Dead Too Soon: A Thriller (Val Ryker series Book 3)

by Ann Voss Peterson

  Carla took another step backward, banging into the plastic partition.

  “Give them to me, now.”

  Ethan wrapped his arms around Grace’s leg and let out a sob.

  “It’s okay, buddy.” Grace glanced back at him. Poor kid. She sensed movement, saw motion in her peripheral vision, and by the time she brought her focus back to Carla, the woman was lifting Aunt Val’s shotgun to her shoulder.

  Carla pointed the barrel at Grace. “Put the knife down.”

  Grace gripped the handle tighter. Her palm was sweaty. Her heart beat so hard in her chest she thought it might explode. She’d thought she was ready for this. She’d thought she’d faced the fact that she would probably die.

  She’d been wrong.

  “Put the knife down.” Carla blinked rapidly, as if she was nearly as confused to find a shotgun in her hands as Grace was to see it. “I won’t let you ruin everything.”

  “Everything?” Grace was incredulous. “So far he’s made you bleed, and he yells at you all the time, and he hit Ethan. That is what you don’t want me to ruin?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “You’re right. I don’t.” Grace tried to focus past the gun barrel, looking into Carla’s eyes, but her gaze kept going back to the shotgun. She had to be stupid to say these things to Carla. The woman blamed her for everything and wanted her dead. She’d been pretty clear about that. But what was Grace’s alternative? Stay and chat with Hess? “You keep saying he needs you. He loves you. Except he doesn’t. You wouldn’t have to try so hard to convince yourself if he did.”

  Still blinking, Carla looked away. She lowered the gun. Only an inch or two, but Grace was able to breathe a little better.

  “What do you know?” Carla finally said, emotion thick in her voice. “You’re just a kid.”

  “I don’t know anything. It just seems people you love shouldn’t hurt you like that.”

  “It’s different when you grow up. You’ll see.”

  “I’m not going to grow up, Carla. Not unless you quit pointing that gun at me and give me the car keys.” Grace tried to swallow, to moisten her throat. “Hess just wants to hurt us. You and Ethan and me. But we don’t have to let him. Don’t you see that?”

  Carla looked down at the shotgun in her hands, as if she’d just remembered it was there. She pointed the barrel at the floor.

  “None of this stuff has been your idea, Carla. I know you were trying to help him, but you never wanted this.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because you are the only mom Ethan has known. And he’s a sweet kid. He must have gotten that from somewhere.”

  Carla glanced at Ethan clinging to the backs of Grace’s legs.

  “He doesn’t deserve to be hurt.”

  “Ethan is his son.”

  “So?” Grace glanced back at the little boy. Fat teardrops still glistened in his eyes, but he’d stopped crying. Instead, he was watching Grace, trying to make sense of things he couldn’t possibly understand. “I didn’t even know my dad.”

  “You’re lucky.” Carla cradled her head in her hands. “Dads, foster dads, friends’ dads… you’re lucky.”

  Maybe that was it. Maybe Carla was so used to being hurt she assumed she deserved it. Or maybe it just felt normal. “Come with us. You and me and Ethan. We’ll get in the car and drive away.”

  “You don’t see it, but Dixon does need me.”

  “Does he see it?”

  “He will. He will.” Carla looked up, meeting Grace’s gaze. Tired. She looked tired. And sad. She reached into her pocket, pulled out the car keys, and held them out to Grace. “I’ll tell him you escaped.”

  Grace set down the knife, relieved to get rid of it, and took the keys. “You can’t stay here.”

  “I have to.”

  “He’ll kill you.”

  “No, he won’t.”

  Grace wanted to disagree once again, but she knew it was hopeless. If something inside Carla needed to stay with Hess, so be it. “I’m taking Ethan with me.”

  Carla stepped in front of the door, barring the way. “He belongs here. He belongs with his father.”

  “He belongs with people who love him.”

  “I love him.”

  “Then show it. Let me take him.”

