by Jordan Dane
Baker slammed on his horn and yelled obscenities as if he had the right of way. Surprisingly cool under fire, Seth lurched the van forward when Baker tried to drive around him. It gave Jess time to catch up. She lunged for the handle and flung the passenger door open just as Baker hit the gas. She grabbed for anything to keep her upright but lost her battle. Her hand found an armrest, and with the other, she wrapped a wrist tight into a seat belt. She ran as fast as she could until her feet gave out.
When Baker picked up speed, she struggled against being pulled under the SUV. Her ankles and legs battered against the ground. The friction made them feel on fire. As her fingers strained with the weight of her body, Baker swerved. The door flew wide, pulling from her grip.
“Let go, bitch!” he screamed, his eyes maniacal and cruel.
In the background, Jess heard police sirens growing louder. Baker heard it too. A mean vicious evil swept across his face. He had to ditch her, fast.
He swung the SUV left at the next turn. Her body swept wide, whipping her back against the door. Her spine nearly snapped in two. Although she knew she couldn’t hang on much longer, letting go wasn’t an option until she got what she wanted. If she couldn’t get Baker, she’d take the next best thing. Her eyes fixed on the laptop lying on the floorboard.
“Ummphh.”
With a grunt, Jess shoved from the door handle and swung toward Baker. He reached for her and pressed a hand to her face, blocking her air. Blind, she grappled for the laptop, her body suspended only by the seat belt.
When she grasped the computer bag, she pulled at the strap and let gravity do the rest.
Baker screamed, “Nooo!”
He lunged for her, and the SUV veered right. She tried to break free of the seat belt, but Baker held her wrist, almost wrenching her shoulder out of its socket. Jess yanked the laptop to her chest, clinging to the hardware like a lifeline.
He tugged at her arm, pulling her inside. Without her footing, she had nothing to leverage against, and he gained an advantage in their battle of tug-a-war. Police sirens blared from everywhere now. Speeding onto a street with more traffic, Baker drove with one hand and yanked at her with the other. He craned his neck behind him looking for flashing lights. They were an accident waiting to happen.
In a minute he’d get her inside—and have his computer back. Damned if she’d let that happen!
Baker didn’t care what happened to her, she reasoned. He only wanted his property. And with the cops closing in, he wouldn’t risk slowing down. She’d have one chance. She had to make it count.
When he had her balanced on the edge of the passenger seat, he let go of her arm and wrestled for the computer she now clutched to her chest. It was the break she’d been waiting for.
She bit into Baker’s hand until he let go.
“Aarrgghh!” he shrieked. “Shit!”
He pulled back his hand in reflex, and she rolled toward the open door and fell out the moving vehicle, still gripping the laptop. Her hip hit the street, jarring her teeth and neck. Out of control, her body careened across the road, tumbling and scraping the pavement. Still, she held onto the computer, sheltering it from damage with her arms and chest. For that, she paid the price. It jabbed her ribs and elbows, sending shock waves of pain through her, but her Kevlar vest insulated her from more damage.
When Jess slammed into a parked car, stars burst behind her eyes and through her skull. She struggled to stay conscious, her eyes seeing only a blur. A police car sped past her—siren blaring and lights flashing—hot after Baker. The first cop led the pursuit, but she knew he’d radio the others to find her. Other cops weren’t far behind. Not much time before they caught up to her and she’d have to answer a lot of questions.
Jess shoved the computer into the shadows under the parked car that had stopped her perilous fall from the SUV. With great effort, she lifted herself off the pavement, every bone and inch of her skin aching. With a pronounced limp and chest heaving, she hobbled to the curb and stumbled down the block, away from the prize she’d stashed from the cops.
When she looked down to assess the damage, she only shook her head and kept walking. Her lungs burned. Everything hurt. Insult to injury, Baker had torn her T-shirt and she smelled like puke, but topping her WTF list, she’d lost her White Sox ball cap. Damn it! She wanted to collapse at the curb but had to put distance between her and Baker’s computer. She wanted a crack at it before the cops.
