The John Milton Series Boxset 2

by Mark Dawson

  And then she thought of Orville. He would have complained about the weather, about the chiggers and the insects that had buzzed around them, the mud on his clothes and the sheer inconvenience of being out of town, so far from his car and cellphone coverage and—

  Shit.

  Orville.

  She should have called him. She had broken a bunch of rules already, and she had allowed the fact that she was off the reservation to blind her to proper procedure. First up, she needed to clear out the civilians. At least the Stantons had gone home, but there was Milton to think about, too. He would need to go back to the hotel.

  And then they would need to speak with the marshals. It was their responsibility for moving the prisoners, getting them back down to the city. They would send a truck to pick them up. Orville could sort all that out.

  She could be in trouble for what had happened. A stickler for the rules, someone like Orville, they could go to town on her for what she’d done. A single agent going after four armed fugitives was stupid to the point of being reckless. She should have insisted that they come back down from the lake to call for backup. She should have gotten the civilians out of harm’s way. But, she knew, she would only have gotten into hot water if something bad had happened. There was a big difference in breaking the rules and coming up empty and breaking the rules and bringing the bad guys back. She figured that she would be okay.

  She patted her pockets for her phone. It was in her jacket. She took another handful of tissue paper and wiped it against the back of her neck, mopping up the last of the moisture, dumped it in the trash, and went back into the office.

  Lundquist and the sheriff were talking.

  “You feeling more human?” the sheriff asked.

  “Better.”

  “Pretty fierce out there,” Lundquist offered.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “We get all sorts of weather up here, right, Lester? And it changes, blink of an eye. The number of times we’ve had to go up there and help folk out who got surprised when it dropped twenty degrees in six hours, you wouldn’t believe it.”

  She went across to her jacket. ”I need to make a call.”

  “The bureau?” Lester said.

  She nodded.

  Lundquist uncrossed his legs. “You haven’t called this in yet?”

  “No. No signal up there, and then I forgot.” She took out the phone and switched it on. “It’s okay. I can do it now. They won’t get up here until tomorrow now, anyway.”

  She turned her back on him and scrolled through the address book for Orville’s number.

  “Don’t.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Put it down.”

  It was Lundquist. His voice was quiet and firm.

  “Morten?” came Lester Grogan’s surprised voice.

  Ellie turned back to them.

  Lundquist had drawn his pistol, and he was aiming it square at her.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You’re not calling anyone. Put it on the chair.”

  She stared at the gun. “What are you doing, Deputy?”

  “Morten! Have you gone mad?”

  “Put the phone down right now.”

  Ellie looked into his eyes and saw grim certainty there. He wasn’t playing. This wasn’t a prank. She looked down at the round opening at the end of the barrel, the narrow black hole ringed with chrome, and raised her hands slowly and carefully in front of her chest.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m putting it down. Relax.”

  “Take off your gun.”

  She unhooked her holster and draped it over the back of the chair.

  Lundquist waved at the wall, away from the gun rack. “Get over there.”

  She did as she was told.

  Lundquist’s sleeve had ridden up a little, and Ellie saw a tattoo on the inside of his wrist. The sleeve fell back down again and obscured it before she could look at it properly.

  “What are you doing, Morten?”

  “Get up, Lester.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Up. Now.”

  “What’s gotten into you?”

  Lundquist jabbed the gun at them and his sleeve rode up again. Ellie saw the tattoo.

  1:3.

  She remembered.

  The four robbers in the cell downstairs all had the same tattoo.

  What?

  The sheriff did as he was told.

  Lundquist moved around, stepping between them and the gun rack and the door. “That fucking guy. Why didn’t you make sure he stayed out of town? None of this would’ve happened if he wasn’t here.”

  Lester’s face switched through confusion to a slow, and shocked, realisation. “Please don’t say you’re involved with those boys?”

  He chuckled bitterly, without humour. “Yeah, you could say that. You’ve got my son downstairs, Lester.”

  “What?”

  “Michael. He’s my blood.”

  “You never—”

  “It was a long time ago. You and me, that time we went to Green Bay, remember?”

  “The girl behind the bar?”

  “I’m not proud of it, but he’s my boy. My son. That means something to me, having a boy, you know it does.”

  “So don’t do something stupid that’ll get both of you arrested.”

  “It’s not just that. Those boys you’ve got downstairs are soldiers. They’re patriots, Lester. They’re fighting against the tyranny,” he spat the word, “that people like that bitch over there represent.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m their commanding officer, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to sit here and let the federal government get hold of them, swallow them up, and make them disappear for fifty years.”

  “They killed a man, Morten.”

  “This is a war, Lester. You make an omelette, got to break a few eggs.”

  Lester’s face darkened with anger.

  “Take it easy,” Ellie warned him, but his anger just kept deepening, and he didn’t hear her. She looked at Lundquist. “Put the gun down, Officer. Nothing has happened yet that can’t be straightened out.”

  “Listen to the agent,” Lester said.

  That was a mistake, and his eyes flashed with fury. “The day I listen to an agent of the federal government is the day I die.”

