by Jen Blood
My phone buzzed again. This time I didn’t put it on speaker, but Diggs leaned in to listen alongside me.
“What the hell happened—I was getting ready to go over there,” Kat said.
“Ignore that impulse,” I hissed, “no matter what happens. I think we’re running out of time, so let’s get back to what we were talking about before. Laurie and Nate… Maya, why do you think there was something between them?”
“You’re sure you’re all right?” Maya said.
“Not even close,” I said. “But that’s completely beside the point right now. Please…”
“Fine. As I said, Laurie came to the clinic for birth control. The last time I saw her, it actually seemed like she was doing better. Bruises and other signs of…abuse, were common with her—which is obviously cause for concern. This time, though, there were very few. She said she was seeing someone new—someone different from anyone she’d ever been with before.”
“How do you get Nate Simpson from that?” I asked.
“She talked about college—which I’d never heard her do before. She asked me what I thought about psychiatry; whether I thought it might be a good field for her. Then she said her boyfriend had been heavily medicated most of his life, and she wished she could help him… That he didn’t like what the medications did to him. And then, she asked some fairly specific questions about schizophrenia and schizo-effective disorder, which I believe are Nate’s diagnoses.”
“And you didn’t report this?” I asked.
“I had no real evidence, and Laurie’s eighteen. And Nate… Despite being in the residential home, he’s his own guardian. And to be honest, I had never heard her more…eloquent. More clearly concerned about someone else’s welfare.” She paused. “But if they killed Laurie’s father…”
“We don’t know that,” I said. “We don’t really know anything. Which brings us back to the beginning: what’s the target? If we can just figure out where Nate would head next… How surprised are we about Laurie’s father?”
“We’re not,” Kat said flatly. “She’d never say, but I’m sure Jake had been molesting her for years.” Which was certainly consistent with her behavior.
It seemed like we had everything we’d get from the dual doctors, so Diggs and I told them both to lay low and I hung up. Diggs looked at me, following the same line of logic we’d gotten tangled in on the phone.
“So if Nate killed him, he was targeting someone who hurt the woman he loves,” he said. “Or the girl, in this case. What did Nate say when you talked to him today?”
I thought back. “I don’t know—a lot. Nothing. He talked about how much he hates being defined by his illness. How he feels like he’s behind bars, locked out.” There are people like me everywhere. No one should be in a cage. I shook my head. “I don’t really know how any of what we talked about gets us to J.’s target.”
“Whatever’s happening, they’re going for maximum carnage,” Diggs said. “J. is planning something significant. Cameron has said as much.”
“What are the local towns where something could happen?” I said.
“The ones most likely as far as I’m concerned would be Littlehope, Friendship… Cushing, Warren, and Thomaston don’t technically fall within the coordinates given, but these are desperate times.”
“Warren,” I said. Nate’s words came to me again. There are people like me everywhere... People who need to pay for their sins, and some who never sinned at all who deserve to be set free. No one should be stuck in a cage.
Diggs got there the same time I did. “The State Prison.”
That was it—I was sure of it. I called Jack back. I’d barely gotten the information out before he decided I was on the right track, and hung up to get Monty and Sheriff Finnegan up to speed. Meanwhile, I called Cameron. He sounded tense, which wasn’t exactly a surprise. He sounded even more tense when I told him Jenny had just taken out Trent Willett.
When I mentioned that Kat was back in town, however, I thought he might have flatlined on the other end of the phone.
“Cameron?” I prompted.
“Where is she?” he demanded.
“She and—” I stopped, recalling the look he got whenever he mentioned my mother. “She’s at the clinic. I told her to stay low, keep out of the way.”
I heard him mutter something about impossible women under his breath.
“What’s the problem?” I said. “Jenny’s going after J., right? Kat doesn’t have anything to do with them.”
“Do you think Jenny has any idea where Katherine is right now?” Cameron asked. “Does she know your mother is in town?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Cameron, why would Jenny care? Kat doesn’t have anything to do with J.” I felt myself starting to panic. “Right?”
“You need to get to her,” Cameron said, without answering my question. “Call her. Talk to her. Tell her to stay out of sight until this is over. Both you and her need to stay away from Jenny.”
I started to question him again, but he interrupted me.
“I have to go. But damn it, listen to me: get Katherine somewhere safe. Jenny will look at the clinic—trust me, if she knows your mother is in town, then she’s looking for her. That’s one of the places she’ll go.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “We’ll get to her. Call me if you hear anything, please.”
“I will.” There was a pause on the line. “Tell your mother that I said she’s a pain in the ass…and to please be careful. I’ll speak with you soon.”
As soon as I was off the phone, I went for my jacket. “We need to get to them,” I said.
Diggs stood in front of the door. “Not on your life. She’s gunning for you too—you heard Cameron. Call Kat. Tell her what he told you, and let her do the math. She can find a hiding spot; there’s no reason you need to hold her hand.”
“So I’m just supposed to sit here, locked in this friggin’ box until the whole thing blows over?”
“Call Kat,” Diggs said. His arms were crossed in front of his chest, his jaw set. I made the call.
