The Bitterroots (Cassie Dewell #4) - C.J. Box Page 0,30

through the administration and back down again to a breathing maintenance man, who would then have to order a whole new closed-circuit video assembly and wait for it to get shipped before he could even think about installing it.

*

The driver stayed in the pools of shadow as he made his way back to his truck.

He climbed inside the cab, closed the door, and returned the Browning to the center console.

After checking the streets to ensure that no one was watching, he started the engine and rumbled away. His target, he thought, would never see him coming.

Part II

Envy slays itself by its own arrows.

—The Greek Anthology, X 111

You shall not hate your brother in your heart.

—Leviticus 19:17

seven

As Cassie drove to Lochsa County the next day, she was still unnerved from the encounter the night before with the tractor-trailer outside her house. It had been so unexpected and it had awakened in her a feeling of dread and doom that she thought she had left behind.

Maybe she should see someone, she thought, a counselor of some kind. If simply seeing a semi-truck in a state filled with them on every highway brought out this kind of dread …

She tried to push it aside. Cassie had always thought herself smart and strong enough to deal with her issues and she had secret contempt for people who ran to psychologists as a matter of course to dissect their feelings. But maybe when things slowed down she would see someone, she thought.

The last thing she needed, though, would be for word to leak out that she was undergoing psych treatment. That might discourage current and future clients. She knew from experience how fast rumors could travel within law enforcement and legal circles even among the more enlightened. She knew she’d have to discreetly ask around for a name or two of counselors who could keep their mouths shut.

But first, she had work to do.

Blake Kleinsasser, rapist and moral reprobate that he was, deserved a competent defense. And if he was as guilty as he seemed, Rachel needed to know it so she could negotiate with him on solid ground to cop a plea.

That would be the best route, Cassie knew. Blake would go to prison and Franny would be spared reliving the crime in front of jurors and press coverage.

*

Smoke hung in every valley and it distorted the view of the mountains in every direction, as if someone had smeared Vaseline on the interior windows of her Jeep. It was so thick she could taste it.

She glimpsed makeshift camps of temporary firefighters as she drove west as well as distant helicopters and aircraft carrying loads of water and fire retardant. The fires were everywhere there was timber, and that meant there were fires throughout the Northern Rockies.

Cassie chose to leave Interstate Highway 90 after Butte and she cut south and west on two-lane state roads. There was no direct route because the Sapphire Range ran north to south between the interstate and Lochsa County. There was one unpaved road that switchbacked over Skalkaho Pass, but she’d seen digital roadside warnings reporting that there was an active fire on top and long delays were likely.

So she took Highway 43 to Wisdom, Montana, with the Pioneer Mountains on her left, the Sapphires and Continental Divide on her right, and the Big Hole River coursing through the stunning empty valley. She encountered less than a half-dozen cars along the route, although she glimpsed drift boats and fly fishermen at times on the river.

Cassie recalled from her Montana history that the Big Hole Battlefield was where Chief Joseph and his Nez Perce engaged the U.S. Seventh Infantry in a day and a half battle in 1873. It was a sad and depressing story, as well as a typical one.

The American government renounced a treaty they’d signed with the Nez Perce to allow settlers and white miners into their lands, and Chief Joseph—betrayed too many times already—had decided to lead the entire tribe through the mountains to Canada where he hoped to team up with Sitting Bull and his relocated Lakota. The army intercepted them along the Big Hole River and attacked, killing almost a hundred Nez Perce men, women, and children.

With the survivors, Chief Joseph fled east through what was now Yellowstone Park, then cut to the north hoping he could elude the army. Forty miles short of the border and starving, he surrendered.

The valley might be breathtakingly beautiful, she thought, but it cloaked one of the worst episodes