Desolation Lake

by Kane, Remington

  DESOLATION LAKE

  By

  REMINGTON KANE

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  DESOLATION LAKE

  First edition. July 31, 2015.

  Copyright © 2015 Remington Kane.

  Written by Remington Kane.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  LEARN ABOUT NEW RELEASES FROM | REMINGTON KANE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  A PLEA

  ALSO BY REMINGTON KANE

  LEARN ABOUT NEW RELEASES FROM | REMINGTON KANE

  TO CONTACT:

  Further Reading: Inevitable I

  This book is dedicated to my Beta Readers.

  Thank you ladies and gentlemen!

  LEARN ABOUT NEW RELEASES FROM

  REMINGTON KANE

  http://www.remingtonkane.com/contact.html

  CHAPTER 1

  Boston, Massachusetts, Thursday, October 8, 2:55 p.m.

  Brady Ross was smiling beneath the ski mask he wore.

  He strode out into the road and opened fire with an Atchisson assault shotgun, shredding the front tire on the armored car, as on the left side of the vehicle, his partner Jake was doing the same.

  The tires were equipped with plastic liners designed to help the vehicle’s occupants to continue driving even if the tires were flattened, but the liners were also destroyed by the shotguns’ blasts and so the truck was essentially riding on its rims.

  As the armored car, which was actually more of a truck, lumbered past them, Brady and Jake rolled out of the way and into a ditch at the side of the road, as a third man, Craig, set off the charge that was hidden inside a bright orange traffic cone.

  The directional blast was massive and its force slammed into the side of the armored car, and for a second, the truck continued driving along on only two wheels.

  Beneath the mask, Brady grimaced, as it looked as though their plan was about to fail, but then the truck tipped too far, fell onto its side and scraped along the roadway while leaving sparks in its wake.

  Craig had been following the vehicle on foot after the blast went off and his speed placed him just yards south from where the armored car finally skidded to a stop.

  Before the guards inside the truck could regain their wits, Craig attached a second, but smaller, charge magnetically to the rear doors, before moving to safety by hugging the roof of the vehicle, which had come to rest upon its left side.

  The charge tore apart the lock on the doors and the guards inside stumbled out with their guns up and ready.

  Brady and Jake rose out of the drainage ditch and showed themselves, drawing the guards’ attention forward, and that’s when Craig fired at the men from behind with a shotgun.

  Both guards went down, but were still alive, because Craig had been using bean bag rounds.

  He fired at each of them once more as he drew closer, and that’s when the driver of the armored car flung open the door of the cab, pulled himself up, and took aim at Craig.

  Brady shot the man, and he too was using bean bag rounds, but the shot hit the guard in the right temple and he dropped like a stone back into the flipped over cab.

  While they normally held money, this armored car was transferring valuable works of art from one museum to another.

  Inside the vehicle, there were thirty rectangular containers. They were blue, resembled briefcases, and were several different sizes. The cases had handles and there were alphanumeric codes printed on their sides.

  As Jake placed plastic restraints on the guards from the back of the truck, Craig, who had memorized the specific codes, identified and gathered up two large cases.

  The cases contained one valuable painting each, and combined, they were worth a dozen times more than all the artwork left behind.

  While that was happening, Brady checked on the guard inside the cab.

  “Hey in there, let me see your hands!”

  There was no answer.

  Brady moved around to look through the bulletproof glass of the windshield and felt sickened by what he saw.

  The guard was dead. The man’s sightless eyes were staring back at Brady in an unblinking gaze, and there was a trickle of blood coming from the right ear, near the temple struck by the bean bag.

  Bean bag rounds were supposed to be non-lethal, but they still hit their targets with massive force, and the unlucky guard must have been struck just right.

  Brady stared at the guard with regret. He had killed before, but this job was supposed to go smoothly and without anyone getting hurt. No one needed to get hurt on a job, and if anyone did, it meant even more trouble from the law.

  A van approached at a high rate of speed and broke Brady from his trance. He pulled his eyes from the dead guard and saw Mitch, the crew’s leader, pull up in the getaway vehicle, a stolen van with the name and logo of a power company displayed on its sides.

  They had used one of their favorite tricks for this heist, by having Mitch follow the armored car in the van until it turned off the highway and onto a less traveled road.

  Then, Mitch blocked the road entrance with the van and immediately jumped out. Afterwards, he placed plastic sawhorses with signs attached warning that high voltage wires were down across the roadway.

  Before Mitch did his part, Craig had already blocked the other end of the road in a similar fashion, before getting into position to set off the blast that would tip over the truck, and by the time Mitch finished his work and joined them, the guards were handled and the paintings were in their possession.