As a distraction from the pain and insult, Jess reached for her com set. The earpiece and microphone dangled from her shirt, out of place, but the unit itself had stayed put. A regular miracle that ranked right up there with how she’d survived another clash with Baker.
“Seth? You…there?”
“Where are you?” he cried, worry heavy in his voice. She heard the sound of his engine in the background. He was on the move.
“No time…to explain,” she gasped, out of breath. “I stashed…Baker’s laptop.”
She quickly told him where to look. “Cops are gonna…take me into custody soon. I’m not gonna make it hard for them…to find me, but don’t worry. Just get that computer. Start working on it. You got that?”
“Yeah, but Jess—”
“No buts, Seth. Just work your magic, genius. I’ll catch you later.”
With every muscle in agony and protesting, Jess took off her com set and ditched it under a withering shrub in front of a house up for sale. The ramshackle dump didn’t look like hot property, so her equipment was probably safe until she could pick it up later. She was in enough hot water. No need calling attention to Seth, her Boy Wonder and resident Einstein with a computer.
Besides, she had bigger problems.
A siren closed in. They’d be on her soon. Jess heard the crunch of gravel under a tire as the patrol car pulled to the curb. She kept walking, keeping her back to the cops. No sudden moves. Spiraling red and blue lights filled the dark sky with color. Party time. She slowed down, nice and easy, heard the cop’s voice pierce the fog building in her brain.
“Stop right there.” A stern voice. “Put your hands up. Now!”
“Okay, okay. I’m all about cooperation here.”
She did as she’d been told, stopped and raised her hands, still not turning around. She knew the cop had a gun on her. Protocol. She wouldn’t do anything to provoke a fight with the boys in blue.
“Get on your knees, hands behind your head. Do it!” Another voice. A cop and his partner.
Feeling beat up and raw, Jess didn’t have any more fight in her. Sinking to her knees, she yelled over her shoulder, “Officers? I’m a freelance Fugitive Recovery Agent. And I’ve got a permit to carry and a Colt Python under my shirt. I can explain everything.”
“Yeah, I bet you can…” one of them said. “Bounty hunter.”
The cop said the words like he’d just been forced to eat raw monkey brains on a cracker at gunpoint and couldn’t spit it out. She hated the term “bounty hunter.” Cable TV hadn’t done her profession any favors. And today her obsession with Baker hadn’t helped.
Ignoring the cop’s cynicism, she closed her eyes as they manhandled her to the sidewalk, yanking her hands behind her back to fit her into cuffs. And, of course, they took her gun. Back at the local cop shop, word would get around she’d been at it again. Her crusade against Lucas Baker would be under harsher scrutiny.
Jess appreciated the challenge of talking her way out of this, but knew she’d never fool one set of dark eyes. Detective Samantha Cooper had her number. And they went far enough back to make lying impossible. If Sam got called in at this hour, Jess knew her night had only just begun.
For a cop, the ringing of a phone in the middle of the night meant only one thing—bad news.
Samantha Cooper awoke as if waiting for it. Her eyes popped open on the first ring. No need to wait for cobwebs to clear. In the dark of her bedroom, she reached for the phone on her nightstand, her voice steady and calm.
“Cooper.” Already on
the job, she answered like an on-duty cop.
“Hey, Sam. Sorry to wake you. Miller here.”
She recognized the voice of the night desk sergeant, Jackson Miller, a top-notch cop cruising to retirement.
“Yeah, Sarge. What’s up?” Raised on one elbow, she flicked on the light and squinted as she grabbed the pen and paper she kept handy by the phone. “I’m not on tonight.”
“I know, but I got something you might want to hear. Something personal.” He paused only a moment before he continued. “It’s your friend Jessica Beckett.”
Sam’s heart lurched. She tossed the pen on her nightstand and slumped back onto the pillows, pulling the covers to her chest. Her stomach suddenly felt queasy, like the aftereffects of a roller coaster free falling from its pinnacle on full tilt. A part of her had known this day would come, when she’d get the call in the middle of the night telling her Jess had crossed one too many lines in the sand. Maybe her friend had been living on borrowed time from the day they’d met.
