River Runs Red (The Border Trilogy) Read Online Free Page B

cup and looked about for someplace to toss it. “Just wait and see.”
    Ron Loesser rose from the bench and walked toward a freestanding trash can. He tossed his cup at it. The cup hit the rim and bounced away, but Loesser was already taking rapid strides toward the building. He didn’t look back, at his cup or at Truly.
    Truly picked up the cup and dunked it into the can. He felt an obligation toward those who had worked for the agency, even if it wasn’t their primary occupation, even if no practical application had been found for their abilities. But given the way his day had begun, he didn’t mind being told not to put any effort into finding out what had happened to Lawrence Ingersoll. Just staying alert and coherent would take all the energy he had to offer.
    Walking back toward his office he realized some of Loesser’s coffee had leaked onto his fingers. He shook a drop away, then sniffed his hand. Loesser took his coffee black, strong and rich. Suddenly a cup of coffee seemed like a good idea. Truly couldn’t drown himself in booze at work, and he wasn’t a hard-drinking guy under any circumstances, but a good jolt of caffeine might keep him going until it was time to head back to his empty home, and his now equally empty life, on the other side of the Potomac.

 
     
     
    THREE
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    The Colorado River. The Conchos. The Crooked. The Cannonball. The Missouri, the Musselshell, the Madison. The Snake, Salt, Salmon, Secesh, St. Mary. The Canadian River. The Russian River. The American, the Frenchman, the Republican. Shoshone, Sheyenne, Gila, Mohawk, Flathead, Klamath, Kootenai, Pawnee. Eel, Snake, Swan, Bear, Beaverhead.
    In his cell—a cave, really, with a triple-locked solid steel door over the opening—Wade Scheiner tried to make the hours pass by remembering the names of as many western rivers as he could. He had visited many of them. Some he had run in rubber rafts or wooden dories or canoes made of steel or fiberglass. He had gone swimming in some, wearing trunks or not, most often in the company of Byrd McCall, his best friend during those carefree summer days of youth when hurtling headlong into the greenish brown waters of the Guadalupe or the ever-present Rio Grande seemed like the ultimate expression of sweet freedom.
    Outside his prison, he was certain, the war raged on, Iraqis killing Iraqis with Americans caught in the middle. Before his abduction, he had covered it for CNN. Now he was part of the story.
    Tongue, Milk, Knife, Kettle, Boulder, Sun, Powder, Encampment, Big Hole. The Green, the White, the Red, the Ruby, Big Blue, Little Blue, the Greys, the Vermilion, the Verdigris, the Yellowstone. Neosho, Niobrara, Little Nemaha, Wynoochee, Owyhee, Coweeman, Humptulips.
    Wade had attempted to keep track of the days of his imprisonment by scratching hash marks into the cave wall with a bit of stone. Without windows, though, with captors who fed him when they wanted to and woke him at will and allowed him to bathe (using lukewarm water in a metal pail) only sporadically, he had no way to accurately gauge the passage of time. At least ten days had passed, he believed, but maybe it had been two weeks or a little more. Seemed like forever.
    His dark blond hair was matted, his normally clean-shaven cheeks and chin thick with whiskers. He itched all over, but when he scratched, he worried that he was rubbing the stench of this place into his pores. His jeans and long-sleeved dress shirt were torn and filthy and they had taken his belt, his wallet, his ID, had thrown his cell phone out the car window as soon as they had shot his driver and squeezed inside around him. He was glad he’d left his iPod and his satellite phone and his video equipment in the hotel room, along with backup identification and most of his cash reserves. He just hoped it would all still be there whenever he was freed. The cave’s temperature was steady, humid and not too cold, and he had been taking off his