Five minutes later, Soledad had returned. His demeanor was just as cool as when he went in. The only difference in appearance were the tiny flecks of blood on the back of his right hand and a spot of it on his right cheek.
“Follow me,” Axel had said. “I need some help.”
It took four trips to completely empty the upstairs gun safe of weapons and ammunition. Shotguns, rifles, pistols, wicked-looking submachine guns were all among the cache. Randy didn’t know guns. He was surprised how heavy they were.
The weapons had filled three large duffel bags in the back of the van.
Randy wasn’t sure he wanted to know what had happened. They’d entered the house through a side door and he couldn’t see the front room. And Soledad offered absolutely no clue other than to say that “a problem had been solved.”
* * *
—
“Well, well, well,” Soledad said as he looked at his phone. His face was animated.
“What?”
“Look at this,” Soledad said. He held the phone to him, but didn’t let go of it. Randy leaned in to make out what it was.
He saw a blurry photo of a white van taken from the side. There were words painted on the exterior of the vehicle that he couldn’t make out.
Soledad swiped the screen and there was the van again, this time pointed in the opposite direction.
“I don’t get it,” Randy said. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”
“Do you remember when I stopped on the way out of the Wingville ranch?”
Randy did. Soledad had halted half a mile from the compound. After rummaging around through a gear bag in the back of the transport, he’d gone outside and shut the door, then come back five minutes later without an explanation.
“I hid a trail cam in the brush,” Soledad said. “That way, I’d know who went in and out after we left. The trail cam sends shots to my phone as long as the batteries hold out.”
Randy nodded for him to go on.
“This van showed up an hour after we left. Drove down the road one way, then back out. Can you see what’s written on the side of it?”
Randy reached out to steady Soledad’s hand. He peered at the screen and pinched it out with his fingertips to zoom the shot.
“Yarnick?” he asked.
“Yarak, Inc.,” Soledad corrected. Then: “Bird abatement specialists from Saddlestring, Wyoming.”
Randy was befuddled. Soledad laughed, but not at Randy. He was laughing at the photo of the van.
“Nate Romanowski is after us,” he said.
“Who?”
Soledad chinned toward the transport. Meaning the birds inside. “He wants what we have.”
“Who is he?”
“You’ve never heard of him,” Soledad said. “You’re not a falconer. He’s old-school, from another era. He was considered to be a big man back then: deadly, full of mystery and crackpot ethics. But he left the life to become a pussy capitalist. His time has passed.”
“Why is he following us?” Randy asked.
Soledad didn’t answer. He had already spoken longer than at any time Randy had been with him. Soledad, if anything else, kept his own counsel. His description of Nate Romanowski, even. It seemed like it was something Soledad was saying to himself, not to Randy.
Then Soledad checked the clock on his phone and said, “Time to go.”
“Where?”
Soledad didn’t answer.
* * *
—
They took the US 30 exit off I-84 and drove through central Pendleton until it became Southeast Court Avenue. They passed a Walmart Supercenter and Randy pointed out that it was open, but Soledad kept driving. They merged onto Westgate and crossed the Umatilla River, and Soledad slowed down and drove into the parking lot of the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution.
The facility was sprawling and multistoried, constructed of blond bricks and topped by a red-slate roof. Randy thought it looked more like a college campus than a medium-security prison.
“What are we doing here?” he asked Soledad.
“Picking up a buddy,” Soledad said. “You’ll need to move into the back.”
“What, and sit on the floor? With the hawk shit?”
Soledad shrugged. Then he gestured toward the large building in the center of the complex that appeared to be the headquarters. “There he is.”
Randy squinted toward where Soledad was pointing.
Four men emerged from the side door of the building. Three were obviously correctional officers. They were dressed in dark blue and wore EOCI ballcaps.