Cut Off (Book 3): Cut Loose

by Dalton, Charlie

  Gregory didn’t like the look of it, but if this was the only way to get them all inside, so be it. He gestured for Katie to join them. One after another, they shuffled inside.

  42

  The secret to any plan was to ensure that even in the case of failure it fed directly into the next plan, which was made all the more likely to succeed thanks to the previous plan’s efforts.

  A trap fails to snare a rabbit’s neck and instead draws tight about its foot. The wire bites into the poor creature’s flesh. The blood draws a fox, luring it into a second larger trap the rabbit wasn’t even aware of.

  The supply carriage was the snare. The first brick in a series of dominoes. Ideally, they could have continued blocking the fuel supplies, thus severing the prison’s backup power and Quentin could have walked free.

  But then these people got involved and he was forced to come up with another solution.

  Four of them were grizzled old men. The sort Michael expected to lead their respective families. That didn’t prepare him for the final member of their team. A girl, no older than eighteen or nineteen. He thought there had been some mistake until he saw the fierce intelligence in her bright eyes.

  “Wesley?” Louisa launched herself at her uncle and wrapped her arms around him.

  “You’re all right, lass.” Wesley rocked her gently side to side. He pulled back to look into her face. “You’re not having an easy time of it lately, are you?”

  Jack glanced at Michael, asking silently if he wanted him to remove the girl from her uncle. Michael shook his head. A little family reunion might well do their plan a little good and oil its wheels.

  “How are you holding up, boy?” Preston ruffled the hair on the injured lad’s head. “Did they beat you again? I swear, your bruises look more violent today than they did when I saw you last. Let this be a lesson to you. Love will always stick its boot in when it can.”

  The lodge was better stocked than he expected. In another lifetime, perhaps he might have shacked up with these people, would have learned to farm, to help defend them. But that wasn’t the life he had now.

  The final old man and the young girl moved to the dining table and addressed the lad and his mother who’d been staring daggers at him ever since he set foot in the lodge.

  “Have they hurt you?” the girl said. “Or any of the others?”

  The boy shook his head but didn’t pull his eyes from Michael’s face. Condemning. Hating. The boy was lucky Michael was understanding.

  “Mum?” the girl said. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” The mother seemed distant, spaced out.

  “Where’s Steve?”

  “Still in town.”

  The old man snorted and shook his head. “Still with his head buried in a book. He’ll come out of this without knowing anything happened.”

  Silence broke out and all eyes turned to Michael.

  “How about you tell us what’s going on here,” the girl said. “Why are you holding my family hostage?”

  “I won’t beat around the bush. Time is very much of the essence. Here’s the deal. We are part of the Chelsea Smile gang. Some of you might recognise us, others maybe not. If you want autographs, we can give them to you later. Just over a year ago, the authorities caught us and locked us away for life imprisonment. One of us escaped, the man you know as Gregory. He’s been working his way through the local law enforcement ranks all this time so that when we had a chance to escape, he would help us.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” The girl’s eyes were on fire. “You want what we have here, is that it?”

  “No. We want our leader back. You see, the generator is still running in the prison. It powers the maximum security section of the facility. Our leader, Quentin Morse, is still in there. We want you to get him out.”

  It took a moment for the sentence to sink in.

  “You’re the ones who hijacked the supply line,” the girl said.

  “Correct. It would have worked too if you hadn’t stuck your noses into our business. You decided to get yourselves involved, so that’s why we’re here. We need to get you involved. We figured out who you were, where you lived, and what you had of value. Which brings us here. But we didn’t want you to have all the fun.”

  Michael turned to address the whole room. “Now, we have all your young people. We don’t want to hurt them, but we will if we have to. We want you to use any means available to you to break our leader out of prison. Whoever succeeds gets the boy, the girl and everyone else here.”

  “What makes you think we have any sway over the prison?” the girl said.

  “I don’t care if you do or if you don’t,” Michael said. “All I care about is getting Quentin out of there alive and well. Bring him to us and I’ll hand everyone over to whoever does. You can do whatever you want with them. We couldn’t care less. Just bring us Morse.”

  Wesley nodded to his niece. “What guarantee do I have you won’t harm my girl? I count a lot of men here.”

  “You have my word that we won’t touch a single hair on her head,” Michael said. “I happen to be a man of my word, but you can take it or leave it.”

  “And what good is the word of a murderer and a thief?” Wesley said.

  “A fair question.” Michael didn’t take any offence. They were facts, after all. “None. But think of it this way: what benefit do I have in harming any of your children? You would chase me down with every man you have, with every resource available to you, and I would deserve to die. I don’t want that to happen. It won’t happen. We’re smarter than that and only want our leader back. Nothing more.”

  “How do you know we won’t come after you with everything we’ve got anyway?” Preston said.

  “I imagine you have a great deal more pressing things to be doing than chasing down a man who did you no harm and in fact returned your loved ones to you when the people here refused to do so.”

  Preston cocked his head to one side in thought.

  “Here are the terms. If any of you try anything underhanded like breaking your loved ones out of here, they die. If you take longer than sundown to bring Quentin here, they die.”