  Lester moved fast, before Ellie could stop him. He rushed across the room, closing the gap between him and Lundquist so quickly that the older man didn’t have time to react. They slammed into one another, Lester’s momentum carrying them both across to the far wall, crashing together, his hands going for Lundquist’s right wrist and the pistol. They wrestled, evenly matched, until Lester’s youth started to show, and he pushed Lundquist’s arm down towards the floor. The older man grunted with exertion, but his arm was straightened out and then pinioned against the wall. Lester reached his fingers down to the pistol, trying to prise it loose. Lundquist bucked off the wall, sending the two of them stumbling in Ellie’s direction.

  She stepped into them both, wrapped an arm around Lundquist’s chest, and tried to restrict his range of movement. He shifted his stance, and Ellie lost her balance, stumbling into Lester and breaking the hold that he still had on Lundquist’s wrist. She fell to the floor.

  Her gun. It was on the chair, six feet away.

  Lundquist brought his arm up in a flash of desperate motion and fired.

  The room went quiet.

  Lester staggered back until he bumped up against the edge of the desk. His face was eloquent with surprise, a dawning realisation and then, finally, a wash of pain. He put his hands to his chest, holding them there for a moment as he settled down against the desk, and then, as he pulled them away and let them drop loosely at his side, Ellie saw that they were red with blood.

  Lundquist looked dismayed. “Lester,” he said. “I… Oh, shit. Why did you have to do that?”

  Lester slid down, his back slithering against the side of the
desk until he was sitting on the floor, leaning against it. His shirt front was swamped with blood, and his face had been leeched of colour.

  “Why did you have to do that?” Lundquist repeated.

  Ellie pushed herself to the chair and her gun.

  “Don’t you move,” Lundquist said, swinging the pistol around in her direction. “This is your fault.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Your fault,” he shouted, nodding at Lester. “Yours. You should have gone home with your partner. None of this was necessary. He didn’t have to get shot.”

  “I’m a federal agent. You’re a cop. You know what that means, right?”

  “Like that means anything up here? You’re in my town now. You’re under my jurisdiction.”

  “It doesn’t work like that.” She pointed down at Lester. His right hand was fluttering over his wound. “You need to call 911. He’s going to die if he doesn’t get help.”

  “It’s too late for that.”

  Her words seemed to have jarred him out of his shock. He aimed the gun at her, steady and true, and gestured for her to get up. She did, reluctantly, and allowed him to back her around against the far wall of the room. He went to the chair, took her pistol from its holster, and slid it into his own. He went across to the front door and turned the key in the lock.

  “He’s dying, Deputy.”

  “No,” he said. “You call me lieutenant colonel. And men die in war.” He pointed to the door. “Downstairs.”

  THE FOUR suspects were packed tightly in the cell. They must have heard the commotion from upstairs, and they were looking over at the door with a mixture of fear and expectation. Ellie came down the stairs, Lundquist directly behind her with the gun pressed tight into her spine.

  “Pops,” Michael Callow said. “You all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I heard a shot.”

  “The sheriff.”

  Callow’s face twisted into a sneer of pleasure. “You shot him?”

  “That’s right,” Lundquist snapped.

  “He had it coming.”

  The others whooped.

  Lundquist reached through the bars and slapped the heel of his hand into Callow’s forehead. “Shut up, Michael. If you hadn’t been so stupid and got yourself caught, if this bitch hadn’t stuck her nose where her nose doesn’t belong, if that fucking Englishman had passed on through town, like he should’ve done, it wouldn’t have been necessary. But you fucked up, she did, he didn’t, and it was. The operation’s changed. We need to be getting out of here.”

  Callow stepped back, rubbing his head. The others settled down, Lundquist’s anger quelling their jubilation.

  “Are we clear, Privates?”

  “Yes, sir,” they said, in unison.

  Lundquist took the key for the cell and unlocked the door.

  Callow came out first. “Sorry, Pops,” he said quietly.

  “Get upstairs. We’ve got work to do.”

  The four men went up first, and they followed. Lundquist had his left hand on Ellie’s shoulder, the gun in his right still pressed into her back.

  They had only been out of the room for a few minutes, but the atmosphere had changed. Ellie looked down at Lester. He had died while they were downstairs. His body had slipped further down the desk, his legs were splayed, and his neck was at an angle. The blood had washed out of the wound all the way down his chest down to the line of his belt. His eyes were open, staring, eerie.

  Ellie felt a wave of nausea, but closed her eyes and forced it back down again.

  No weakness, she thought. Not in front of them.

  “Look at him,” Reggie Sturgess said. “Deader than disco.”

  “Shut up, Reggie,” Callow said, anticipating another blast of irritation from his father.

  Lundquist had gone over to the gun rack. Aside from Milton’s excellent rifle, there were three semiautomatics and two shotguns. “Arm yourselves,” he said.

  “What are we going to do with her?” Tom Chandler said, looking at Ellie.

  “I’ll take her to the farm. She can go in the barn.”

  Callow straightened out the kinks in his neck. “What do you want us to do?”

