by Diane Capri
Noah screamed again. “I said, let her go!”
“Go back to bed, kid.” Denny squeezed her throat harder. “The keys, Fern. That’s all I want.”
She barely had enough air to gasp, “Okay.”
“See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Denny said.
Noah yelled like he had as a child when he’d jumped off the high dive at the local pool. A long, loud, piercing screech.
She heard his footfalls as he ran from his room toward Denny.
Fern wiggled harder, kicking forward, trying to loosen Denny’s hand from her neck with as much strength as she could muster.
Then, Noah grunted with the effort as he plunged his hunting knife into the muscle of Denny’s shoulder. He jerked on the knife after it penetrated.
Denny screamed like a wounded animal and released his grip on Fern’s neck.
Blood rushed down Denny’s arm and torso, pooling on the floor beside his feet.
He pulled the knife from his deltoid muscle, held it aloft, and charged Noah like a bull, snorting with rage.
Noah fell backward to the floor. He scrabbled backward on all fours toward his room, desperately trying to run from Denny.
Fern steadied her feet on the floor and took great gulps of air, making every effort to oxygenate before she passed out.
Noah pushed to his feet and ran full-out toward his room.
Denny ran after him, with Noah’s hunting knife in his fist.
Fern grabbed the first heavy object she could find and threw it at Denny. The lamp hit Denny’s head and bounced off, flying over the banister and down to the first floor, where it crashed and scattered.
Noah was almost to his room now. Denny was two steps behind.
Fern ran to her bedside table, yanked it open, and grabbed her pistol. She tried to scream a warning, but her vocal cords were bruised. A weak “Stop!” was all she could manage.
She rushed to the open bedroom door and fired the first shot wide to the right of Denny’s retreating body.
The shot was monstrously loud in the enclosed bedroom. Her ears were ringing long before the bullet hit the wall.
Denny slowed and turned toward her, shaking his head like a wounded animal.
Noah dashed into his room and slammed the door.
Fern stood facing Denny.
She held the pistol steady in both hands and aimed it straight at his heartless chest.
Denny stared at her, eyes wide, nostrils flared, red-faced with rage.
She could almost see the gears turning in his head.
If he charged forward, how many times could she shoot him before he grabbed the gun?
They stood like that for a few surreal moments.
Fern tried to speak, to tell Denny to calm down. She didn’t intend to kill him. But her throat was too bruised to carry the words through his outrage.
With the percussive damage to her ears from the gunshot, she wasn’t sure whether Denny heard her words or cared enough to puzzle out her intent.
Her aim never wavered.
He lowered his head like an animal and screamed as he ran toward her, like a three-hundred-pound offensive lineman.
He was less than a dozen steps away. He’d arrive in a fraction of a second.
If he hit her, he’d kill her for sure.
“Stop!” she tried to scream again.
He was a huge target. From this rapidly closing distance, she couldn’t possibly miss him.
Fueled by rage and adrenaline, Denny kept coming, arms wide, faster than a man his size should have been able to move. Each footfall on the old hardwood bounced the floor as he approached.
She actually wondered, briefly, whether he might fall through the boards and land in the kitchen below.
Fern opened fire.
Denny kept coming.
She hit him seven times before he finally fell, less than two feet from where she stood.
She slumped back onto the bed, breathing heavily, staring at his bleeding corpse.
Denny lay face down on the floor. Blood continued to pump from his shoulder wound for a moment. When it stopped pulsing, she knew his heart had stopped.
He was dead.
Fern stared, wide-eyed, but calm enough. Shock, she thought.
She had never killed a man before. She’d always said she couldn’t kill another person, no matter what. Guess that wasn’t true, either.
The list of things she’d been wrong about continued to pile up. She might break under the weight of it all.
But not yet.
After the shooting stopped, Noah opened his bedroom door and peeked out. Half a second later, he rushed toward his mother. They hugged tightly, each attempting to comfort the other through their tears.
Together, they’d killed a man. Both understood that their relationship would never be the same.
After a while, Noah pulled away. He looked into Fern’s horrified face.
“Mom?” he said worriedly, sounding like the young boy he once was instead of the sullen teenager he’d become. “What do we do now?”
“We check on Grandpa. And then, I’ll call Chief Mitchell. He’s got his hands full with the situation at the prison right now. A few more minutes won’t matter.” She avoided walking through Denny’s blood and made her way to the stairs.
Noah followed her lead.
She was already down to the kitchen before she remembered she’d left the gun in her room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Saturday, May 14
Bolton, South Dakota
6:15 a.m.
A fist pounding on the door of her hotel room jolted Kim awake. She climbed from the warm bed, slipped into her robe, and stood on her toes to put her sleepy eye to the peephole.
After a few attempts, she was able to focus. A huge black man waited, both hands holding hot coffee. FBI Special Agent Reggie Smithers. Her face broke into a grin.
She quickly pulled her hair back and twisted it into a tight bun at the base of her neck. Then she opened the door. “Hey, Smithers. Fancy meeting you here.”