  “What’ll you do after you have him?” Bill said.

  “What difference does it make to you?”

  “What insurance do we have that once we bring him to you, you’ll leave this place?”

  “Only my word. And let’s just say a farm life is not the life for me.”

  Preston and Wesley glanced at Bill, who then turned his eyes on Katie. The fact that did that was of great interest to Michael. Why would they turn to her to make the final decision for them?

  The girl simply nodded. It was a starting pistol.

  Preston and Wesley moved for the door first, turning sideways to squeeze through at the same time.

  The girl turned to her brother and looked him in the eye. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she said. “And make sure to do the best you can.”

  She kissed her little brother on the forehead and hugged her mother.

  “We’ll be back soon,” Bill said.

  He rushed outside on the heels of his granddaughter.

  Michael had passed the baton to the others. Soon, Quentin would be free. He dreaded to think the devastation he would rain upon this tiny town that incarcerated him for so long. It wouldn’t be pretty, but it would sure be a wild ride.

  43

  Katie came running out of the lodge. Preston and Wesley were already mounted up.

  “Wait!” Katie said. “There’s a solution here that’ll work for everybody.”

  The two leaders of their houses shared a look. Each expecting the other to bolt first. But neither of them did. They waited to hear Katie’s idea.

  “Let’s hear it,” Preston said.

  Katie suspected she had less than thirty seconds to explain her idea before the two men took off in a cloud of dust.

  “We work together,” she said. “That way, we get everything we want. We’l
l go to the police station together to speak with Inspector Taylor and convince him to let us take Morse out provisionally. We’ll bring him back here and hand him over. With all your men standing by, we can force them to give us what they promised. After we hand him over and get our family back, we set the trap so your men recapture the whole gang. Then we put them back in prison where they belong.”

  The two men shared a look and laughed, slapping their knees with vigour and hugging their ribs in pain.

  Preston wiped a tear out of his eye and flicked it to one side. “Oh, man. I’ve needed a good laugh like that for a long time.”

  Katie was confused. “I don’t understand. What’s so funny?”

  “Just about everything you just said,” Wesley said.

  “It’s the most logical thing to do,” Katie said.

  “Maybe it is,” Preston said. “But you’re forgetting about one thing. These are the Wedges and Thornhills you’re talking about. We don’t work together. Ever.”

  “We did yesterday,” Katie said. “Everybody was happy with how it turned out.”

  “But there’s one thing you had last time that you don’t this time,” Wesley said. “And this time, we have it.”

  “What?”

  “Choice.”

  And there was the truth of the matter. They were never going to go along with her plan. No matter how logical or impressive, they were always going to go with what they wanted to do. What they had always done. They were first and foremost members of disparate families. They weren’t going to give that up, not when they could get an advantage over the other.

  The two family heads turned their mounts and heeled them down the drive.

  “It was a good try, kid,” Bill said. “You just underestimated their selfishness. They were never going to work together, not if they didn’t have to.”

  “But it’s not only their loved ones on the line.” Katie’s voice was small.

  When she looked up and saw those twin dirt trails rushing into the distance, the raw disappointment in her chest congealed into a rushing bubbling mass so thick it made her growl.

  Darryl, Aaron, and the twins jogged over with their horses.

  “What’s going on?” Darryl said.

  Katie took Vincent’s reins and swung up onto his saddle. “We’re competing against both the Wedges and the Thornhills.”

  “What?” Tanya said. “They have more men, more firepower, and they know this town better than we ever will.”

  “If we don’t succeed, we’ll lose everything we built here,” Katie said. “We have no choice. We can’t fail.”

  She spurred Vincent into a full sprint. She was going to have to push him harder than she’d ever done before. He had to perform for her today. Speed was of the essence.

  44

  Ronnie and Tanya stayed behind to keep an eye on the lodge and make sure the gang didn’t relocate while they were gone.

  Katie, Bill, Aaron, and Darryl ran into town toward the police station. The one man who might be on their side was also the one man they’d treated most harshly since they arrived at the lodge. It was going to take some doing convincing him to help them.

  The townspeople were busy living their lives, not having to live through the same drama and high-stakes tension Katie and the others endured. A man carrying a baby in his arms turned away from their rushing horses and ran into a corner shop. Inside, it was rammed with people. Outside, a sign proclaimed: “COLLECT YOUR RATIONS HERE!” Food was the new currency, and it was scarce. It made sense to spread the provisions out to prevent people from revolting. But how long would the rations last before they ran out?

  Katie pulled Vincent to a stop outside the police station and used the reins to tie him to a lamp post.

  “Keep an eye on the horses,” Katie said as she charged into the police station.

  Bill pulled up next and repeated the same command. “Keep an eye on the horses.”

  Darryl pulled up next, a superior rider to Aaron, who tended to bounce in the saddle like Kermit the frog. Aaron climbed off his horse and glared at Darryl, daring him to issue the same order as the others.

  Darryl raised his hands in surrender. “I’ll watch the horses.”

  Aaron took off into the police station.