  Mitch wasn’t wearing a ski mask, but wore a wig and sunglasses instead.

  Mitch had been a professional thief for most of his sixty-three years and when he saw the guard laying inside the cab, he spoke softly to Brady.

  “It happens, kid, just bad luck.”

  Brady took a seat beside Mitch and removed the mask he wore, revealing a handsome face beneath dark wavy hair. Seconds later, Craig and Jake climbed into the back of the van, and each of them held one of the cases that contained a painting.

  Mitch was driving away from the scene, as behind them, people emerged from their homes to see what had caused all the noise.

  However, the houses along the two-lane road sat far back from the roadway, and they would have to walk out to the street if they wanted answers, and when one of them did so, the police would follow, if they weren’t already on their way to the scene.

  Mitch drove over the plastic barricades at the other end of the road and entered an on ramp for the highway.

  From the moment they shredded the tires until the time they re
ached the highway, the entire robbery took less than three minutes and would earn them each over thirty thousand dollars.

  However, planning the job cost them two months’ time and thousands to set-up, still, the time and expense was nothing compared to what the dead guard paid, a man who was a retired Boston cop, and his death would make Brady and his friends a high priority target.

  CHAPTER 2

  Burlington, Vermont

  Chief of Police Clay Richards gazed down at his wife’s gaunt face and hairless scalp and was glad that she had finally drifted off to sleep, for it was only in sleep where she truly found any relief from the pain.

  Outside the hospital window, the first snow of autumn was drifting down, but inside Clay’s heart, it had been winter ever since he first learned about the cancer.

  A gentle hand touched him on the shoulder and Clay turned to see the nurse, Mary Carson, looking up at him with a kind smile on her pretty face.

  “You look like you could use a cup of coffee, hmm?”

  Clay agreed and then followed her out of the room, but not before looking back at his wife.

  They walked to the elevators, then waited for one of the notoriously slow metal beasts to appear and open its mouth to receive them.

  Clay Richards was six-four and rangy, with good looks and dark brown hair worn short. He was thirty and had been Chief of the neighboring town of Destination, Vermont for two years, having run unopposed when the former Chief retired.

  Clay was from Oklahoma, but he met his wife while going to school in Vermont on a basketball scholarship, and settled down in the state after graduating.

  Mary Carson was a slim blonde with green eyes and a freckled face that exuded warmth and caring. After initially visiting the town of Destination to care for an ailing great-aunt, Mary decided to move there from Boston when the old woman bequeathed her large home to her, and later she found work in nearby Burlington.

  Once they were settled at a table in the cafeteria, Clay smiled across at Mary.

  “I want to thank you once again for caring for my wife. Patty tells me that you take very good care of her.”

  “You’re welcome, but there’s really no need to thank me, after all, it is my job.”

  “Nursing is not just a job to you; it’s more like a calling. I’ve seen you with my Patty and I’ve seen you with the other patients too, you give yourself to them and comfort them. It’s a rare gift to be able to bring comfort, but it’s a gift you have.”

  Mary gave a slight shrug.

  “All I’ve ever wanted to do is be a nurse... and also a mother.”

  “Do you have any children, Mary?”

  “No, Chief.”

  Clay looked over at Mary and thought that she must be somewhere in her mid-twenties.

  “Well, you’ve plenty of time,”

  “Speaking of children, how is your boy doing?”

  “Bobby... it’s been hard on him not having his mother around.”

  “I can imagine. How old is he, seven?”

  “He just turned six, but he’s tall for his age.”

  Mary grinned.

  “He must take after his father.”

  Clay grinned back at her, but then Mary saw a haunted look enter his eyes and knew that he was worrying about his wife again. She asked him a question to take his mind off the horror of his wife’s condition.

  “Um, Chief, I’m a history buff and I’m always curious about how certain places got their names and nicknames, such as Destination Lake, why do some of the locals refer to it as Desolation Lake? Also, I finally took a drive up to the lake the other day and noticed two things. One, it wasn’t desolate at all up there, and two... there’s no lake.”

  Clay laughed and Mary delighted at the sound.

  “It is real pretty up by the lake, but you’re right, there’s no water, yet.”

  “Yet? Does that mean that there will be water soon?”

  “Yeah, from what I hear a fella from New York made a deal with the town to develop the lake. They tell me that we’ll be swarming with tourists someday, but first they have to make a lake.”

  “How do you make a lake?”

  “It’s not too hard, they just have to tap into the natural springs that border that land, and it was done once before back in the twenties.”

  “So there was a lake at one time?”

  “Absolutely, the problem was, they built it atop the old copper mines without sealing them first.”

  Mary’s hand went to her mouth.