“Morning, Agent Otto. Sorry to show up so early, but I thought you’d be ready. Never known you to sleep the day away.” He grinned and handed her one of the containers of hot, black coffee. “I’ve got stuff to tell you and I’m short on time.”
“Sure. Come in,” she said, accepting the coffee and standing aside. “We were planning to look you up today anyway.”
The instant he walked in, the room seemed to shrink a few sizes. Smithers was a big guy. He was also an excellent field agent. Reliable. Steadfast. Competent.
She gave him extra points for being acceptable to Gaspar. They’d teamed up twice before, him official and her off the books, and she trusted him completely.
“Why are you working this prison break?” she asked, waving him to the only chair in the room while she perched on the bed with the coffee, which was way too hot to drink.
He shrugged. “You know how it is. All hands on deck and I was the most experienced agent in the neighborhood. Relatively speaking.”
“Right.” She imagined he hadn’t exactly been hanging out in Bolton. Or even South Dakota. But she was glad to see him, whatever the reason.
“We’ve been working all night and we’ve got a meeting to discuss status at oh-eight-hundred. You and Burke should join in.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.” She nodded. “So why are you really here?”
“I’d forgotten how blunt you can be.” He grinned. “If you’re here, Cooper thinks Reacher’s involved. I want to know what Reacher has to do with all of this. So tell me.”
“I would if I could, my friend. Trust me on that.”
A frown clouded his features. “You’re handing me that classified bullshit? You?”
“Not at all.” She shook her head. “I meant it literally. I would tell you if I knew. I don’t.”
He looked at her frankly, sizing up the response. FBI agents were trained to suss out liars. He’d found her explanation credible,
she guessed, even if he didn’t like the answer.
“Okay. You don’t know why or how Reacher’s involved. What’s your best guess?” he pressed, with a glance at the clock.
“It’s always the same. Cooper believes Reacher might be here. Either now, or he’ll be arriving soon. Cooper never explains himself. Even when I ask,” she replied as she pulled the top off the coffee to allow it to cool enough to drink. “Which I mostly don’t do because it’s a waste of breath.”
“What’s your orders? Shoot to kill?” he grinned, swallowing his coffee like it was tepid instead of scalding.
She smiled in response. “Nothing that simple. My mission is to find Reacher. I’m supposed to locate him and call it in. Cooper will take over from there.”
Smithers opened his big eyes wider. “And he didn’t give you any direction at all beyond that?”
“Not much.” Kim shrugged. “He told me to interview a local lawyer. She’s got a client I’m supposed to interview, too—an inmate at Bolton Prison. Or at least, he was before yesterday. I assume he’s still there. I don’t know the inmate’s name. I’m supposed to get it from the lawyer.”
“Who’s the lawyer?” Smithers asked.
“Her name is Fern Olson.” She blew on the coffee and managed to take a shallow sip. It was still so hot it scalded her tongue. “I imagine either the inmate or the lawyer is connected to Reacher somehow. Or maybe they both are. I just don’t know how. Yet.”
He cocked his head and nodded as if considering something puzzling. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small thumb drive. He held it out to her. “This is a list of all the inmates who escaped yesterday. File materials we grabbed quickly for each one are there, too. Several of the escaped inmates are represented by Fern Olson.”
Kim raised her eyebrows. “So you think she’s involved in the prison break?”
“Seems likely. But we don’t know for sure yet. We got a warrant for a wiretap and phone records when we managed to wake up a local judge. We’ll know everything there is to know about Fern Olson in a couple of hours.” Smithers paused for a breath and the troubled look returned to his face.
“What’s bothering you?”
“You know about the explosion they had out here seven years ago, I assume.”
“Gaspar told me.” She nodded and took another tentative sip of the coffee, which had finally cooled enough to drink.
He held up two fingers. “Two things. Olson’s law partner was killed back then. Shot in the head.”
Kim stared at him.
“And one of Olson’s clients was involved in whatever went down. He was already an inmate at Bolton. His name’s Ryan Denny. He was on death row for a while, but he turned informant on something big and got his sentence reduced to life in prison.”
“Okay. Let me guess. He’s one of the escaped inmates.”
Smithers nodded.
“Have you interviewed Fern Olson?”
“Not yet. We’ve had our hands full. But we will. This morning, probably.” He paused for a deep breath. “Join us for the briefing. We’ll hear the rest of the intel. After that, we’ll have the phone records, and then we’ll go talk to Olson together.”
Kim nodded and took a big gulp of the coffee. “Sounds like a plan.” Burke’s go-to phrase slipped out before she had a chance to squelch it. She wrinkled her nose. Was he rubbing off on her?
“I’ll see you in the briefing room,” he said before he stood and walked out.
She heard the door latch behind him, but her thoughts were running through the list of Gaspar’s files she’d read before bed. Nothing on Ryan Denny, she was sure.
She found her phone and hit the redial. When Gaspar answered, she told him about Smithers and the intel he’d shared.