  Carla shook her head. “If you are going, you’d better go now.”

  So that was it. Not only was Carla willing to die for her misguided love, she was willing to let Ethan die, too.

  Grace eyed the shotgun. If she was smart, she’d just leave. Alone she’d be quieter, faster. She had a better chance of getting away. She might come out of this alive.

  But she would have to live knowing she’d left an innocent toddler behind to face who knew what kinds of horror.

  “He’ll be back soon,” Carla said, the tone of her voice rising.

  “Okay. Okay. I’m going.” Grace released Ethan’s hand and stepped toward the door. And as Carla moved to the side to let her pass, Grace bunched her hand into a fist and slammed it as hard as she could right into the poor woman’s face.

  Pain cracked through Grace’s hand and shot up her arm. Her stomach gave a twist. A wail stuck in her throat.

  Carla stumbled backward and fell. Blood spurted from her nose. She cupped her hand over her face, blinked rapidly, then grasped the shotgun. “You little bitch…”

  Grace grabbed Ethan around the middle and shoved out the door. Her feet hit the mud, slid a little, but she didn’t go down. She focused on the police car, sprinted toward it.

  Carla slammed out of the motor home. “Bitch!”

  A boom sounded from behind. The squad car’s windows exploded, glass flying everywhere.

  No, no, no.

  Grace spun around. Skidding on mud, she dashed around the front of the Winnebago, still holding Ethan, and crashed into the dark woods.

  Behind her, Carla yelled. The frightened toddler’s wailing made her words impossible to understand. But Grace could guess.

  Carla was screaming for Hess.

  And that meant Hess would be coming.

  Kevin

  Kevin Burke had saved a lot of lives when he was with the U.S. Army. Then his role had been to identify and destroy unexploded ordnance and IEDs. Now he was the bomber. The one who would cause the destruction, the death.

  A man couldn’t be proud of that.

  He sat in the ancient fire rescue vehicle, overlooking the swollen river and the vacant golf course that hugged the bank. The cell phone was slick in his palm. His fingers felt cold as the river water itself.

  Paul had taken him in after the less-than-honorable discharge when he’d had no money, when he’d had no prospects. Paul had barely been able to pay his mortgage and take care of his wife and daughter, and yet he’d welcomed Kevin without a thought.

  The explosives had been Kevin’s idea. Heimbach knew some guys who would pay, and Kevin didn’t ask a single damn question. It was supposed to be a one-time thing. Easy. A pot of money to pay off Paul and give Kevin a new start. Neither one of them had considered that Heimbach was a dumb ass.

  The truck had made it easy to connect Paul, and Kevin thought prison time was inevitable for him, too. Then Paul refused to talk. Said he needed Kevin on the outside to take care of his girls. And Kevin had done his best. Taking odd jobs, piecing an income together.

  Heimbach, on the other hand, had threatened to give Kevin up. Even after his conviction, he liked to talk, to threaten. That Heimbach had ultimately kept his mouth shut had never made sense to Kevin… not until yesterday. When the idiot was first put away, he’d bragged that his cellie for a little while was none other than the infamous Dixon Hess.

  Kevin could imagine how it went.

  Hess was a man with plans and a man who collected ways to make those plans happen. Heimbach shut his mouth because Hess told him to. And as soon as Hess needed an explosives expert, he’d just called up his mental rolodex and decided to call on Kevin Burke. After all, Kevin ow
ed Hess his freedom, whether Kevin knew about the deal or not.

  And for insurance, Hess had threatened Kevin’s brother and his family.

  Kevin picked up the phone again. He’d punched in the digits earlier. Everything he’d need. All he had to do now was hit send, and the matching cell phone would detonate the ANFO he’d placed in the dam. Just a flick of the thumb, and it would all be done.

  “Excuse me, sir?” A woman with brown hair and a nice smile peered through the driver’s window.

  Kevin hadn’t seen her coming, hadn’t even heard her. He must be losing his edge.

