by Jeff Carson
Margaret finally made eye contact with him and then handed him the receiver.
“What’s going on? Where are you?” Wolf asked.
“You have to go with Margaret. I’ll meet you guys.”
“You’re meeting us? Where?”
“Margaret knows. You have to move, now. They’re going to see you’re gone from your house and they’re going to throw up containment road blocks.”
Wolf shook his head. “I don’t care. I need to stay here. Here’s where we’ll get answers.”
“You have to leave, because I have the answers. So get your ass moving and get in Margaret’s car. Now.”
The line went dead.
Wolf exhaled and gave her the phone.
“What?” Margaret asked, putting the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
“I guess I’m going with you.”
Margaret grabbed her keychain off the desk and walked.
Wolf eyed the empty room. The computers on the other desks were running, screensavers bouncing across the screen. There was an email on the nearest screen, abandoned in mid-creation.
“I sent them all away.” She walked to the door and pulled it open.
The sleigh bells snapped Wolf into action. He walked fast outside and she jogged out to her SUV.
Engine howling already, Wolf climbed into the passenger seat and they were backed out of the parking spot before Wolf got his seatbelt on.
“Shit, duck.”
Wolf saw what she meant, but it was too late.
Tom Rachette stood on the corner, staring wide-eyed as Margaret rolled through the stop sign and turned north on Main Street.
“Get down.”
Wolf ignored her, locking eyes with Rachette.
Dressed in plain clothes, Rachette held a coffee in one hand and stood rigid, his eyes unblinking.
Wolf twisted in his seat and kept staring, and Rachette held his locked gaze with his. As Rachette’s form receded behind them, Wolf lifted a hand and saw Rachette lift his chin, turn, and walk the opposite way.
“Cops, cops, get down.”
Margaret slowed to the side of the road as a line of screaming and flashing Sluice-Byron SD vehicles flew past.
Wolf never saw them go by, because he was curled on the passenger side floorboard.
Chapter 10
Patterson took another deep breath and steeled herself for the inevitable sight that was to confront her.
As they drove up the inclined driveway, through the bullhorn gate of Wolf’s ranch property, she felt a tear well up and blinked it away. Wolf was hands down the best man she’d ever known. Someone was doing this to him and everyone was taking it hook, line, and sinker.
The scene was mayhem: unmarked Fords flashing, men and women pouring out of the SBSD vehicles, their turrets flashing blue and red through the haze.
Lancaster pulled into the grass and parked.
He got out and marched double-time down the driveway and she took her time following, in no hurry to see such a disturbing sight as David Wolf being arrested for murder.
She passed Wilson and nodded.
“You hear?”
She stopped. “Hear what?”
“They found the gun.” He nodded toward the barn and smiled. “But not him.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yep.”
“What did you say, Sergeant?” Lancaster’s deep voice boomed.
It was always startling to hear the sound of Lancaster’s voice, because the man used it so little. And at this volume? Patterson could hardly remember the man enunciating so clearly in the last few weeks she’d been partnered with him.
Lancaster’s beady eyes narrowed to slits, his tiny mouth puckered. “He escaped?”
Wilson shrugged. “That’s the news.”
Lancaster turned and jogged toward the front of the house and this time Patterson ran to catch up.
A group of suited agents gathered in front of the covered carport, staring at another agent some distance away as he held up a plastic bag with a pistol inside.
The barn doors were wide open, and that Assistant Special Agent In Charge that had interrogated her and his big-ass sidekick were conferring with one another. The barn seemed to be off limits to everyone save two white-clad agents with cameras inside taking pictures.
Upon closer inspection, Patterson saw that Agent Frye was studying the ground intently, and his sidekick—Cumberland, that was his name—was watching his boss.
Frye followed a line on the ground and looked up at Patterson. No, past her.
He walked fast, keeping his eyes on the ground, and the crowd suddenly went quiet, taking notice.
Marching fast past Patterson and Lancaster, he snapped his fingers. “Buntham and Vincent!”
“Yes, sir,” an FBI agent answered quickly.
Agent Frye continued walking and everyone followed, including Patterson, eager to keep within earshot.
“I’m looking at Mr. Wolf’s footprints here, walking off the property. The scrape marks on the ground inside the barn indicate he was carrying something heavy.”
“Yes, sir,” one of the agents, either Buntham or Vincent, said.
“Ah. Here.” Agent Frye paused underneath the head gate wooden arch of Wolf’s property and pointed at the ground. A conga-line of agents and sheriff’s deputies stopped along with him.
Frye looked up at the agent he’d been speaking to and the agent swallowed. Though a man of slight build and under-average height, ASAC Frye was clearly intimidating to his agents.
“A boat.” Frye exhaled and walked down the hill, across the dirt road, and stopped at the embankment overlooking the river. “Did you happen to see him as he passed you in his boat, Agent Buntham?”
Buntham stared at the water with open mouth.
“Buntham!”
“Yes, sir. We did. We thought it was a fisherman. Just a … boatist.”
“A boatist?”
Buntham lowered his chin.
“I want a roadblock on north and southbound highway 734, and a bird in the air checking the river for our boatist, and then checking any east-west county roads.” He locked eyes with Patterson.