“Can you find whatever you can on Ryan Denny and send it over? I’m hopping in the shower. I’d like to read it before I go into the briefing,” she said then swallowed the last of the coffee.
“Copy that. It should be fairly easy. Inmates generally have a lot of publicly available information in various databases. I can have more than you want to know now, and then more later, probably,” Gaspar replied.
“Perfect. Thanks.” She thought of something else. “The whole town is crawling with law enforcement personnel by now. And Smithers is here. You don’t have to worry so much.”
“Right. Wanna buy a couple acres of swampland?” Gaspar grunted and hung up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Saturday, May 14
Near Bolton, South Dakota
6:35 a.m.
The cold wind gusted across the open ground as he walked along the road, slamming Keegan with a frigid blast every few minutes. He’d experienced weather like this plenty of times back home, but not so late in the spring. He’d begun to wonder how normal humans could live in South Dakota.
By mid-May in Boston, he’d have had blooming annuals in his flowerbeds and maybe a few plants ready for the garden. Here, the ground was bare and the earth hard. Nothing much seemed to grow. At least, not yet.
He welcomed the windbreak when he moved from the road into the trees. When he heard the shots, Keegan had covered about half the distance to the farmhouse, using the trees to conceal his approach.
At first, he didn’t identify the quick, sharp explosions.
Then he recognized muffled gunshots inside the house.
One shot followed rapidly by others. He counted six. Maybe seven.
In his experience, return fire should quickly follow, and then the surviving shooter would hightail it away from the scene.
Keegan slipped behind a big tree trunk, thinking things through quickly while he waited for the shooter to flee.
He and Walsh had been extremely careful, stayed on the back roads, and changed vehicles three times.
The plan had worked well. They had not seen another escaped prisoner.
They hadn’t run into roadblocks or cops, either.
“So far, so good,” he murmured.
Still, there had been more than forty guys in the exercise yard when the fence came down. Most were able to escape.
Some were too stupid to run. Others probably went back, either voluntarily or at gunpoint.
“Where did the rest of them go?”
South, most likely. Because that’s where the good roads and easy escape routes were. The bulk of the recovery efforts would be deployed south of the prison, too.
Which was why he and Walsh didn’t go south.
But Keegan had the advantage.
He’d known precisely when the jailbreak would occur.
The other prisoners were doing what came naturally, taking advantage of the opportunity when it presented itself.
He shook his head. “They had no plan.”
Even so, now that he thought about it, some inmates might have set out north instead.
“They could have walked this far by now. They’ve been out for ten hours.” He paused and stuck his head out from behind the tree like a turtle.
“Yep. They could be inside the farmhouse. Alone. Or not.”
Keegan cocked his head. “At least two possible scenarios.”
He pressed one finger to the tree trunk. “Perhaps the place is abandoned.”
In which case, the inmates could be fighting among themselves inside the farmhouse.
That idea had legs. Various factions had fought often enough in prison. The smallest thing could set one off against the others.
It was no stretch of the imagination to believe escaped prisoners who made it this far could be shooting each other inside the farmhouse now.
Made sense. He nodded.
“Second option. They invaded the house.”
Keegan cocked his head to consider it. “Yeah, a few of those guys were dumb enough to try something like that.”
He nodded again. “So maybe the homeowner shot them.”
Bolton Correctional inmates had displayed extremely poor impulse control. Many were sociopaths. More wer
e stone-cold killers.
Either option meant he was not dealing with harmless farmers.
He turtled his head out again. Still nobody coming.
Now that he understood the situation, Keegan considered moving on.
He couldn’t stand here indefinitely.
“Make a decision.”
There was no point going back to Walsh because he couldn’t move the Land Rover.
He could forget about the farmhouse and go into the village, but he wasn’t sure what lay ahead.
He needed a vehicle. He needed to get to Canada. And he wanted to take Walsh with him. Right now, all of those options still seemed viable if he could make it to the farmhouse.
“Better the devil you know,” he murmured.
He waited fifteen minutes, which should’ve been plenty of time for the shooter to get away if he planned to flee.
Seemed like he wasn’t running.
Keegan pulled his pistol from his waistband and moved closer, all senses alert. He heard no further gunshots or other problematic noises.
He advanced carefully from one tree to another, approaching the building.
“Front door? No.”
He’d seen lights in the back earlier. At least, if there were people inside the kitchen, he should be able to deal with them. It was impossible to handle an enemy he could not see.
Crouched low, he advanced from one concealing point to the next as he made his way around to the back of the house.
The driveway past the farmhouse on the left led to the backyard. He saw an outbuilding twenty-five yards ahead. Probably a garage.
They had to have a vehicle.
“No way they could live out here without one.”
He didn’t know much about country life, but he assumed the residents would have motor vehicles and not something crazy like a horse and buggy.
He heard voices outside, from behind the house. Two people talked quietly. Keegan strained his ears to understand the conversation.
He couldn’t make out the words from this distance.
How could he get closer?
Keegan scanned the immediate area. He could be spotted and picked off by gunfire as he left the cover of the trees.