  “Oh no, so you mean the water all just drained out of the lake?”

  “That it did, it took months, and the fella that owned the property back then went broke trying to find the leak. See, the mines were no problem, they would fill with water, but one of them had a sinkhole and that’s where all the water went. In the end, he was destitute and sold the land to the town for near nothing. After that, folks started calling the area Desolation Lake.”

  Mary smiled at Clay, thinking how much she loved hearing him talk. He was a young man, but his use of the words “fella” and “folks” made him seem charming and old school.

  “So what’s different this time? Won’t the water just leak out again?”

  “Nope, there’s a type of sophisticated sonar equipment they used to locate the sinkhole. It’s been sealed tight. I actually went down there with the men last summer and you should see all the tunnels, and some of them still lead up to the surface, but of course, all the entrances have been blocked off for years.”

  “Wow, and I guess the lake will do wonders for property rights too, I’m glad I held on to my aunt’s house.”

  “You say you’re a history buff,” Clay said. “I’m one too, American history mostly, and especially anything having to do with the Civil War.”

  Mary’s eyes lit up.

  “Oh my God, I’m a Civil War junkie too. My parents took my brother and me to Gettysburg when we were kids and I was blown away by the reenactment. I’ve always wanted to go back, but I haven’t gotten around to it.”

  “I’ve never been there, but I’ve always wanted to go.”

  They smiled at each other, but then Mary’s watch emitted a beep, telling her that it was time to end her break. She stood up.

  “I have to get back on the floor.”

  Clay stood too.

  “I’ll go see my boy, but I’ll be back later, and Mary?”

  “Yes, Chief?”

  “Thank you, I know you were trying to take my mind off things and you did, just for a little while.”

  “I know it’s hard to see her like that and I can tell you two are in love.”

  Clay nodded, as his throat felt too constricted to talk. But after taking a deep breath, he spoke.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do without Patty and I don’t know what my son is going to do without a mother.”

  Mary reached over and gave his hand a squeeze.

  “One day at a time, Chief, you know?”

  “Yeah and that’s how they come to us anyway, isn’t it.”

  “I’ll check on Patty as soon as I return to the floor.”

  “Thank you, and Mary, please call me Clay, all my friends do.”

  Mary smiled.

  “Say hello to your son for me, Clay.”

  “I’ll do that and I’ll see you around.”

  Outside the cafeteria, Mary turned left to head for the elevators, and as Clay watched her walk away, he thought that she would make some man a damn fine wife someday. He then headed back into town to be with his son.

  CHAPTER 3

  Back in Boston, Brady and his crew entered a construction site where their company, Atlas Construction, was in the process of building a shopping center.

  The crews had all left for the day, while they were off pulling the robbery of the armored car, and so they had the job site to themselves.

  The ski masks and the guns had been stashed inside a hidden compartment of a company pickup truck, and Brady, Jake, Craig, and Mit
ch climbed the metal steps of a job trailer and entered. Jake and Craig were carrying the cases containing the paintings, and had wrapped them up in plain white sheets.

  Atlas Construction was founded by Mitch over thirty years earlier as a cover for his illegal activities.

  The son of a carpenter, Mitch had done a fine job on several projects and the work began flowing his way. When he wasn’t pulling heists, he had been growing the company, and now it routinely handled large projects as a general contractor.

  The legitimate business was used to launder money and was a good cover, and over the last few years, its profit has rivaled the proceeds from the heists.

  Brady, Jake, and Craig were all partners in the business as well, and each earned enough from it to live on. However, the construction business bored them, and they all craved the rush that came from pulling heists.

  Jake placed one of his massive hands on Brady’s shoulder and gave it an affectionate squeeze.

  “Don’t feel too bad about what happened to that guard, shit happens, you know?”

  Brady nodded up at his blond friend, who at six-four, stood nearly five inches taller than Brady did.

  Craig, who had dark hair graying at the temples, reiterated what Jake had said and Brady thanked them both and told them that he would be okay.

  At thirty-one, Brady was the youngest of the gang, with Jake and Craig in their forties. The older men were both married and fathers, while Mitch, who was sixty-three, had just lost his wife of over forty years.

  The four men and their wives were more of a family than a group of cohorts, and they had seen each other through a lot over the years.

  Once the trailer door was locked and the blinds closed, Mitch walked to the rear of the construction trailer and slid the desk aside, picked up a piece of ratty carpet and revealed a compartment set in the floor.

  After sliding aside a panel, Mitch input a five-digit code and the door on the compartment clicked and popped open an inch.

  Jake walked over with the blue cases that contained the paintings and lowered them down inside.

  A minute later, the desk was back in place and the four men sat around it as they drank beer.