St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

the driver belonged to the part of the American population that believed four-wheel drive could handle anything weather could dish out.
    Live and learn.
    Or die.
    The sniper waited, invisible on the ridge, white on white, patient.
    The small truck bored through the late-afternoon gloom, eating up the road. Ruts made for a bouncy ride, but there were so many ruts they were bound to grab the tires from time to time.
    The sniper was counting on it.
    As the vehicle approached the deadly curve, the sniper’s finger slowly, slowly took up slack on the trigger.
    The front tires of the truck hit icy ruts and lunged toward the drop-off. The driver fought it and was on the verge of regaining control when a red dot gleamed on the inside of the right front tire and snow-muffled thunder cracked. The tire collapsed, headlights bobbed and lurched.
    The truck slid wildly on ice, then shot off the road and somersaulted into the gloom below.
    The sniper waited, watching snow fall.
    And waited.
    When he was certain no one had seen the accident, he strapped on snowshoes and took a roundabout way down to the road and then on down the rest of the ridge to the wreck.
    He found the man first. DOA, definitely. The fool hadn’t worn a seat belt. The sniper continued on down to the wreck itself. The woman was still alive, dazed and bleeding, her face a mess against the shattered rime of glass that was all that remained of the passenger window. He sat on his heels, found her pulse, and sighed.
    Not quite.
    He took her chin in one hand, the side of her forehead in the other, and gently searched for just the right angle.
    Her eyes opened, slowly focused on him in the gloom. “You,” she said weakly. “But I killed them both for you…the Senator and Winifred…to keep the secret.”
    “Always a good idea.”
    There was a single snapping sound.
    The sniper stood and glided away on snowshoes into the concealing veils of snow.

QUINTRELL RANCH ROAD
SUNDAY MORNING
61
    DAN WASN ’ T HAPPY WITH CARLY COMING ALONG , BUT THE IDEA OF LEAVING HER alone with his mother hadn’t appealed, either. Besides, Carly was the one with permission to come and go at the ranch. What she would be doing wasn’t, technically, breaking and entering. She still had the keys to the ranch house, plus she had a copy of Winifred’s holographic will.
    What Dan planned to do was a lot more dicey, legally speaking. So he wasn’t telling Carly about that part. If it went from sugar to shit, he wanted her to be able to say she didn’t have the faintest idea what he’d planned and was shocked, really shocked.
    The only good news was that the snow came and went in squalls, rather than in endless veils that clung and buried everything. The ten inches they’d already had was quite enough. If the storm cleared later tonight as it was supposed to, the wind would begin to blow and powdery snow would blow with it. Dan wanted to be back in Taos before that happened.
    Besides, if he entered one more picture into the computer, or filled out one more genealogical form, or thought any more about what his mother had said, he was going to go nucking futz.
    There were two sides to his personality; the other side wanted some exercise.
    There was only one bad patch of ice on the road, but since Dan was driving like every foot of the way was black ice and hugging the road cuts, he kept control of the truck without a problem. The fact that he had large, studded snow tires helped.
    “Yikers,” Carly muttered, bracing herself on the dashboard when the truck bucked.
    “Yeah. We’ll have to remember that one on the way out.”
    The windshield wipers moved sluggishly, compacting snow to the side of the rubber blades. The truck turned around the toe of Castillo Ridge and headed into the valley that held the Quintrell ranch. Gradually the snow squall thinned and vanished. The sky showed a few pale ribbons of blue and a glow where the sun was shrouded in clouds.
    Except for security lights along the driveway and walkways, all of the ranch buildings were dark despite the gloomy day.
    “Looks like Lucia was right,” Carly said. “Sunday is everyone’s day off.”
    Lucia had been very glad that Carly and Dan didn’t want to see her, so glad that she’d chattered on for several minutes before Dan could gracefully hang up.
    Dan pulled up to the front of the house and turned off the engine. “Ready?”
    “Even with Winifred’s permission, I feel like a thief.”
    “That’s why we’re