit," I said. "Holy shit, Grant."
"Tommy."
"What in the actual hell are you doing here?"
He'd thickened out a little since I'd seen him last. He was always the most solid of us—built like our daddy, the same square jaw, the same eyes that didn't waste motion. He looked good. Tan. Tired around the edges, but tan.
I tried to do the math on how long it had been and came up with a number I didn't like. Eighteen months. Maybe two years. Last time we'd been in the same room, we'd been in Valentine for forty-eight hours over Christmas, and we'd both been on the next flights out before the new year. That was how the Dane boys did Christmas now. Hello, goodbye, drive safe.
He let me hold his shoulders a beat longer than I expected, then took a half step back and looked at me. The way an older brother looks at a younger brother. Reading him.
His face changed.
"I need you in Charleston, Tommy."
"Charleston?"
"Today."
The word landed like a hand on my chest. I knew that face. I'd grown up with that face. That was the face Grant had worn the morning our daddy didn't come home, the morning we all sat at the breakfast table looking at Mama's hands and waiting for her to tell us what we already knew.
"Mama," I said.