Patterson stepped back, unprepared for the intensity and focus of the man’s gaze.
“Deputy Patterson.”
“Yes, sir?”
“I want to speak with you. Everyone move!”
Another agent raised his voice and started giving orders, and the crowd dispersed fast.
As Frye stepped close a shadow passed over Patterson’s face. Lancaster stood right next to her.
“What did you and Wolf talk about?”
“What? When?”
“Yesterday. When you were here.”
Patterson tried to figure out how he would have known.
“Answer the question.”
“Not … he … we went for a walk and he showed me your surveillance teams.”
Frye’s face soured.
“And I don’t know. He hasn’t been back into work for months. He’s no longer sheriff, he’s healing, he’s out of the loop. We meet every week or so to go over the news.”
“What kind of news?”
Patterson glanced up at Lancaster. His dead-eyed stare never wavered.
“News—”
“I want the actual news, deputy. If you tell me the news by using the word news again I’m going to toss you in this river.”
She took a deep breath. I’d like to see you try. “He was concerned about the sudden increase in surveillance. He wanted to know what had changed. I told him the FBI had been talking with me and deputy Rachette and Baine in the last few weeks, but he wanted to know why you had three teams watching him.
“I think he was getting antsy about his state of being, and was frustrated with the current investigation into the death of his ex-wife, and how he and his deputies were being implicated.”
Frye nodded with a humorless smile.
She lifted her chin.
“Sir
,” Lancaster said, “we’d like to help in any way. And as soon as possible.”
Frye looked up at Lancaster. “Yes, Undersheriff. Thank you. Why don’t you and deputy Patterson help with the southern roadblock.”
“Yes, sir.” Lancaster nodded and twisted on his heels.
Patterson stayed where she was.
Frye watched Lancaster step away and then leaned into Patterson. “Stay available, deputy.”
Patterson frowned. “Yes sir.”
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
Frye marched away after Lancaster, leaving her alone overlooking the river.
Flowing high on its banks, the gurgling Chautauqua sparkled in the warming sun.
She smiled to herself and jogged after them.
Chapter 11
“What the hell were you doing? He saw you.”
Wolf cracked an eyelid.
“He won’t tell anyone.” He could barely hear himself over the growing ringing in his ear.
“This is crazy.” Margaret jabbed the power button on the radio.
The country music was silenced and nothing remained but the ringing.
Keeping his eyes closed, Wolf breathed deep to counteract his queasy stomach.
“Are you all right?”
Wolf exhaled, inhaled again.
“Wolf?”
“Yeah. I just need a minute.”
The minute turned into forty minutes of silence. Wolf wanted to ask what was going on, but the obvious answer was clear enough: two women in his life were risking unknown dangers to help him escape from federal agents.
Wolf sat back and observed life happening around him, giving over his trust to Margaret Hitchens and Kristen Luke.
After driving for ten minutes north on highway 734, they had taken a left on County 17, passing a couple of fisherman hanging lines off the bridge into the river, and continued at a steady pace up the dirt road into the forested mountains on the west side of the Chautauqua Valley.
Twenty minutes into the drive the ringing in his ear had stopped, and the nausea dissipated, leaving only the normality of his throbbing leg and hip.
Now at the fortieth minute into their escape, Margaret finally let off the gas and started taking turns at reasonable speeds, and then she began to lean into the windshield.
“What’s happening?” Wolf asked.
“She’s supposed to be around here.”
Out the windshield a woman jumped into the middle of the road waving her hands. She was dressed in gray sweatpants and a black hooded sweatshirt.
Margaret gripped the wheel with both hands and jammed the brakes.
Wolf recognized the athletic build and movements of Kristen Luke as they ground to a halt in an explosion of dust.
“Crap.” Margaret leaned toward the windshield.
Luke jumped in the back seat and slammed the door. “Let’s go.”
Margaret hesitated for a second, her jaw opening and closing, and then she pressed the gas.
There was no sign of Luke’s vehicle anywhere, but Wolf spotted a vein of oak trees among the pines and knew she would have parked it there, keeping it invisible from the air.
Wolf glanced at her, thinking of the three-month silent treatment he’d just gotten from her and opted out of greeting her.
Luke gave him a sideways glance. “Have you talked to her?”
“No,” Margaret said.
“Who?”
Luke leaned forward in between the seats and stared forward. Her cinnamon eyes were so wide and fierce Wolf wondered if they might glow.
The cab filled with her scent, which Wolf knew to be her feminine deodorant and bathing soap and not perfume, which she despised. He’d forgotten how impossibly smooth and taut her facial skin was, like her face had not aged since fifteen years old.
Her brown hair was pulled back tight against her scalp, striped with wheat colored strands that looked to be the recent handy work of a hair stylist.
She flicked him an annoyed glance. “What? It’s the workout clothes I keep in my car.”
Wolf looked out the windshield. “I’m just wondering when you’re going to let me in on the plan.”
She pointed. “There!”
They rounded a corner and saw an SUV coming at speed, its brake lights glowing as it rumbled past.
Margaret jammed the brakes again as they entered a cloud of dust.
