Battle Mountain

Book 25: A Joe Pickett Novel

by C.J. Box

Genres: General Fiction; Mystery; Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

Outlaw falconer Nate Romanowski is off the grid and out for revenge in this riveting new novel from #1 New York Times bestseller C. J. Box.

The campaign of destruction that Axel Soledad and Dallas Cates wreaked on Nate Romanowski and Joe Pickett left both men in tatters, especially Nate, who lost almost everything. Wondering if the civilized life left him vulnerable to attack, Nate dropped off the grid with his falcons in tow to prepare for vengeance.

When Joe gets a call from the governor asking for help finding his son-in-law, who has gone missing in the Sierra Madre mountain range, he enlists the help of a local, a rookie game warden named Susan Kany.

As Nate and fellow falconer Geronimo Jones circle closer to their prey, Joe and Susan follow the nearly cold trail to Warm Springs. Little do Nate and Joe know that their separate journeys are about to converge . . . at Battle Mountain.

Release date: February 25, 2025

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons

Print pages: 368

Sample

Chapter One

Seven Months Before

Nate Romanowski was thigh-high in the icy water of North Piney Creek under the craggy profile of the snow-covered Wyoming Range. He was there to kill a man named Axel Soledad, whom he'd pursued in a state of unhinged fury for months.

Soledad had left a trail of death and destruction behind him in his hunger for revenge against Nate and Joe Pickett. The cost had been catastrophic.

Liv. The blood, the body.

Nate blamed himself for his wife's death.

He blamed Axel Soledad more.

It was mid-April and the ice was finally breaking up. Large three-inch-thick platters of it bobbed along the surface, carried by the current. As he crossed the creek, he kept one eye upriver so he could spot the largest chunks floating his way and dodge them, lest they knock him off-balance. Even though he wore a pair of waders that he'd purchased at a fly-fishing shop in Pinedale, a small town with a welcome sign that announced that it was All the Civilization You Need, the water was so cold that his legs had gone numb and he could barely feel his feet. The water in the freestone river was so clear he could see the rounded maroon and beige river rocks between his boots.

Nate was tall, blond, and rangy. His eyes were icy blue and piercing and they peered out from a high-altitude windburned face with high cheekbones and a hatchet-like nose. He wore his long hair tied back in a ponytail with a leather falcon's jess.

Under his parka was the weight of a Freedom Arms .454 Casull handgun loaded with five rounds. Half a box of spare cartridges was in his parka pocket. He doubted he'd need them. Five rounds meant five dead bodies, and from what he'd learned, there were only four people at his destination.


At over seven thousand feet in the mountains, it was still winter. Crusty snow clogged the pine tree-lined banks, and the first green shoots emerging from the snowpack were at least a month away. It was twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit and every breath he exhaled was in the form of a condensation cloud.

The night before, Nate had learned through a barroom conversation in Big Piney that a man matching Soledad's description had been holed up in a bizarre rental property on the west bank of Piney Creek. The property belonged to a marina owner from the Ozarks who was a Wild West aficionado. The Missourian had purchased a onetime line shack on a small private holding and transformed it into a mini frontier village with a two-story lodge, false-front outbuildings, and a serve-yourself saloon.

People would go crazy for it, the owner had announced. The locals in Big Piney and Pinedale had been less impressed. The property was so isolated that very few tourists ever booked it, and those who did were lucky to find it. It sounded like the perfect place for Soledad.

Soledad had shown up in the town of Big Piney a week ago with three others, Nate had learned-two men in their midthirties and a woman who appeared to be Soledad's girlfriend. They'd arrived in an older-model Honda Civic with Colorado plates.

While one of the men had retrieved the keys to the place from a local realtor who served as the owner's agent, the man behind the wheel had gotten out of the Honda and walked stiffly around on a pair of crutches. That was undoubtedly Soledad. Nate had no idea who the other three were, but one of Soledad's traits was collecting hangers-on. This certainly fit the pattern.

The drinks he had bought for the talkative realtor last night had been well worth it, Nate thought.


He’d found out during midnight reconnaissance that the remote lodge could be accessed off a county road and then a two-track that ended at the house. The only way to approach would be to drive his Jeep right up to the front door, which was not a good plan.