  “Tidy up that mess you made. Go get Leland. He knows Mallory Stanton. Maybe he can make this easier. Get over to the RV now, pick her and her idiot brother up, take them to the farm.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, Private,” Lundquist snapped. “Now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Chandler pointed at Lester’s body. “And him?”

  “The Englishman did that. Lester arrested him the day before yesterday, before he went up to the lake and rounded you idiots up. We’ll say he came back, looking to settle the score.”

  “So where is he now?”

  “Olsen’s taking care of him. He won’t be a problem for much longer.”

  Chapter 19

  “THIS WEATHER,” Olsen said, gesturing through the windscreen. The rain was thundering onto the glass and drumming against the cruiser’s roof.

  They passed out of town and kept going west.

  Milton looked across at him. “So what did you say happened?”

  “They were in the taxi; the car didn’t stop and sideswiped them.”

  “The car?”

  “Yes. What?”

  “You said it was a pickup.”

  Olsen nodded, just a little too quickly. “Yeah, a pickup.”

  “Did you speak to them?”

  “A little. He was in a lot of pain. Mallory was better.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  “Just wanted to know her brother was all right.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “I’m sorry, Milton. I’m just telling you what happened.”

  Milton looked at him again. He was trying to behave normally, but there was something about him that Milton noticed, something vague and indefinable, but something that nagged at his awareness like a torn fingernail.

  And then he saw it. Olsen’s shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow and, inscribed on the inside of his wrist, was a tattoo.

  1:3.

  Milton’s stomach flipped.

  “So,” Olsen said. “You went and got those boys down from the lake?”

  He hid it. “That’s right.”

  “You got a history in law enforcement?”

  “Army.”

  “Army. Right.”

  They drove on, passing the campsite where Lester had dropped him the day before yesterday.

  Milton watched Olsen in the dim reflection of the windshield. He had his left hand on the wheel. His right was in his lap, fidgeting, fingers twitching, and he was casting furtive looks across the cabin at him when he thought he wouldn’t notice.

  “What does the tattoo mean?”

  Olsen brought his arm up a little so that Milton could look at it, and then, as if suddenly aware that he had done something unwise, he hurriedly put his hand back on the wheel and turned his wrist so that it was facing down, putting the tattoo out of sight.

  “What does it mean?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t mean anything.”

  ”It must mean something.”

  His brow puckered as he worked out which of his meagre, unimpressive selection of lies he should use before he said, “Got it when I got out of high school.”

  “What is it? A Bible verse?”

  He shrugged.

  “The four men we brought down from the lake today all have the same tattoo.”

  Olsen swallowed, his larynx bobbing in his throat. ”You pay an awful lot of attention to the way a man looks,” he said, trying to sound flippant, but the words were undercut by anxiety, aggression, and fear.

  “The business I used to be in,” Milton said, “it paid to be observant.”

  “The army.”

  “No. Something I did after that.”

  “Yeah? I was going to say, you get a man paying that much attention to how another man looks
, you get to fixing that other man might be a homosexual.”

  He turned his head and looked at Milton as he delivered that riposte, his lip curling in ugly pleasure, the barb a decoy to try to deflect attention from his hand as it drifted down to his holster, the retention strap already loose and the .45 calibre semi-auto ready to be pulled out and used.

  Milton jabbed his left elbow into Olsen’s gut, hard. The officer grunted in surprise as he pulled the gun, catching the bump of the pistol’s rear sight on the holster, yanking it again and freeing it just as Milton swept his hand sideways into Olsen’s face. The man might have been stupid, but he was cunning, full of adrenaline and primed for action. He brought his right hand up to block the blow, their wrists clashing, and then, just barely managing to keep the car on the road, he drove the point of his elbow into Milton’s face. The bony joint connected with Milton’s cheekbone, sending a coruscation of pain into his brain, distracting him just long enough for Olsen to jerk his hand again and bring the gun out of its holster.

  He tried to aim.

  Milton blocked Olsen’s gun arm, but then his seat belt caught, restraining him. Olsen had leverage on him.

  There was no time for anything else.

  With his left hand, Milton stabbed down at the base of Olsen’s seat, his fingers jabbing into the seat-belt mechanism and releasing it, and then he pulled down as hard as he could on the wheel, clockwise, turning the cruiser against the direction of travel.

  The rubber bit on the wet road even as the momentum of the big car continued along the road. There was more than enough force to skid the back end out, and then, the wheels now perpendicular to the direction of travel, the rubber bit again and the cruiser flipped over onto its side and rolled.

  Milton braced his arms and legs as his seat belt pulled for a second time. His head smashed into the side window as the airbags deployed, the car striking down onto its roof and then rolling over a second, third, and fourth time. His knees were crushed against the dashboard, and shards of glass cast over him as the front and side windows crashed over him.

  The car rolled again, the momentum draining away, finally coming to rest on Milton’s side.

  Milton found that he had closed his eyes. He felt a heavy weight against his shoulder, and when he opened them, he saw that Olsen had been thrown out of his seat and, eventually, on top of him. His face was a bloodied pulp, with tiny fragments of glass peppering his wounds. His head, when Milton worked his shoulder away from underneath it, flopped loosely on a snapped neck.