Fearing the worst, Sam couldn’t stop the flood of memories from invading her mind, dark childhood images that had changed her life forever. In truth, they were never far from the surface. They had marked her and stripped away what remained of her innocence. Scars buried deep. But in her mind it had been far worse for Jess, who dealt with the scars she carried on the outside, visible for all to see.
“Is she…?” Sam shut her eyes, catching the emotion in her voice. She cleared her throat. “What about her, Sarge?”
She waited for him to spit it out.
“She had another run-in with that scumbag Baker. And it ain’t going well, if you know what I mean.”
Sam breathed a sigh of relief, but shook her head. Baker served as the catalyst for a longtime crusade Jess had against sex peddlers in all shapes, sizes, and perversions. And her childhood friend had elevated pissing people off into an art form. Jess never knew when to quit. Most days, she admired her for it. No, the word “envied” described it best. That kind of attitude not only emblazoned the way she lived her life, but how she had survived what happened to her.
But in the solitude of her heart, Sam knew the truth. Jess had become her Achilles’ heel, the focus of a pervasive guilt that made it impossible to turn an apathetic shoulder to her friend. She knew it. And at times she suspected Jess used it against her—all for the greater good, of course.
“I’m coming in. Who’s got the lead on this?”
“You’re not gonna like it, Sam.”
She felt the start of a tension headache tighten at the base of her skull. No way to start the day, but sidestepping it was out of the question. She knew what Sergeant Miller was going to say before the words were out of his mouth.
“The chief has taken a personal interest.”
“This time of night?” With brow furrowed, she glanced toward her alarm clock. “It’s almost three.”
“He got called in on a high-profile murder that happened two hours ago. Some rapper I ain’t even heard of. A gang thing.” The sergeant lowered his voice. “Anyway, once the press left, he caught your friend’s case. Bad luck for her.”
Sam shut her eyes again and took a deep breath. She worked at Harrison Station, the Eleventh District. Last year, Harrison took top prize on the most murders in the Chicago metropolitan area. A dubious distinction her fellow detectives would have preferred to pass on. The chief’s personal concern over this statistic did not surprise her. The media would be all over this one, dredging up the station’s marginal record once again.
As a member of the metro police department, Sam worked in Vice Control under the Detective Division of the Bureau of Investigative Services. She’d been working her way toward Homicide for the past two years, hoping to catch a break into the more prestigious unit. She didn’t need this. Butting heads with the chief, her boss’s boss several times removed, was not her idea of a smart career move.
Within BIS, the chief headed up her entire division and had five deputy chiefs reporting to him. Plus, the man had shot up through the ranks like a regular golden boy, garnering the favor of the superintendent and many others during his meteoric rise.
How far would she go to get Jess off the hook this time?
Her personal connection to Jess was already known within the CPD, but no one knew the reasons behind her loyalty. Her pact with Jess had gone unspoken, a commitment born as much from her own burden of guilt as the love she felt for her headstrong friend.
But Sam’s career in law enforcement meant everything to her. It had become the focal point to her life, giving her a sense of worth. Would she be forced to choose between her life’s blood and the friend she loved like a sister?
Sam prayed it wouldn’t go that far.
“I’m coming in, Sarge.” She tossed back the covers and sat on the edge of her bed. “Be there in thirty.”
Talkeetna Alaska
River Park Campground
1:00 A.M. AKDT
On the northwest side of town, Nikki hid in the scarce shadows by the public restrooms of the campground, waiting for her ride. This time of year, the sun merely dipped below the horizon, leaving behind a wedge of time where the night sky was as dark as it ever got—a deep dusk that would eventually turn to morning.
The best time to make her escape.
Her duffel bag lay near her feet as she paced with hands in her jacket pockets. In the distance she smelled a campfire, and saw its glow through the trees. Soft voices and the lingering aroma of a late night dinner drifted toward her, making her stomach growl. She hadn’t counted on this. Who would be up and cooking this time of night? She rolled her eyes at the ridiculous question. Why should she care?