Rather, Nate stayed on a rough path that hugged the curves of North Piney Creek. He'd found a place to hide his vehicle off-road. Then he'd left it at three in the morning and worked his way downstream along the tangled bank of the creek. It had been hard going-there was no game trail or natural path-and he'd had to bushwhack through frozen brush and outstretched tree roots. For about half a mile, the creek had been frozen solid and he could slide his way along the top of it. But when he saw black openings in the ice ahead of him in the moonlight, and the surface began to crack under his weight, he realized that the only way he was going to be able to proceed was to get into the water.

When he did, the cold shocked him even through the waders, but Nate didn't mind. Like most prey, including big game, Soledad would never expect a threat to come from the water.


As the sun lit up the tops of the pine trees in a warm orange, the lodge came into view around a bend in the creek. The buildings were dark and squarish, and no artificial light shone from any of the windows.

Nate hugged the right bank, keeping the thick brush between him and the structures as he approached the enclave. It was as it had been described to him: a two-level wooden clapboard building and a small jumble of faux-Western businesses. A thin line of woodsmoke clung to the top of a chimney pipe and looked like a vaporous flag.

An older-model Honda sedan was parked on the side of the lodge.

Nate found himself shaking, and he stepped out of the creek onto the icy rocks to calm himself. He looked hard at the lodge, trying to guess which room Soledad would be in.

So, he thought. It has come down to this.

"Get ready, Axel," he whispered.


Nate entered the close-packed pines upstream from the enclave and slowly advanced toward the lodge. He tried to step on patches of snow that had seen the most shade during the day, so the surface would be hard and he wouldn’t break through. As he moved toward the compound, he sized it up through gaps in the tree trunks.

In addition to the lodge, there was a line of small outbuildings extending to the side. Each was signed in frontier lettering: Saloon, Livery Stable, Marshall's Office, Jail. They all looked empty and forlorn.

A great horned owl watched his progress from its perch on top of a hitching-post rail. Its eyes were unblinking. Nate stared back, and for a second a connection was made. A beat after, the owl shuffled its talons on the rail, extended its wings, and flapped away. Nate nodded his approval. His message had been received: Trouble was on the way.


Nate went still when the front door of the lodge swung open and a man stepped outside.

Concealing himself behind a tree, Nate leaned to the right and peered around it. The figure was bearded and hugging himself against the cold. Tight black jeans, sneakers, a light leather jacket. It was not serious clothing for the location and the conditions. Where had Soledad picked him up?

The man walked across the hard-packed snow to what appeared to be an outhouse. Before going inside, he propped a semiautomatic rifle with an extended magazine next to the door.

The fact that the man had a weapon with him even for a trip to the outhouse made Nate smile. He was in the right place.


Nate was on the move the second the outhouse door closed. He jogged to a space between the parked car and the side of the lodge, keeping his eyes open for movement behind any of the windows. There was none, and when he reached his destination he leaned his back against the siding of the house and removed his waders. Then he unzipped his parka. The grip of his revolver was warm from his body heat.

He bent over and looked inside the Honda through the side windows. There were fast-food wrappers on the floors and someone had left a coat on the back seat. He tried the driver's-side door and found it unlocked.

Nate leaned into the vehicle and opened the glove compartment and the console. The console revealed two cheap burner phones and a half-empty box of .410 shotgun shells. Then he backed out of the Honda and reached under the driver's seat. As he suspected, he found a gun and pulled it out.

It was a bruiser of a weapon: a Taurus Judge Public Defender, with a two-inch barrel and five .410 shotgun shells in the cylinder. They could be replaced with .45 rounds, but Nate was pleased with them. Unlike the rounds from his own .454 that could exit a body and punch through walls like they weren't even there, the Judge would be perfect for close-in work. Shotgun pellets couldn't be matched to a particular weapon like slugs could, they were devastating at close range, and the weapon wasn't tied to him in any way.


With the .454 in his right hand and the Judge in his left, Nate shouldered the front door of the lodge open and swung inside.

The lobby was dark and jammed with overstuffed chairs and couches. Buckaroo prints hung on the pine-paneled walls, and an unlit wagon-wheel chandelier was suspended from the ceiling.