  Katie paused in the wide foyer and ran an appraising eye over the setup. The front desk was manned by three police officers. The waiting rooms on either side expanded into adjacent offices since the EMP struck.

  Katie approached the front desk. “Where can I find Inspector Taylor?”

  “Inspector Taylor is busy at the moment,” a police officer with a pinched expression said.

  Bill grabbed Katie by the arm and dragged her around the front desk.

  “Sir! You can’t go in there!” the pinched faced officer said. “Sir!”

  Seeing the disturbance, Aaron interjected. “I’d like to lodge a complaint against a police officer. His name is Gregory Davis and he’s just sided with one of the most notorious criminal gangs in our nation’s history. I want to know why you didn’t investigate him properly.”

  The pinched faced woman blinked at the onslaught of information. “Excuse me?”

  Aaron shot a glance at Katie, who looked back over her shoulder and smiled at his distraction as she hustled through a door and into the nether regions of the station.

  “Never ask for permission to do anything,” Bill said. “There’s nothing to gain and everything to lose.”

  He still had hold of Katie’s arm and used his offhand to shove aside any of the police officers that got in his way. He might be an old man, Katie thought, but he was in better shape than most of the officers darting accusing looks at them.

  Inspector Taylor’s eyes bulged when he saw Bill and Katie marching down the corridor toward his glass-walled office. He rushed over and pulled on the controls to bring the slats down. He was too late.

  Bill shoved the door open and Katie shut it behind them.

  “Did you bring the families here?” Inspector Taylor said with a genuine shock of terror on his face. “Already?”

  “What?” Bill said. “No. This is something else.”

  Inspector Taylor sighed with relief, but the tension ratcheted up again when he saw the expression on Bill’s face.

  “You’ll want to sit down for this,” Bill said.

  The door burst open and half a dozen large police officers flooded through the doorway. “Everything all right in here, sir?”

  Inspector Taylor eyed Bill and Katie with an angry eye. Just say the word and he could have them thrown out of there.

  “It’s about to get a whole lot worse if you don’t get out of here and let the adults talk,” Bill snapped at the younger man.

  The officer glared at Bill and slapped his palm on his truncheon.

  “Just go,” Inspector Taylor said.

  “Sir?”

  “Leave.”

  The officer shot one more hate-filled glare at Bill before turning around and shutting the door behind him.

  “Are you going to tell me what this is all about?” Inspector Taylor said.

  “Have you heard of someone called the Chelsea Smile gang?” Bill said.

  “Only one of the most dangerous gangs in our history. And among the worst prisoners we’ve got at Pikehall prison. Why?”

  “Most of them are drinking our tea in the lodge. When the power went down, most of them escaped.”

  Inspector Taylor swallowed. “Escaped?”

  “And you haven’t heard the best bit. Your beloved deputy, Gregory Davis, is one of them.”

  “What?” Inspector Taylor blinked at the rapid revelation of information.

  Bill shook his hand and leaned over the desk. “None of that matters. The important thing is that they broke into our lodge, took all our people hostage, and invited Preston, Wesley, and yours truly inside to offer us a deal. He wants us to break their leader, Quentin Morse, out of prison by nightfall and in exchange, they’ll hand over the hostages.”


  “Where are they? Preston and Wesley?”

  “Out there doing anything and everything within their power to break the criminal out before the other manages it. We can’t allow that to happen.”

  Inspector Taylor nodded. In a daze.

  “We came here for you to take us to the prison and convince the warden to let Morse into our custody.”

  Inspector Taylor nodded, then caught himself and shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

  “Sure you can. I’m sure you and the warden have a real chummy relationship.”

  “Sure. But that’s his jurisdiction, not mine. I can’t demand anything.”

  “In case you didn’t notice, the world has changed. The same rules don’t apply.”

  “You might want to explain that to the local powers that be. They’re still using the same old playbook. They’re not going to let the prisoner go. No one has that power. No one.”

  “Except…” Katie said.

  “Except, what?”

  “In this situation, there’s always a but. There’s always someone who can do something, someone powerful enough to let a criminal out. Who has that power in town?”

  “Nobody.” Then, a flicker of hesitation. “Well, except maybe the judge.”

  Bill snapped to attention. “Judge? Which judge?”

  “Judge Hampton.”

  “Judge Hampton?”

  Inspector Taylor nodded. “Judge Hampton.”

  “Everybody stop saying Judge Hampton!” Katie snapped.

  “But you just said–”

  Katie slammed her fist on the desk. “Where is Judge… This judge?”

  “Where are judges usually? In the courthouse.”

  Bill grabbed the man by the arm. “You’re coming with us.”

  Inspector Taylor grabbed the corner of his desk. “I’m the inspector. My place is here.”

  Bill towered over the smaller man, soft and flabby behind his desk. The inspector shrank and leaned backwards in his swivel chair. It creaked and threatened to break.

  “Oh, you’re coming,” Bill said. “Even if I have to drag you kicking and screaming through this police station. You’re coming. And maybe we’ll forget to file an investigation against how you missed Gregory being one of the Chelsea Smile gang. And maybe, just maybe, you might keep your job.”