Before it went through, I heard the door open out front. This time, it was unmistakable.
“Get the computer,” Diggs whispered. A light came on in the hallway, a strip of yellow spilling under the storeroom door. I went over and turned off the monitor. We were plunged into darkness. I waved my arms in front of me, using the scant light from the hall to guide me back to Diggs. He took my hand and leaned in to whisper in my ear. Footsteps—heavy, definitely someone in thick boots—echoed in the hallway.
“It’s probably someone who works at the paper,” he said. I nodded, but didn’t speak.
The footsteps paused farther up the hall. Then, there was a loud crack that it took a second for me to identify. A second followed.
A boot, hitting the door. It slammed open.
“Aiiiii-rin,” Jenny sang out. “Time to go, bitch.”
I texted a desperate message to Jack. Boots echoed in the hallway once more. Two more cracks, her steel-toed foot against another wooden door.
“The back door,” I whispered to Diggs.
“Go,” he said.
The light from my phone provided just enough illumination to ensure I didn’t trip over my own feet and give us away. I reached the far wall. Stacks of boxed files barred our only other exit. Diggs’ hand settled at the small of my back. I could hear Jenny getting closer.
“Wait,” he whispered.
He drew his Glock and got in front of me.
“Don’t be an idiot,” I hissed. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Sssh,” he whispered back.
The footsteps stopped just outside the door. My heart pounded, my palms slick with sweat. I rubbed them on my jeans and held my breath.
Her boot hit the door. It cracked, but held. Diggs and I were in the farthest corner of the room, Diggs in front of me, gun drawn—pointed directly at the door.
She kicked it again.
Again, it held.
One more, though, and I knew it wouldn’t.
A split second passed.
And then, a phone rang.
I nearly passed out, until I realized it didn’t belong to Diggs or me.
“What?” Jenny answered.
Her footsteps faded as she moved away from the door. Diggs and I made for the back door, silently moving boxes out of the way while I listened to Jenny’s conversation in the hallway.
“I’m not negotiating this,” she said. “We can’t do this without that bitch. You knew this when we started—you agreed. If we’re doing this, Erin needs to be on the island with us. Whatever it takes.”
I grabbed another box, my muscles tensed from the effort of trying to be quiet.
“Willett would have ruined this,” Jenny continued. “You know that. We couldn’t risk it, not now. When did you get so soft, Daddy? When you gunned down my mother, I don’t remember you showing so much mercy.”
Diggs took the box from me. I reached for another. I didn’t get a good grip, though—in the process of setting it back down, it slipped from my hand. The sound that it made when it landed couldn’t possibly have been loud; it fell no more than an inch to the ground. It felt as deafening as the gunshot I was certain would follow.
Jenny paused, for just an instant. Diggs and I both froze.
Then:
“Explain to me how we’re supposed to do this without Erin?” she asked. “We have a trap, but you know we need more for bait than that goddamn box.”
Incredibly, her voice was getting more distant.
“Fine. You want to do it this way, I’ll try it,” I heard her say. “I’ll get to the island as fast as I can.”
I heard the door to the outside open, then clamber closed. My knees were shaking. Diggs’ hand had found my arm at some point, though I couldn’t remember when. He squeezed lightly.
“Holy shit,” he whispered.
“My thoughts exactly.”
We waited in the dark for ten minutes. Twenty. Half an hour. There wasn’t another sound in the hallway.
Jack finally texted back.
What’s happening? RU OK?
I texted back, hands still shaking. Close call. Where RU? Diggs would be appalled that I’d resorted to text-speak, but I figured if any situation excused the degradation of the English language, this would be it.
Prison w/ sheriff. Meet us? Finnegan won’t turn you in but we need to talk.
“What do you think?” I asked Diggs, showing him the text. He frowned, but eventually nodded.
“We’re probably safer with them than anywhere else. We’ll need a ride, though.”
“Kat’s car,” I said. Which would conveniently give me a chance to check in and make sure Jenny hadn’t eviscerated my mother on her way out to the island.
I texted Jack back and told him we were on our way. Diggs and I straightened from the awkward crouch we’d been frozen in.
“Should we take the back door?” I asked.
There were still about ten boxes blocking the way. Diggs shook his head. “You heard her: Cameron told her to move along.”
“What the hell do you think they were talking about?”
Diggs went to the door. He still had his gun drawn, tension simmering. “I don’t know. But it sounds like Cameron’s been in on the plan from the start – ”
“You think he and Jenny worked together to kill the J. operatives?” I asked.
“That’s my guess. Hang on a second, okay?” He pushed the door open, but remained inside the room with me. I waited for gunfire to erupt.
Nothing.
Diggs stuck his head out the door. No one shot it off. He looked back and forth. Jenny didn’t appear from the recesses of the hallway.
“Okay,” he whispered, still scanning the empty hallway. “Let’s go. Quickly.”
We stepped into the hallway together, staying close to the wall. There were three other doors in the hallway—all of them open. I saw a boot print on one, the wood cracked. The front door was twenty feet down the cavernous corridor. It seemed like miles. I took the first step.