“Just pull over.”
Margaret did as she was told and Luke was out the door.
“Who’s that?”
Margaret put the SUV in park and pressed the emergency brake. “My sister.”
“From Aspen? Patterson’s mother?”
“Yep.” She got out. “Let’s go.”
“Son of a bitch.” Margaret’s sister squinted against the choking dust. “This him?”
Margaret hugged her sister as they reached her vehicle, which was a brand new looking silver Ford pickup.
“Valerie, this is David Wolf.”
The woman eyed Wolf with a hard gaze that reminded him instantly of Deputy Heather Patterson.
Wolf shook her hand and felt that Patterson got her tenacity from her mother. “Nice to meet you.”
“Wish I could say the same.” She shook her head at Margaret and Luke. “I was in the line at the grocery store. You guys freaked me out. You mind telling me what’s going on?”
“Sorry,” Luke said, “there’s no time to chat, we have to move. They’re going to be all over these hills in no time.”
“Who?” Valerie asked, swiveling her gaze to each of them.
Wolf’s ear felt like cotton was stuffed inside of it, and it began to ring again. He staggered and caught himself. “I’ve gotta go sit down,” he said, turning back toward Margaret’s vehicle.
“No, we’re going in Valerie’s truck,” Luke said.
Wolf stopped and walked toward the passenger side.
“Christ, he’s in bad shape. Should we help him?”
Wolf stopped and waved a hand. “I’m all right,” he said, trying to ignore the deafening sound.
The three women stared at him for a second.
“We need your truck,” Luke said. “You two go back in Margaret’s SUV.”
Valerie Patterson nodded with reluctance and gave over her keys. “This dude better be worth it. Everyone’s always talking about how great Wolf is. Wolf did this, Wolf did that. Doesn’t look so great to me.”
“Val, shut up and let’s go. I’ll explain on the way to Rocky Points.”
“Rocky Points?”
The trees swirled in a stuttering circle and then Wolf fell to the ground.
Chapter 12
“One. Two. Three!” Luke heaved Wolf’s upper body into the passenger seat while the two sisters pushed his legs inside.
Luke pushed on him and slammed the door, hoping all of his limbs remained clear.
“What happens if the FBI pulls us over?” Margaret asked.
“FBI?” Valerie’s eyes popped.
Luke stepped around the front of the truck. “Just don’t worry about it. They won’t be looking for you and your sister. They’ll be looking for me and Wolf, in my car, not in yours.”
“FBI?” Valerie asked. “What if they ask if we’ve seen you? I can’t lie. I suck at lying.”
“She can’t.” Margaret nodded.
Luke opened the door. “Thanks girls. I owe you. Just … go home. We’re going to straighten all this out, and we’ll be in touch soon, all right?”
The two women stood with raised eyebrows.
Luke got in and fired up the engine, turned around, and drove west. She watched in the rearview mirror as the two sisters jogged to Margaret’s SUV, opened the door and climbed in. And then they were out of sight around the bend.
Settling in, she adjusted the seat and mirrors and cruised on the well-maintained dirt road at forty miles per hour.
Wolf was quiet, bouncing in his seat and leaning against the window. She’d seen him only a few weeks after his fa
ll off the cliff. Back then he’d looked more broken and pale than she’d ever seen him, with a greasy mat of hair and unkempt beard, an unmoving body that was ripe with the smell of sweat and scotch.
Now, three full months later, he scarcely looked any different, other than he was fully clothed and not sitting in a hospital bed. His facial hair was short, but his features were sunken, his limbs thinner than she’d ever seen. He smelled normal. No smell at all. That was an improvement.
With his mouth gaping wide open, he slept, undisturbed by her violating assessment of him.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket and her heart leapt.
Pulling it out she saw the one number she hoped to God it wouldn’t be—her Special Agent in Charge, Charles Keene.
“Wolf,” she said, slapping him in the leg.
He swallowed, and once again his jaw fell open.
She took a sharp breath and cleared her throat, then pushed the answer button.
“This is Agent Luke.”
“Luke, where the hell are you?”
“Sir?”
“Frye’s been trying to get hold of you.”
“He has? Sorry, I’m not sure what’s wrong with my phone.”
She pulled the phone away and looked at the screen. There were no indicators that she’d missed any calls. No messages. But there was a different symbol next to her one reception bar. They probably hadn’t registered on her phone yet, lost somewhere in cyberspace.
“Tedescu?”
“I’m sorry sir. I didn’t catch that, can you repeat?”
She jammed on the brakes and pulled over.
Wolf slid forward, careening headfirst into the dashboard.
She reached over and barred an arm across his chest and then pushed him back in the seat.
“I asked, where’s Tedescu? We can’t get hold of him, either.”
“He left me this morning, sir. Said he had a family emergency of some sort. I’m not sure where he went. Wouldn’t say.”
There was a long pause. Luke swallowed and shifted in the seat.
"Frye wants you up in Rocky Points. They’ve got a situation up there.”
“Yeah, I heard about it this morning. He told me to stay in Denver.”
“Well, I’m telling you to get up there, now. Your buddy Wolf has gone AWOL.”
