Page 47 of Badlands (Nora Kelly #5)

B EHIND THE WHEEL of the black SUV, Corrie did her best to thread her way safely through the fantastical landscape of spires and hoodoos.

They had passed several large NO TRESPASSING signs put up by the oil companies, and now far ahead she could see a large drilling rig, a row of green fracking tanks, and several white pickup trucks.

A group of men in hardhats and orange vests were working on a cluster of pipes nearby.

As Corrie and Nora approached, the men saw them, turned, and jogged for their pickup trucks.

“What are they doing?” Nora asked.

“Looks like they’re blocking the road,” said Corrie.

And they were, in fact, pulling their trucks into a line across the road.

Once they successfully obstructed the road and both sides of it, the men got out of the pickups and waited.

“This is strange,” said Nora.

“I wonder why they’re so touchy.”

“I guess they think we’re trespassers.”

The SUV reached the flat and Corrie slowed to a halt as they approached the roadblock.

The half a dozen or so men were leaning against their open truck doors or lounging around, dirty and grinning.

Several had taken the opportunity to light up cigarettes.

One had a cigar.

“Kind of ugly to be Harvey Girls,” said Nora.

“Besides, I don’t see any restaurant around.”

Two of the men sauntered over.

The one with the cigar tapped on the driver’s window.

Corrie rolled it down.

The man looked inside, turned to his friend, and said, “Looky what we have here.” He turned toward Corrie.

“Wanna party?”

Corrie stared at the man.

He was so disgusting—unshaven, dirty and sweaty, stinking of cigar smoke—that she almost laughed.

The days when she’d feel cowed by a miserable bunch like this were long gone.

“We’d like to pass,” she said.

The man turned to his friend.

“The buckle bunnies want to go through.”

“Gotta pay the toll.”

“What toll?” Corrie asked.

“What’s the toll?” the man called back to his friend.

“Show us a titty.”

“He wants you to show us a titty,” the man at the window said, blowing a stream of smoke into the cab.

Corrie gazed at the man steadily.

“A titty ? Half a dozen good old boys like you—and all you want as a toll is to see one titty?”

The man was momentarily taken aback.

Then, aware of the others staring at him, leered.

“What you offering, girlie?”

“How about something spicier?” Corrie asked.

“Hell, yeah!”

“You sure you’re man enough, now—to see it, I mean?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, cackling.

“Let’s see it.”

Corrie reached into her jacket and removed her FBI wallet, held it inches from the man’s face, and let it fall open, displaying her badge and ID.

“Spicy enough for you?”

There was a freezing silence as the man stared.

Corrie let a beat pass and said: “Special Agent Corinne Swanson, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Albuquerque Field Office—in case your reading skills are as bad as your breath.”

Beads of perspiration popped out on the man’s forehead and his whiskers quivered as he stared at the ID.

“Um, sorry. Sorry, ma’am. No disrespect meant. We were just having a little fun.”

Corrie put away the badge.

“Fun. Right. Get that goddamned cigar out of my face.”

He sheepishly dropped the cigar to the ground and stepped on it.

“I have some questions for you.”

“Sure, of course.” The man had become so obsequious, so quickly, that Corrie was amused and disgusted at the same time.

“Did a couple of guys come through here a few days ago, driving a late-model brown Ford F-150 pickup? One tall and skinny, the other one shorter and stockier?”

“They did.” He was suddenly willing to talk.

“They tore through here like a bat out of hell, and when we ran them to earth the short guy pulled a gun on us and gave us a bunch of bullshit. The tall guy videotaped the whole thing.” He looked positively eager.

“They in trouble? You looking for them?”

“When was this?” Corrie asked.

“Three days ago.”

“Time?”

“Afternoon. Around three thirty. What’d they do? I hope you catch those motherfuckers.”

“Tell your people to move their vehicles out of our way.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He shouted and gestured at the men, who were standing around looking confused.

They climbed into the pickups and moved them off the road.

“Listen up,” said Corrie.

“I’m going to let this slide. But if you and your boys harass anyone coming through here again, I’m going to come back for you with some friends—the badge-carrying kind. And we’ll toss you so far up shit creek you’ll find yourself in the rectum of the devil himself. You understand?”

“Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.”

She rolled up her window and the man stepped back, nodding obediently, then turned and began yelling for the men to get back to work.

As Corrie eased the SUV forward, Nora laughed—a laugh with a naughty edge.

“That was fun.”

“Yup. Can’t usually take advantage of that kind of thing—but those shitheels deserved it.”

They continued on, the land rising, pinon-juniper scrub giving way to ponderosa forest. The road, already tentative, got rougher and was washed out in places.

Finally, as they emerged from the forest, Nora saw a glint: Edison’s truck.

They pulled up alongside it, parked where the road ended.

They got out. Corrie went to the truck, peered in the window, and then tried the door.

“Locked.”

Nora circled the truck.

“Footprints,” she said.

They shrugged into daypacks containing water, snacks, and a few supplies.

Nora waited while Corrie buckled her service weapon into place, then began following the prints over the sandy ground.

In less than a mile, they came to the edge of the canyon.

“Looks like they went down along that ridge,” said Nora.

Corrie took out a pair of binoculars and scanned the canyon floor.

“Is that a campsite there, by the river?” She handed them to Nora.

“Sure looks like it.”

Nora started down the slope, watching for loose rocks; Corrie followed close behind.