That was when I saw the shadow in the office directly across the hall from us. Diggs saw it at the same time.
“Go back!” Diggs shouted. He grabbed me, spun me around, pushed me forward. I flinched as a gunshot sounded. It took me a second before I realized Diggs was the one who had fired. Jenny cried out. A second gunshot went off. Diggs’ hand returned to my back, pushing me through the door and back into the safety of the storeroom.
He slammed the door shut.
“I think I got her,” he said, the words clipped, his breathing ragged.
“It sounded like it,” I agreed.
We both moved deeper into the room, toward the backdoor. There was no time to waste on consultation—without a word, we flung boxes aside. Jenny’s footsteps approached again. I could almost feel her fury when she called to us.
“You think you’re getting away?” she shouted. “Did you hear that phone call? Daddy Dearest, begging for your life yet again? Like you’re his flesh and blood, when we both know that’s not true. We know your dad was never a quarter of the man my father is. I saw his fingers digging into your side.”
I shut out her words and stayed focused. The last box was on the floor. Diggs leaned down and grabbed it. He stumbled on the way back up.
“Sol—” he said. He dropped the box.
Jenny’s boot landed at the center of the door. I shoved the box out of the way. Reached for the door. Diggs leaned against the wall.
“What are you doing?” I said. “Go.”
He nodded, but the way he moved—suddenly sluggish, heavy—told me that something was wrong. I opened the double doors. Wind and freezing snow gusted in, so cold it felt like I’d been plunged into a world of ice water. I pushed Diggs forward and grabbed a lug wrench that had been standing by the exit. I closed the doors again, then shoved the wrench through the handles. I didn’t care how hard Jenny kicked, she wasn’t getting out this way. Diggs stumbled again when we were outside. He fell to his knees. Lit by a world of blinding white snow, I finally saw why:
There was a hole in the front of his parka—in the upper chest. Blood blossomed in a wide, perfect circle. He looked at me, his eyes round. I read panic there, unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
“Hang on,” I said, blinking back tears and snow and terror. “You’ll be all right.” I couldn’t think. “I’ll make sure you’re all right.”
Behind us, I could hear Jenny getting closer.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It was ten-thirty when Jack saw the text from Erin. Monty had joined him when they realized Jenny had switched cars and wasn’t likely to come near Edie’s again that night. Now, he and Monty left were in Jack’s Honda Civic, idling outside the prison while they waited for the sheriff to confer with the warden inside. The storm and the location had ensured that cell service was spotty up to that point. By the time he’d learned that Erin and Diggs were fine, a fresh wave of anxiety had run up and over him. Sometimes, he thought Erin might kill him sooner than J. ever did.
“They’re all right?” Monty asked, equally concerned.
“For now,” Jack said. “They’re on their way here. I’ll feel better if I can keep them in sight.”
Monty grunted, which Jack took as an exhausted assent.
The sheriff emerged from the prison, clearly harried and out of patience. Not that Jack could blame him.
“They’re on lockdown—no one goes in or out. Same with the prison farm down the road—I gave everyone the word. They’ve got extra personnel coming in, just in case. But the bottom line is, even if Nate Simpson is crazy enough to try it, there’s no way in hell he’ll get through here.”
Jack looked up as a pair of headlights swung up the snowy drive toward the prison security gate. The sheriff’s hand went to the gun at his belt.
“What the hell?” Monty said, frowning in the direction of the vehicle. “Hold your fire, sheriff. Goddamn it.
”
He left them without explanation, jogging toward the car. Jack ran with him, squinting against the blowing ice and snow. “Who is it?”
Monty didn’t have to answer, though—Jack saw the Flint K-9 on the side of the snowy vehicle. A moment later, Jamie stuck her blond head out the window.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Jack and Monty asked at the same time.
She smiled. “I don’t like running from a fight.”
Moments later, they were assembled together with the sheriff as he resumed his debriefing, reiterating his belief that there was no way anyone could breach the prison.
“What if he had explosives of some kind, in a vehicle?” Jack pressed. “Could he drive something into the side of either this facility or the prison farm next door?”
Finnegan looked uneasy for a moment. “Not unless he’s got some kind of big rig—that’s the only way he could get through the front security gate. And there’s no way in hell he’s driving something like that in a storm like this.”
“If he was, though,” Jack pressed, “where would he get something like that? Is there somewhere local where they keep big rigs?”
“There are usually at least a couple of rigs parked at the Littlehope Trap Co.,” Finnegan said. “But—”
“The Littlehope Lobster Trap Company?” Jamie said. Finnegan nodded. “The place owned by Jake Smith?”
The sheriff blanched. “I’ll make the call.”
◊◊◊◊◊
Wind buffeted Jamie’s SUV, snow blowing hard enough to make visibility nearly impossible. Jack gripped the dashboard as Jamie expertly navigated over unplowed roads and patches of bare ice.
“You know where we’re going?” he asked. The sheriff was sending someone out, but staff was spread thin and his priority was making sure that if, on the off chance that Nate actually got a truck all the way to the prison, he had the personnel on hand on that end to deal with it.