  He glanced down at the phone, then set it aside on the center console. He’d get rid of her, then finish the job. She seemed like a nice woman. Pretty. It would be a shame to see her swept away by the first gush of water thundering from the breach.

  He hit the button on the armrest, and the window lowered automatically. “Something wrong?”

  “It’s embarrassing.” She glanced down at the pavement. “I got a flat tire. Now here I am in the rain, and I don’t know the first thing about changing it.”

  Great. On second thought, it would probably take more than a few seconds to get rid of her. Maybe he should just let the river wash her and her flat tire to the Mississippi. He doubted one more death would add additional burden to his soul. “Where is your car?”

  “Over by the eighth hole.”

  Burke stuck his head out the window. A small silver sedan sat in front of one of the two modest houses that neighbored the country club course.

  So why would this woman walk twice as far and go through a locked fence onto posted private property to ask for help? Why not knock on the door ten feet away?

  “I stopped by to say hi to some friends of mine, but they’re not home,” the woman volunteered, following his gaze back to the house.

  Maybe he was just being paranoid, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. Could Hess have sent her? Was she here to make sure he got the job done? Or was she trying to stop him, some kind of off-duty cop?

  “If you could help, I’d really owe you one. Anything. This rain is awfully cold.” To illustrate, she wrapped her arms around herself and gave a shiver.

  Burke was armed, a pistol at his waist. He was twice her size. If she was a threat to him, he could stop her. But the only thing that would ensure that Hess would leave Paul, Sharon, and Heidi alone was hitting the button on that phone. But once Kevin pressed send, neither he nor this woman were likely to survive the flood. He planned on being a lot farther away first.

  What to do, gun or phone?

  “Listen, I’m freezing. If you’re not going to help…”

  He took his hand from the steering wheel, scratched a spot on his chin, then rested his fingers on his pistol and unsnapped the holster.

  At the sound of the first snap, the woman moved so fast he couldn’t react. Her left hand came up, fingers plunged into his eyes, the heel of her hand smashed upward into his nose, pain exploded in his head.

  His hand slipped from his gun.

  Grasping, grasping.

  Her forearm pressed against his neck, pinning him against the headrest, cutting off his air.

  “I think you might have forgotten something at the dam. Say, a trailer full of explosives?”

  Kevin flailed his arms, unable to see, to speak, to breathe, to think. He was going to die. Right here. Before he finished the job. Before he made sure Paul, Sharon, and Heidi would be safe.

  “So how were you going to set off the ANFO, Kevin? Huh?”

  He thrashed, but she held him fast. His limbs grew heavy. His thoughts started to fade.

  She took her arm off his neck and opened the car door.

  He didn’t have time to react, to strike out, even to reach for his gun, and she was on top of him again, half straddling him, her forearm again pinning him down.

  “I asked you a question.” She held his throat in one hand and took his pistol with the other. She stuffed it in the back of her waistband, then grabbed the phone.

  He couldn’t let her take it. He lurched forward, throwing his entire body weight against her, trying to pin her to the steering wheel.

  She slipped out, then before he realized, she flipped him forward, out of the truck. He landed facedown on gravel.

  She pinned his arm behind his back, her knee drilling into his spine. She grabbed him by the hair, lifting his head, then slammed his face into the ground. “Every time I ask you a question and you don’t answer, you lose another tooth.”

  Kevin gasped, coughed, and gasped again, blood filling his mouth.

  “So I assume you meant to trigger the explosives with this phone.”

  “Yeah.” His voice came out in a weak croak.

  “And you’re the only one here?”

  If he told her he was alone, what then? She was no cop. Would she kill him? Shoot him with his own goddamn gun?

  Another yank on his scalp and slam into the gravel. “Two down. Thirty to go.”

  He spat, pain exploding through his head. “I’m the only one.”

  “Where’s Hess?”

  “I don’t know. I swear.”

  “You want me to believe Hess trusted you with the trigger?”

  “Trusted?”

