Page 85 of Battle Mountain

“I like it, except for the hike,” Geronimo said. “How many bad guys do you suppose we’ll be up against?”

“It’s hard to say for sure from what little we know,” Nate said. “I’m guessing his force is fifteen to twenty. It might be a few less because we’ve taken out a half dozen, but he might have picked up some new recruits along the way we don’t know about. I’m not really worried about the hippies. I’m worried about the number of vets he has in his group.”

Geronimo looked up at the ceiling. “The last thing I want to do is kill brother soldiers.”

“Let’s do our best to avoid that,” Nate said. “I don’t know how, but we can try. It shouldn’t be that tough telling the vets from the hippies when we pull the trigger.” Then: “If we take out Axel, we’re done. We need to cut off the head of the snake and we can go home. I don’t care about the hippies or the Centurions, to be honest. I just want Axel.”

Geronimo lowered his eyes and took in the sketched map on the desktop, then he leaned forward and cleaned it of the dust and erased it so no one could ever see it.

“Then let’s get going,” Geronimo said. As he said it, his cell phone burred in his pocket. He took it out and held the screen up to Nate. It read:Sheridan Pickett.

Geronimo punched her up on speaker. “Hello, Sheridan.”

“Geronimo, are you with Nate?” Her voice sounded tinny and there was static on the line.

“He’s right in front of me,” Geronimo said.

“Good. I thought that might be the case. Please let me talk to him.”

Instead of handing over the phone, Geronimo held the device out between them.

“I’m here,” Nate said.

“Listen, I just cuffed Sheriff Bishop with his own handcuffs and he’s rolling around in the back of my car. He tried to kidnap Kestrel from my mom.”

“He didwhat?” Nate hissed.

“He pulled over my mom on her way to work and he was going to take Kestrel from us. I stopped him.”

“How did you do that?” Nate asked, astounded.

“I stuck a shotgun in his face. It felt like something you would do.”

“Is Kestrel okay? Is your mom okay?”

“They’re fine. Bishop is really remorseful, and he keeps begging me to let him loose. Honestly, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with him.”

Over the speaker, they could hear Bishop’s muffled pleas.

“I had to gag him,” Sheridan explained. “He was driving me insane. But I needed to let you know what he told me, which is that Axel Soledad ordered him to take Kestrel.”

“He wanted to take us off the board,” Nate said to Geronimo. “He knows we’re close to him, and he wanted us to hightail it to Saddlestring.”

“This guy is always a step ahead of us,” Geronimo said. “I’m really starting to hate that.”

He jabbed a finger at Nate and said, “See what happens when good people spend too much time around you? Theykidnap their local sheriff.”

“Sheridan, you’re amazing,” Nate said, ignoring him. “Thank you.”

“I wasn’t going to hurt her!” Bishop yelled from the back seat. Apparently, he’d worked free of the gag.

“Smack him,” Nate said to Sheridan. “And if he doesn’t pipe down, twist his ear off.”

“No,” Sheridan said. “I’m not doing that.”

Nate asked, “Where is Joe in all of this?”

“He’s been out of town the last couple of days. The governor sent him on an assignment to try and locate a couple of missing elk-hunting guides.”