In no time she’d be gone. All she had to do was keep a low profile until then.
In the background the confluence of the Talkeetna and Susitna rivers surged against a steel gray sky. Normally, the white noise of the water would be soothing, but not tonight. The unsettling rush made her more anxious. Dressed in a royal blue windbreaker and jeans, she wished she wore another layer. It felt chillier by the river, and a brisk evening breeze had kicked up. Maybe nerves had more to do with her shivers. A silver Subaru Outback would pick her up, and the signal of flashing headlights had been prearranged.
She knew after tonight her life would change forever.
“Come on,” she whispered under her breath.
She’d done all her thinking. No regrets. She didn’t see the point in having second thoughts. Drained, she finally slouched onto the canvas bag, straddling it. She kept her eyes on the drive into the park. And to ward off the cold, she rubbed her thighs with her hands.
Nikki hated making her ride drive through town to pick her up, but the campground wouldn’t draw many locals this time of night. And since it was close to her home, she wouldn’t have to lug her duffel far. It made sense at the time she arranged it through her friend Ivana, but now she felt out of place…and alone.
In the fanny pack around her waist she carried the essentials she’d need for the trip. She’d been told to leave any credit cards and her cell phone behind, making it impossible for her mother or the law to trace her once she got where she was going.
She had followed her instructions to the letter, severing all links to the life she’d left behind.
This should have felt liberating, but it only reminded her of the deceitful way she skulked out of the house in the middle of the night. She left her mom a cryptic note, saying only that she had gone and would contact her when she could. Anything more would have been trouble.
But a strange mix of dread and relief came when headlights pierced the gray murkiness, flickering between the tall stand of evergreens. A car eased toward the park. At that distance and angle, Nikki couldn’t make out the color or make. She stood and craned her neck for a better look. About the time she poked her head up, a young man emerged from the trees to her right. He barged down the trail without a care in the world.
“Oh shit,” she gasped, nearly leaping out
of her skin. “You scared me.”
“Sorry. Didn’t know you had this section of the park staked as private property.” He grinned. “Just here to drain the lizard. You okay?”
Between the river noise and the distraction of the car, she hadn’t heard him coming down the path. The guy was tall and lean, with dark hair. He had a nice smile and kind, soulful eyes. She gauged him for late teens or early twenties. With her heart still racing, her judgment meter was way out of whack. Normally, he would have been her type, but she had more on her mind.
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?” Nikki sneaked a peek past him toward the headlights. She had to ditch him fast or all bets were off. “I had to use the restroom, that’s all.”
The kid chuckled. “Yeah, right. So why’d you lug the duffel with you? Planning on staying awhile?”
Nikki swallowed and blinked—caught in her lie. After a quick second, she collected her thoughts enough to glare at him with hands on hips, going on the offensive.
“Why don’t you go and take care of your…lizard.” She raised her chin in defiance. “I got better things to do than talk to you.”
Pretty lame, but it was all that sprang into her head. The guy smirked and walked by her with a shrug, more amused than pissed. But before he got near the men’s room entrance, he glanced over his shoulder and checked out the car driving up. Maybe in the shadows and the glare of the headlights, he wouldn’t see much. Or God willing, the whole incident wouldn’t register with him. He vanished into the darkness of the men’s room, but not before the damage had been done.
She had overreacted. Chalk it up to a bad case of nerves, but now someone had seen her and the car. Her only prayer was that the kid would be gone in the morning, before the search for her had begun.
As planned, the vehicle parked and flashed its lights twice. From this range and through the headlights, Nikki couldn’t see inside. Almost sick to her stomach, she reached down to pick up her duffel bag and hoisted the strap over a shoulder. She looked up the footpath and down, to make sure no one else saw, then ventured from the trees. She walked toward the car, gravel crunching underfoot. Even up close she still was unable to see the driver’s face. And no one got out. When she reached for the door, doubt kicked her heart into high gear and throbbed in her ears.