  “You don’t have the trigger, you idiot,” she said. “Hess does.”

  She pushed up from his back and started to run, sprinting across the golf course, leaving him prone on the ground.

  Hess had set him up? Hess had planned for him to die in the flood all along?

  Kevin struggled to his knees, to his feet. He climbed back in the truck and groped for the keys, praying they were in the switch. His fingers closed on them just as the explosion started, the support points of the south side of the dam, just as he’d intended, just as he’d planned.

  The ignition whirred, trying to turn over.

  The old truck sputtered, stalled…

  And then the water came.

  Chapter

  Thirty-Five

  Carla

  By the time Dixon answered her calls and emerged from one of the paths in the forest, Carla was hoarse from screaming his name.

  He eyed the destroyed squad car, the light from the Winnebago sparkling on the shattered glass littering the ground. His expression grew dark. “What happened here?”

  “It was her fault.”

  “Carla…”

  “It was. She hit me, then tried to take Ethan.” Surely he could see the damage. Her head throbbed. She could feel blood, sticky on her lips and chin. She could just imagine how bad her eyes looked. The time Tammy Krause’s dad broke her nose, she’d had double shiners.

  Dixon’s ice-blue eyes drilled into her. “Where is Ethan?”

  “I told you, she—”

  “You said she tried to take him. Did you mean to say she succeeded?”

  “That’s why I was yelling for you. We need to get him back.”

  “How did she hit you, Carla?”

  “She just hauled off and punched me.”

  “With her hands cuffed behind her back?”

  Carla’s cheeks grew hot. She couldn’t tell Dixon what really happened. He wouldn’t understand. He would think she was trying to hurt him, when all she ever wanted was the best where he was concerned. “I don’t know how she got them off.”

  “That’s what you’re going to go with? Really?”

  “Maybe Ethan helped her.”

  “You’re blaming my son?”

  “No, no, of course not. She tricked him. Like she did before.”

  “That’s right. That fuckup wasn’t your fault, either, was it?”

  “No.”

  “Bad things happened? Mistakes were made?”

  Carla let out a shuddering breath. Maybe Dixon did understand after all. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. Not then, not now.”

  “Did you mean to shoot the car?”

  “The car?”

  “Or did Ethan shoot it? Or may
be it was that conniving Grace?”

  “I was trying to stop her.”

  “You were trying to fuck up everything you touched.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “It’s perfectly fair. You need to learn to take responsibility for your actions, Carla.”

  “But I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

  “You didn’t mean to let Grace go free?”

  Her cheeks were burning now. Maybe he was right. Maybe she should have thought this through a little more. “I wanted us to be a family. I wanted us to be happy. She was in the way. She was the one who kept screwing things up for us. I love you, Dixon.”

  “Then prove it.” His gaze dropped to the shotgun in her hands. “Show me how much you love me. Show me how sorry you are.”

  A tremble started deep in Carla’s chest. He couldn’t be saying what she thought he was. Could he? “I don’t understand.”

  “How far are you willing to go, Carla? How much do you really love me? Because I’m getting the sense that you aren’t really committed.”

  “I’ve done everything you asked. I’ve given up everything.”

  “Now, we both know that isn’t true.”

  The shotgun was cold and slick as ice in Carla’s hands. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold it. Any second it could slip out of her fingers and fall to the ground.

  But then he’d be angry. So angry.

  “Show me, Carla. Make me believe in you.”

  She turned the shotgun around and stared at the barrel.

  “Keep going. I need to see commitment if I’m going to believe.”

  Carla’s heart pounded. “You can believe in me.”

  “Can I? You haven’t shown me that.”

  She hadn’t shown him. And that was her failure, wasn’t it? She needed to show him now. Then everything would be okay. Then he would know how much she loved him, and everything would be perfect.

  Hands trembling, she raised the shotgun to her mouth and slipped the barrel between her lips. The steel clicked against her teeth. She tasted the acid grit of burned gunpowder.

  “That’s a good first step.”