Past the lobby in the dimly lit kitchen, a doughy ginger-haired man with a growth of stubble looked up from a breakfast table in the kitchen. His eyes were red and unfocused, and he had a quizzical expression on his face that quickly morphed into anger.

"Who the fuck are you?" he asked in a phlegmy voice that suggested either illness or the effects of a hangover. He glanced down at a semiautomatic handgun on the tabletop next to his coffee mug. So did Nate.

"Where's Axel?" Nate said in a tense whisper. Then: "Don't do it."

But he did it and lunged for the gun.

Nate shot the man in the heart with the Judge. The impact of the blast flung him tumbling backward in his chair, and the sound of the shot was deafening.

But surprisingly, he wasn't dead. The ginger man scrambled on all fours on the floor out of Nate's line of vision, and his crablike hand reached up and appeared on the table, searching for the gun.

"Really?" Nate said as he blew a hole in the table with his new weapon, and the ginger man sprawled out and went still.

Nate strode across the room into an adjoining bedroom where the door was open. He peered inside at an unmade bed. There was meth paraphernalia on the bedside stand next to a half-full bottle of Fireball whiskey.

The window above the bed gave a clear view of the outhouse in the yard, where the occupant inside suddenly kicked the door open while buckling up his black jeans at the same time. When he reached around the opening for his rifle, Nate raised his .454 and aimed it through the glass. His revolver bucked hard and the window shattered and the man was hit center mass. He dropped like a stone. Illuminated by morning sunlight, Nate could see a round hole in the back of the outhouse wall where the bullet had passed through.

He backed out of the room and glanced through the open door of a second bedroom off the lobby. Like the first, the bed was unmade. Clothes were strewn across the floor.

Between the two bedrooms was a small bathroom. It was empty. Nate twisted the faucet and no water came out. That explained why the man had gone to the outhouse: The water pipes were frozen in the lodge.

There were no more rooms on the first level, and Nate eyed the staircase.

Two down, Nate said to himself as he ran up the stairs. Go, go, go.


Since the lodge had been built for guests, Nate expected to find several bedrooms on the top floor. In fact, there were four. Two closed doors on either side of the hallway were marked by hand-lettered signage inspired by historical Wyoming figures: The Jim Bridger Room, The Buffalo Bill Room, The Chief Washakie Room, The John Colter Suite.

Nate paused for a second at the top of the landing with both weapons outstretched before him. It was quiet down the hallway with no sign of activity from any of the rooms. He had no doubt that Axel had heard the gunshots and was ready for the intruder. Since the last door on the left was a suite, Nate made a calculated guess that Axel had chosen the grandest for himself. He bypassed the first three rooms and launched himself at the door of the John Colter Suite, hitting it low with his shoulder, just below the doorknob latch.

The doorframe splintered as Nate bulled his way inside. He rolled on the floor and came up on his knees at the foot of a four-poster bed, both weapons aimed at a naked woman sitting bolt upright in a maelstrom of covers. She had tousled brown hair, and her face was smeared with eyeliner that had run across her cheeks, making her look like a raccoon.

She was in her late twenties, thin and bony, and she screamed as she scrambled away from him, clutching the tops of the sheets and pulling them under her chin as if they would protect her.

Axel wasn't with her. There was no place in the bedroom for him to hide and the window wasn't open. A pile of black clothing lay on the floor beside the bed and a black bra was draped over a lamp on the bedside desk. Black combat boots poked out from under the bed. There was no other clothing in the room.

"Where is he?" Nate asked her.

"Where is who?" she asked back unconvincingly.

"Axel. Where is he?"

She seemed to be deciding whether to lie to Nate or tell the truth as she pulled the top of the sheets tighter to her chin.

Nate stood up, but kept both guns on her.

"He's gone," she said. "He left yesterday."

"Then why is his car outside?"

"Constantine took him to Jackson Hole. He was going to get a new car there. Constantine brought Axel's Honda back here so we wouldn't be completely stranded."

Nate thought that was possible. "Constantine was the city guy in the leather jacket?"

She vigorously nodded her head.

"Who was the other guy? The ginger?"

"J.R.," she said. Then she echoed the word "was," and it seemed to dawn on her what had happened downstairs. She looked up at Nate with horror.