Présentation de l'éditeur It's Joe Pickett's last week as a temporary game warden in the mountain town of Baggs, Wyoming, but his conscience won't let him leave without checking out the strange reports coming from the wilderness: camps looted, tents slashed, elk butchered. What awaits him is like something out of an old campfire tale, except this story is all too real-and all too deadly. Extrait Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page Dedication PART ONE - THE LAST PATROL TUESDAY, AUGUST 25 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 26 THURSDAY, AUGUST 27 FRIDAY, AUGUST 28 SATURDAY, AUGUST 29 PART TWO - RELOADING WITHOUT BULLETS TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3 PART THREE - OUTLIERS AMONG US FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 Acknowledgements ALSO BY C. J. BOX THE JOE PICKETT NOVELS Below Zero Blood Trail Free Fire In Plain Sight Out of Range Trophy Hunt Winterkill Savage Run Open Season THE STAND-ALONE NOVELS Three Weeks to Say Goodbye Blue Heaven Publishers Since 1838 Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Copyright © 2010 by C. J. Box All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Box, C. J. Nowhere to run/C. J. Box. p. cm. ISBN: 9781101196564 1. Pickett, Joe (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Game wardens—Fiction. 3. Wyoming—Fiction. I. Title. PS3552.O87658N’.54—dc22 This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content. For Mark Nelson And Laurie, always . . . PART ONE THE LAST PATROL In no other country in the world is the love of property keener or more alert than in the United States, and nowhere else does the majority display less inclination toward doctrines which in any way threaten the way property is owned. —ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, Democracy in America TUESDAY, AUGUST 25 1 THREE HOURS AFTER HE’D BROKEN CAMP, REPACKED, AND pushed his horses higher into the mountain range, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett paused on the lip of a wide hollow basin and dug in his saddlebag for his notebook. The bow hunters had described where they’d tracked the wounded elk, and he matched the topography against their description. He glassed the basin with binoculars and noted the fingers of pine tre