Vicious Circle (A Joe Pickett Novel, Band 17) - Softcover

Box, C. J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0399185496 ISBN 13: 9780399185496

Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

Don’t miss the JOE PICKETT series—now streaming on Paramount+

The past comes back to haunt game warden Joe Pickett and his family with devastating effect in this thrilling novel from #1 New York Times–bestselling author C. J. Box.

The plane circled in the dark. Joe Pickett could just make out down below a figure in the snow and timber, and then three other figures closing in. There was nothing he could do about it. And Joe knew that he might be their next target.

The Cates family had always been a bad lot. Game warden Joe Pickett had been able to strike a fierce blow against them when the life of his daughter April had been endangered, but he’d always wondered if there’d be a day of reckoning. He’s not wondering any longer. Joe knows they’re coming after him and his family now. He has his friend Nate by his side, but will that be enough this time? All he can do is prepare...and wait for them to make the first move.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

C.J. Box is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of seventeen Joe Pickett novels, most recently Off the Grid; five stand-alone novels, most recently Badlands; and the story collection Shots Fired. He was won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Gumshoe, and two Barry awards, as well as the French Prix Calibre .38 and a French Elle magazine literary award. His books have been translated into twenty-seven languages. He and his wife Laurie split their time between their home and ranch in Wyoming.

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 Chapter One
 
 
     Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett flicked his eyes between the screen of the iPad mounted in front of him and the side window, as the vast dark pine forest spooled out beneath the Cessna Turbo 206 below.  He tried to keep his eyes wide open so he wouldn’t miss anything but he fought against his instinctive reaction to close them tightly in anticipation of the inevitable engine failure that would result in his quick and fiery death in the Bighorn Mountains.

     For the first time in his life, he understood the desire for the fidgety solace of a set of prayer beads, and he wished he had some.

     It was Halloween night, and the pilot, John Wilson “Bill” Slaughter, a stout and compact man in his early sixties with an aluminum-colored crew-cut, eased down the nose of the small plane.  Black timber filled the windscreen. Joe tried to breathe.

     “Twelve hundred feet,” Slaughter said through the headset to both his co-pilot Gail Herdt and Joe who was looped in.

     “Roger,” she said.

     Both Slaughter and Herdt were retired from the military as well as members of the Wyoming Civil Air Patrol.  Herdt was an art teacher at Pinedale Middle School, and Slaughter had a small Angus cattle operation near Torrington.

     “Why twelve hundred feet?” Joe asked, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.

     “We normally don’t drop below two thousand feet at night,” Herdt said calmly.  “It’s not considered very safe.”

     “So don’t tell anyone,” Slaughter said.

     Joe asked, “Then why are we doing it?”

     She looked over her shoulder at him alone in the backseat. “To see better,” she said, matter-of-fact.

     Joe nodded.  His mouth was dry and he felt like he could throw up at any second.  He gripped an overhead strap so hard with his right hand he’d lost all feeling in his fingers.  His stomach surged with every turn, drop, and climb.

     “Is he okay?” Slaughter asked Herdt.

     “Are you okay?” she asked him directly.

     “Dandy,” he lied.

     The crowns of lodgepole pines shot by below them so quickly it was mesmerizing.  The crowns of the trees rose from the inky forest and were illuminated light blue by the slice of moon and the hard white stars.  The visual maelstrom of passing treetops reminded Joe of snow blowing through his headlights in a blizzard.  The trees seemed to be so close he could reach out and touch them.

     “We hardly ever crash,” Bill Slaughter said.

     Herdt laughed and told him to stop it.

     Joe stared at the back of Slaughter’s round head and tried to burn two holes in it with his eyes.  Although he appreciated the time and effort that went into being members of the Civil Air Patrol, he didn’t appreciate their black humor at the moment.
 


     “So what’s this guy likely to do if he finds himself lost?” Slaughter asked Joe through the headset.

     “What do you mean?”

     “Is he the kind of guy who panics?”

     Joe thought about it.  “No.  He’s too dumb to panic.  And he does know these mountains pretty well.  He used to guide hunters up here.”

     Slaughter said, “The reason I asked is that we’ve learned over the last few years that if the lost person is young, they start climbing to try to find a cell signal on the top of a mountain.  If they’re older, they tend to walk down along a creek or stream.”

     “That makes sense,” Joe said.  “My guy would walk down.  My guess is he’d follow a spring creek until it joined one of the forks of the Powder River.  Then he’d find a ranch or another hunting camp.  I could also see him breaking into a cabin or hunting trailer and going to sleep without even imagining that someone might be looking for him.”

     “Oh, great,” Herdt said.

Said Joe, “What doesn’t make any sense, though, is why he’d just walk away from his elk camp in the first place.”

     “I hope we find out what made him leave,” Herdt said. “I’m always curious to find out how people get lost.”

     “It adds to our experience bank,” Slaughter said.  “We’re constantly learning, all of us.  The biggest thing I’ve learned is people do stupid things for not very good reasons.”

     “Sounds like him,” Joe said.

     Herdt chuckled.

     “Hold it -- what’s that?” Joe asked when the iPad screen suddenly filled with what looked like white upright sticks or chalk marks on a blackboard – scores of them.
 


     They were looking for a missing hunter named Dave Farkus.  Farkus was a former energy worker, former hunting outfitter, former fishing guide, and was currently an unemployed layabout collecting dubious disability checks.  He’d been missing from his elk camp since twelve hours before.  Because of a forecast of a massive fall blizzard on the way, the available time window to search for him was closing. 

     Farkus’s hunting partner, Cotton Anderson – a welder who’d recently lost his job due to the energy bust -- had called in the incident to Ten Sleep County Sheriff Mike Reed, who in turn called the Wyoming Office of Homeland Security, who called the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center, who called the Joint Operating Center, who called the Wyoming Civil Air Patrol, a part of the National Guard, to look for the missing hunter.

     Sheriff Reed told Joe that, according to Anderson, he’d returned to their camp the night before to find Farkus gone.  Farkus’s pickup was there, a fire had been built, and steaks were thawing on top of the cooler.  Farkus’s hunting rifle was leaning against a tree truck and his holster and back-up handgun hung from a branch.  A nest of empty Coors cans lay at the base of a camp chair and an opened can of beer was in the armrest.  But no Farkus.

     Joe knew no normal hunter would go out without his rifle.  And Farkus would never leave a full beer unless he had a desperate reason to do so.

     Anderson tried to reach Farkus on his cell phone but there was no signal.  Then he tried to radio him on his cheap Motorola walkie-talkie and finally received a reply.

     At least he thought it was Farkus’s scratchy voice that replied, twenty minutes after the first shout-out, “They’re after me…”

But Anderson couldn’t swear it was his buddy’s...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0399185496
• ISBN 13: 9780399185496
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 400
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: G.P. Putnam's Sons; https://www.penguin.com/putnam/; ; 1745 BROADWAY Attn: Madison Forsander; NEW YORK; NY; 10019; USA
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar