Savior/Corruptor: An Allie Krycek Thriller
Author: Sam Sisavath
Date: 2019-08-14 23:00:42+00:00
Description: SHE NEEDED A VACATION, BUT SHE WON'T GET ONE. It was supposed to be a much-needed respite for Allie Krycek. She was ready and needed to heal. And that's exactly what she did in a small nowhere town in the Pacific Northwest. That is, until certain people decided to drag her into their web of murder and lies. When an abused housewife leaves a desperate plea for help, Allie doesn't—she can't—turn the other cheek. It's not in her nature to let an innocent get hurt, if she can help it. But not everything is what it seems, and soon Allie finds herself thrust into a complicated conspiracy that just k
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Press

Savior/Corruptor

Copyright © 2019 by Sam Sisavath

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Road to Babylon Media
www.roadtobabylon.com

Cover by Deranged Doctor Designs

Editing by Jennifer Jensen and Wendy Chan

Contents

About Savior/Corruptor

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

Epilogue

About Savior/Corruptor

SHE NEEDED A VACATION, BUT SHE WON’T GET ONE.

It was supposed to be a much-needed respite for Allie Krycek. She was ready and needed to heal. And that’s exactly what she did in a small nowhere town in the Pacific Northwest.

That is, until certain people decided to drag her into their web of murder and lies.

When an abused housewife leaves a desperate plea for help, Allie doesn’t—she can’t—turn the other cheek. It’s not in her nature to let an innocent get hurt, if she can help it. But not everything is what it seems, and soon Allie finds herself thrust into a complicated conspiracy that just keeps getting more dangerous.

If Allie were any other woman, she would turn and run.

But Allie Krycek isn’t any other woman. She’s going to do the right thing, even if it means taking on one of the most powerful families in the country.

One

MY HUSBAND IS GOING TO KILL ME.

Allie stared. It didn’t matter how many times she read it—five, now, each time slower than the last—the words and the meaning behind them didn’t change.

MY HUSBAND IS GOING TO KILL ME.

This was supposed to be a vacation. She was supposed to get herself back together, physically and mentally. The last few months had been a whirlwind of pain. She could deal with pain. She’d learned how to long ago. That knowledge, combined with five twenty-four hour cycles of ten-hour sleep days, had been just what she needed.

This was day five. She’d told herself she’d only take two more days, at the most, before she returned to civilization.

And then this happened.

The person who had written the letters had left the bar three—or was it four, now?—minutes earlier. Allie hadn’t spotted the note earlier because she hadn’t been paying attention; she’d been too busy ignoring the forty-something barfly in the ketchup-stained flannel work shirt sitting next to her. The man’s speech was slightly slurred, and Allie only got one out of every three or so words, but it was pretty easy to guess what he wanted.

She didn’t see the note until she picked up her glass of beer and spotted it, pinned against the bar counter underneath her coaster. It was written on two flimsy strips of toilet paper in red ink. The letters were all capital letters and not the least bit elegant. That, somehow, only added to their urgency: This was written by someone who hadn’t had a lot of time.

Allie wished she could have ignored it. Flicked it off the counter and watched it flutter to the floor and forgotten about it. That was why she’d come here in the first place.

“You need a vacation,” Lucy had said.

“What kind of vacation?” Allie had asked.

“How about a cruise?”

“A cruise?”

“Yeah. You know. On a boat?”

“I know what a cruise is, Lucy. I don’t know about taking one, though. Locking myself onboard a boat for days doesn’t sound like much of a vacation.”

“I could even come with you!”

“Don’t you have school?”

“What’s your point?”

The conversation had ended there, and for (almost) five days, her much-needed vacation had gone exactly as planned. She’d done very little besides eat and sleep, work out a bit in the woods outside her cabin, then go right back to eating and sleeping. She’d even packed on a few pounds. All the bad fried and greasy food from town was to blame, but she wasn’t too concerned. She could shed the excess blubber when she was ready to go back. She had experience with getting lean in a hurry. All it would have taken was another few days of sweaty work and a decent home-cooked diet.

That was before tonight. Before she stepped into this dingy bar called the Don’t Stop In (Even the name’s a warning. Sheesh.) for a glass of beer. She’d driven past the place a dozen times but had never stopped in until now.

She should have kept right on driving.

Allie stared at the two pieces of toilet paper in her hands. They were the cheap kind, already fraying at the edges. Wet spots had smeared some of the letters by the time Allie noticed them, but that hadn’t done anything to lessen their impact. They still said the same thing after she’d read it for the sixth time.

MY HUSBAND IS GOING TO KILL ME.

The woman who had left the note was a small blonde in her early thirties who wore too much makeup, who had come in after Allie had sat down and was on her second beer. Allie only noticed the blonde’s arrival because someone had slammed the front door, and the loud bang had drawn her attention. She had inadvertently locked eyes with the woman when she glanced over.

How long had their eye contact lasted? Two seconds? Three? A whole minute?

Not a minute. That was impossible, because the woman had come in with a man at her side. She was clutching his left arm as if afraid he might fly away and abandon her. Her husband or boyfriend, Allie had assumed at the time. Maybe even the “husband” who was going to “kill” her.

She peered down at the note again.

MY HUSBAND IS GOING TO KILL ME.

Seven times now, and not a single one of the letters had altered since the last time she read them. The words were like daggers stabbing at her eyes.

Allie only knew that the note’s owner was the same blonde from earlier because she had spotted the other woman at the bar, standing next to Allie’s temporarily empty stool. By the time Allie saw the dire warning and turned around, the woman was gone. Along with her boyfriend or husband.

Husband. The same husband she thinks is going to murder her.

Allie couldn’t understand why the woman had chosen her, of all the people, in the establishment. Was it because Allie was a fellow female and the blonde expected her to have more sympathy than if she’d chosen a random male? Or was it because they’d locked eyes for that one brief second or two when the couple first entered the Don’t Stop In? Was that it? One or two seconds of contact was all it had taken?

As much as it cut into her female pride, Allie had to admit that a woman under duress would be smarter to reach out for a man’s help, especially if she was afraid of being “killed” by another man. What could a woman do against a potential murderer that a man couldn’t do better to stop it? If a fight broke out—

“…my place?”

The voice snapped her out of her thoughts.

Slowly, other sounds faded back in: The clap-clap of boot soles on the dance floor, the jukebox playing in the back, and the occasional chatter of the dozen or so other people who had found Don’t Stop In as irresistible as she had this night.

“…know you want to. I can see it in your body language.”

It was the barfly. He was still chatting into her right ear, and for some reason, his words were a lot clearer than before.

Allie turned around. She had almost forgotten he was there, but he hadn’t gone anywhere even as she stared down at the note and didn’t move from the stool for what seemed like an eternity. If he even noticed what was in her hands, it didn’t show up on his flushed face. His cheeks were bloated, as were his forehead and eyes. He was probably still too drunk to know just how close he was from tipping over his stool and falling flat on his face against the floor.

She resisted the urge to give him the nudge he’d need and said instead, “What?”

“My place,” the man said. He flashed a charming smile. Or what he thought was a charming smile, no doubt. It looked like a reptile trying to mimic what it’d seen a human do, and failing miserably. “Let’s go back to my place, doll. Let’s get nasty.”

“Doll?”

No one had called her doll in…well, ever.

“Your breath stinks,” Allie said. She had no interest in being nice, especially to drunks. In her experience, all that did was encourage them.

“My breath?” The barfly cupped one hand in front of his mouth, blew into it, and sniffed the results before giving her a disbelieving look. “Doesn’t stink to me.”

“Trust me, it stinks.”

“Doesn’t stink.” He sniffed his hands again. “Not stink. Why do you keep saying it stinks? It doesn’t stink.”

For a second Allie thought he might be messing with her, but the look on his beet-red face said otherwise.

“You’re drunk,” Allie said.

“Not yet.” He grinned, revealing surprisingly white teeth. “So how about it?”

“How about what?”

“Let’s go back to my place.”

“No.”

Allie glanced back down at the note. Unsurprisingly, it hadn’t changed since the last time she looked. The words stared back at her, as horrific in all its possibility now as it had been the first time she read them.

MY HUSBAND IS GOING TO KILL ME.

“I got more of these,” the barfly was saying. When she looked over, she saw that he was holding up his empty glass of beer. “Tons of more. All for you.”

“That’s generous,” Allie said.

He flashed that winning smile again. “That’s me.”

“But I’ll have to pass.”

“Why?”

Allie didn’t bother answering. She stood up and slipped the note into her jacket pocket. She looked toward the door, the barfly’s hideous breath warm against the nape of her neck.

“…do the nasty,” the man was saying.

Not in this lifetime, Allie thought as she walked away.

“Leave the lady alone, Stan,” she heard a voice say behind her.

“What? What did I do?” the barfly protested.

“You know what you did.”

“I didn’t do nothin’.”

“Let’s keep it that way.”

She looked back and saw the good-looking bartender who had been pouring drinks for her and everyone else all night. He had one hand on the barfly’s arm, pulling him back down onto his seat. She hadn’t seen it, but the drunk had gotten up to pursue her. Or tried to.

Allie exchanged a brief nod with the bartender. She hadn’t caught his name, and he wasn’t wearing any kind of tag on his shirt.

He gave her a pursed Sorry about the drunk smile back.

She turned and hurried across the bar, to the front door. She had to weave her way around a trio of slow-dancing couples on the dance floor, a George Strait oldie-but-goodie about true love blasting in her ears. All but one woman—out of the six—on the dance floor were wearing long-sleeve flannel shirts. Flannel was very popular in this part of the country.

Allie pushed through the front door and stepped outside into the chilly night. George Strait’s soothing voice faded into the background along with the closing door, and Allie was left to stand underneath the dark light of the moon by herself.

She zipped up her jacket halfway while she scanned the parking lot, even as she told herself she didn’t know what she was looking for. She’d only seen the couple enter the bar but hadn’t caught how they’d gotten here. They could have been sitting in that beat-up van across the lot (though that was unlikely, given how the two were dressed) or necking in the back seat of the equally beat-up Chevy sedan three car lengths down from where she stood.

Dammit. She’d let too many minutes slip by while she tried to digest the note. Add to that the minutes she’d lost before she’d noticed the warning in the first place, and it all came down to the same thing: She had wasted too much time.

It occurred to Allie suddenly that she hadn’t really gotten a very good look at the husband. She’d been so focused on the woman—on all that makeup on her face, way too much makeup, as if she were trying to hide something—that she’d only gotten a cursory glimpse of the man she was with. The couple hadn’t stayed very long, either. In and out, as if this were some kind of pit stop. It made some sense; they were dressed way too well to be frequenting a dump like the Don’t Stop In. Besides, neither one of them were wearing flannel.

Allie took out the two pieces of tissue paper from her jacket pocket and read it again.

MY HUSBAND IS GOING TO KILL ME.

There it was, in bright red ink, written on two very thin pieces of toilet paper that looked as if they might disintegrate in her hands if she held them for too much longer. The “paper” of choice meant the woman was inside the bathroom when she wrote the note. It would also be the only time the blonde could get away from her husband—

A scream cut through the cold night air, coming from behind her.

Allie spun around.

It was a woman’s voice, and it had come from the side of the building.

Maybe she wasn’t too late after all!

Two

Except it wasn’t the blonde and her husband. It was a brunette—a young woman in her early twenties, wearing a white T-shirt that was a size too small with a pair of shorts that were a size too short, especially in this weather—being pinned to the ground by a man twice her size. The man on top of the girl had his back to Allie, giving her a good look at his leather jacket and the eagle at the center, with the words Devil’s Crew MC stenciled in bold white letters that were gripped in the bird’s talons.

There was a second man, just as big as the first, wearing equally dirty jeans and an identical jacket. She could see specks of mud and dirt on them even with just a single fading squiggly yellow light back here, far from any witnesses.

The second man stood to the side, too busy pushing a bandana against his face to get involved with the action on the ground. He either heard or sensed Allie’s arrival and turned around. Blood dripped from the bandana to the gravel floor, an extension of the parking lot behind her. The biker was breathing hard, on the verge of wheezing.

“Mitch,” the one with the bandana said.

Mitch, the biker pinning the girl to the ground, refused to look up. “What?” he said. Or grunted out. He wouldn’t take his focus off the girl, who struggled underneath him, but she was a small thing, and from the looks of it, already tiring.

“We got company,” Mitch’s buddy said.

That got Mitch’s attention, and the man looked up and over his shoulder. He saw Allie, and a flash of annoyance raced across his pockmarked face. “Get lost, bitch. Invitation only.”

“Maybe we should invite her,” Mitch’s buddy said.

“Do what you gotta do.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” The man lowered the bandana, revealing a busted nose, and shoved the cloth into his back pocket. He walked toward Allie. “Hey, little lady, you like what you see?” He looked her up and down. “You’re a little older than I like ’em, but tonight, you’ll do, missy. Oh yeah, I think you’ll do, all right.”

Allie stared at him, trying to decide how much of this she wanted to be a part of. But another look at the girl, still struggling against the brutish Mitch, and the decision was made for her. There wasn’t much of a choice at all.

Mitch got up, dragging the girl up with him, and shoved her against the Don’t Stop In’s filthy wooden siding. She let out a pained grunt as her chest and cheek struck the building. That also turned her head around so that she locked eyes with Allie.

The kid didn’t have to say a word; Allie could see the terror in her eyes.

“Don’t mind her,” Mitch’s buddy was saying. Then, when Allie looked over at him, “She came here willingly. This was her idea. Daddy’s little girl got the urge to take a walk on the wild side.” He snorted. “Not our problem she changed her mind at the last minute.”

“I didn’t change—” the girl shouted.

Or started to, before Mitch punched her in the back where her kidney would be. The girl screamed and might have fallen down if Mitch didn’t grab her by the back of the neck, one beefy hand covering her entire nape, and kept her propped up.

“You good?” Mitch’s buddy said.

“Yeah, I’m cherry.” Mitch glanced over at Allie again. “Be careful. I don’t like the looks of this one.”

Mitch’s buddy scoffed. “This little thing?”

“She’s not that little.” Mitch narrowed his eyes at Allie before saying again, “Be careful with her.”

“You’re paranoid.”

“Look at the bitch.”

Mitch’s buddy turned around to do just that. “And?”

“She’s not running.”

“Yeah, I see that. I think she wants in.” He walked the rest of the way toward Allie, giving her a better look at him.

Mitch’s buddy was taller—over six feet—and bigger than her. They both were. Even with their thick leather jackets, she could tell they were carrying more muscle than fat. Their faces were grizzled, like tan leather. The one in front of her had a scar that extended from the right corner of his mouth and halfway up his cheek. It looked like an old knife wound that hadn’t completely healed and never would.

A million things raced through Allie’s mind as she watched the biker stride toward her. Despite the fresh broken nose, he was oozing confidence, and why shouldn’t he? She was just another woman, standing outside a dingy bar along the state highway. She hadn’t seen a cop car for miles, and in fact had only spotted two from the local Wells City Police Department in all the time she’d been here, both parked along the side of the road waiting for speeders. If she screamed now, there would be no help coming. She doubted the couple necking in their vehicle in the parking lot behind her would even hear her, and certainly no one inside the Don’t Stop In would get a whiff with Garth Brooks crooning on the other side of the wall.

So she was all alone out here. No, not really. The girl was there too, but she wasn’t going to be of any help. The poor kid was terrified out of her mind. Whatever reasons she had come out here (“She came here willingly. This was her idea. Daddy’s little girl got the urge to take a walk on the wild side. Not our problem she changed her mind at the last minute,” Mitch’s buddy had said earlier.), she had changed her mind.

Too late, as it turned out, because the bikers were having none of it.

It wasn’t too late for Allie to turn around, though, not that she would have. Not in a million years and not a million lifetimes. There was the very real possibility of being hurt, yes, but the alternative was more than Allie could bear.

So her eyes snapped left and right, looking for weapons.

Any weapon.

The options were limited. There were a few potentials, but none that would stop a big brute in an MC jacket. If she were smart, Allie would turn and run before the man with the broken nose reached her. If she were smart.

Allie sighed.

Probably too loudly, because Mitch’s buddy stopped about three yards away and cocked his head slightly to one side. “What’s the matter? Don’t want to party with us anymore?”

“No,” Allie said.

“Well, it’s too late for that.” He glanced back at Mitch. “Ain’t that right—”

Allie wasn’t sure about the rest of his question, because before he could finish, she had grabbed the two-by-four leaning against the side of the Don’t Stop In and smashed it across the side of the biker’s head. The thin (Dammit, why did it have to be so thin?) lumber shattered into a dozen pieces as soon as it found its target.

But it’d done its job, and the big man staggered sideways from the blow. It was probably more out of shock than actual pain, but it was what Allie had been hoping for.

Mitch’s buddy stumbled his way to the building, reaching for the siding with one hand while the other groped for his temple. While he was doing that, Allie snatched up the aluminum trash bin on the other side of her, thought, Please be empty. Please be empty!

It wasn’t quite empty but wasn’t completely full either, and Allie was able to pick it up with some effort and swing it from right to left, letting momentum do most of the heavy lifting. The rim of the trash can was stiff and cold, and its side was already dented badly. She added another huge crater to it when she crashed it into the biker’s face as he was pushing off the bar and whirled around. He might have been about to say something else, but all she heard was the clang! of aluminum crashing into a human face.

Mitch’s buddy fell to his knees, screaming as he grabbed at his face. His nose was bleeding again, this time even more profusely. “Fuck! Fuck!”

Allie dropped the bin and turned toward Mitch.

The biker still had the girl pressed against the Don’t Stop In, one beefy hand palming the back of her head like she was a basketball. He was practically grinding her face against the ugly wall. It looked painful, and the girl wouldn’t be able to escape that grip in a million years. Not on her own, anyway.

“Get up,” Mitch said to the other biker. “Get up, pussy!”

Mitch’s buddy tried to do just that, staggering up on wobbly feet before falling back down. He screamed again, blood pumping through his fingers. The entire lower half of his face was now covered in a grotesque red mask. Allie hadn’t actually intended to do that, but she’d take it.

She looked at Mitch. “Let the girl go, asshole.”

“Fuck you,” Mitch said.

“Not tonight. You’re not fucking anything tonight. Unless it’s your buddy here.”

The biker smirked. “You think I’m scared of you?”

“I know you’re not.” Then, off Mitch’s confused expression, “Guys like you are never afraid of girls like me. That’s your problem. And your mistake.”

Mitch’s confusion turned into a big, wide grin. “So you want this, huh? You want this that badly?”

“Let the girl go.”

“Fine. But you’re taking her place.”

The biker stepped back, letting go of the girl at the same time. She fled as soon as she was out of Mitch’s grasp, throwing a quick glance back—and locking eyes with Allie—just before she vanished around the corner of the building.

Smart kid.

Allie wished she could have blamed the girl for running off. After what she had been through and the things that were about to happen to her, it was the right decision.

“Man, I’m gonna enjoy breaking you,” Mitch said. He stalked toward Allie. “When I’m done, I’m gonna pass you off to the boys. We’re going to keep you for days. Maybe weeks. We’re—”

The boom! of a shotgun blast, followed by the very loud (and familiar) sound of the same weapon reloading, shut Mitch up and froze him in place.

Allie spun around to find the bartender from the Don’t Stop In standing behind her with a pump-action shotgun. Her first instincts were to run, but her second was to dive for the weapon in his hands.

But she did neither as the bartender said to Mitch, “I’m sorry. You were saying something? Something about your boys and blah blah blah? I couldn’t really hear over the sound of this shotgun.”

Allie turned back to Mitch. He hadn’t moved since the last time she saw him.

“Well?” the bartender said from behind her.

“This is none of your business, barkeep,” Mitch said. “Go back inside where you belong.”

“Barkeep? Damn. You really put me in my place, boss. But the only one going anywhere is you and your boyfriend there.”

Mitch’s lips twisted into a snarl. “You know who I am?”

“You’re an asshole. What of it?”

“Boy, Casper is gonna—”

“Do shit about this because you’re trying to commit a crime in public. Hell, he’d probably thank me for stopping your dumb ass.”

Casper? Allie thought.

Then: Like Casper the friendly ghost?

But she didn’t interrupt the bartender or Mitch. They seemed to know one another, and the bartender certainly knew more about the area and its inhabitants than she did. Besides, the look on Mitch’s face told her that the bartender’s argument had been more than persuasive, so whoever this Casper person was, he apparently scared Mitch more than the shotgun.

“You should have stayed out of it,” Mitch said as he took a step back.

“Get outta here before I decide to point this thing at something other than the sky,” the bartender said.

“You should have stayed out of it,” Mitch said again.

“Yeah, yeah. Pick up your boyfriend and go before I change my mind and redecorate the side of this place with your brains. Damn siding’s looking pretty sad lately anyway, so that might be a big improvement.”

Mitch’s buddy stumbled to his feet and staggered backward until he was standing beside Mitch. Neither one of them made a move to go anywhere, though.

“Git!” the bartender shouted.

Mitch’s buddy turned and ran off first.

Mitch backpedaled, slowly, and grinned at Allie. “Catch you later, little lady.”

Not if I catch you first.

Mitch finally turned and ran after his friend to where they had parked their bikes. They fired up the Harleys while the bartender walked up to Allie and picked up the trash can.

“Sorry about that,” Allie said.

The bartender shrugged. “The way I see it, you made proper use of it tonight.”

He smiled at her, and she returned it.

“What were you doing out here in the first place?” the bartender asked. “I mean, besides picking a fight with a couple of Devil’s Crew bikers. You knew who they were, right?”

“No,” Allie said. “It didn’t seem important at the time.”

The bartender looked after the Harleys, still making noise as they faded up the highway, before turning back to her. “Word of advice? Try to avoid those guys in the future. They’re bad news.” He kicked at some pieces of the shattered lumber that she’d used on Mitch’s buddy until they vanished into the shadows. “You ran out of there pretty fast.”

“You followed me outside?”

“Of course not. Why would I do that?”

“So what are you doing out here?”

“One of the regulars saw what was happening and told me after he came inside. I don’t go walking around with a shotgun for my health, you know.”

“Good thing you did tonight.”

“Yeah, good thing.” Then, “So what are you doing out here? You, uh, still owe me for the beers, you know.”

“Put it on my tab.”

“You don’t have a tab.”

“I’m opening one.”

Allie took the two pieces of flimsy toilet paper out of her jacket pocket and showed it to the bartender.

He took it. “What’s this?”

“Read it.”

He did, before looking back up at her. “This real?”

“As real as that shotgun of yours.”

The bartender chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” Allie asked.

The bartender held up the shotgun. “Shells are filled with blanks. The owner won’t let us carry a loaded weapon on the premises. Something about liability and insurance.”

Allie stared at him, unsure how to respond to that revelation.

“Hey, it worked, didn’t it?” the bartender said.

“This time.”

“Let’s hope there isn’t a next time.”

Allie glanced toward the highway, but she couldn’t see or hear the Devil’s Crew MC bikes anymore.

“Yeah, let’s hope,” she said quietly.

Three

The barfly was still at the bar with his head resting on the counter when Allie and the bartender (Pete, he had introduced himself outside) returned. Pete put the shotgun away underneath the bar, then picked up a wet towel and expertly cleaned the countertop around the drunk without ever touching him.

“What now?” Allie asked.

Pete looked over. “Don’t worry about those bikers. They show up now and then to cause trouble, but they usually stay beyond the city limits. They don’t exactly get along with the Wells City PD.”

“No. I mean, what about the note?”

“Oh, that.” Then, “What about it?”

“Are you just going to ignore it?”

“I’m not exactly sure what I can do about it.”

“Well, I can’t just ignore it.”

“Like you couldn’t just ignore the girl in trouble out there?” Pete asked, because she had already told him what had happened.

“Exactly like that.”

“Maybe you should.” He shrugged. “Things like this can get complicated real fast. Maybe take it to the police.”

“Take what to the police? Two pieces of toilet paper?”

“Why not?”

“Because they’d laugh me out of the station.”

“Well, what, then? I don’t know what you can do.”

Allie glanced over at the barfly to make sure he wasn’t eavesdropping. If he was still conscious or had heard any part of their conversation, he hadn’t bothered to open his eyes or pick his head up out of curiosity. She thought she could hear him snoring over another country and Western song in the background. She didn’t know this tune; not that she knew a whole lot of country songs to begin with.

She focused back to Pete. He was young—late twenties, with short black hair that almost looked like a buzzcut, which made her wonder if he used to be in the service—with broad shoulders. Despite the stained and dirty apron, he was in good shape, verging on athletic. He’d been friendly and professional enough when she first showed up, and she’d seen the way he worked the crowd. Pete was good with people. Even better with a shotgun.

When she didn’t say anything, Pete sighed. “What did she look like? The woman who wrote that?”

“Blonde,” Allie said. “I think early thirties. She came in here with a man. Maybe her husband.”

“A lot of women come in here with men who may or may not be their husbands. More than half of them are blonde. You’ll have to narrow it down.”

“I can’t. That’s all I know.”

“It’s not much.”

“No, it’s not. But I can’t just ignore this.”

“Can I see it again?”

Allie took the two pieces of still-joined toilet paper—though how long that would be the case, she didn’t know—out of her jacket pocket and handed it over to him. Pete stared down at it for the second time. Maybe, like her earlier, he was just making sure he’d read it correctly the first time. Now that they were back under better lights—not that much better but slightly better—Allie could make out his soft blue eyes as they scanned the words already burned into her skull.

When he was done, Pete fixed her with a hard penetrating stare. “She gave this to you?”

“She put it under my coaster before she left.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

“Pretty sure is not completely sure.”

Allie sighed. “It was under my coaster.”

Pete nodded but didn’t say anything.

“That’s why I was outside,” Allie continued. “I was hoping to catch her, but she was already gone.”

“Who is she?”

“You tell me. I’ve never seen her before.”

“Blonde, you said?”

Allie nodded. “Petite, maybe five-three. Couldn’t have been more than a hundred pounds soaking wet. The man she came in with was tall. Maybe six feet. Not big but not skinny, either. Like you.”

“Me?”

“In good shape.”

“Oh.” Then, “What were they wearing?”

“She had on a white coat and miniskirt. He was wearing a black blazer. I didn’t get a good look at him, just the woman. She was wearing a lot of makeup.”

“You noticed that? That she was wearing a lot of makeup?”

“It was hard to miss.”

“I guess that’s a girl thing.”

“Sure.” Then, “So, do you have any idea who we’re talking about?”

Pete shrugged. He picked up a dirty mug and began wiping it down with a rag. She was briefly annoyed by that—was he suddenly disinterested?—but quickly realized that wasn’t it. She could see that Pete was still thinking, and keeping his hands busy was less a dismissal of her dilemma and more his way of staying occupied while his mind continued to work on the problem.

So she didn’t say anything and gave him the time he needed to mull over the descriptions of blondie and her husband. She had to admit, it wasn’t much to go by. Allie put the note back into her jacket pocket in the meantime. At this point, it was the only proof she had that she wasn’t making all this up

A new song had come on the jukebox in the back, but this one didn’t get any takers. The couples remained at their tables. The Don’t Stop In didn’t have much of a clientele to begin with—three couples, two solitary figures nursing drinks in corner tables, and Allie and her barfly Romeo—but with an empty dancing floor, it looked practically desolate.

“I think I know who the blonde might be,” Pete finally said. “Sarah Marshall. That would make the man with her Tom Marshall.”

“It took you a while to come up with their names.”

“That’s because they’re not regulars. I was a little surprised to see them in here earlier. Not too surprised when they left ten minutes later. This isn’t exactly their kind of establishment.”

“What is their kind of establishment?”

“The kind where you spend more on one dinner than an entire night drinking in here.”

“Are you sure about the woman? Sarah Marshall?”

“It has to be her,” Pete said. He nodded, but she wasn’t sure if that was to convince her or himself. He glanced at Allie’s jacket pocket—or specifically, at the unseen note inside it. “You sure that was her who left that behind?”

“I saw her standing at this exact spot when I came out of the bathroom.”

“She was paying their bill. That could just be a coincidence.”

“It could be, but I don’t believe in coincidences.”

“But why would she leave you something like that? You know her or something? I thought you were new in town.”

“I don’t know her. At least, I don’t think I do.”

Pete grinned. “You’re not sure?”

“I don’t know her,” Allie said, with more conviction this time.

She hadn’t told him that she was new in town, but he’d already guessed. Which made perfect sense. He had regulars, and she wasn’t one of them.

“Why did she ask you for help?” Pete asked.

Allie shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Why wouldn’t she ask me?”

“I don’t know that, either.”

He nodded at the barfly snoring in front of him. “Or even Stan here.” Then, with one of those sorry-not-sorry looks, “No offense.”

“None taken. I’ve been wondering the same thing myself.”

“And you don’t know her…”

“No.” Then, “Where do they live? The Marshalls?”

“How would I know?”

“You don’t know?”

Pete shook his head. “Again: How would I know? I’m a bartender. They’re the Marshalls.”

“What does that mean? ‘They’re the Marshalls?’”

“I told you, this isn’t their kind of establishment. There’s a reason for that. The Marshalls have a long history around here. From what I heard, they’ve been around as long as Timber Creek County has been a county. I guess if you really want to find them, it wouldn’t be very hard. Just go to where the rich people in town live.”

“And where would that be?”

“Again, how would I know?” He flashed her a wry grin. “Wouldn’t be too hard to find out, I figured.”

“Let’s just assume I don’t know where to begin.”

“Just follow the money.”

She was about to ask, “And how would I do that?” when a voice next to her said, “He hitting her again?”

Allie turned to Stan, the barfly who wanted to take her home to do the nasty earlier. The drunk had lifted his head off the countertop and was rubbing his very red eyes with both hands, his unkempt brown hair, sprinkled with doses of gray, looking even more unwashed. Allie had been so wrapped up in trying to figure out the blonde’s identity along with Pete that she hadn’t noticed when Stan gained consciousness.

“What did you say?” Allie asked.

“Did someone hear a gunshot?” Stan asked.

“What did you say?” Allie asked him again.

“A gunshot—”

“No, the first question.”

“He hitting her again? That one?”

“Yes, that one.”

“Who are you talking about?” Pete asked.

“Who are you talking about?” Stan said.

“The Marshalls,” Allie said. “Sarah and Tom.”

“That’s who I’m talking about, too,” Stan said.

The barfly sat up straight on his stool—or tried to, because he almost toppled over. Almost, but Pete reached over and grabbed him by the shoulder just in time to keep him from falling. The bartender had moved so fast that Allie was momentarily taken aback. Pete, besides serving a good mug of beer and knowing his way around a shotgun, had some serious athletic abilities to boot, apparently.

“So, you guys didn’t hear a gunshot?” Stan was asking them.

“Never mind that,” Pete said. He straightened the drunk before pouring some water into an empty glass and sliding it over. “Have some of this while you’re telling us more about Tom Marshall.”

“Why did you ask if he was hitting her again?” Allie asked.

Stan hadn’t seemed to hear her or Pete. He was too busy staring at the glass of water for a moment, as if unsure what it was.

“Stan,” Pete said. “Answer the lady’s question. Why did you ask if he was hitting her again? Were you talking about Tom Marshall and his wife, Sarah?”

The barfly pushed the water away and glanced up at Pete. “Who else would I be talking about?”

“What did you mean, ‘Is he hitting her again?’” Allie asked. She felt as if she’d been asking the same question all night.

“It means what it means,” Stan said. “Is he hitting her again?”

“Tom Marshall has hit his wife before?” Pete asked.

“Sure he has.” Stan stared at Pete for a second or two, before turning on his stool to face Allie. “What? This is news to you two?”

“How do you know it?” Pete asked. He hadn’t said it out loud, but Allie assumed from the way he had posed the question that Stan the drunk didn’t exactly swim in the same pond as the Marshalls.

“Can I have some beer, Pete?” Stan asked.

“Answer the question first.”

“What question? Come on, can I have some beer?”

“The question is: Tom Marshall has hit his wife before? And people know about it?”

“Yeah, sure, people know about it,” Stan said. He rubbed at his face with both palms. “Come on, Pete. Can I get a beer?”

“One beer, coming up,” Pete said. He grabbed an empty glass and refilled it from a spigot, while at the same time shooting Allie a quick glance that said, It’s your turn.

Allie put her hand on Stan’s shoulder to get his attention. Then, when the man swayed around to face her, “If everyone knows that Tom Marshall hits his wife, why hasn’t anyone stopped him?”

Stan stared at her in silence.

“Answer her,” Pete said. He’d finished pouring but hadn’t put the glass in front of Stan yet.

“Because he’s Tom Marshall,” Stan said, as if they should already know.

“What the hell does that mean?” Allie asked.

“This is Timber Creek County, and the Marshalls all but own Timber Creek County, that’s what it means. Everyone knows that boy hits his wife, but no one’s going to do a damn thing about it, just like no one did a damn thing about it when Marshall Sr. shot his pool boy in broad daylight.”

Allie thought about all the makeup on Sarah Marshall’s face when she had come into the bar and they locked eyes. There was so much of it that it was impossible for Allie to miss even with the bar’s dimmed lighting. Sarah was used to hiding the bruises.

She looked over at Pete, who shrugged. “I just got here five months ago. Stan, he’s been here since he could walk. Hell, he was camped out at this bar, in that exact stool, my first night on the job.”

Stan grinned and snatched the beer out of Pete’s hand. He took a large swig that emptied half of the glass before laying it down with a satisfying thump!

“Wanna know all the dirty secrets about the Marshalls?” Stan asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Keep the beer coming, and I’ll sing like a bird.”

“Tell me one thing,” Allie said.

“What, just one thing?”

“Just one.”

“Shoot.” But before she could do that, he turned to Pete. “Be a good boy and give me another one, Petey.”

“You haven’t even finished that one,” Pete said, nodding at the still half-full glass of beer.

Stan picked up the mug and drained it before slamming it back down with a wide grin across his flustered face. “Now. Give me another one.”

Pete sighed, but instead of responding to Stan, he looked over at Allie. “What was your question?”

“I want another one,” Stan said.

“Answer her question first, then I’ll get you another one.”

“On the house?”

“Sure, if you don’t tell anyone.”

“Promise?”

“Just answer the lady’s question.”

“But that’s a promise, right?”

“Yes, Stan. That’s a promise.”

“Just wanted to make sure.” Stan swiveled in his stool to face Allie again. “Fire away, little lady.”

“Tom Marshall…” Allie began.

“What about him?”

“How bad does it get? The abuse? Is he capable of more?”

“More?”

“More,” Allie said.

Stan stared back at her. He might have been drunk, and his brain was probably half-soaked with alcohol tonight, but there was enough sobriety there that he understood, even if it did take him a while.

“He’s done it before,” Stan finally said.

“To Sarah?”

“No, the one before her.”

“What happened to her?”

“Well, death, for one,” Stan said. “She up and died before she could get away from Tom Marshall.”

Four

“Well, death, for one. She up and died before she could get away from Tom Marshall.”

Stan had said it as if he were setting up a joke for a major payoff. Or maybe he’d said it like a half-drunk (Mostly drunk?) man would when he wasn’t quite aware of the ramifications involved. Either way, the words reverberated inside Allie’s head, taking up space away from the words on the tissue paper still inside her jacket pocket.

MY HUSBAND IS GOING TO KILL ME.

“Well, death, for one. She up and died before she could get away from Tom Marshall.”

All of that had led Allie here, sitting behind the wheel of her parked Ford rental about a hundred meters from a large gate. The house on the other side was big, but it wasn’t as opulent or grand as she’d imagined after hearing everything Pete and Stan (but mostly Stan) had told her about the Marshall clan. For a family that had, if the two bar men could be believed, been in Timber Creek County even before there was a Timber Creek County, the parts of the two-story house she could see over the brick wall was underwhelming.

Allie had seen how the really rich lived, and this wasn’t it. Then again, maybe “rich” was different in this part of the northwest. Maybe out here, wealthy just meant having more than the Smiths down the street.

But to hear Stan and Pete tell it…

She wasn’t sure what she was doing here. Pete hadn’t been either when she left him at the Don’t Stop In.

“What are you gonna do?” he’d asked.

“I don’t know,” she had said, which wasn’t the entire truth. She knew she was going to go look for Sarah Marshall at her home, but not what she would do once she got there.

Finding out where the Marshalls lived was easy enough. They weren’t trying to hide from anyone, especially Tom. Like every other town and city in America, Wells City—which made up the biggest slice of Timber Creek County—had its designated suburbs. It was here that she found the Marshall residence. Ten minutes before midnight, and just about every house she’d driven past were dead asleep. The driveways were filled with vehicles, and living room lights had been either turned off or dimmed. There wasn’t another soul still awake. Or it seemed that way, anyway.

The same went for the Marshall home. 2011 Stoner Street. Allie hadn’t been able to see much when she slowly drove past the house earlier to get a quick look at it before circling back. The two-story was built in an American Craftsman style, a combination of modern and traditional. Nothing flashy or ambitious, but it did stand out somewhat from the more modest family homes on the same street. And yet, it wasn’t what she had been expecting, and for a moment Allie had wondered if she had gotten the address wrong.

But no, she hadn’t. Thomas J. Marshall (she wasn’t sure what the J stood for) was in the Wells City business community directory. Under his name was the title Junior Partner at Marshall & Sons Inc. Allie hadn’t spent the extra minute or two it would have taken to find out exactly what Marshall & Sons Inc. did.

Because it didn’t matter. Right now, all she cared about was finding the right house…and the right lady of said house. She had double checked the address and was certain she was at the correct location. Now all she had to do was…

What? What exactly was she going to do?

Go up to the house, ring the doorbell, and ask to see Sarah Marshall? Then, when the woman showed up, ask her why she’d left a dire proclamation written on two flimsy pieces of toilet paper underneath Allie’s coaster?

Yeah, that wasn’t happening.

That was if she could even get inside the house in the first place. The gate was locked, and she’d have to use the intercom. What if Tom Marshall answered when she rang the house instead of Sarah? How would she explain being here, at almost midnight, to the husband?

And then there was the whole matter of Allie being a complete stranger. Not only to the couple but to the population of Wells City, which she didn’t even know existed until a week ago. Hell, she didn’t even know there was a Timber Creek County.

So what was she doing here? What the hell was she doing—

Lights had come on inside the Marshall house. She couldn’t tell if that was the window of the main bedroom that had just suddenly brightened up, but it was on the second floor. She expected the light to turn off just as quickly, but it didn’t. Instead, it stayed on, and Allie glimpsed a figure moving across the window. There one second and gone the next, not nearly long enough for her to make out if it was a man or woman. Of course, from where she sat, she would have needed binoculars to be sure anyway.

Allie didn’t move, her hands on the steering wheel just to give her fingers something to do. It wasn’t freezing cold outside, but the chill had settled inside the Ford. It would have been warmer if she had turned on the engine and let the heater do its job, but that would have drawn attention. Right now, attention was the last thing Allie was looking for.

So she dealt with the cold and watched silently as another window on the second floor lit up. She tried to imagine what was going on inside, why someone would be up this late at night. Maybe a woman who was afraid her husband was going to kill her…

It didn’t occur to Allie until right that second that she’d come here unarmed. She had a gun, but it was back in her cabin. It hadn’t seemed like a smart thing to drive around Wells City with a pistol inside a jacket pocket. Besides, this was a vacation. She had no reason to carry a weapon with her at all times; bringing the SIG Sauer was purely a paranoid act of just in case.

Realizing that she had a gun, but not on her, made her realize she could have used it back at the Don’t Stop In with those two Devil’s Crew bikers.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda.

While Allie was thinking about how unprepared she was to deal with an angry husband who may or may not have already murdered one wife (Stan had been unclear about that part, and that was being overly generous), the front gate began to slide open.

Here we go…

Allie sat up straighter as twin red lights appeared before a vehicle began backing out of the property. A silver Audi, reversing slowly into the street even before the gate had completely opened.

Someone’s in a hurry.

She leaned against her steering wheel to get a better look as the German car reversed through the gate and into the street, its bright—too bright—LED headlights flashing the street and coming toward her. She ducked behind the steering wheel just as the lights raked across her rental’s windshield. The piercing brightness caught her eyes for a split second, and Allie couldn’t be certain if she’d made it out of the way in time. If the driver had good vision, they might have spotted just the top of her head, but that was a pretty big might.

Allie stayed down and listened to the Audi’s smooth engine as it drove up the street and passed her parked car. She sat up and twisted around in her seat, picking up the sedan just as it slowed down at a nearby intersection—barely, and just long enough to make a left turn, all without bothering to use its blinkers.

Someone’s definitely in a hurry.

There had been no chance for Allie to make out the driver as they passed her by. She didn’t even know if it was a man or a woman, or even if it was one of the Marshalls. It could have been their maid, for all she knew, though the idea of a housekeeper driving what looked like a fresh-from-the-showroom Audi was pretty implausible.

Allie fired up the Ford and made a quick U-turn, then hurried over to the intersection before making the same left the Audi had done seconds earlier. It didn’t take her long to pick up the German car’s taillights in the distance. Instead of stepping on the gas and catching up to it—which she could have done easily—Allie eased up on the pedal so the Audi maintained its lead on her. The last thing she wanted now was to spook whoever was driving.

If it was Tom Marshall, she didn’t need the man to know someone was following him.

And if it was Sarah…

What if it was Sarah?

What am I doing here?

She didn’t have an answer. She hadn’t known when she left Pete and Stan at the Don’t Stop In, and still didn’t know while sitting outside the Marshalls’ home. And she remained in the dark now, as she pursued the car up ahead.

There was also something else: She couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something wrong with this whole thing. She didn’t know what it was, but it was there, gnawing at her gut. A persistent annoyance that refused to go away.

Something wasn’t right, but she didn’t know what it was. Her instincts rarely led her astray, but there was just too much for Allie to ignore. The note, Stan and Pete’s knowledge of the Marshalls, and, of course, the mysterious death of Tom’s last wife. All of it had brought her here, even if she didn’t know why.

What am I doing here?

She was still asking herself that question (How many times now? Ten? Twenty? A hundred?), when the Audi began to slow down noticeably in front of her.

Shit. Did they spot me?

Any other time in the day, and Allie would have said no. She was a good driver. More than that, she knew how to stay undetected in traffic—how to remain invisible. But this wasn’t daytime; it was night, and out here, right now, there were exactly two vehicles on the road—hers and the Audi.

Dammit. They’re definitely on to me.

Which left her with only two possibilities: Speed up and pass the other car and keep going, or confront the driver.

Which was the better choice? Was either one? And what if that was Tom Marshall behind the wheel? What if—

The Audi began swerving. Slowly at first, then more dramatically until it was weaving into the incoming lane. Allie could tell that the driver was trying to maintain control and losing.

That means they’re not on to me. Something else is wrong…

The sedan turned sharply toward the curb before going up it and broadsiding a big blue trash bin sitting on a driveway. The plastic container went flying into its owner’s yard while the Audi jerked back into the street and kept going.

For about twenty meters or so, anyway, before its rear lights glowed a stronger red as the driver stepped on the brakes and the vehicle stopped suddenly in the middle of the road.

Allie stopped, too.

She was fifty meters back but close enough to know that the driver could see her. It would be hard to miss the beams of her vehicle’s headlights, but there was nothing Allie could do about that. Her only choice to hide her presence was to shut down her engine, and that would have been just as suspicious if not more so.

So Allie did nothing and watched the Audi as it stalled in the suburban street in front of her. The houses over here were just as quiet and asleep as the two blocks or so they’d driven past. If anyone had heard or noticed the blue trash bin flying across the lawn, they hadn’t come out to investigate.

All the possibilities of how this could go wrong—how this had already gone so, so much more wrong—rushed through her head in the next few seconds.

What if that was Sarah Marshall inside the car, and she was injured? What if she needed help and Allie was just sitting here watching, doing nothing? What if the woman was bleeding out right now?

Then again, what if that was Tom Marshall and he was just drunk? Or asleep at the wheel? How was she going to explain walking up to his vehicle?

What if, what if…

Too many what ifs. That was the problem. That was the damn problem about tonight.

Allie slowly applied pressure on her gas pedal. She eased the Ford up the street, expecting the Audi to instantly jump back to life and take off. Except it did no such thing. It stayed where it was and had been for the last minute or so, its rear lights staring brightly back at her.

Ten meters closer, and the much more expensive automobile remained dead in the street.

Twenty meters…

Forty…

Allie stopped the Ford behind the Audi and stepped out of her vehicle. She wished she’d brought a flashlight with her, but all she had were her keys, which she had left in her steering wheel. It was a good thing her eyes had adjusted to the darkness after sitting in the dark for all this time, because it allowed Allie to see her surroundings. The well-maintained streetlights didn’t hurt.

The Audi hadn’t moved an inch in any direction. The engine was idling quietly—absurdly quiet, especially against the much louder Ford—and its windows were still up. Unfortunately, both the driver-side and rear passenger windows were tinted—the back more so than the front—and at night they might as well be pitch-black.

Allie approached the vehicle cautiously, still expecting it to leap forward and vanish up the street on her at any second. Or, worst-case scenario, the driver opened the door—or powered down his window—and shot her dead in the street.

Okay, so the latter was probably not very plausible.

Then again…

What if. What if…

As she neared the driver-side door, Allie tried to get a glimpse inside the vehicle. Tried, without any luck. Even with the streetlights—one very bright bulb just a few feet away—she couldn’t see a damn thing except the silhouette of the driver on the other side. That, unfortunately, didn’t offer up any hints as to the other person’s sex, never mind identity.

Allie stopped next to the door and waited, hands at her sides. She would have liked to keep them in her pockets for warmth, but that might be too suspicious.

“It’s not my fault, Officer; she had her hands in her pockets. I was scared for my life, so I fired first!”

She glanced around at the darkened streets. Out here, at this time of night, anything could happen. That included getting shot by a violent husband out for a drive. For all Allie knew, the man might have already killed his wife and was trying to make his getaway when she had the bad luck to intercept—

Click! as the door opened and a body fell out, landing with a painful-sounding thump against the hard asphalt road.

Allie took a quick step back and stared.

It was a woman—the same one from Don’t Stop In—and she lay crumpled in the street, thick, wet blood covering one entire side of her face.

Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.

Allie wasn’t sure what she was feeling at the moment: Validation that tonight hadn’t been a wild goose chase after all, or dread that everything was going exactly as she had feared?

She knew one thing for certain, though: She should have gone on that cruise with Lucy like the teenager had wanted. Right about now, walking around on a big boat with a bunch of middle-aged retirees and raucous kids sounded extremely appealing.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda…

Five

A half-dead woman in the middle of a suburban street at midnight. Or past midnight. Not that the exact time really mattered, because when someone looked out their window—and there were so, so many windows out there—and saw her standing over the lifeless and bloodied body of Sarah Marshall, that was going to be all they remembered.

“Yes, Officer, that’s the woman I saw! She’s the reason Sarah Marshall is dead right now!”

Maybe the witness wouldn’t add the second part, but the first was a dead certainty. (“Dead?” Nice choice of words.) And it wasn’t like Allie could blame them; after all, she was standing over Sarah Marshall, who lay on the asphalt unmoving—

Or not, Allie thought even as she took one more, then a second reflexive step away from the body.

Sarah Marshall stirred on the ground and opened her eyes, staring up at Allie. Soft brown eyes blinked, the right one peering out from underneath a fresh coating of blood that clung to her eyelid.

“Help me,” the woman whispered.

She crouched next to the blonde and helped her to sit up on the street, leaning her limp body against the still-idling Audi. Sarah’s entire frame was warm underneath the white coat she was wearing. The color made it easier to make out the splatters of blood that dripped down from the right side of her face. Allie couldn’t tell where all the bleeding was coming from; she’d need to get a closer look. A flashlight wouldn’t hurt, either.

“Sarah?” Allie asked. “Are you Sarah? Sarah Marshall?”

The woman continued staring back at her, eyes blinking. Then, something that looked like recognition flashed across the pale part of her face that wasn’t covered in blood. “You. From the bar…”

Allie nodded. “Yes.”

“You…came looking for me?” Sarah asked with a look that almost screamed “I can’t believe you actually came looking for me!”

Allie wanted to laugh and reply with “Yeah, I can’t believe I actually came looking for you, too.”

She said instead, “Of course I did.”

“I didn’t think…”

“What?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“But you left the note for me? Under my beer coaster?”

“Yes.”

There it was. The confirmation she’d been searching—hoping—for.

There it was…and she had no idea how she felt about it. A part of her wished those flimsy pieces of toilet paper had been meant for Stan. Or better yet, Pete. The handsome bartender could have done a lot more for this woman than Allie could. She was a stranger to this part of the world. Pete might have been a newcomer, too, but he was still more native than she was ever going to be.

And Stan… Well, maybe it was better that she got the note instead of the barfly. Chances were good Stan would have either missed the scream for help entirely or failed to heed it. If he could even make out the words through his beer goggles.

Sarah had reached up and was touching the blood-covered side of her face. She brought her hand back and stared at the dark red on her palm. “I’m bleeding. Why am I bleeding?”

“You didn’t know?” Allie asked.

“I was in a hurry…”

“From the house.”

“Yes…”

“What happened at the house? Why were you running away?”

Sarah didn’t answer. Allie couldn’t even be sure if the other woman had even heard the question as she wiped her palm on her coat. Watching her do that, Allie couldn’t help but think, I wonder how much it’s going to cost to get all that blood off? Because everything about Sarah screamed money, from her clothes to her car, to, yes, even her currently disheveled appearance. Those eyelashes and painted nails didn’t come cheap, and neither did the highlights in her hair.

Looking at the other woman up close, Allie didn’t have any trouble imagining a younger Sarah captaining the high school cheerleader squad, winning beauty pageants, and making teenage boys’ hearts flutter whenever she walked past them in the hallway. Not that Sarah had said good-bye to her prime by any means, but she had looked better. The bruises, now unconcealed with the absence of thick makeup, along her chin and left cheek took away some of the shine. All the blood dripping down her face also didn’t help.

Where’s all that blood coming from?

“Sarah,” Allie said. “What happened to you? Do you need a hospital?”

“No!” Sarah said, before she all but lunged at Allie, showing surprising speed and strength for a woman who looked half-dead. She grabbed Allie’s hands and clung to them, brown eyes boring into Allie’s. “Don’t take me to the hospital!”

“Why not?”

“Because he’ll know if you take me to the hospital.”

“Who?”

“Tom! Tom will know!”

Right. Tom. Who else?

Allie pried Sarah’s hands away. “What happened? Did Tom do this?”

“I don’t remember,” Sarah said. She reached for her head again, but must have suddenly remembered the dry blood already on her palm, and stopped halfway. “I just had to get away. Do you understand? I had to get away!”

“Why? Why did you have to get away?”

“Because he would have killed me. I saw it in his eyes. He was going to kill me…”

“That’s why you left the note for me.”

“Yes.” Then, eyes widening, “Yes! And you came. I can’t believe you actually came…”

“Okay,” Allie said, more to herself than the other woman. “Okay...”

Allie glanced up and around the street. It was still just the two of them out here, alone in the middle of the road. If any of Sarah’s neighbors had noticed anything out of the ordinary, no one had come out to take a look. No one had also called the cops either, because besides the crickets in the nearby yards and the sounds of their cars idling, there was no other noise in the entire world.

She concentrated back on Sarah. The other woman was absently wiping the blood on her right palm against her pant legs. She wasn’t doing a very good job of it but didn’t seem to realize she was just making it worse.

“We have to go,” Allie said.

Sarah looked up at her. “Go? Go where?”

“Anywhere but here.” She started to get up. “Come on. Can you walk?”

“Yes…”

“Where are you bleeding?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tom did this?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I don’t remember. He tried to stop me.”

“How did he try to stop you?”

“I can’t…remember. God, why can’t I remember?”

So what do you remember? Allie wanted to ask but bit her tongue.

She said instead, “Let’s not worry about that now. We have to get out of the road before someone sees us. Can you drive?”

“I…” Sarah started to say when she almost fell back down.

She might have done just that if Allie wasn’t holding onto her arms at the time. The woman’s legs had turned to jelly underneath her, and it was all Allie could do to pin her against the Audi’s opened driver-side to keep her upright.

That’s a no, Allie thought, leaning in closer to get a better look at Sarah.

There was a gash along her temple. It didn’t look very large but was bad enough to cause all the bleeding. The cut was jagged, so it hadn’t been put there by a knife or some kind of sharp instrument. Maybe a glancing blow from a blunt object swung by a very strong man.

Nice swing, Tom, you dickhead.

“You can’t drive,” Allie said.

“I can,” Sarah said.

“No, you can’t. You can barely stand.”

Allie glanced around the neighborhood again. The homes that were dark when she last looked remained so, and thankfully it was still just the two of them—along with their cars—on the streets. She guessed that had a lot to do with it being the time of day. She had a feeling the good folks of Wells City’s suburban population went to bed early in order to wake up bright and wide-eyed to attack the morning.

“We’ll take my car,” Allie said.

Sarah didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Allie wasn’t sure if that was because the other woman was trying to process what Allie had just said, or—

No, that was it. Sarah’s mind was working slower at the moment, not that Allie blamed her. There was a hell of a lot of blood on the right side of her face. Whatever Tom had used, he’d gotten her pretty good. That left Allie to wonder how Sarah had gotten away, but like the other hundred questions racing through her head, she pushed that into the back for later.

Right now, she needed to get them off the streets. Now.

“Come on,” Allie said when Sarah didn’t say anything.

She pulled the other woman away from the Audi and turned to go when Sarah grabbed her arm and stopped moving.

“Wait,” Sarah said.

“We don’t have time to wait. We have to go.”

“No, no, wait.” Sarah looked back at her car. “The back seat…”

“What about it?”

Sarah pulled her hands free and turned around, then opened the driver-side rear door and disappeared inside.

“Sarah, what are you doing?” Allie asked.

“Just a minute,” Sarah said from inside the Audi’s back seat.

“Sarah, we have to go. We have to go now.”

“Please, just give me a minute…”

Allie sighed and moved over to see what Sarah was doing. The other woman was inside the back seat, where the clack-clack sounds of seat belts unbuckling could be heard.

What is she doing?

Sarah slid back out of the vehicle, pulling out a detached seat with her. It was black leather with pink stripes, and there was a small human being strapped inside it.

A baby.

Sarah was coming out of the Audi with a baby.

Stan, goddammit, you didn’t tell me they had a friggin’ baby, you drunk bastard.

Six

A baby.

A tiny baby.

(Of course it was a tiny baby; weren’t most babies tiny? Except this one looked a little tinier than most, for some reason.)

“Is that your baby?” Allie asked just to be sure.

Sarah nodded, her face beaming noticeably under the streetlights. “His name’s William. He’s the most precious thing I have in this world.” The same beaming face suddenly turned somber. “And I won’t let anything or anyone hurt him.”

“I believe you,” Allie said. Then, putting one hand on Sarah’s shoulder, “Come on. Let’s go.”

“What about my car?”

“We’ll have to leave it. You’re in no condition to drive.”

And I’m not too keen on getting caught in the street driving a bloodied woman’s car, Allie thought.

She said, “Get in the back with William.”

Sarah nodded and hurried to the rental Ford. For a small woman, she cradled the baby and his seat with surprising strength. Allie was reminded of all those stories about mothers summoning out-of-this-world abilities—like lifting cars—when their babies were in trouble. Looking at Sarah now, Allie completely believed those “tall” tales: Nothing—and no one—was going to hurt that baby. If they did, it would have to be over Sarah’s cold, dead body.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

She put mother and son into the back and left Sarah to cinch the baby’s seat into place while she hurried back to the Audi, giving the dark streets another quick sweep. Still as empty and as quiet as the last hundred or so times she’d scanned it. The paranoid part of her, that she had developed over the years and had kept her alive through all her “misadventures,” continued to work overtime. She fully expected a caravan of police cars to show up at any second, and their absence should have made her feel better, but it only encouraged her to move faster.

The driver seat of Sarah’s car was as messy as Allie had expected. It was easy to spot the blood on the upholstery, on the steering wheel, and on the gear shift with the bright ceiling light turned on. Sarah might not have noticed that she was even bleeding until Allie pointed it out to her, but that hadn’t stopped the other woman from liberally spreading the blood everywhere.

Allie slid into the Audi, forcing herself to get past the squeamish feeling of sitting in blood, and put it back into drive. She moved the car over to the side of the road and parked it against the curb. She didn’t drive forward very far, just enough that should the two houses nearby come awake, they wouldn’t be too alarmed at the strange vehicle parked at their curbside. Not that they were going to miss it in the light of day, but it wouldn’t immediately pique their suspicion. Or, at least, Allie hoped it wouldn’t. For a while, anyway.

She killed the Audi and closed the door, locked it, then hurried back to her own vehicle. Sarah was in the back, using her jacket as a blanket to cover up baby William. She still had blood over one half of her face, but Allie was pretty sure the other woman didn’t notice it. Allie would have wasted the time necessary to do something about Sarah’s wound if it was still bleeding, but it looked to have stopped, and Sarah didn’t seem to be suffering too much.

Allie slipped back into her Ford and closed the door. She looked up at the rearview mirror, at Sarah in the back. The younger woman met her gaze before pursing a smile. It was probably as genuine as Sarah could make it, given the circumstances, not that that prevented it from coming across as extremely awkward.

“Okay?” Allie asked.

Sarah nodded. “Thank you. Thank you for coming.”

“Don’t thank me yet.”

Allie drove them up the street before taking a right turn. She was glad to be moving again.

“Where are we going?” Sarah asked.

Good question.

The truth was, she didn’t have an answer. She barely knew where she was now, this very second. This was an unfamiliar area, and none of the street signs rang any bells. She just knew she had to get away from the parked Audi.

“I have a cabin,” Allie finally said. “We’ll stay there for the night, then figure out what to do in the morning.”

“Okay,” Sarah said.

“Okay?” Allie thought. She wondered if she would be okay if some strange woman she hadn’t met until a few hours ago—and in a dark bar, at that—showed up at her house to whisk her away.

Probably not.

But Allie wasn’t like most people, and certainly she wasn’t like most women. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not, though. The people she’d helped along the way would reply Yes, but the ones that she’d left in the dust would likely vote No.

“I don’t even know your name,” Sarah said after a while.

“Aubrey,” Allie lied. “My name’s Aubrey.”

It wasn’t her real name, of course, but it was the name on her fake driver’s license.

She sneaked another glance at Sarah. The other woman was checking on the baby, pulling down the jacket to get a better look at him. She was still oblivious to the bloodied half of her face, which didn’t hide the beaming smile every time she gazed down at the boy. Allie couldn’t see the baby itself, but it’d remained quiet ever since Sarah switched it over to the Ford. If Sarah didn’t look so content and serene, Allie might think there was something wrong with the child.

Allie leaned across the front seats and snapped open the glove compartment before taking her eyes off the dark streets briefly to grab the first-aid kit. Rentals didn’t come with first-aid kits, but Allie had added it herself. Another one of her just in case paranoia. This one had paid off. She hoped the other one did, too, eventually.

“Here,” Allie said, holding the box toward the back.

Sarah took it. “Am I still bleeding?”

“You don’t know?”

“I can’t feel anything. My face… I think it’s numbed over.”

“It doesn’t look like it’s still bleeding, but you should clean the blood off anyway. In case someone stops us.”

The thought of getting pulled over halfway to the cabin with a bloody woman in her back seat made Allie squirm. Now that was going to take a lot of explaining. More than that, she kept thinking about what Pete and Stan had told her about the Marshalls.

“The Marshalls have a long history around here. From what I hear, they’ve been around as long as Timber Creek County has been a county,” the bartender had said.

“This is Timber Creek County, and the Marshalls all but own Timber Creek County, that’s why,” Stan the drunk had added. “Everyone knows that boy hits his wife, but no one’s going to do a damn thing about it, just like no one did a damn thing about it when Marshall Sr. shot his pool boy in broad daylight.”

That last bit about Tom’s father shooting his pool boy in broad daylight was what really stood out to her. Of course, she didn’t know how much of what Stan had told her could be believed. The man was, after all, a drunk. You didn’t get very far swallowing everything a drunk told you. If she’d had twenty-four hours to play with, Allie might have been able to confirm everything Stan had said. Or, if not confirm them, then get a better sense of how much was town gossip and how much was truth.

But that was a moot point, because she hadn’t had twenty-four hours. She had one, and that had been spent driving to the Marshalls’ residence after locating their address. Besides, she didn’t need to understand everything about the Marshalls to know that Sarah was in deep, deep trouble and needed her help.

That same woman was cleaning the blood off her face with a wet wipe in the back seat now, using her reflection in the window to see with. She was doing a decent job of it, but it was going to take more work to get everything off.

And a lot more water and scrubbing…

“You okay?” Allie asked.

“It’s still numb,” Sarah said. “I guess that’s a good thing.”

“What about the cut on your forehead?”

The other woman leaned toward the window before poking at the gash. She grimaced. “It still hurts.”

“So you might not want to poke at it.”

Sarah pursed a smile before going back to cleaning the dry blood off her cheeks. “Did I thank you yet?”

“Once or twice.”

“I don’t think I can ever thank you enough.”

Don’t thank me yet. We’re a long way from this being over. Hell, I can’t even see the finish line yet.

It had gotten noticeably darker outside as Allie exited the suburbs, leaving all the bright streetlights behind with it, and drove toward the state highway. The center of Wells City was somewhere to the northeast, but Allie had turned left, which would take her toward her cabin. Right now, that was the best place for both of them. The rental property was hidden away in the woods and on the side of a hill, and was a perfect spot for someone who didn’t want to be bothered unless they decided differently.

“You’ll love it, totally hermit-ready,” Lucy had said after booking the place for her. The teenager had seen the pictures. “Just a short drive away from town for supplies. Also, human companionship. You know, if you should want such a thing.”

Allie had smiled. She wasn’t sure if she wanted human companionship, either. She didn’t count going down to the grocery store twice, a local diner about three times for breakfast when she was too lazy to cook, and a strip mall on the outskirt of town for some miscellaneous items as “human companionship.” Stopping at the Don’t Stop In earlier tonight, on the other hand, did count. Seeing the handsome Pete working the bar had even led her thoughts further astray.

“It’s so dark out here,” Sarah said after a while, peering out the window.

Their vehicle was the only one for what seemed like miles in every direction. That was exactly what Allie wanted, even if, in the back of her mind, she kept expecting police sirens to appear behind them at any second.

“Why me?” Allie asked.

Sarah looked over. “Why you?”

“The note. Why did you leave the note for me? There were other people at the bar.”

Sarah didn’t answer right away.

“Why not the bartender?” Allie continued.

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “I guess there was something in your eyes.”

“My eyes?”

“I don’t know how to explain it.” Sarah was clearly struggling with the answer. “I just had this gut feeling that you could help me.” She smiled. “And I was right, because here you are.”

Yeah, here I am.

“Tom,” Allie said. “He’s your husband.”

“Yes…”

“What happened to him back at the house?”

Sarah shook her head and pressed her hands against her head. “I don’t remember. I still don’t remember.”

“What do you remember?”

“I was running, grabbing William…” She paused briefly before shaking her head. “Then I was in the car and driving down the street. Then you were there, saving us.” She looked up, meeting Allie’s eyes in the rearview mirror again. “Thank you. God, thank you for coming.”

Allie wanted nothing more than to keep asking her the same questions, insist that she remember everything that happened tonight, because Allie had a very strong feeling it was all going to come down to what had happened back at that house on 2011 Stoner Street. Not just this night, but the next few days. Or weeks, maybe.

God, she hoped she could wrap this up before this dragged on into weeks…

But Allie didn’t pursue it. Sarah didn’t look like she had the energy to keep up. Even with the rooftop lights turned off, Allie could still make out the old bruises on the other woman’s makeupless cheeks and chin. She’d been caking herself with all that makeup for a reason.

“He hitting her again?” Stan the drunk had asked.

Yeah, Stan. He has. The bastard has…

“Try to get some rest, if you can,” Allie said. “We’ll be at my place soon.”

Allie focused out the front windshield at the long, endless stretch of asphalt road coming into view in patches thanks to her car’s headlights. Anything could be hiding out there, and she wouldn’t know it until it either revealed itself…or she ran right smack into it.

Seven

“You got yourself into one heck of a mess, haven’t you? That seems to be a talent of yours.”

“I didn’t ask for this, Hank.”

“But you didn’t run away from it.”

“That’s not me. I don’t run away from things. Especially something like this.”

“Oh, I know. You don’t have to tell me that, kid. So what are you going to do with her?”

“I was hoping you’d have some ideas.”

“Me?”

“You used to be a cop.”

“Used to be.”

She imagined Hank sighing wryly on the other end of the line, even though the only thing she could hear was his slightly-labored breathing. It was well past midnight for the both of them, but she wasn’t the one who had been woken up in the middle of, from the sounds of it, a very good sleep and asked to solve a problem.

“Shouldn’t you have thought about the consequences before you acted?” Hank asked her through the phone.

“I wasn’t expecting this.”

“What were you expecting?”

That’s a good question.

She said into the phone, “I couldn’t turn the other cheek, Hank. The woman left a note that said her husband was going to kill her under my coaster. Would you have been able to ignore something like that?”

This time she did hear Hank sighing from the other end. “A note under your coaster, huh?”

“Exactly.”

A slight chuckle. “That sounds familiar.”

Allie smiled, remembering the first time she stumbled across Hank Pritchard. That seemed like another lifetime ago. A hastily written note had been involved then, too.

“At least I went into that with my eyes open,” Allie said. “This one, I’m going in blind. I still am, and I have a feeling I’m not even close to the deep end yet.”

“Now that sounds ominous.”

“It’s appropriate.”

“Gut feeling?”

“Something like that,” Allie said, before pausing momentarily to stare at a brief flash of light that had appeared between the wall of the trees outside her window and vanished just as quickly.

Relax. There’s no one out there.

…yet.

She slowed down her breathing and searched for, then found, the crickets making their familiar noises outside. That had been her constant companion for the last five nights, and on night six, confirmation that there was nothing out there right now but woodland creatures, some bigger (and noisier) than others. They were her early warning system.

The cabin sat a mile and a half from the state highway, on a slight incline on the side of a hill. A dirt road connected the log cabin to civilization, though if you didn’t know it existed, it would have been easy to drive past the entrance below. Allie had missed it the first time and had to backtrack when her GPS told her she had overshot her turn.

The single-floor house she stood in now looked just as unimpressive in the dead of night as it did in the daytime. It had three bedrooms—one of which was currently occupied by Sarah and her baby—and a spacious great room. There was no TV, no radio, and Allie’s only link to the outside world was the GPS and radio in the Ford parked outside and the cell phone she’d brought with her. There was a fireplace, but it’d never gotten cold enough for her to use even though the owners had conveniently left behind a stack of firewood outside, just a few feet to the right of the window—

Lights, flickering among the trees outside.

Allie switched the phone to her left hand while her right slipped behind her toward the SIG Sauer tucked away back there, underneath her jacket.

“Hey, you still there?” Hank’s voice from the phone.

Allie let her right hand drop to her side when she couldn’t pick up the lights outside anymore.

Relax. Just car headlights from the highway. That’s all.

Relax…

“I’m still here,” she said into the phone.

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Paranoid?”

“Definitely.”

“Good. Paranoia keeps us healthy. Especially considering what you’ve been doing with your life, kid.”

“You mean getting by?”

“If you wanna call it that, then sure.”

There weren’t many people in this world who knew about her—what she’d been through and what she’d done—but Hank was one of them. The other was a teenage girl who should be sound asleep at the moment, which was why Allie had called Hank instead. The fact that Hank was a former cop, with a wealth of knowledge, was the other reason. But the truth was, she just needed a familiar voice that she could trust to confide in.

“What’s your next move?” Hank was asking her.

“I was hoping you’d know.”

“For one, keep an eye on the news. If this family is as powerful as you say, that means they’re well-connected. Money buys a lot of loyalties. When you add in the small-town factor, it buys even more. How small is Wells City, anyway?”

“Twenty thousand or so residents.”

“Twenty thousand? That’s not that small at all.”

“It’s not Seattle.”

“Most places aren’t Seattle. How did you end up all the way out there, anyway?”

“It was this or a cruise with Lucy.”

Hank grunted. “Yeah, you probably picked the right door. I like that kid, but being stuck on a cruise with her… No thanks.”

“I’ll tell Lucy you said that.”

“Uh, don’t do that.” Then, quickly, “But back to the problem at hand.”

“About that…”

“What?”

“I don’t have a TV.”

“You’re shitting me. Who doesn’t have a TV?”

“Me. That’s the whole point of coming out here, remember? No TV. No Internet. Just sleep and rest and sleep some more.”

“No Internet?”

“There are some local news websites, but there’s nothing on them right now.”

“Of course not. When did all this happen, just a few hours ago?”

“Around there.”

“You’ll have to wait till morning to be sure, kid.”

“Seems so.”

“So I guess you weren’t kidding when you said you’re on some hillside in the woods?”

“I wasn’t, no.”

“Can you get your hands on a TV? You didn’t happen to make any friends while you were out there, did you?”

“Sort of.”

“So borrow his TV.”

“I didn’t say it was a ‘he.’”

“Isn’t it?”

Allie didn’t answer.

Hank chuckled. “Right. Go and borrow his TV tomorrow and monitor the local news. Watch and listen carefully, and you’ll get a feel for just how much influence the Marshalls have in the area.”

“And then?”

“And then, proceed carefully. What’s the worst that can happen? I mean, it’s one angry husband. And maybe he’s from a powerful family. But you have right on your side.” Then, almost as if to confirm to himself, “Right?”

“Right.”

“You sure?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, do you believe her?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? That wasn’t what I expected to hear, kid.”

“She seems to have some kind of short-term amnesia. She doesn’t remember what happened at the house or even how she got away.”

“What about the state of the husband?”

“She doesn’t remember that, either.”

“You said she was bleeding when you found her in the street. And that she was fleeing her house?”

“Yes.”

“Her husband did that.”

“I think so.”

“You think so?”

Allie sighed. “I just wanted to get her off the streets, Hank. Get us off the streets. She never came right out and said the husband put her in that condition, but who else could have? She still has some old bruises on her face that she’s been covering up with makeup. He put them there, that’s not in doubt.”

“But you have to be sure, kid.”

“I will, in the morning. We’ll have a real talk then.”

“Good,” Hank said. “So what about these bikers you had a run-in with? Are they going to be trouble?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“What were they called again?”

“The Devil’s Crew MC.”

“Doesn’t ring any bells. Then again, there are a few dozen major clubs running around out there on any given Sunday. More, if you count the lower tier wannabes. But these guys could be new. You want me to look into them?”

“One problem at a time, Hank.”

“That’s probably best. For now, your goal should be to tread carefully. Don’t make any rash decisions until you’ve gathered all the facts.”

“That’s it? That’s all the advice you have for me?”

“Hey, this is new territory for me, too. I’ve done a lot of things in my time in and out of uniform, but I never got the chance to help an abused housewife. You’re getting that opportunity now for the both of us.”

“That’s one way to look at it.”

“Nothing you can do about it now. You’re in it, kid.”

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

“Just…be careful, and don’t trust anyone.”

Hank sounded even more tired now than when their conversation had started. Allie had to remind herself that he was an old man and wasn’t exactly in tip-top shape, especially not after waking up in the middle of the night.

“You don’t know who you can trust right now,” Hank continued. “Faced with that, the best course of action is not to trust anyone unless they prove themselves.”

“Thanks, Hank. I got all morning to think about this.”

“Sorry I couldn’t be more help.”

“You were.”

“Yeah?”

“I needed someone to talk to. You provided that.”

“Glad to hear it. What time is it over there? You said you were in the Pacific Northwest?”

“Yes. I’m two hours behind you.”

“You should be asleep. We both should be asleep.”

“Sorry for waking you up, old man.”

“Eh, I was tossing and turning anyway,” Hank said, but for some reason Allie didn’t fully believe him.

“I know it’s not fun to get a phone call in the middle of the night.”

“I said don’t worry about it. You should try to get some shut-eye, though. You’re going to need it when morning comes.”

I don’t think that’s going to happen, Allie thought, but she said, “I’ll try.” Then, “How are you two getting along?”

“Who are we talking about here?”

“You know who.”

“He’s fine. He eats a lot more than I thought he would.”

“He’s a grown dog, Hank. He eats a lot.”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t mention that part. Anyway, I’ve already taken out a second mortgage to make sure I can keep feeding him and me until you return. Wanna talk to him?”

Allie smiled. They were talking about Apollo. It was either leave the dog with Hank or Lucy, and the teenager was busy with school. Hank, despite his grouchiness, looked to Allie like he could use a little companionship. And besides, she needed time alone. Taking care of a dog while on vacation wasn’t exactly her idea of fun. Apollo was obedient, but he needed attention, too.

“No,” Allie said. “I’ll do that when I swing by to pick him up after I’m done here.”

“When will that be?” Hank asked.

“Hopefully soon.”

“Well, you know what they say: Hope springs eternal. But call me if you need anything. I’m not sure how much help I’ll be from all the way over here, but you never know.”

“You never know,” Allie said, and hung up.

She glanced back at the hallway that led into the bedrooms. Sarah and her baby were sleeping quietly in one of them. The two had gone right to sleep as soon as Sarah finished cleaning the blood off her face, and Allie helped her treat the gash on her temple. The baby had been asleep since the car.

A battered housewife fearing for her life and her newborn baby.

Sleeping in her cabin.

Christ. What did I get myself into?

She’d gone toe-to-toe with a serial killer, faced off against a small army of gunmen, and she’d voluntarily put herself into the crosshairs of a criminal organization that was probably still looking for her right now. And yet, helping a desperate woman and her baby was the scariest thing Allie had ever done.

Because she wasn’t ready for this. There were too many question marks. Allie didn’t like the unknown. Her entire life, ever since she lost her sister, was about control. She always knew how to get in, how to get through, and how to get out of every situation. Even if those equations were a little muddy at times, she always had a good idea. A general direction of how to achieve her goals.

But this…

“It’s just one angry husband,” she said to the dark cabin. “You can handle one angry husband.”

She expected to feel better after saying it out loud, but she didn’t.

Allie glanced down at her watch. 3:11 a.m.

Over three more hours before sunup.

It was going to be a long three hours…

Eight

Click.

Allie opened her eyes.

Someone was at the door. Someone was trying to open the door.

In the middle of the night.

That wasn’t good. That was so far not good, it had entered This is very bad territory.

Click.

There it was again.

No, not the door, as she had previously suspected. The sound was off. Doors made different noises.

The windows?

Yes, the windows. It had to be one of the windows.

She stared up at the dark ceiling in silence, though there was nothing silent about the scenarios flashing across her mind’s eye, and counted down from ten.

Ten…

Nine…

Eight…

Seven…

Six…

Fiv—

Click.

She sat up in bed—slowly—even as she reached for the SIG Sauer resting on top of the laptop, on the nightstand to her right. The 9mm was where it was supposed to be, its walnut grip cold against her fingers.

As was the night. It was chilly inside the cabin—inside her room—but not enough to make her use the blanket.

Allie glanced down at her wristwatch. 4:16 a.m.

Two more hours, give or take, before sunrise. The fact that someone was trying to come into the cabin now, at this time of night, made her alarm system go haywire. It was a good thing she hadn’t managed to get a single second of sleep since lying down about an hour ago, otherwise she might not have heard the noise coming from the front of the cabin.

One of the windows. It had to be one of the windows. The front door was locked and bolted. The windows, while also locked, would be less trouble to break into if someone really knew what they were doing. Certainly easier than the door—

Click!

This one was much louder than the previous clicks. Barely audible like all the rest but not quite silent. Not when she was sitting there, barely breathing, and listening for it.

Allie swung her legs off the bed, the semiautomatic pistol in her right hand. She’d gone to sleep in her clothes, so she didn’t have to worry about being caught in the middle of the night in her skivvies. The fabric of her jeans made a slight rustling sound as she moved, but not enough to cause her worry.

Not too much worry, anyway.

Her eyes—long since adjusted to the darkness—focused on the small slit in her bedroom door. She’d left it slightly open to keep an eye—and both ears—on Sarah and her newborn in the room across the hallway. She hadn’t heard a peep out of mother and son since they fell asleep, leading Allie to wonder just how long it’d been since the two of them had gotten such a peaceful slumber. Sarah, in particular, since Allie doubted the baby knew anything about his home’s domestic situation.

Allie had turned off all the lights before retiring, so there was nothing out there for her to zero in on. There should have also been no moonlight, because she’d pulled the curtains. There shouldn’t have been any moonlight, anyway, but there was.

A small sliver of it, splashing across the faux wooden flooring of the back hallway that separated Allie’s room from Sarah’s. There was a third room, but Allie was using that for storage. She had some clothes in there that she hadn’t touched since arriving—

Tap-tap.

Footsteps. Not very loud, but audible still because there were no other sounds in the entire building and, seemingly, the world outside. Of course, the latter wasn’t true. It was only because the owners of the cabin had built the place with excellent insulation, keeping everything out there where they belonged, including all the creatures that roamed the hillside woods.

That attention to detail allowed Allie to hear everything going on in the house. It’d been the first thing she noticed when she went to bed the first night.

And she could hear plenty now. Like someone trying to painstakingly tiptoe their way unnoticed from the front of the cabin toward the back.

The operative word being trying.

And it was definitely someone and not something. Woodland creatures could be sneaky, but they didn’t know how to open windows and close them back up afterward.

Allie slowly raised herself off the bed, careful not to cause the mattress’s springs to squeak. She tightened her grip on the pistol as she glided across the room, thankful she’d kept her socks on because it had been just chilly enough. She hardly made any sounds to her own ears.

The same couldn’t be said for the intruder:

Tap-tap.

Her eyes had become used to her environment, but that didn’t mean Allie could see in the dark. The small patch of moonlight helped a bit, but if the intruder didn’t step right into its path—

There. A shadowy form appearing against the wooden floors.

Gotcha.

A human figure, just as she had thought. Allie wasted a second or two wondering if it was Tom Marshall, come to reclaim his wife and child. Or maybe it was Mitch and his buddy, the two bikers from outside the Don’t Stop In, that had somehow found out where she lived and were looking for some revenge.

Not that it mattered who it was out there, because they had just broken into a place she was calling home and that was all the (Excuse) reason Allie needed to shoot them. It was a good thing she’d come armed.

Just in case…

She stared at the intruder’s elongated form as it stretched forward, the shape wrapped by distance, her angle, and the way the moonlight was hitting her target from behind. There was no way to tell if it was a man or a woman, or even how many there were. For all she knew there could be a dozen hiding in the great room, but that was doubtful given how little noise they’d made so far. Groups of people just wouldn’t have been able to stay that quiet.

Allie leaned against the wall, keeping the slightly ajar door to her left. She could see out but hopefully whoever was out there—getting closer—couldn’t see in. Her room was at the very back of the hallway and the limited visibility would keep it mostly hidden. Mostly. She didn’t have any delusions that the intruder would completely miss her opened door—no matter how slightly open—as they got closer. She just hoped she spotted them before—

Squeaking shoes shattered the silence, so loud that they might as well be firecrackers in the heavy silence of the cabin. The intruder, making a quick and sudden move! They were no longer trying to remain undetected, which could only mean—

She’d been spotted!

Allie lunged toward the opening and out into the hallway just in time to glimpse a black-clad figure climbing through one of the windows that flanked the front door. A dark shape wearing all black, its back to her. She couldn’t tell if the figure had its face covered; there was too much shadow and not enough lights.

“Stop!” Allie shouted.

She didn’t know why she’d bothered. She already knew the man or woman wouldn’t obey, but it was a natural instinct to try anyway.

As expected, the intruder didn’t even hesitate and jumped out the open window and onto the other side, only to pop right back up and take off across the grounds of the cabin. And he or she was fast, too.

Allie charged through the hallway and into the great room, but instead of following the intruder through the window, she took the easier—and faster—route by employing the front door. She undid the locks, threw the door open, and bolted outside.

Cold night air pressed against her exposed face but Allie grimaced through it, searching, searching…

There!

The intruder was already gone, having made their way across the clearing and into the thick black woods by the time she made it outside.

Damn, they were fast!

Then, a flock of shadowed birds taking flight, their sudden movements hard to miss.

Allie ran in the direction of the birds, bursting into the woods and dodging trees that appeared as if by magic in front of her. She kept the SIG clutched in one hand, her fingers tight around the walnut grip. She’d thumbed the safety off before she left the cabin but checked it again just to be sure.

There was a bright side to all of this: She was dealing with just one person. One intruder. That was better than a dozen.

She willed her breathing to slow down as she jumped over a bush and landed on the other side and was back into a full sprint a heartbeat later. She scanned the woods as she ran, looking for signs—anything at all—of where the intruder had gone. She’d lost them by just seconds, so they couldn’t have gone very far. Allie wasn’t 100 percent physically fine after the last few months, but she wasn’t exactly a couch potato, either.

Adrenaline pumped through her veins, driving her legs faster, and her ears were filled with her own breathing and the sounds of the woods hammering away around her. The only thing that wasn’t loud was her running footsteps, thanks to the fact she was still in her socks. It was much too dark to see anything beyond a few meters around her at a time, but she was certain she was headed in the right direction.

Probably.

Broken twigs on the ground, along with obviously fresh sneaker imprints. So she was definitely going in the right direction, even if she couldn’t see or hear—

The bang! of the pistol shot was followed by something small and subsonic buzzing her right ear a heartbeat later.

Allie threw herself forward and to the ground on instinct, the fact that she could even do that telling her she hadn’t been hit. She slammed into the slightly damp floor on her chest as the gunshot ricocheted off the trees around her.

It echoed, echoed...

She stayed down, her head slightly raised while eyes snapped left to right to in front of her and back all over again. She didn’t bother checking where the bullet had struck behind her. The only thing she cared about was that it hadn’t ended up in her, even though it’d been close. Close enough that she’d felt the heat of the round as it zipped past her head.

That was way too close.

Realizing that she was out in the open despite being low to the ground and with nothing but a two-feet high brush in front of her for protection, Allie rolled to her right until she had made it behind a thick tree trunk. She picked herself up and leaned against the tree, but she didn’t wander away from its protection.

“You missed!” Allie shouted.

Her voice echoed softer than the gunshot had just seconds ago, and it too faded into the night.

There was no response from the shooter. She hadn’t expected any, but was hoping.

Hope springs eternal, right, Hank?

“Want to try again?” she shouted.

Again, there was no response.

The only sounds she could detect were her own labored breathing and the adrenaline coursing through her veins. Allie stayed where she was. She was safe, for now. If the shooter could see her, he would have already tried to take her out a second time.

Slowly, very slowly, Allie got ahold of her breathing until she could hear the woods around her again. The flap-flap of birds, along with the noticeable mad scrambling along the branches directly above her. She wasn’t the only one that had been sent scurrying for cover by the gunshot.

Someone had taken a shot at her. The same man or woman she had been pursuing; the same one that had broken into the cabin. What was he doing back at the cabin?

Allie didn’t move for the longest time. She was satisfied to wait and listen. She didn’t believe for a second that the shooter had simply stuck their gun behind them and squeezed the trigger while they were fleeing, hoping to hit her. No. That bullet had come too close (Even now, she thought she could still feel its heat signature against her left cheek) for it to be dumb luck. It was more likely that the shooter had stopped, turned around, and waited to see her before firing. Which meant it was entirely plausible they were still out there right now, hoping for a second crack.

Allie wasn’t going to give them the chance.

She glanced down at her watch. 4:22 a.m.

Only eleven minutes since she first detected the break-in, even though it felt more like eleven hours had passed.

Time flies when you almost get your head shot off.

Her breathing had gone back to normal, and she could hear everything around her with clarity again. The animals had gone quiet, the presence of herself (and probably also the shooter’s) making them very cautious. They were smart like that. Even the dumbest creatures knew it didn’t pay to make a target of yourself when there were humans around.

And Allie thought of herself as smarter than a squirrel, so she stayed where she was, safely behind a massive tree that was probably there long before she ever existed and would remain at the exact spot long after she vanished from this Earth. If the shooter wanted her dead, he or she would have to come and get her.

Come on. Let’s see if you’ve got the guts.

She looked down at her watch again. Only a minute had ticked by since she last looked. The night had started out long, and it wasn’t going to get any shorter anytime soon. That was okay. It wasn’t like she had anything to do anyway. She’d come here to rest, to take her mind off her troubles. This served the same purpose. She hadn’t thought about the Syndicate or Reese in days.

But especially not Reese…

Allie slid down the length of the tree, the gnarled bark pricking at her back, and sat on the cold, hard ground. She kept the SIG in front of her, flexing her fingers to make sure she still had a good grip, and waited.

Morning would come soon. If the shooter (Is that you out there, Tom?) wanted to wait another two hours in hopes she would do something stupid like give them another shot at her, then they were going to have to wait the full two hours.

Allie wasn’t a fool. If they could stick it out, so could she.

It was a good thing she had all her clothes on.

And socks…

Nine

Thirty minutes or so before sunup, and Allie was sure the man or woman who had taken a shot at her was long gone. She was also convinced it was a man; the way the figure had moved while she was chasing it screamed “male.” Not that that particular knowledge—whether she was right or not—did her any good while she was hiding behind a tree staring at a squirrel, while the critter watched her back from a branch a dozen feet away.

The gunshot almost ninety minutes ago hadn’t brought anyone out into the woods to investigate, which wasn’t too much of a surprise. They were far from the nearest Wells City residence, which was the entire point. Not just the distance from civilization, but all the trees in the woods would have absorbed a lot of the gunshot’s sound.

Still, Allie kept expecting cops to flood the area and wasn’t sure if she was relieved or annoyed that they never showed up. Slightly relieved, because she’d hate to deal with Wells City’s finest right about now and have to explain what she was doing out here with her own pistol, while Sarah Marshall and her child slept in a cabin nearby. Slightly annoyed, because now it meant she’d have to deal with the shooter all alone.

Allie glanced up and blinked at the first rays of sunlight that had begun to sneak through the canopies above. The woods were coming alive, the hillside brightening up with every passing minute. The squirrel she’d been engaging in a staring contest with had run off to do something else, while the crickets on the ground came awake, as did the birds higher up.

Thirty more minutes later, Allie stepped out from behind cover and looked around.

The shooter was gone. She was the only one standing out here with a gun, wearing just her socks. At least it wasn’t as chilly as it had been last night.

Instead of retracing her steps back to the cabin, Allie went forward, hoping to find some clues to where the shooter had vanished. She quickly picked up the sneaker prints on the ground, leading farther into the woods.

About twenty or so minutes after that, Allie stepped out of the woods and onto a small dirt trail. She hadn’t known it even existed. But apparently the shooter had. There were more prints on the ground: Four large tires belonging to a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle. The ATV had been parked just off the path before it was used to escape. As far as Allie could tell, only one person came and went.

Could it actually have been Tom Marshall last night?

No, that was a bit of a stretch. Marshall wouldn’t have been sneaking around out here. If the man and his family were as powerful as Stan and Pete claimed, Tom would have gone to the cops and brought them here.

No, this was someone else.

Who? And what had they wanted back at the cabin?

Her? Sarah? The baby?

And why did the intruder come armed with a pistol and, if last night was any indication, the will and ability to use it?

She touched her cheek, where the bullet had almost struck her. It’d been close. A killing shot. An attempted killing shot, not that that made her feel any better. Whoever it was, the man hadn’t been messing around. He’d fully intended to kill her.

Better luck next time, Allie thought as she backtracked into the woods.

* * *

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“Nothing?”

Sarah shook her head. “I guess I was more tired than I thought.”

Allie recalled how she’d found Sarah in the streets, with half of her face covered in blood and a cut along her temple. Being “more tired” than she thought made sense considering what she’d gone through last night.

“You said there was a man in here?” Sarah asked.

The other woman sat at the kitchen counter, stirring oatmeal around in her small bowl like someone who wasn’t really hungry but knew they had to eat to survive. It was an automatic response. The cabin came stocked with food, along with beer and water, but there were little things like bacon that Allie had found in town.

Allie sat down with her own bowl and poured milk from a carton into it. “Last night. He fled into the woods.”

She thought about telling Sarah the whole story, that the man was armed and had even taken a shot at her, but decided against it. She was already dealing with a traumatized and battered housewife caring for a newborn, and Sarah probably didn’t need the added knowledge that a stranger with a gun had been outside her door last night, preparing to do God knows what.

“What do you think he was doing here?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t know. I’ll ask him if I run into him again.”

“You didn’t see his face or what he looked like?”

“It was too dark, and he was too fast. I chased him into the woods, but he got away.” Allie looked across the counter at Sarah. “You really didn’t hear anything last night?”

Sarah shook her head again. There was a bandage on her temple where she’d been cut, and in the revealing light of morning, Sarah’s old bruises were more obvious. There were three that Allie could see on the other woman’s face, probably more on the rest of her that Sarah kept hidden underneath her clothes. Instead of her bloodied shirt and pants from last night, Sarah was wearing a set of pajamas that Allie had packed with her. They were slightly big on the smaller woman, but it was better than letting her sleep in her old wardrobe.

“I was so tired,” Sarah said. She sat back on her stool before glancing over her shoulder toward the bedroom hallway.

“How is William?” Allie asked.

“Asleep.” Sarah gave her a small smile. “He sleeps so soundly. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“He doesn’t cry?”

“Not very much. Tom used to say—” She stopped in midsentence, before crossing her chest with her arms almost as a defensive instinct. “What are we going to do now?”

“We?” Allie thought.

Then: Right. We. Because I’m in this now.

“Tell me what happened back at the house,” Allie said. “Before you fled in the Audi last night. You said you didn’t remember before.”

“I didn’t.”

“And this morning?”

Sarah’s lips twisted, eyes looking down at the bowl but very likely seeing something else. Maybe someone else in the milk. “We got into a fight…”

“You and Tom.”

“Yes.”

“How did this happen?” Allie asked, touching her own temple.

“I think he hit me with something…”

“You’re not sure?”

“It’s all a little blurry…”

“What about Tom? How did you manage to get little William away from the house in your condition?”

Again, Sarah shook her head. “I don’t remember. I’m sorry, but…” She put her face in her hands. “I’ve tried to remember. Last night and all morning, but…”

“It’s okay,” Allie said. “It was traumatic. You were fighting for your life. It’ll all come back to you eventually.”

“God, I hope so. The not knowing is… It’s strange. Like a part of my life is missing.”

“It’ll come back. Until then, let’s talk about what you do remember. Why were you guys fighting in the first place?”

“He thought I was cheating on him.”

“Were you?” Allie asked, the question bursting out of her mouth before she could even think about it.

“God, no,” Sarah said. Her eyes widened noticeably, as if she’d just heard the most terrible thing in the world.

Allie believed her. If Sarah was pretending, she was doing a Meryl Streep-worthy Oscar performance.

“But he wouldn’t believe me,” Sarah continued. “He’s always been the jealous type, even while we were dating. You know what’s funny about that?”

“What?”

“He was the one who strayed. He was still seeing his ex-girlfriend while we were engaged.”

“And after you two married?”

“He called it off. Or he told me he did. But…”

“But?”

“I was always sure there was someone else. Or someones else.”

“Did you confront him about it?”

“Yes, and he always turned it back on me. Accusing me of cheating on him.” She sighed and stared off at one of the cabin’s walls. “For a while, I thought we’d gotten past all that…”

Past your husband cheating on you? Allie thought, but again bit her tongue.

“I was hoping that after William was born, things would change,” Sarah continued. “But it had the opposite effect.”

“What happened?”

“He got more jealous. A lot more.”

Sarah looked back down at her oatmeal floating in the ceramic bowl. If she had any appetite to begin with, it was long gone.

“What about his ex-wife?” Allie asked.

“Claire?” Sarah said.

Allie nodded. “What happened to her?”

“She passed away.”

I heard Tom killed her, Allie thought but said, “Do you know how?”

“She was driving during a thunderstorm. It was an accident.”

“Was it?”

“Yes.” Then, off Allie’s unconvinced look, “Did someone tell you it wasn’t?”

A drunk at a bar last night, Allie thought but said, “I’ve heard rumors that she was trying to divorce him when she died.”

“She was. Tom admitted it. They didn’t get along and got married when they were too young.”

“And you’re sure Tom didn’t have anything to do with Claire’s death?”

“No. I’m not sure. I’m not sure about anything that has to do with Tom anymore.”

“Do you think he’s capable of it? After everything that’s happened?” After the way he beat you, left those bruises on your face and God knows where else? she wanted desperately to add, but once again, bit her tongue.

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “I don’t know anything anymore. Last night, I was sure he was going to kill me. The look on his face, the sound of his voice…”

Sarah shivered. She might not have even realized she’d done it. Allie wondered how much of what Sarah thought she knew about her husband she was questioning at the moment. Maybe all of it.

“What happened last night?” Allie asked. “What prompted the argument that started all of this?”

“We were at dinner before we stopped in at that bar. What was it called?”

“The Don’t Stop In.”

“Right. That one. For some reason, I can never remember the name.”

“Probably because you don’t go there often.”

“We don’t.”

“What happened at dinner?”

“I smiled at a guy while we were at the restaurant. It wasn’t anyone we knew; or I knew. He was just a nice guy who smiled across the room at me and—I don’t know why—but I smiled back. It was an instinctive response. You know, just to be friendly?”

Allie nodded. “And Tom saw it?”

“Yes. And he got mad. We didn’t even finish our dinner. He wouldn’t let us. I think he would have yelled at me at the restaurant, but there were too many people there, and if there’s one thing Tom knows, it’s not to cause a scene.”

“Because of who he is. His name.”

“Yes.”

“Go on.”

Sarah might have shivered again, though it was barely perceptible. Allie only noticed because she was watching the other woman so closely.

“He didn’t yell at me at the restaurant, but once we were in the car, that changed,” Sarah said. “He yelled at me all the way home. The most obscene things. Accusing me of cheating again. I thought he was…” Sarah stopped.

“What did you think he was going to do?” Allie prompted.

“I thought he was going to kill me.”

Sarah stared across the counter at her in silence for a moment. Allie had seen a lot of traumatized human beings before in her life—too many, in fact—and she saw another one of them here.

Allie reached over and took the other woman’s hand and squeezed. She pursed a smile, and Sarah tried to return it and failed badly.

“Okay. You were leaving the restaurant, and he was angry,” Allie said.

“That’s why I forced him to stop at the Don’t Stop In.” She made another attempt at a failed smile. “Maybe ‘force’ isn’t the right word. I told him I was going to pee in his car if he didn’t stop for me. And he loved that car, maybe more than me.”

“That’s why you left the note for me.”

“Yes.”

“How did you manage that?”

“We ordered drinks when we came in. I was at the bar to pay for them. While I was doing that, and he wasn’t looking, I put the note under your coaster.”

“All of this, because you smiled at some guy during dinner.”

“That was just the latest thing to set him off.”

“‘The latest?’”

Sarah reached up and touched the bandage over her temple. She winced slightly. Her fingers trailed down to one of the bruises on her cheek.

“How many times has he done this?” Allie asked.

“I haven’t exactly been keeping count.”

“But it’s a lot.”

“Yes.”

So why did you stay with him? Allie thought and wanted to demand but didn’t. She wouldn’t have gotten a good answer and would be shocked if Sarah had an answer to give. Allie had never been in Sarah’s situation, but she knew people who had. The question was a simple one, but the answer rarely, if ever, was.

Allie reached into her jacket pocket and took out the two flimsy pieces of toilet paper. She placed it on the table between them.

“You still have it,” Sarah said. She looked surprised to see it.

“It’s evidence.”

Sarah picked up the note by one wet corner. “God, I was so scared when I wrote it. I don’t know how I managed to even write these letters, my hands were shaking so badly.”

Sarah laid the note back down but continued to stare at it.

“You took a really big chance,” Allie said.

“I didn’t have any choice. But I didn’t think anything would come of it. What’s that thing they call in football, when the quarterback just throws the ball into the end zone, hoping one of his teammates catch it?”

“A Hail Mary.”

“That’s all that note was. A Hail Mary.” She smiled, and this time it wasn’t nearly the epic failure as all the other attempts. “I guess some Hail Marys are answered.”

Allie didn’t know how to respond to that. No one had ever referred to her as a Hail Mary football pass before. Then again, no one had ever left a note under her beer coaster asking for help, either.

“We have to go to the police. You know that,” Allie said after a long silence.

The color drained from Sarah’s face.

“There’s no other way,” Allie continued. “Someone will have already found your car in the street by now. That means the police will already be involved. I’ll be shocked if they’re not flashing your picture across the TV screen this very second.”

“I can’t go to the police, Aubrey.”

“You can’t, or you won’t?”

“I can’t.” She leaned forward, as if she were hoping the extra inches of nearness would convince Allie of what she was trying to say. “The Marshalls… You don’t understand the kind of power they have in Timber Creek.”

“I’ve been told it’s a lot.”

“By who?”

A drunk at a bar and the bartender who works there, Allie thought, but decided it was probably not the most convincing answer she could give.

She said instead, “Everyone around here knows, from what I’ve been told, that the Marshalls have been in Timber Creek County before there even was a Timber Creek County. Or so goes the saying.”

“The sayings are true. Tom’s family really has been here a long time. That’s how they’ve gotten to their position.”

“Which is…?”

“They call the shots. Nothing happens around here without their okay. Mayors, assemblymen, even state representatives.”

“They’re that powerful?”

“They have that much money. Everyone knows it, including everyone in the WCPD. That’s why I can’t go to them. Why I couldn’t before last night, and why I still can’t this morning.”

“You don’t think they’ll believe your word over Tom’s.”

“I know they won’t believe me over him,” Sarah said. She had, maybe unwittingly, picked her spoon back up and was gripping it so tight in one hand that her fingers were turning ghostly white. “The police won’t believe me. No one will believe me.”

“I believe you.”

“But you don’t live here.” Sarah glanced around at the cabin. “You rented this place. You don’t belong here.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You’re a stranger in Timber Creek. And no one’s going to take a stranger’s word over Tom’s.”

“It’s my word and yours against his.”

“No, that’s what you don’t understand, Aubrey,” Sarah said. Her shoulders sagged noticeably, as if all her strength had been zapped from her. “When it comes to the Marshalls, it’s not just Tom, it’s all of them. And what the clan says, goes.”

“Maybe.”

“No, not maybe. That’s how things are around here.”

Allie sat back in her chair, picked up her coffee, and took a sip. “It’s a good thing I’m not from around here, then.”

Ten

She needed news and the lack of a TV—something that was formerly a plus but had now become a disadvantage—wasn’t going to get her that. Wells City was small—at least to Allie, even if Hank disagreed—but it did have a couple of dedicated news websites run by the three local channels. Unfortunately, none of them had anything for her, either because it was still too early in the day or they just didn’t update content as quickly. She wanted to believe the lack of news was because there was no news to write about, but the paranoid part of her wouldn’t let her glom to that hope.

Allie also wasn’t going to get news sitting in the cabin talking with Sarah. The woman’s inability to tell Allie anything about Tom’s state, or exactly what had happened last night at the house, hadn’t helped. Allie didn’t think continually asking her the same questions would get them anywhere. The woman just didn’t remember, and considering what she’d been through, Allie didn’t really blame her. She had experience with trauma. Maybe too much. Some people used it as an incentive, while others hid from it.

Besides gathering news about what was—or wasn’t—happening out there, there was also the matter of William’s needs. The cabin wasn’t designed to care for a newborn, but everything they would need could be found in town.

“What does he need?” she had asked Sarah.

“A lot,” Sarah had said. “Could you go back to the Audi? I managed to put a lot of his things in there, but I was in such a rush I forgot to grab them before moving him to your car.”

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen. Assuming the cops haven’t found your car yet—and that’s such a big if it’s not even worth thinking about—I don’t think it’s a good idea for either one of us to be seen around it in broad daylight.”

Allie told Sarah to stay indoors before she left, and wanted to add, “And try to remember everything that happened last night. Especially how you left Tom.” But she didn’t. Maybe soon she’d have to force the woman to face what had happened, but that could wait.

For now, anyway.

She didn’t have to worry about Sarah doing something stupid like calling someone while she was gone, though. Besides the fact that Sarah had left her phone, along with her purse and William’s bag, inside the Audi, she agreed with Allie that right now their best course of action was to stay out of sight until Allie could find out what was happening out there. So that allowed Allie to leave the cabin (mostly) worry-free.

Last night’s intruder stuck in Allie’s mind long after she’d lost sight of him. It wasn’t just that the man had come armed and ready to use his weapon, but what the hell was he doing here in the first place?

That was the big mystery. One of many. One of too many for her to deal with simultaneously right now. As clichéd as it sounded even to herself, she had to take it one problem at a time.

For now, she had two immediately solvable problems: Find some news, and get things for the baby.

There was the possibility that Sarah’s Audi had remained undiscovered. It was a slight one, yes, but wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibilities. And if Tom was fine and dandy after last night, and hadn’t alerted the police to his wife and child’s absence yet, then Allie would have more time. This one was more likely given that Tom wouldn’t necessarily want to broadcast to the world about his marital problems. There was a big difference between town gossip and evidence. But could she really count on those two things, though?

No, but as Hank said, hope springs eternal.

She thought about calling Hank again to get some ideas about how to proceed but didn’t. There wasn’t a lot Hank could do for her all the way out here.

No, she was pretty much on her own.

So what else was new?

* * *

There were only two cars parked in front of the Don’t Stop In when Allie turned into it about twenty minutes later. She would have reached the bar faster if she hadn’t been driving at the speed limit. Towns like Wells City were notorious speed traps, and Allie didn’t need the extra attention this morning.

The presence of only two vehicles was good, because fewer cars meant fewer people to avoid. If she was really lucky, the ones in the parking lot would all belong to the employees. She knew from having driven past the place over the last week that the bar closed at two in the morning and reopened around ten, and she was two hours early. But the presence of vehicles meant there would be someone there to open the door for her. Probably the early shift getting ready for the lunch crowd.

Allie parked next to a beat-up Jeep and climbed out. The second car was a red Subaru with mud-caked tires. Fresh mud, which meant it had come from out-of-county because the road she’d been driving on this morning was bone dry.

She headed into the Don’t Stop In.

The bar looked completely different in the morning, the ambiance literally night and day. Unlike last night, there was no Stan to bother her and no couples slow dancing to George Strait or another country and Western favorite. The only person in the place was the bartender—a short woman in her late thirties with a ponytail, wiping down some glasses with a much-too-raggedy rag.

Allie glanced around, but there were no signs of another employee. So who did the Subaru outside belong to?

“You’re early,” the woman said as Allie walked over to the bar. “Can’t officially serve you liquor until noon.”

“Officially?” Allie said.

“Well, as long as you don’t tell anyone…”

“I’ve been driving all day and just needed a place to rest for a bit.”

“We’re not officially open yet, either, but feel free to take a load off.”

“Thanks.”

“No big whoops.”

She sat down on the same stool as last night. She hadn’t seen it the day before, but the upholstery on Stan’s stool next to her was faded, as if it had gotten a hell of a lot of use over the years.

Allie turned to the female bartender. “You guys sell anything other than beer?”

The smaller woman pointed across the bar. “Got coffee, but it’s not for sale.”

“Unofficially?”

“It’s not for sale, but I’ll pour you a cup anyway.”

“Thanks. You’re a lifesaver.”

“One nasty cup of java coming up.”

“Can’t be that nasty.”

“Oh, you’ll see. Don’t say I didn’t try to warn ya.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

The bartender walked over to the other side of the bar while Allie looked for and found the big LCD TV hanging off the wall to her right. It was turned on, but the sound was muted, and instead of the local morning news there was a woman in dungarees jumping up and down, very excited that she’d just won something on The Price is Right.

Allie looked over at the bartender as she poured some black coffee into a mug. “You mind if I change channels to the local news? I’m hoping to catch the traffic report, in case there’s any road works up ahead that I might want to avoid.”

“You’re too late,” the bartender said. “News ended a few minutes ago.”

Allie looked down at her watch. 8:06 a.m. “No repeats?”

“No repeats. But it starts all over again at ten, eleven, and noon.”

“How many channels do you guys have?”

“Three, but they all come on at the same time in the mornings. Ends at the same time, too.”

Swell.

“Why do you need the news, anyway?” the bartender asked as she walked back over with the cup of coffee and some sugar sachets. “You don’t have GPS in your car?”

“Not the rental I’m driving,” Allie lied.

“Seriously? You saw that busted Jeep outside?”

Allie picked up the coffee, ignored the sugar, and took a sip. It was as nasty and bad as the woman had warned her. “Uh huh.”

“That’s mine. Even it has GPS that gives you the latest traffic updates.”

“I only paid for the basic package on my car. It doesn’t come with GPS.”

“That’s mighty brave of you to drive around without GPS these days.”

“They did give me a free map.”

“Sure, if you like reading, but who has time for that?”

Allie smiled. “Thanks for the nasty coffee. You sure I can’t pay you for this?”

The bartender was about to answer when she looked past Allie.

Allie turned around.

The front door had opened, and two Wells City deputies had entered.

Easy. Easy…

Then she saw the way they had their hands resting casually—or it was supposed to look casual, anyway—on the butts of their holstered sidearms.

Oh, goddammit.

But she didn’t panic and she didn’t run. She didn’t even take her hand off the coffee’s handle, even though she wanted desperately to.

Instead, she sat very still while the older of the two deputies looked across the bar—first at Allie, before focusing on the bartender, and asked, “Hey, Mickey, where’s the owner of the Ford parked outside next to your Jeep?”

It took all of Allie’s willpower not to reach for the SIG Sauer hidden behind her back. It was a good thing the compact pistol was easy to hide and didn’t cause a bulge back there, underneath her jacket.

“Which car again?” the bartender, Mickey, asked.

“The Ford,” the older of the two deputies said. He had at least twenty years on his partner, with grays along his temples and a slight paunch. Trent was stenciled across his name tag. “White, with California plates. It’s parked next to your Jeep.”

Mickey glanced across the counter at Allie. She could feel the woman’s eyes out of the corner of her own, but Allie was too busy watching the deputies. The younger of the two (his nametag read Evans) had moved slightly away from his older partner as he scanned the bar for signs of other customers. But there was no one except her.

And the whole time, neither men took their hands off the butts of their weapons. That was all the signs Allie needed that she was in trouble. The question was: How much?

“I’m not sure,” Mickey was saying to the right and slightly behind Allie.

The bartender’s quick look in Allie’s direction must have alerted Trent, because he trained those hard brown eyes of his on her from all the way across the room. “Didn’t you open up the place?” the deputy asked. He was staring at Allie while clearly talking to Mickey.

“Yeah, I did,” Mickey said. “But I didn’t run outside to check the parking lot every time someone drove in. I don’t know who was driving the Ford.”

Allie’s mind had been replaying an image of the parking lot outside as soon as Trent had mentioned Ford. She remembered the Jeep—Mickey’s, she knew now—and another vehicle out there…

“The Subaru’s mine,” Allie said.

“Subaru?” Trent said.

“Red. Mud on the tires. The Ford was already here when I pulled in.”

Trent’s eyes went back to Mickey for confirmation.

The bartender shrugged. “Don’t look at me. But a guy did show up a few minutes before she did.” Mickey nodded toward the back. “Bathroom.”

“A guy?” Trent asked.

“Nature was calling. Loudly, from the sounds of it.” She glanced down at her watch. “Poor guy’s been in there a while, too.”

“How long was a while?” the younger deputy, Evans, asked. He was already focusing on the back hallway that led to, Allie knew from last night, the bathrooms.

“Five? Maybe ten minutes ago?”

“He’s been in there for ten minutes?”

“Told you. Nature was calling the poor guy something fierce.” Then, “What’s going on? What’s with all the questions?”

Trent ignored her question and looked at Allie. “The Subaru outside’s yours?”

“That’s right,” Allie said.

“Where you coming from?”

Allie didn’t answer right away. She was too busy sifting through her memory banks, trying to remember what kind of plates she’d spied on the Subaru as she walked past…

“Seattle,” Allie said, a mental image of clear white skies over a snow-capped mountain passing through her mind’s eye as she answered.

It was the right state, because Trent looked away from her and over to his partner. “Go make sure he’s still in there, but don’t approach him. Easy does it.”

Evans nodded and walked toward the bathrooms. He didn’t take his hand off the butt of his holstered pistol. If anything, he looked even more nervous.

Trent was much calmer now as he sidled over to the bar. He nodded at the cup of coffee Allie was holding. “Got some more of that, Mickey?”

“It’s nasty,” Mickey said.

“Nasty’s appropriate for this morning.”

Mickey walked back to the coffee station. “What’s going on, Bill? You and Philly there look like you’re chasing Bonnie and Clyde.”

“Maybe not too far from the truth.”

Up close, the deputy looked even older than his partner and reminded Allie a bit of Hank. And just as grouchy, too.

The man looked over at Allie. “What were you doing in Washington?”

There was no reason she had to answer, but Allie didn’t want to antagonize the man. It was a simple enough question—and maybe even casual and friendly, in other circumstances—that should she try to avoid it, would have only alerted the veteran cop.

“Business,” Allie said. “I don’t usually like to stay there longer than I have to.” Then, adding because she already knew what the next question would be in response, “I flew in and I’m driving out. Got a few days off, and it’s a good excuse to see the country.”

“What business you in?”

“Sales,” Allie said. It was a generic occupation, and most people rarely asked any follow-up questions besides one.

“What do you sell?” Trent asked, which was exactly the follow-up question everyone always asked. Even if they weren’t interested, it was just the polite thing to do.

“Medical equipment.”

And just like that, the conversation about her job was over. Most people knew what medical equipment was in the general sense, but that was it. And they didn’t want to know more, either. What was so exciting about medical equipment sales, anyway? Absolutely nothing.

“You been in town long?” Trent asked, shifting topics.

“Not long,” Allie said. “Just driving through. Anything out there to see in this town of yours?”

“Depends on what you want to see.”

“Anything famous?”

“Um, not really. Unless you count all the roadhouses we have along the highway. We got plenty of those.”

“They’re famous?”

“Mostly infamous.”

“Avoid those places like the plague,” Mickey said from the other side of the counter. “You don’t want to go in there. Too many of those MC posers.”

“MC?” Allie asked even though she already knew. She just assumed Trent and Mickey wouldn’t think a medical saleswoman would know about such things.

“Motorcycle club,” Trent said. “They’re bad news. Avoid them at all costs, like Mickey says.”

“Won’t be hard. You’ll hear them coming from a mile away with those bikes of theirs,” Mickey said. “You know what they say about guys with loud bikes.”

“No, what’s that?” Allie said.

Mickey grinned. “The louder the bikes, the smaller the dicks.”

Trent rolled his eyes. “She’s had bad relationships with bikers, can you tell?”

“Whatever,” Mickey said. She poured coffee into another cup. “She stopped in for local traffic news. Maybe you can help her out.”

“Anything out there that I should know about?” Allie asked the deputy. “I’d hate to get stuck in traffic, if I can avoid it.”

“I thought you wanted to see the country?”

“Seeing the country is way different than sitting in your car, waiting to move an inch at a time.”

“Good point. All I can say is, you might want to stay here for a while.”

“Why’s that?”

“There’s going to be a lot of roadblocks between here and the county line.”

“Roadblocks?”

“Did you say roadblocks?” Mickey asked.

Trent turned back to the bartender. “That’s what I said.”

“It’s that bad?”

“Yeah,” Trent said somberly. “It’s pretty fucking bad. This whole county’s about to blow up when this hits the air.”

Not what I wanted to hear, Allie thought, wondering what exactly had happened out there while she was trying not to fall asleep last night.

A lot, apparently.

Eleven

“What’s going on, Bill?”

Yeah, Bill, what’s going on out there? Come on, you can tell her. And tell me, too, because I don’t have a clue, and it’s killing me.

“I can’t say.”

Yes, you can.

“Oh come on, you can say.”

Listen to her.

“I can’t.”

Goddammit, Bill, don’t be so stubborn.

“Yes, you can.”

Yeah, Bill. Say it!

“You know I can’t. I’m under strict orders.”

Whose orders?

“Whose orders?”

Someone’s reading my mind.

The deputy sighed. “Look, I can’t tell you what’s going on because it hasn’t hit the news yet, okay? Just take my word for it and stay off the roads for now. That goes for the both of you.”

“It’s that serious?” Mickey asked.

“It’s pretty damn serious, yeah.”

“What is?”

Trent smirked. “Really? I’m going to fall for that? Hey, Mickey, I was born at night, but not last night.”

Mickey shrugged. “Girl can try, can’t she?”

“She can, but she should know when it’s time to stop.”

“That’s my problem. I never know when it’s time to stop. I heard that’s your problem, too. Or is it the other way around? You can’t start when it’s time to start?”

“Whoa, whoa, girl, don’t go there.”

Mickey grinned. “Sure thing, dude.”

Trent grunted, and the two of them rolled their eyes at each other.

Allie had the impression they were talking about something entirely different now. She didn’t interrupt them—anything that put Trent at ease and got his hand away from his pistol was fine with her—and instead took another sip from the bad coffee. It was like forcing thick, disgusting sludge down her throat, but it gave her the opportunity to process everything she’d heard and could extrapolate from the events so far.

Whatever had caused Trent and his partner to come in here had also resulted in roadblocks being erected across the county roads. That signaled the police were taking this seriously. Really, really seriously. But the fact that they were only looking for a vehicle and not a specific type of driver—say, white female with brown hair—meant they didn’t have a suspect, but just the general description of a car.

The latter was good. The former, not so much.

But she could work with that.

“Well?” Trent was asking.

Allie was surprised to see him looking in her direction when he asked the question and was caught off guard. Before she could answer, though, she realized he was looking past her.

She glanced over as the other deputy, Evans, came out of the back hallway. He’d been there this entire time and had one hand holding a handkerchief over his mouth and nostrils.

“He’s still in there,” Evans said, removing the rag just long enough to answer.

“What’s he doing?” Trent asked.

“Dropping a deuce and a half, from the sounds and smells of it.”

“That’s gross,” Mickey said, making a face.

“I hope you stocked up on cleaning material, Mickey.”

“Stop it, or I’m gonna hurl my breakfast at you.”

Evans chuckled. “Hey, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

“He looked like he’ll be in there longer?” Trent asked.

“Sounded like it might be an overnighter.”

“He’s the one you guys are looking for?” Mickey asked.

“Don’t know yet,” Trent said. He took a sip of his coffee and must have liked it as much as Allie did, because he cringed noticeably. To be fair to Mickey, the bartender had warned both of them how “nasty” it was.

“But you know you’re looking for a Ford?” Mickey asked.

“White Ford,” Evans said. He leaned against the counter. “Can I have some of that coffee, Mickey?”

“Coming up,” the bartender said, and headed back to the coffee station.

Allie didn’t say anything and kept busy drinking more of Mickey’s coffee. Evans was on her right, while Trent was camped out on her left. She didn’t know if the deputies had flanked her on purpose or not. Maybe she’d missed a sign? A look between the two men? Were they that clever, or was she just being paranoid again?

“So what’s happening?” Mickey was asking.

“Told you, can’t say,” Trent said.

“Oh come on, you can tell me.”

“Can’t, sorry.”

“It’s big,” Evans said.

“What’s big?” Mickey asked.

“Can’t say,” Trent said again.

“Oh come on.” Mickey walked over with the coffee and put it in front of Evans. She leaned across the counter and smiled at the younger deputy. “You can tell me, Philly. What’s going on? What’s with the roadblocks?”

“You told her about the roadblocks?” Evans asked Trent.

Trent shrugged. “It’s going to be public knowledge pretty soon when the news gets their mitts on it.”

“I thought the chief said not to tell anyone anything.”

“It’s done. Get over it.”

“What about the other thing?”

“Not the other thing,” Trent said with a shake of his head.

“What other thing?” Mickey asked.

“Can’t say,” Trent said.

“Can’t say,” Evans repeated.

“You guys, come on,” Mickey said. She was almost pleading now, and Allie thought, Yeah, you guys, come on.

“Look, it’ll be on the news soon,” Trent said.

“What will be on the news soon?” Mickey asked.

“We can’t say.”

“But if it’s going to be on the news soon, you can tell me now, since everyone will know eventually anyway. Right?”

That made Trent and Evans exchange a look, and for a second—just a second or two—Allie thought they would change their mind.

But they didn’t.

Trent shook his head. “Can’t say. You’ll just have to wait, like everyone else.”

“You guys suck,” Mickey said.

“Just doing our job, Mickey,” Evans said.

“Just doing your job is out there, not drinking my shitty coffee in here.”

“She’s got a point,” Evans said, taking a sip off the coffee. “This thing is pretty shitty.”

Trent chuckled. “Best coffee in town.”

“In what universe is this the best coffee in town?”

“It’s free, ain’t it?”

“Oh.”

The more the deputies refused to say what was happening out there—what had happened since last night—the more Allie knew it wasn’t good. Not just for Sarah Marshall, but also for her, because there was clearly an APB out on her Ford. And now, county-wide roadblocks were being erected. You didn’t do that because a husband beat his wife. Something else had to have happened. Something big.

And what was that Mickey had said?

“What’s going on, Bill? You and Philly there look like you’re chasing Bonnie and Clyde.”

“Maybe not too far from the truth,” Trent had replied.

Bonnie and Clyde were notorious 1930s Depression-era criminals. They were bank robbers and killers.

Time to go, girl. Easy does it.

Allie put down her half-empty cup and looked at Mickey. “You sure I can’t pay you for this?”

Mickey waved a dismissive hand. “It’s on the house, just like it is for these two bozos.”

“Hey, we take offense to that,” Evans said, even as he took another sip of the free and very bad coffee.

Allie smiled. “Well, thanks again.”

“No problemo,” Mickey said.

Okay. Now get up and go.

Slowly…

She got up from her stool and turned to go.

“Leaving already?” Trent asked, his eyes watching her over the rim of his ceramic mug. There were already coffee stains on the rim.

Allie nodded. “Faster I get back on the road, faster I get home.”

“Where’s home?”

“Oklahoma.”

“Where in Oklahoma?” Evans asked.

Where in Oklahoma?

She had a feeling they were testing her, and they had to choose a good question, too, because she only knew two cities in the entire state of Oklahoma…

“Tulsa,” Allie said. It was either that or Oklahoma City, and she thought Tulsa would sound less obvious.

“Oh yeah?” Evans said. “One of our deputies is from there.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah. He brags about his college days all the time. It’s kind of annoying, actually.”

“How’re the Golden Panthers doing this year?” Trent asked, slowly putting his cup down. “They gonna finally beat the Sooners this time?”

Allie guessed pretty quickly that the Golden Panthers was likely a local Tulsa sports team. Maybe even the college team. From that, and the way Trent had phrased the question, she extrapolated that Sooners—a nickname also given to Oklahomans—was a rival sports team to the Golden Panthers.

She had two options: She could fake a response, or she could go the more likely route and play the “I’m a girl; I don’t know sports” card.

“Sorry, you’re talking to the wrong person. I don’t follow sports,” Allie said. She got up and glanced over at Mickey. “Thanks again.”

Mickey nodded, but there was something about the way she was staring back that told Allie something wasn’t right.

Shit. Did I get something wrong?

Golden Panthers? Sooners? Did I just miss something, and everyone knows it except me?

“No problem,” the bartender said. “Safe travels.”

“Thanks,” Allie said, and turned to go.

“Golden Panthers, huh?” Evans said from behind her.

Allie stopped and turned around to look at the young deputy. “What about them?”

“The Tulsa college sports team.”

“And?” Then, with the best forced smile she could muster, “I told you, I don’t follow sports. You guys are barking up the wrong tree.”

“The thing is, the team isn’t called the Golden Panthers. Florida International University is the Golden Panthers. The ones from Tulsa are the Golden Hurricanes. If you were from there you’d know that, even if you don’t follow sports.”

Oh, goddammit. I hate sports.

When Allie looked forward again, Trent had climbed off his stool and was reaching for her shoulder with one hand, while the other strayed toward his holstered gun.

Her mind clicked away at a hundred miles a second:

An APB on her car.

Countywide roadblocks.

Bad news that was going to explode all over the TV soon.

Bonnie and Clyde…

She didn’t really know about the last one, but it didn’t sound good. And then there was Trent, reaching for her, seemingly moving in slow motion. She knew that wasn’t the case. It was just how everything was represented in her mind at the moment—the world was crawling by at a snail’s pace—as she processed every little scrap of information and tried to decide how to respond.

“Why don’t you stick around?” Trent was saying.

From behind her, she heard the tap-tap of Evans climbing off his stool.

But she ignored Evans for now. At this very second, Trent was the most dangerous man to her.

Which was why she punched the veteran deputy in the solar plexus. It was a straight jab to the center of the body, just underneath where Trent’s breasts were. The move was easy, given how little separation there was between the two of them, and didn’t take a lot of strength to execute. He wasn’t wearing a vest, which was a good thing, because if he had it would have just been like hitting a sandbag.

The thought This is a really bad idea raced through her head even as she saw the pain exploding in Trent’s eyes. He stumbled as if he was about to fall but managed to remain mostly upright, somehow.

That allowed Allie to quickly slip behind him, even as she grabbed the deputy’s gun and unholstered it. The loaded weapon was heavy in Allie’s hand as she pressed it against the back of Trent’s head, then searched past the older deputy’s slightly crouched form and found his younger partner.

Yeah, this is a really bad idea, all right.

Evans had already drawn his own service pistol and had it aimed with two hands, shouting, “Let him go! Let him go now!”

Allie stared back at him and thought, Okay, so how are you going to make this even worse?

She said, “No.”

Oh. So that’s how.

Twelve

What if she was wrong?

You better not be wrong.

What if she was overreacting?

You better not be overreacting.

What if it was all one big mistake and they weren’t even looking for her Ford?

There it was again. Another if. So, so many ifs. That basically summed up the last two days for her.

But it was too late to change her mind now.

Way, way too late.

Shit. You better not be wrong!

Allie tightened her grip on the gun. Deputy Trent’s weapon was a Glock 43 9mm. It didn’t have a hammer that Allie could cock for dramatic effect, but it was fully loaded—all she had to do was feel the gun’s weight to know that—and no doubt already had a round in the chamber. She was certain of that last part, because just about every cop carried their weapons in what they called “Condition One”—that is, ready to fire. And Trent was a veteran.

The young deputy was unsteady in his shooter’s stance, with both hands on the pistol that was aimed—if a bit wobbly—at Allie. Or as much of a bead on her that he could get with Trent standing in front of her.

Allie decided to throw him off a little more and fired a round into the ceiling.

The bang! sent Mickey diving to the floor behind the bar while Trent’s body jerked in surprise.

Evans all but jumped up and down. “Hey, hey! Don’t do that!”

Allie returned the Glock’s barrel to the back of Trent’s head while she glared at Evans. “Lower your weapon.”

“What?” Evans said.

“Lower your weapon.”

“Are you insane? I’m not gonna do that!”

Allie pushed the gun into the back of Trent’s head for effect. The deputy leaned slightly forward with a pained grunt.

“Lower your weapon,” Allie said again, in the same calm voice.

“No!” Evans shouted. Unlike her, the young man—he was somewhere in his mid-twenties—was continually raising his voice. “Stop telling me to lower my weapon! You should be lowering your weapon!”

Allie knew exactly why he was doing that. Evans was trying to assert dominance over her, to take charge of the situation. Scream and shout enough, and the perp—her, in this case—would be overwhelmed. Unfortunately for Evans, she wasn’t—and she had a gun of her own. Two, actually, but Evans didn’t know about the P225 behind her back.

She could almost see the adrenaline pumping through Evans’s body, running from his squinting eyes all the way to his toes. She could feel it in her own veins, in the tightness of her fingers around the Glock. She had one hand on the gun and the other on Trent’s left shoulder to keep him in front of her at all times. She wasn’t sure what kind of condition Trent was in; he hadn’t attempted to run off yet, and the way his legs kept shuffling made her believe he was still suffering from her punch to his solar plexus. He was much bigger and stronger than her, but at the moment she had full control. The presence of the gun, and her willingness to use it, probably didn’t hurt her command.

Allie focused on Evans, her main and only real problem right now. “Put your weapon away, Deputy. Holster it.”

“I already told you, no!” Evans shouted. “Let him go! Let him go right now!”

“I can’t do that.”

“What?”

“I can’t do that.”

“The hell you mean, you can’t do that?”

“It means exactly what it sounds like. I can’t let him—”

The sound of a shotgun being racked loudly stopped Allie in midsentence, and she looked over—without moving her head, just her eyes—toward the bar. Mickey was behind it with a shotgun pointed at her. It was a pump-action and looked very familiar.

“Let him go!” the bartender shouted.

Allie spent the next few seconds staring at the shotgun to make sure it was the same one Pete had used last night on the bikers. It had to be. What were the chances the Don’t Stop In bar had two shotguns back there—one loaded with real shells and one not?

I guess I’ll find out.

“No,” Allie said.

“What?” Mickey said. “I said, let him go or—”

“Or nothing. Your shotgun’s loaded with blanks.”

“Bullshit!”

“We both know it’s true.”

Mickey stared at her from behind the iron sights of the pump-action for a moment, not saying a word.

“Mickey?” Evans said.

“Fuck,” the bartender said, before she lowered her weapon.

“What are you doing?” Evans’s voice was panicking now. “Don’t do that! I said, don’t do that!”

“She’s right. It’s loaded with blanks, Philly.”

“What?”

“It’s loaded with blanks!”

“Dammit!”

“Sorry,” Mickey said. She put the shotgun on the counter and took a step back, as if to say, Okay, I’m out of it now, so don’t shoot in this direction, guys!

Allie refocused on Evans. “I’m backing up now.”

“What?” Evans said.

“I’m backing up. Then I’m going through that door with your partner. If you follow us, I’ll have to shoot him.”

“What?”

“Don’t follow us.”

“Wait, wait, don’t move. I said, don’t move! Do you hear me? I said don’t move! Stay right where you are!”

Allie began backing up, pulling Trent with her. The older deputy stumbled but remained on his feet even as he backpedaled. Allie couldn’t see his face, but she assumed he was locking eyes with Evans, maybe trying to silently communicate with his young partner. He must not have been doing a very good job of it by the confused expression on Evans’s face as his own eyes shifted desperately from Allie to Trent and back again.

“Stop it!” Evans shouted at Allie.

Allie ignored him and kept backing up.

“Stop it, for Christ’s sake!”

She was halfway to the door now.

“Stop! I said, stop!”

There was a loud bang! from the back of the bar, and Evans spun around with his pistol.

A man in his thirties, wearing wire-rimmed glasses and wiping his wet hands on an impressively huge bundle of paper towels, stood frozen in the bathroom hallway, staring back at Evans. Or, to be more specific, at the gun in the deputy’s hands that was aimed at his face.

“Um,” the man said. Then, dropping the bundle of paper towels to the floor, “I didn’t mean to take so many.”

Allie turned, pushed open the front door, and shoved Trent through—

—and out into the parking lot.

Before Trent could get too far, Allie grabbed him by the same shoulder and directed him through the parking lot. She didn’t waste time shooting a quick glance back at the door they’d just come through. It wouldn’t be very long before Deputy Evans realized his mistake and followed them outside.

As soon as the gravel floor crunched under her shoes, Allie expected a squad of Wells City’s finest to be waiting outside, but there was just Mickey’s Jeep, the Subaru, and her Ford. Except now the three vehicles were joined by a fourth—a WCPD cruiser parked behind her rental. She couldn’t find any hints that Trent and his partner had radioed for backup, which was more than she could have hoped for.

“You’re making a mistake,” Trent said. It was the first time he’d spoken since she struck him and took his gun. She had been wondering how long it would take him.

Probably, Allie thought but said, “Shut up.”

“It’s not too late—”

Allie shut him up by shooting the rear driver-side tire on his squad car, then did the same to the front one.

“Jesus!” Trent shouted.

The second shot was still echoing when the Don’t Stop In door slammed open behind her.

Allie swung back around, with Trent in front of her, as Evans staggered outside. The deputy must have lunged into the door with his shoulder, perhaps in some kind of action-movie stunt, because he was off balance and was clearly struggling to regain his composure as he burst out into the parking lot.

“Stop! Stop!” Evans shouted.

Allie almost laughed. If she hadn’t stopped when Evans demanded she do so back in the bar, it wasn’t going to happen out here. Besides, there was no turning back for her now. She’d acted out of instinct, accepting that things had gotten out of hand between last night and this morning, and made her move. Trent’s gun in her hand and the three shots she’d fired so far was all the conviction she needed to know that there was no turning back unless she had a time machine.

“Stop moving!” Evans was shouting as he followed her and Trent to the Ford. “I said, stop moving, goddammit!”

There were no signs of Mickey or the Subaru’s owner—the man in the wire-rimmed glasses back in the Don’t Stop In, Allie assumed—but she had a feeling the bartender wasn’t just standing in the building behind Evans, drinking her bad coffee. No doubt Mickey was on the phone now, calling for help. That was, if Evans hadn’t already done so before coming out. He had lagged behind just a little longer than she’d expected before pursuing.

Allie kept moving backward toward the Ford with Trent between her and Evans. “Don’t follow me. Do you understand?”

“What?” Evans said. There was a look of confusion on his face that Allie didn’t think was fake. He really didn’t understand what she was saying.

“Don’t follow me,” Allie said again. “I’ll let your partner go when I’m a mile from here. But if you follow me, I can’t guarantee his safety.”

Evans didn’t say anything. Instead, he swiped at beads of sweat that had gathered on his forehead.

“Get in the car,” Allie said, this time to Trent.

She still couldn’t see the older deputy’s face, but she didn’t have to. Trent hadn’t tried anything since she got behind him. Allie didn’t know if that was because he was still hurting or if he was just too smart to do something that might get him killed. She hoped it was the latter. A hostage who didn’t want to be a hero was always so much easier to control.

“Do what she says,” Trent said to his partner.

“What?” Evans said.

“Do what she says. Don’t follow us.”

“What are you saying?”

“Dammit, Philly, don’t get me killed!” Trent said. He hadn’t shouted the words, but it was pretty close.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Evans said, more to himself than to her or Trent.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Trent said again.

“Listen to your partner,” Allie said. Then, taking out her key fob and unlocking the Ford’s doors, “Get in.”

She had led Trent over to the front passenger’s seat and directed him through the door, then pushed him until he was across and over to the driver’s seat. Allie kept an eye on Evans the entire time she had her gun pointed at his partner.

Allie slipped into the vehicle and slammed the door shut. “Drive.”

Trent took the key from her and started up the Ford. The older deputy locked eyes with Evans through the windshield as he backed up the rental. He didn’t glance away until he had turned the car and pointed it out of the Don’t Stop In parking lot.

“East or west?” Trent asked.

The cabin was back east, but she didn’t need Trent to know that right now. He would eventually find out anyway—he and the rest of the Wells City Police Department—but the more time she could give herself until then, the better.

“West,” she said.

Allie glanced up the rearview mirror as Trent turned left onto the highway. Evans stood in the parking lot, hands and gun at his sides, watching them go. She wondered how long it would take him to snap out of it and run to their squad car to call for backup.

“You just made a really big mistake,” Trent said.

Tell me something I don’t already know.

She said, “What happened? Why is there an APB on my car, and why are there roadblocks being put up?”

Trent didn’t answer.

“Tell me, or I’m going to make you keep driving past the one-mile mark,” Allie said.

“You told Philly you would let me go.”

“Yeah, well, I can change my mind about a lot of other things if you don’t tell me what I want to know.”

Trent remained quiet, hands gripping the steering wheel. He stared forward, and she imagined he was trying to decide how much to tell her in order to stay alive, while at the same time not completely destroying his credibility as a cop.

Allie decided to lend a hand. “You’ve been smart so far, doing what you’re told. That tells me you want to live through this.”

“Yeah, well, I kinda like living,” Trent said.

“So stay smart. Tell me what I want to know, or we’re going to keep driving. What’s all this about?”

“Tom Marshall.”

Allie sighed. Of course this was about Tom Marshall. Who else would this be about?

I definitely should have gone on that cruise with Lucy…

“What about Tom Marshall?” Allie asked.

“You don’t know?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking, now would I?”

Trent snuck what he probably thought was a sly glance across the front seats at her, maybe trying to read her face.

“He sent you after me?” Allie asked when Trent didn’t continue.

“Who?” Trent said.

“Who else? Tom Marshall.”

“He didn’t send me anywhere.”

“So why are you looking for my car, and why are there countywide roadblocks being erected?”

“Because Tom Marshall is dead,” Trent said. “Someone killed him last night in his own home. Someone driving a white Ford sedan.”

Thirteen

Just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did.

“Because Tom Marshall is dead. Someone killed him last night in his own home. Someone driving a white Ford sedan.”

Tom Marshall was dead.

A man who Allie had never technically met but had glimpsed in a dark Don’t Stop In last night. She had never even said a word to him. She wasn’t even sure if he’d even noticed her sitting at the bar next to a drunken Stan when he came in with his wife.

Tom Marshall.

Wife beater. Son of an influential family that probably owned all of Timber Creek County, and within it, Wells City. A man whose wife and child were currently in Allie’s cabin right now, waiting for her to come back with news. A wife and child that Allie had helped to escape.

Tom Marshall.

Dead.

She wished she could say things had become more complicated, but the truth was, it was already complicated when she helped Sarah into her car last night. This morning had just exacerbated the problem.

“Turn here,” Allie said.

“We’re already past the one-mile mark,” Trent said.

“Turn here.”

“You said—”

“I lied.”

“Figures,” the deputy said with a sigh, before turning as he was ordered.

Not that Trent had any choice. She had his Glock in her lap, the muzzle pointed across the front seat at him.

Allie had lied to Mickey when she said her Ford didn’t have GPS navigation. It did, and she was using it now to get off the highway and find another route to the cabin. The urgency was to get off the road before the Wells City Police Department converged on the Don’t Stop In. She was surprised no one had as of yet, but Allie wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. She needed, and would take all the extra minutes she could get.

They hadn’t turned off the highway for more than ten seconds when Allie picked up the first sounds of police sirens.

“Stop,” she said.

Trent did, easing on the brake before putting the gear into park. “What now?”

She didn’t answer and instead listened as the sirens got louder. Then strobe lights flashed across the rearview and her side mirror.

One, two—three speeding white vehicles.

Allie waited for one of them to stop and turn back, but they continued on up the highway toward the Don’t Stop In. It occurred to her that it was probably a bad idea to keep the Ford, a car that was already being hunted. There was the Subaru and Trent’s own squad car that she could have taken instead. Then again, how long before Evans radioed in her new getaway vehicle?

Two minutes or so after she first heard the sirens, they began to fade until she could barely hear them out there.

“Let’s go,” Allie said.

“Where are we going?” Trent asked as he put the car back into drive.

“Just drive. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

“I need to know where we’re going.”

“I’ll tell you what you need to know. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Allie couldn’t help herself and smiled. Trent was either being the world’s most cooperative hostage, or he was plotting something. The paranoid half of her leaned toward the latter, but she didn’t believe it this time. The deputy was playing the hand he’d been given and trying to see the other end without getting killed. There wasn’t a shred of hero cop in Trent’s game that she could detect.

Good. At least one thing was going well for her this morning.

There was a serene quality to their surroundings; it was the same ambiance that her cabin had provided. Out here, she wouldn’t know there were roadblocks being set up and likely a manhunt currently being organized for her capture. No doubt Evans would have told the others what she looked like by now. Mickey the bartender would corroborate everything. There was even a third witness, the driver of the Subaru.

Allie hadn’t said a word for a few minutes, and though he sneaked looks in her direction, neither had Trent.

She finally broke the silence. “Tom Marshall is dead.”

Trent didn’t answer.

“Well?” Allie said.

“Was that a question?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, he’s dead.” Again, that questioning look from Trent, as if trying to figure out if she was testing him.

She ignored his not-all-that-subtle glances and said, “How did he die?”

“You don’t know?”

“Just answer the question, deputy.”

“I don’t know, either.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I wasn’t there when they hauled his body away.”

“Didn’t anyone tell you?”

“I didn’t ask, and no one volunteered.” The deputy shrugged. “They say he was murdered in his home. I don’t know if that means he was shot or stabbed or hung. Just that he’s dead.”

“Who is ‘they?’”

“The Chief. The DA. Them.”

“The district attorney is already involved?”

“Of course.”

The way he had said it, “Of course,” bothered her.

“What does that mean?” Allie asked. “‘Of course.’”

“It’s Tom Marshall.”

And that, Allie understood.

It was Tom Marshall, so of course the DA would already be involved even before any semblance of a case was put together. The death of the youngest son of the Marshall clan would demand that kind of attention. The same clan that, according to everyone she’d talked to so far, ran Timber Creek County.

“What else do you know?” Allie asked. “And don’t give me that ‘I don’t know anything’ shit. You know something. You cops always talk.”

Again, that questioning side glance from Trent.

“Well?” Allie said.

“I don’t have any details, if that’s what you’re asking. It’s all still pretty fresh,” the deputy said.

“So what do you know?”

“Just that it happened last night in his home.”

“I could have gotten that by watching the news.”

“Yes, you could have. You still can. Just let me go.”

“Don’t try to be clever. It’s not a good look for you.”

Trent grunted.

“And someone saw the killer get into a white Ford sedan?” Allie asked. “Or were you just told to look for one?”

“Look for one.”

“So you don’t know if the driver is the killer?”

Trent said nothing, but Allie could imagine his thought process at the moment: “Hey, lady, you just assaulted a cop, shot up a bar, and then took that cop hostage. What’s a little murder to someone who can do those things?”

Allie didn’t bother protesting her innocence. He was a small cog in a big machine. Not that he would have believed anything she said anyway, not while she was holding a gun—his gun—on him and forcing him to drive up the side of a hill. In his shoes, she wouldn’t believe a damn thing she said, either.

“You said there were roadblocks,” Allie said. “Where are they?”

“Everywhere,” Trent said.

“Be more specific.”

“There’s someone watching every exit and entrance at the moment. They just haven’t expanded into the hills yet. You’ve been lucky so far, but it’s not going to last. You have to know that. Taking me hostage was a very big mistake.”

Allie didn’t believe that there was someone “watching every exit and entrance,” but she fully agreed with the “big mistake” part. Her first really big one was stopping at the Don’t Stop In last night. Then there was that note. That damn note.

Sarah. She was still at the cabin right now. Allie wondered what the woman would do or say when she found out about Tom’s death.

Happiness? Shock? Anger?

It was hard for Allie to predict; she’d never had to live with an abuser before. She had no idea what kind of hell that was, and she never would. Allie would die first before she allowed something like that to happen to her. She’d spent so much of her life fighting that to just subject herself to that kind of treatment was beyond her understanding.

But Sarah wasn’t her. Sarah and every other abused wife out there had never had to lose a sister to a serial killer. They’d never spent years of their life training to hunt down and kill that man as revenge. They had never been so singularly driven that they ate and slept and breathed vengeance.

In so many ways, Allie wasn’t even close to a “normal” woman.

“Turn left,” she said, watching the car’s navigation screen with one eye.

“There’s no turn,” Trent said.

“It’s coming up.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t see—” He stopped when the trees parted as if by magic to reveal a turn in front of them. “Turning left it is.”

According to the map, the cabin was still far up ahead. They would come up on it from behind because of the back roads they were taking. Sarah would be inside, waiting with her baby, and Allie pictured the woman’s face as she broke the news.

Sarah.

What about Sarah?

It hadn’t occurred to her before, but Trent hadn’t said a single thing about Sarah. Why was that?

“What about the wife?” Allie asked.

“The wife?” Trent said.

“Tom Marshall’s wife.”

“What about her?”

The way he had posed the question…

He doesn’t know she’s missing.

Was that possible? Did the police still not know that Sarah had run off with her and Tom’s newborn?

Allie didn’t discount the possibility that Trent wasn’t telling her the whole truth. He could very well be playing his own game, trying to extract information from her while she was doing the same to him. He appeared smart enough. He was certainly calm and collected and in control. A man like that could be dangerous.

And yet, looking at him, Allie didn’t think so.

“Did she see what happened?” Allie asked.

“I don’t know,” Trent said. He sounded believable enough. Sounded. “All they told me was to look for a white Ford sedan, because the driver is a person of interest. That’s it. If you wanted the down and dirty, you should have taken another deputy hostage.”

“What about the baby?”

“What baby?”

“The Marshalls had a baby. Is it okay?”

“I don’t know anything about that, either.”

“You killed Tom Marshall. Shouldn’t you already know the answers to all of this?” she half-expected Trent to say, but he didn’t. Even if he was thinking it, Trent was too smart to do it out loud and risk antagonizing her.

He’s like you, Hank, except with more hair.

Allie said, “I thought the Marshalls were famous around here. Influential men about town. Word is, they were here before Timber Creek County.”

“They are definitely all that, but it doesn’t mean we all know about their personal lives,” Trent said. “At least, I don’t. I’m not that nosy. They may be famous, but it’s not like they’re the Royals.”

“The Royals?”

“You know, the English Royals?”

“You follow them?”

“They’re interesting. Also, there isn’t a lot to do when you’re waiting at the grocery store to check out.”

Allie wondered if Hank had a secret interest in the Royals, too. She’d have to ask him when she swung by to pick up Apollo. Right now, though, that reunion was looking further and further away.

“So you don’t know if the wife saw Tom Marshall’s murder or not? Or even if their baby’s okay?” Allie asked.

“That’s correct,” Trent said.

“And you don’t know how Tom was killed.”

“No.”

“Did someone shoot him?”

“I have no idea.”

“You don’t know much, do you?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Allie couldn’t help herself, and she smiled again. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think Trent was taken hostage on a daily basis; that he was used to it.

“You really want to live, don’t you?” she asked.

“Is that a trick question?”

“So what’s her name?”

“Who?”

“The woman you’re so desperate to live through this in order to see again.”

Trent chuckled. “Cynthia.”

“Is she pretty?”

“She’s thirty-two, blonde, stacked as hell, and way too young for an old fart like me.” He rubbed his chest with one hand while driving with the other. “That really hurt, you know.”

“What?”

“Punching me in the chest like that. You know kung fu or something?”

“That wasn’t kung fu.”

“Then what was it?”

“That was just a punch to the solar plexus.”

“The sol-what?”

“Solar plexus.”

“I don’t know anything about that, but it still hurts when I do this,” he said, rubbing his chest again.

“So don’t do that.”

Trent shot her a quick smirk. “Clever.”

“So why’s she dating an old fart like you?”

“Who?”

“This stacked thirty-two-year-old blonde.”

“Cynthia. And ’cause I have a good job and a nice pension on the horizon, and she has two kids and their dad’s a deadbeat. Oh, she lives in a trailer, and I don’t. So yeah, I really want to live through this to see her again.”

“What about her two kids? You want to live to see them, too?”

The deputy shrugged. “Meh.”

Fourteen

“Hey, Sarah. You know Tom? The husband who abused you and who you thought was on the verge of killing you? Well, turns out he’s dead. Someone went into your house last night and killed him. Oh, by the way, he was still alive when you left the house last night, right? Because as I recall, you don’t remember that part.”

Allie wasn’t exactly sure how she was going to tell Sarah about Tom, or bring up the unanswered questions of Tom’s life yet again, but it was probably not going to be quite as glib as the dialogue going around in her head.

There were so many questions this morning, even more so than last night. She had to replay everything Sarah had told her—or didn’t (or couldn’t, according to the other woman)—all over again. How much of it was a lie? How much was truth?

All of it? Some of it? Most of it?

Those questions, and a dozen more, swam around in Allie’s head as Trent got closer to the cabin. Not that Allie let him drive straight up to the front yard. Instead, she made him stop about half a quarter mile away before switching off the engine.

For the next ten minutes, Allie sat in the car with the windows powered down and just listened to the wildlife around her. There was nothing that indicated the Wells City Police Department had found the cabin or was preparing some kind of ambush. It would have been nice if Trent had a radio on him, but he didn’t—and neither did Evans back at the bar, now that Allie thought about it. A police radio would have allowed her to eavesdrop on the WCPD as they coordinated their efforts to find her. And by now, they would have zeroed in on her as Suspect #1.

“So, uh, we’re just going to sit here?” Trent asked after a while. She was actually surprised he had lasted over ten minutes.

“You are,” Allie said. She reached over and took out his handcuffs, then pulled the car keys out of the engine.

“Oh come on,” Trent said, because he already knew what she was about to do.

“Make a sound, and I’ll come back here and pistol whip you with your own weapon.”

“Harsh.”

“So make sure you don’t make me do it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Allie handcuffed Trent to the steering wheel of the Ford, then sat back and stared out the windshield. She was trying to decide if there was another, better way to go about this, but she couldn’t see it.

“You know, it’s not too late,” Trent was saying. “You can still salvage this. Just let me take you in. I promise you’ll get a fair shake.”

She gave him a wry look. “You really believe that?”

“Sure.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Of course I do. I wouldn’t have said it otherwise.”

“Bullshit.”

“There’s nothing bullshit about everything that’s happened this morning. You’re just digging yourself a deeper hole.”

“I’m not going to hurt you, Deputy. Relax.”

Trent almost rolled his eyes. Almost. “Yeah, right. Relax.”

“Scout’s honor.”

“You were in the Scouts?”

“No.”

“Of course not.” Then, “I just realized that I don’t even know your name.”

“You don’t need to know my name.”

“Then what’ll I call you? You know how much paperwork I’m going to have to file after this?”

“Sorry about that.”

“Are you? Really?”

“No.”

“Figures. So what’ll I call you in all the reports they’re going to make me write?”

“Ma’am will work just fine.”

“Okay, ma’am, my offer still stands. Let me take you in, and we can defuse this before it gets any worse.”

“I need you to shut up and sit still now.”

“Ma’am—”

She gave him a hard look.

Trent sighed. “Don’t say I never gave you a chance.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

She got out and walked around the vehicle before looking back at the veteran deputy through the front windshield. Allie put one finger to her lips.

Trent smirked back at her.

Allie didn’t have any doubts he was going to try to escape as soon as she was out of view, but unless he could break the steering wheel off, then he had a Herculean task ahead of him. Allie herself could have picked the lock with something as simple as a paper clip. But that was a skill she’d mastered because of a previous experience with handcuffs. She didn’t think Trent had ever had any need to learn the same things she did.

She spent the slow—very, very slow—walk to the cabin trying to figure out just what kind of trouble she had found herself in. She abandoned the backroad as soon as she was out of view of Trent and the Ford and used the woods to pick her way through and around trees. She’d never been in this part of the hillside before, but the navigation had been pretty straightforward. As long as she kept the road to her left and moved parallel to it, she would come up on the rear of the cabin within a quarter mile.

It was a long quarter mile.

Sarah’s bloody face flashed across her mind’s eye. Then Sarah in the Don’t Stop In with Tom. The man whose image Allie had only seen glimpses of in person, but there was a better picture of him under the directory where she’d located his home address: Early thirty-something, blond hair, blue eyes, and what Allie thought was a somewhat mischievous-looking smile, in a professionally snapped picture.

She tried to recall everything Sarah had told her about what had happened last night before she fled the house, but nowhere in any of their conversations—then or this morning—had the words Tom and dead ever come up. If anything, Sarah had been avoiding the topic, almost as if she didn’t want to relive it. Was that because she had killed Tom? Was that why she’d blocked it out? Trent said someone had killed Tom in his own house. The deputy hadn’t said how or when, probably because he didn’t know.

Did you kill him, Sarah? Is that why you can’t remember? Because you don’t want to remember?

If that were the case, how was Allie supposed to feel about that? An abused woman fighting back against her abuser played well in the public eye, and she supposed it did to her as well. Not just as a woman but as a fellow human being.

Still, if that was what had happened, it bugged her that Sarah hadn’t confessed to it. Unless she really couldn’t remember. That was very much possible. Trauma did different things to different people: It turned Allie into a specter of vengeance, but Sarah wasn’t Allie by any stretch of the imagination.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. My client was beaten regularly by her husband. Abused! Everyone knew it, but no one did anything about it. She had no choice, you see. She had to fight back! Can you blame her? What if it was your sister or mother?”

Allie couldn’t blame her if Sarah had killed Tom last night, and neither would a jury. Unless, of course, Tom Marshall’s family was as powerful as everyone kept telling her, in which case even the truth might not be enough.

She understood why her car was linked to Tom’s death. That was easy. God only knew how long she’d sat in the rental outside their residence last night. Then later, chasing down Sarah in the Audi. She’d made herself so vulnerable last night. It was a miracle the police didn’t already have a sketch of her face, put together from a dozen witnesses.

Lucy was right. I should have gone on that cruise…

* * *

The cabin appeared as dull and simple as it did the first time she saw it almost a week ago, and likewise as unspectacular as when she left it this morning. There was nothing off about it, and no signs of a vehicle anywhere. But more importantly, there were no hints that vehicles had ever arrived after she left. If the Wells City police had found the place, there would be clues—if not obvious tracks, then something.

Except there was nothing. There was just the cabin.

Allie crouched in the tree lines and waited, not trusting what she was seeing. She opened up the rest of her senses, listening for voices that shouldn’t be there and trying to smell other humans in the area besides herself.

Five minutes…

Ten…

She hadn’t exposed herself, but she wasn’t exactly hiding, either. Allie kept Trent’s Glock at her side, her own SIG still covered behind her back. The presence of a weapon out in the open would have been more than enough reason for a police sharpshooter to take her out.

But no one did, because there was no one out there.

Allie got up and jogged across the clearing and toward the cabin. The lack of police presence was a relief, but the absence of Sarah outside or even visible through the front windows was disturbing. Was the other woman keeping herself in the back with William?

The door was unlocked, which wasn’t a good sign. Allie remembered telling Sarah to lock the doors and not open them for anyone but her.

And yet, the front door was unlocked.

Allie stepped inside, the Glock at her side.

“Sarah,” she said.

There was no response.

She tried again, louder this time: “Sarah!”

Again, no response.

Allie closed the door behind her before looking around. There were two cups on the kitchen counter—one was hers, the other Sarah’s from this morning. But there were no signs of Sarah or the baby. There was also no evidence that Sarah had cooked anything other than the empty bowl sitting next to the sink.

“Sarah!”

Like the first two times, there was no answer.

Allie hurried through the great room and toward the back hallway. Three bedrooms, the first one used for storage. Sarah and William had taken the second, while Allie had the third all the way near the back.

The second bedroom door was ajar and Allie pushed it in slowly before peering inside.

Empty.

No Sarah and no William. The bed was unmade, the blankets on the floor, so she hadn’t imagined mother and son sleeping in the room the night before. They had been here, just not now.

Not now.

Sarah and her baby were gone. There were no obvious signs of a struggle, but there wouldn’t be if Sarah had been taken at the point of a gun. There was no way the woman would put up a fight with her baby in peril.

Had the man from last night come back?

Shit. What if he had? What if he’d been waiting out there all this time for Allie to leave, then returned to finish what he’d started last night?

Everything and anything was possible right now after the morning she’d had.

She left Sarah’s room and hurried over to hers. Her laptop was where she’d left it on the nightstand next to the bed. Allie grabbed it and turned to go but forgot about the attached power adapter, and it snapped loose from the PC.

She crouched to pick it up, and as she did—

Sunlight glinted off a metal object on the floor, just underneath the bed. If it’d been deeper inside, she might have missed it, but there it was.

A gun.

A silver-chromed revolver, to be exact, lying on its side, the muzzle pointed at her.

It wasn’t hers. She’d brought just the SIG Sauer. She also distinctively remembered sweeping the floors when she first arrived, and there hadn’t been a weapon down there or she would have noticed. You didn’t exactly gloss over a gun.

Which could only mean one thing: Someone had put the pistol down there, and recently, too.

Someone had put it there.

The thought was still reverberating around in her head when she heard the slowly-building sound of police sirens.

Outside.

Coming up the road.

Getting closer…

Allie reached for the revolver—

No, what are you doing?

She pulled her hand back and stood up, opened the nightstand, and snatched the handkerchief inside. She used it to pick up the revolver—.38 Special Cal. was written on the side of the small snub-nosed barrel—and ran back to the door.

She wasn’t entirely sure what she was going to do with the gun, but there was no way she was going to leave it just lying in her room, under her bed, and in the cabin she was renting.

Outside, the sirens had grown in volume. It sounded like the entire Wells City Police Department was charging up the road.

Allie stopped for a second and stood in the back hallway, looking down at the revolver in her hand, even as the last twelve or so hours came rushing back to her like flash cards.

Tom Marshall was dead, killed inside his own house last night.

Someone had conveniently spotted her car in the area, leading to an APB being put out on the white Ford this morning.

And now, someone had taken the opportunity to plant a gun in her temporary place of residence while she wasn’t home. What were the odds that the gun in her hand wasn’t the same weapon that had killed Tom Marshall?

And oh, lest she forgot, suddenly the cops knew exactly where she was.

I’m being set up.

Fuck. I’m being set up!

Allie turned and ran to the back of the cabin and burst through it without hesitation. She sucked in a lungful of chilled fresh air before breaking off into a mad run through the woods, darting around trees and ducking underneath low-hanging branches.

I’m being set up.

She clutched the revolver with one hand. It was impossible not to feel its weight, seemingly much heavier than it should have been, but maybe that was just her imagination. The police sirens from behind her continued to invade the peace of the woods, growing and growing…and growing…

Fifteen

“Things aren’t going exactly as you planned, huh?”

“Not exactly, no.”

“Well, that’s the thing about best-laid plans…”

“Shut up and get out.”

“Can I finish?”

“No.”

“Oh come on. I’ve been practicing it since you took off.”

“Get out. Now.”

“You’re no fun.”

Fun went out the window last night, Allie thought as she watched Trent climb out of the Ford’s driver seat. Allie had already given him the keys to his handcuffs, and the deputy had used them to unlock himself from the steering wheel.

The veteran cop stood next to her, rubbing his wrists. “Sounds like the whole Wells City PD and then some are back there. Wouldn’t surprise me if the county sent some of their boys to help out, too. A case this big. Not every day a Marshall gets dead.”

He was talking about the police sirens, which were as obvious now as they had been when she first heard them. The sudden and very loud presence of humans had scared away most of the wildlife in their immediate vicinity, but a few still skirted rebelliously along branches nearby.

Allie focused on Trent. “The trunk.”

“The trunk?” Trent said, but from the way his eyes widened slightly, she thought he already knew what she was going to do next.

“The trunk,” Allie said again.

“No, no, not the trunk.”

“The trunk. Now.”

“This is not cool. I thought we were getting along?”

“Now.”

Trent sighed and walked toward the back of the car. “You should give yourself up. Game’s over. If they know where you live, then they know who you are. Two plus two gets you four, right? At least the last time I was in school. Who knows these days, what with all those fancy curriculums and whatnot.”

Trent’s knowledge of school courses may have been a little muddled, but he wasn’t wrong about the cops knowing her identity. All those police cars swarming her cabin, that she could still hear in the distance, was all the proof she needed to confirm that latest bit of bad news.

And the day’s still young…

It was possible Evans had spotted and called in the Ford’s license plate, and from there they could have easily gotten Aubrey White’s fake ID from the car company. The cabin was being rented under her alias, but there shouldn’t have been any way for the cops to link her to it. And yet, they had.

…because someone had told them.

It was clear as day. What wasn’t clear at all was who.

Was it Sarah? Was she part of the setup? Or maybe it was the man from last night. Was he working with Sarah? Or maybe she had nothing to do with it. Maybe the man had come back, taken Sarah and her newborn, then sicced the police on her.

“Think about this,” Trent was saying as she followed him along the length of the Ford. “It’s not too late.”

“I need you to be quiet now,” Allie said.

Trent sighed again. It was overly dramatic and obviously done for her benefit. “Listen, kid, you don’t seem like a bad person.” He stopped and turned around. “I don’t know if you killed Marshall or not, but you’re obviously involved somehow. Even a blind man can see that. Now I’m not the smartest guy on the force—hell, I’m still a deputy and I’m pushing fifty, for God’s sake; so that obviously says something—but even I can figure out there’s more going on here than meets the eye.”

Allie didn’t answer him. Instead, she wondered if Trent really could help her. She had flashbacks to Hank Pritchard, who had ended up becoming an ally. And that was after she had shot him. She hadn’t shot Trent yet. Though she’d taken him hostage at gunpoint, he didn’t seem to be holding a grudge.

“You can’t keep running,” Trent continued. “You need to stop and face the music sooner or later. That time is now. Don’t make it any worse for yourself.” He held out his right hand, the palm facing up. “Give me the gun, and I’ll do my best to put in a good word for you. Heck, I’ll even leave out the part where you took me hostage and used my own service weapon on me. That’ll save me a lot of embarrassment, too, so it’s not all Good Samaritan on my part.”

Allie decided that she did believe Trent to be a man of his word, and he probably would do everything to help her out. The only problem with that was how much his word was worth compared to everything she’d done since this morning. Unless he had a magic wand… Which he didn’t.

“Come on,” Trent said, still holding out his hand. Those brown eyes, that had looked so hard back at the Don’t Stop In, were softer now underneath the shade of the woods. “Give me the gun, before it’s too late.”

“It’s already too late,” Allie said.

“Not yet, it’s not.”

“You forget about what happened at the bar this morning?”

“We can fix that.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet, but we can fix it.”

Allie smiled at him. “I need you to get in the trunk, Deputy.”

“Come on, kid. Don’t do this. Let me help you. Help me, help you.”

“You got that last part from a movie, didn’t you?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Get in the trunk,” Allie said, motioning with the Glock.

Trent again sighed heavily as he turned around. “Will you at least do me a favor?”

“Will you get in the trunk if I say yes?”

“Yes.”

“Then what is it?”

“Don’t tell anyone you took my gun?”

“Evans already knows I took your gun. He saw me take it back at the bar.” And so did Mickey the bartender, Allie thought but didn’t add.

“I’ll convince him to leave it out of his report,” Trent said.

“And why would he do that?”

“We’re partners. Plus, I basically taught the kid everything he knows.”

Including how to get taken hostage with your own weapon? Allie thought but decided the deputy probably didn’t need the extra ego bruising. Besides, it would likely come across as kicking a man while he was down.

She clicked a button on her key’s fob, and the trunk snapped open. “Inside.”

“The gun?” Trent asked. He was this close to begging.

“I’ll think about it.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

“How come I don’t believe you?”

“You don’t have any choice. Now get in on your own, or I’ll have to push you in there. And I’m not going to be gentle.”

Trent climbed into the trunk and lay down on his side. He pulled his long legs inward until he looked almost like a child lying in a fetal position before her. “This is embarrassing.”

“Relax. It could be worse.”

“How’s that?”

You could have been set up for a murder and didn’t even know it until the cops were all over your front door.

“Trust me, it could be worse,” Allie said.

“I don’t see how,” Trent said. “By the way, did I tell you I’m claustrophobic?”

“Is that true?”

“Would it help if I said yes?”

“No,” Allie said. Then, “Watch your head,” just before she slammed the trunk closed on Trent’s amusingly depressed face.

Well, it was amusing to her, anyway. She was sure Trent didn’t find it all that funny.

* * *

She didn’t even think about giving up. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She had entertained Trent’s offer—for a few fleeting seconds, anyway—until the reality of her situation took over: There was nothing at the end of this rainbow that didn’t involve her in handcuffs and standing trial for Tom Marshall’s murder. The revolver that had magically appeared in her cabin at the same time that Sarah and her son disappeared and cops were swarming the place were undeniable proof of that.

She was being set up, and it was a damn good setup, too.

Note to self: Congratulate the assholes responsible when you catch up to them.

The problem—one of many, but one of the bigger ones—was that she didn’t know the players or the reasons behind any of this. She had never met Sarah or Tom before. She’d never even been in Wells City until last week, didn’t even know the town existed. So there was no history here, no mastermind trying to get revenge for a past wrong that she might have committed against them.

And Allie had committed plenty of sins in the past to a number of people and organizations and law-enforcement agencies. But most of the people she’d “wronged” were dead or behind bars, and the ones that weren’t had their own problems to deal with that didn’t include her.

No, this wasn’t personal. Nothing about it smelled like a grudge. She wasn’t sure why she was so certain about that, but she was. The whole thing felt like a crime of convenience.

Unless, of course, she was missing something.

Was she?

No. I’m not.

…or am I?

She didn’t know. Not yet. But she’d find out.

God help her, Allie would find out one way or another.

That was going to be a little hard with the WCPD on her ass, though. Maybe they might have even gotten help from the county like Trent had opined. Or, if she was really unlucky, state troopers were already involved. How many forces could the Marshalls, if they believed she had killed one of their own, send after her? That would probably depend on how much influence they actually wielded. According to everyone she’d talked to, the answer was plenty.

I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

Allie drove in silence, lost in her own swirling thoughts. She hadn’t gone back down the road they’d taken to get to the cabin, because that would have led her to the state highway. At this point, with the cabin discovered, Allie fully expected an ever-expanding net looking for her. The cops would either know about the roads she’d taken already—including the one she was currently on—or run across them eventually.

So Allie headed in the other direction, using a web of dirt roads that snaked seemingly arbitrarily around this side of the hill. Every minute meant leaving the cabin farther behind, and along with it, the fading sounds of sirens. She didn’t know where she was going, but the GPS assured her there were more roads up ahead that she could take that didn’t lead right back to the very open highway that was, right now, probably crawling with cops.

She needed to keep moving. The wind outside helped to clear her thoughts, and the churn of the engine, along with the bumps in the road every few minutes or so, eased her nerves. There was something surprisingly calming about being here, driving down a single-lane trail flanked by knee-high grass and towering walls of trees, that she wouldn’t have discovered if none of this had happened.

Allie glanced over at the revolver, still wrapped in the handkerchief and lying on the front passenger seat. She’d considered throwing it away while running back to the Ford, maybe even taking the time to dig a deep, deep hole and bury it. But she’d decided against that. Soon the cops would figure out where she was parked. When that happened, there was the very real chance they might search the woods for evidence.

She couldn’t take the chance. There were too many scenarios where the gun could be located, and even though it didn’t have her fingerprints on it—she’d made damn certain of that by using the handkerchief—it was still evidence. She’d seen plenty of people convicted of murder—whether they did it or not—without their fingerprints ever appearing on the weapon used to do the crime.

But she had to get rid of the gun. She knew that much. How, was the question. It had to be efficient, and thorough. Even if the cops discovered it later, there had to be nothing left of it that could be used against her.

She had been driving for more than an hour when she remembered the radio and turned it on. She shouldn’t have bothered. They were too deep in the woods, and she could barely get any reception. The only station she could pick up played a seemingly endless stream of old country and Western, and even that faded in and out.

Allie gave up and turned off the radio, and was looking back up when something in the rearview mirror caught her attention—

The trunk of the car was open!

Allie slammed on the brakes. She had barely jumped out of the driver-side door when she caught a flash of tan uniform as it disappeared out of the road and into the woods.

Sonofabitch!

It was Trent. Who else could it be? Besides, the trunk was now empty.

For a second or two, Allie thought about running after him but quickly came to her senses. There was no point. It wasn’t like she was ever going to do anything with the deputy anyway. Certainly she wasn’t going hurt him in any way, so the fact that he was now out of her hair was probably a good thing. He’d done her a favor, and now she didn’t have to waste any more brain cells trying to decide what to do with him.

Allie closed the trunk back up. She didn’t bother trying to figure out how he had opened it, because it didn’t matter. The deputy was on foot, and it would be a while before he found help out here. By then, she’d be long gone.

She walked back to the open driver-side door and was about to slip inside when she heard the very faint whup-whup-whup of machinery somewhere above her.

Allie stopped, one hand on the door, and looked up as the helicopter flashed by overhead, the word POLICE stenciled across its metal belly plain as day.

If the pilot of the aircraft saw her standing in the road, they didn’t stop. The aircraft kept on going…until it didn’t.

There goes my head start, Allie thought as the chopper began to slowly turn around…

Sixteen

A helicopter.

A damn helicopter.

That was the worst-case scenario she could have thought up. A helicopter, even one flown by an inexperienced crew, could keep tabs on her from the air without too much trouble, even with all the foliage around her. Especially out here, with only two directions for her to go—front or back. Of course, she could break off from the road completely, but that would mean driving through a dense tree-populated area, and the chances of getting boxed in by trees were pretty high. That was, if she didn’t drive headfirst into one first and kill herself. The car, at this moment, had become a hindrance.

I should have ditched the car.

It would have been easier to lose the chopper if she could melt into her surroundings on foot. There were plenty of tall trees to vanish underneath. But again, that would only last until the cops from the cabin could widen their search for her. Speaking of which, the pilots would have radioed in her location by now.

Allie glanced at her mirrors. There was nothing back there.

Yet.

But it wouldn’t be long now…

She kept driving, her mind working overtime trying to figure a way out of this. There wasn’t one that she could see. It didn’t matter how long she thought or how many possibilities flashed across her mind’s eye. The chopper was going to follow her until it didn’t need to anymore—which would be when she was finally intercepted, then surrounded.

She snapped a quick look at her navigation. Yup, there was nowhere for her to go but forward for another five miles or so. After that, there was a right turn that would eventually lead back to the highway, where she would, no doubt, be met by a dozen or more cars at the exit. The phrase “a snowball’s chance in hell” came to mind.

So where did that leave her?

The gun. The revolver that someone had planted at the cabin. It bounced on the front passenger seat, mocking her with its shiny chrome body. She had to get rid of it, but how? She couldn’t stop the car. The helicopter would take note of that and, if they didn’t immediately suspect she might have tossed something out, they eventually would. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why she would have stopped in the middle of a chase.

No, that wasn’t going to work.

And yet, she had to get rid of the damn thing. Bringing it with her from the cabin had been a mistake, but she hadn’t wanted to risk ditching it so close to where all the police were. Fortunately, Trent hadn’t seen her return with the gun. Allie had wisely put the weapon in her jacket pocket, so if she got rid of it now, the veteran deputy wouldn’t alert a potential search group that there was a missing revolver out there.

That, as far as she could tell, was the only upside to any of this.

And it was a shitty one, too.

I’ll take it. Not like I have any choice.

She leaned forward to get a better look at the chopper. It had already caught up to her and was now hovering above, easily keeping pace with the Ford. It could have flashed on ahead but hadn’t, because it didn’t need to. It was also definitely keeping an eye on her, likely to make sure she didn’t throw anything out of the window.

Definitely not an inexperienced crew, then.

The cop leaning out the side hatch was cradling a rifle but didn’t appear to be in shooting form. They would have realized she was fleeing them—after all, she hadn’t stopped after it was plain to see they were shadowing her—but might not have gotten any orders to immobilize her at any cost. They didn’t have to take such drastic measures. There would be plenty of opportunities for that up ahead.

Because she had no place to turn. No place to evade.

She was…stuck.

Goddammit, she was stuck.

Allie kept driving. Not too fast that she ran the danger of hitting a pothole and puncturing a tire. The last thing she needed right now was to get stopped in her tracks. She grabbed the revolver from the seat and put it in her lap even as she scanned the road up ahead.

Trees, a lot of trees, with nothing but more trees to the right and left of her.

And beyond those, even more trees.

Damn, there were a lot of trees.

She sneaked another peek at the police aircraft. It was still up there—but of course it was still up there—and every now and then its silhouette flashed across her sedan’s hood only to disappear when she drove underneath a heavy canopy of tree crowns.

That was it. The canopies.

Or, more specifically, the shade they provided. The invisibility, no matter how temporarily. They didn’t just give her some respite from the sun but also kept the helicopter from seeing her. Not for very long, unless she decided to stop, but it was enough that if she could find a lengthy stretch of cover…

There, up ahead. A series of towering trees forming something with their extending branches that almost looked like a tunnel.

It would do. It would have to do.

Allie unfurled the revolver from the handkerchief and waited.

And waited…

Then she was underneath the canopy!

Allie gripped the revolver by the barrel with her left hand, her right controlling the steering wheel, and flung the gun underhanded with everything she had. She glimpsed the weapon disappearing between two large trees, said a silent Thank you, Lord when it didn’t bounce off one of the tall sentries and land right back in the road. If that were to happen, she would have had no choice but to stop and retrieve it.

But it didn’t, and the gun vanished into the dark shade of the woods.

She couldn’t be sure exactly how far she’d managed to fling the weapon—throwing it underhanded wasn’t exactly ideal—but she couldn’t locate it readily when she glanced at her side mirror. That had to be good enough.

Damn, I hope that’s good enough.

She continued driving, keeping a steady pace—and was out from underneath the canopies and back in the sunlight a mere five seconds later. The helicopter remained in the air, but now just slightly ahead of her. She hoped her constant pace had prevented them from marking her brief disappearance as suspicious. After all, it wasn’t as if she’d gone looking for it; the “tunnel” was just naturally there.

Allie maintained her speed, taking Trent’s service semiautomatic out from her front waist and placing it on the passenger seat. She hadn’t gotten rid of it because it wouldn’t have done her any good. In fact, it would have been problematic to ditch it, too. They already knew she had taken his gun, and if they couldn’t locate it on her person, they would have a very good reason to search the route she’d taken from the cabin for it. As far as she knew, the police had no idea someone had planted the snub-nosed revolver. She’d stumbled across it before the setup could fully come to fruition.

That’s it, look on the bright side.

Navigation told her that the turn that would take her back to the highway was coming up in half a mile.

Then one quarter…

She took the turn, and the helicopter did likewise in the air above her. Not that Allie ever thought she could lose the pilots, given the too-damn-straight nature of the back roads she was on. Besides, the ones up there probably had a better understanding of her surroundings than she did.

Allie drove on, steeling herself for what was ahead. She wasn’t going to make the highway. Well, maybe she’d make it, but that would be it. The chopper would have already radioed ahead, and if there weren’t already a dozen squad cars waiting for her, then they would be arriving very soon. The lack of car pursuit so far was a bit of a surprise, but maybe it shouldn’t have been. She had put a good distance from the cabin, and it would take them a while to catch up.

She fished her cell phone from her jacket pocket and pressed the Recent Calls list. It would have been difficult trying to punch in the numbers with one hand on the steering wheel, but it helped that she’d only made two calls total on the phone, so there were only two numbers to pick from. She scrolled past the most recent one, which was Hank from last night, and auto-dialed the second.

While the phone call connected, Allie snuck another glance up at the chopper. It was still up there. As if the damn thing was ever going anywhere. It paced her like a silver metallic hawk waiting to pounce.

Finally, after three rings, someone picked up the phone on the other end, the voice coming through the speaker loud and clear. “How’s the vacation going?”

“Not good,” Allie said.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m in trouble, Lucy.”

“Uh oh, that doesn’t sound good,” the teenager said.

Now that’s an understatement if I’ve ever heard one.

“What’s going on?” Lucy asked.

Allie peeked at the navigation. The highway was closing in on her fast.

“I’m going to be arrested in a few minutes,” Allie said.

“Oh, shit,” Lucy said, her voice rising noticeably even through the speakers. “Why? What did you do this time?”

Allie smiled. She would have taken offense at that question if she didn’t share the kind of history she did with the kid. The truth was, it was a perfectly logical response, considering all the other messes she’d been caught up in the last few years.

“Never mind that,” Allie said. “Where are you now?”

“School.”

“Still?”

“Allie, it’s ten in the morning. Where else would I be?”

“Playing hooky.”

She imagined Lucy grinning when the girl said, “Not today. So what do you need me to do?”

“Get in touch with Randall.”

“Randall?”

“Yes, Randall.”

“I don’t like that guy. He always hits on me. I don’t think he knows I’m still in high school.”

Oh, he knows, Allie thought.

Then: I’ll definitely have to talk to him about that, but not today.

She said, “You don’t have to like him, you just have to get in touch with him for me.”

“What do you need him to do?”

“I need Aubrey White wiped from the system.”

“Which system?”

“All of them.”

“Oh, shit. You really are in trouble.”

“Yes, Lucy, I really am in trouble.”

“How can I help?”

“Call Randall.”

“Besides that.”

“You can’t.”

“There must be something I can do…”

“Not this time. The best way you can help me is to do what I asked. ASAP.”

“I’m leaving class now,” Lucy said. In the background Allie thought she heard a man’s voice calling Lucy’s name, then a door slamming shut.

“I’ll be in touch,” Allie said.

“Make sure you do,” Lucy said.

“I will. Be good.”

“Yeah, you too. And be careful.”

Too late, Allie thought but said, “Now hang up and call Randall. Let him know how urgent this is. Then pay him from the same fund.”

“Okay, bye,” Lucy said, and the phone went dead.

Allie picked the cell up from her lap, then flicked her way to the phone’s system with her free thumb before scrolling down the list of options. This was a little more difficult with the road getting a little bumpier—

“There they are,” Allie said to herself.

She knew they would be there, but Allie was still disappointed to see them: At least a half dozen police vehicles—the ones she could see, anyway—parked across the road that linked the dirt trail to the state highway. She hadn’t been able to make out their lights because of the daytime, but there was no missing them now. She still couldn’t hear sirens, probably because they had them turned off.

And the chopper, still shadowing her from above.

Allie slowed down so she could focus on the phone in her hand. She found the right menu option, then pressed it.

A prompt on the phone asked her if she was sure about erasing its contents.

She pressed Yes, then tossed the mobile onto the front passenger seat.

Allie slowed down further as she neared the barricade, but didn’t stop completely until she was about a hundred yards from the armed deputies up ahead. She put the car in park at about the same time she finally heard sirens coming from behind her. The ones from the cabin, finally catching up, even though she couldn’t see them in her mirrors yet.

In the sky, the chopper had gone on ahead when she stopped. It was now making a U-turn, the uniform cop hanging out the side hatch pointing his rifle down at her. She didn’t think he was going to shoot but was probably just getting a better look through his scope. Or, at least, she hoped that’s what he was doing, because she had turned off her car’s engine.

Allie held the keys out of the window for the sniper to see. When the man didn’t fire, she dropped the fob, then repeated the process with Trent’s Glock, followed by the SIG she’d been carrying behind her back this entire time.

Not that Allie expected the army of cops out there—and that was what they sounded and looked like, an army ready for battle—to go easier on her because she’d made a show of disarming herself. They couldn’t be sure if she didn’t have more guns on her, and frankly she didn’t blame them.

Allie took out the tissue paper that Sarah Marshall had written her note on. She stared at it for a moment. It was still mostly intact but torn at more places now, and the red ink had smeared so much that if Allie didn’t already have the words burned into her brain, she wouldn’t have been able to decipher most of it without a lot of study.

She tore the note up into smaller pieces before putting them into her mouth, then forcing them down with the help of a water bottle in her door’s cup holder. The note wasn’t going to help her now. If anything, it tied her to the Marshalls and was just one more thing that could be used against her.

The note…

Sarah’s flight from the house…

Tom’s death…

The revolver…

She was clearly being set up, and she couldn’t trust anything anymore. Nothing Sarah had said and certainly nothing the woman had left for her to find last night at the Don’t Stop In. For all Allie knew, Sarah was the mastermind behind all of this, using Allie as a patsy for her husband’s murder. That would explain her disappearance and the revolver mysteriously appearing in Allie’s cabin.

Allie sat back and waited.

She glanced over at the phone just to make sure it was still erasing. It had stopped working because it was done, and the screen was welcoming her to a reset phone. That was one complication out of the way.

Now for the rest…

The police cars—every one of them featuring Wells City PD paint jobs—had reached her parked vehicle. They stopped about fifty yards behind her, and men and women in tan uniforms flooded out to take positions behind their open doors. At the same time, dark-suited commandos in urban assault vests, goggles, and Kevlar helmets were moving up the dirt road toward her from the highway, matted black shields leading their way.

It was a lot of firepower. Too much. But maybe the identity of the victim had a little something to do with that.

A little something? Or everything?

She sighed, watching sunlight glinting off shiny bulletproof helmets as they bobbed their way toward her car. Slow but steady.

Slow but steady…

Seventeen

All things considered, the day could have gone worse. Not that this was something she was going to write home about, or think back on with a smile, but Allie had been in worse situations that ended in much worse ways.

A lot worse.

So when she thought about this in terms of all those other moments, it really wasn’t so bad. It was manageable, which was a good thing. At the very least, she was under no risk of being shot to death. Unless, of course, the Marshall clan’s power really was as vast and all-encompassing as people kept telling her, and the head man decided she was guilty and deserved to die, a trial be damned.

But Allie didn’t think so. Even a place like Wells City, insulated from the rest of the Pacific Northwest as it was, had to obey the rules of the 21st century. Maybe a hundred years ago a family like the Marshalls could order someone’s murder in the name of instant justice, but those days were long gone.

At least, Allie hoped they were.

The SWAT commandos hadn’t taken any chances when they grabbed her and dragged her out of her vehicle, then threw her down on the ground to handcuff her. Allie thought she could still feel the hard bone of a kneepad-wearing knee as it ground against the small of her back, pinning her to the dirt road while another man slapped manacles around her wrists and ankles. They hadn’t been very gentle at all.

The ride back to Wells City was less traumatic. Apparently no one had tipped off the local media that she was coming, and Allie was whisked to the WCPD station in the center of town and entered through the back. Inside, she was fingerprinted and had her mugshot taken. When they asked her name, she told them “Aubrey White,” because they already had her fake ID.

They typed everything into a computer and later, a female deputy gave her a thorough body search in a small room that provided some privacy. Afterward, Allie was given a bundle of surprisingly fresh-smelling jail clothes. Loud orange, with no belts or anything that could be used to hurt herself. They also took her old clothes for evidence gathering, along with all her personal items, including wallet.

“You’ve done this before,” the female deputy who searched her said when they were done.

“What makes you say that?” Allie asked.

“Oh, come on.”

Allie smiled back but didn’t confirm or deny the other woman’s suspicions. She wished she could say it was the first time she’d had to go through the ordeal, but that would have been a lie.

They cited her for evading a police helicopter but said nothing about the murder of Tom Marshall or his wife’s disappearance. Allie had a feeling there was more coming. The citation was just to put her in detention until they could come up with more charges.

After that humiliation, she was led away by three officers, including the same female deputy who had inspected her in private earlier, and two big men with a foot and about fifty pounds of muscle on both Allie and her female guard combined. They took her into the back, where the holding cells were, and she was led to her own private room at the end. Unfortunately, this meant being paraded past general holding cells, where drunks from the previous night got to watch her walk by.

A couple of those curious eyeballs belonged to a trio of Devil’s Crew MC bikers, but none of them were Mitch or his companion from the Don’t Stop In. Just remembering that encounter reminded Allie of how fast everything had happened. She had gone from trying to get a little buzz to being arrested in less than twenty-four hours. She’d had more whirlwind single days before, but not by very much.

Her guards put her in the last cell, the female deputy locking it once she was inside, then asking, “Any requests?”

“Yeah, let me go,” Allie said.

The woman—she was in her thirties, wearing blonde hair in a ponytail—chuckled. “You’re talking to the wrong person. I just work here.” Then, with a wry smirk, “You really stole a cop’s gun and took him hostage, while his partner was standing there?”

Allie looked past the deputy and at the surveillance camera on the wall across from them, the lens pointed directly into her cell. Was the other woman trying to get her to confess to something?

No, Allie thought when she saw the amused look on the deputy’s face.

“Is that what they said I did?” Allie asked.

“That’s one of the things they’re going to charge you with, from what I hear,” the deputy said. “And oh, something about damaging police property.”

“That’s all?”

“You mean there’s more?”

“You tell me.”

The woman shrugged. “I just work here. Someone will be along shortly to give you all the answers you need.”

I doubt that very much, Allie thought.

“You sure you don’t need anything?” the deputy asked. “Last chance.”

“If you can’t leave the door open for me, I guess there’s nothing I need right now,” Allie said.

“Well, holler if you change your mind.”

Allie nodded, before noting the deputy’s name tag for the first time: Parker.

“Thanks, Parker,” Allie said.

“You betcha,” Parker said.

Parker left with the other two, leaving Allie alone in her cell. It was much smaller than the others and provided her some privacy, not that that stopped a couple of her fellow jail detainees from trying to talk to her through the brick wall between them anyway.

Allie ignored them and found a seat on a bench in the back.

No one had said a word about Tom Marshall’s death or asked her about his wife and child’s whereabouts while she was being led through the police station. No one came to talk to her at her cell after Parker left. There were also no mentions of Sarah’s Audi or the blood on the upholstery the woman had left behind last night.

So what happened to the car? Did someone take it after she left with Sarah? Maybe Sarah’s accomplice—if she was a part of this—had secured the vehicle before it could be discovered. Was that the same man who had broken into the cabin?

There were so many possibilities, and any one of them could be reality. That was the problem. She was swimming in the deep end of a dark, black ocean and couldn’t make out how far down the bottom was. It was disconcerting and annoying, and she hated the lack of control. Her life was about being prepared for anything, always knowing what she was getting herself into.

This wasn’t one of those times. Someone had brought her into this. Who? Why?

Too many questions. There were just too many questions in front of her.

Allie wasn’t worried about having her real identity exposed. Besides, the “Allie Krycek” that once existed no longer did. These days, she was a ghost that had disappeared off the face of the earth one day and never resurfaced. That was also one reason why she was so sure this wasn’t personal.

No, there had to be another reason behind this setup. What, though?

What?

* * *

One of the jailbirds on the other side of her wall was trying to talk to her. A man with a slightly hoarse voice, leaning against his bars and sticking one skinny hand out and waving, not that he could see her at the very back of her own cell.

“Hey, how’re you doing?” the man asked.

Allie ignored him.

“What did you do?” the man asked.

Allie continued to ignore him.

“Must have been something big. You shoot some cops or something? That’s wild. Whole building’s abuzz.” Then, when Allie still didn’t say anything, “Come on, you can tell me. We’re all friends here.”

“Speak for yourself,” another voice piped up in the adjoining cell.

“Shhh,” the first man said. “I’m trying to get her to talk.”

“Give it up, she’s not talking,” a third voice said.

“Not if you two don’t keep your traps shut.”

“Give it up, man,” the second voice said. “Sit back down. You’re annoying everyone in here.”

“You don’t wanna to know? Don’t bullshit me. You know you wanna know. We all wanna know.”

“No. I don’t wanna know. I don’t care.”

“Liar.”

“Sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up,” a fourth voice, much harder edged than the previous two, snapped.

That shut Curious George up and made Allie wonder who the fourth speaker had been. One of the Devil’s Crew MC bikers, maybe. Someone like that, flanked by two of his mates, could make for an imposing threat to a drunk.

She closed her eyes, thankful for the silence.

* * *

Around two in the afternoon, Parker returned, once again flanked by the two large deputies that walked at her sides like protective big brothers making sure no one messed with their sweet and innocent little sister. Allie got up and walked over as Parker opened the door, keeping both eyes on Allie the entire time.

“Where we going?” Allie asked. She already knew the answer, of course. She’d done this dance before.

“Some of the detectives want to talk to you,” Parker said.

It’s about time, Allie thought, stepping outside.

She followed Parker up the same hallway, passing the same curious groups of eyes from the general population cells. They hadn’t cuffed her for the trip, not that Allie had any illusions she could escape from them. Parker by herself, yes, but forget about all three, even if she could manage to steal one of their police batons. And even if she somehow got free from the trio, there were all the other cops in the building to deal with.

No, fighting her way out of here wasn’t going to work. Not now, anyway.

A man with greasy long hair that ended in a mullet ran over to the cell bars and stared out at her as Allie walked past. “Hey, what’s happening? What did you do?”

Allie recognized the voice. It was Curious George from before.

Like the last time the man tried to talk to her, she ignored him.

“Hey, Jonas, what’d she do?” Curious George asked, this time directing his question at one of the big male guards walking alongside Allie.

Like her, the guard ignored the man.

They turned a corner, when Parker said, “You’re famous.”

“Am I?” Allie said.

“Oh yeah. Bill’s still trying to live down what you did to him.”

“Bill?” Allie thought, before remembering.

Bill Trent. The deputy I assaulted, took his gun, then put him in the trunk of my car. Good luck living that down, Bill.

“You also haven’t asked for a lawyer yet,” Parker was saying.

“Do I need one?” Allie said.

“That’s up to you. But usually that’s the first thing people do. Ask for a lawyer. Too many episodes of Law & Order on the brain.”

“I don’t need a lawyer.”

The female deputy looked over at Allie with an expression that Allie read as, Are you sure about that?

But the deputy said, “Suit yourself. Just so you’re aware of your rights.”

“Thank you for the reminder.”

Parker chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” Allie asked.

“You,” Parker said. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were walking inside the mall right now, enjoying the air conditioner and window shopping for a new dress.”

Maybe I am window shopping.

For information…

They were almost at the end of the hallway when a door on their right opened without warning. One of the civilian employees at the station rushed out, almost bumping into Parker in the process. The woman jerked back just in time. She was clutching a stack of folders to her chest as if her life depended on them.

“Oops, sorry, Parker,” the woman said.

“Where you running off to in such a hurry?” Parker said.

“They want these files right away.”

Then the woman glanced down the hallway at Allie and almost lost her grip on her precious bundle.

It was the girl from outside the Don’t Stop In, who Allie had saved from the two Devil’s Crew MC bikers. She was wearing glasses, a pencil skirt, and white blouse, and Allie might not have recognized her if she hadn’t run into the girl just one night ago. Then again, the last time Allie saw her, the woman was wearing cut-off shorts that barely hid her butt cheeks and a T-shirt that was a size too small, not to mention how wild her hair had looked after being tossed around by Mitch and his buddy. She had all those blonde locks in a tight, very conservative bun this afternoon. She looked like a secretary. A mousy one, at that.

Parker must have noticed the way the young woman was staring at Allie and vice versa, because the deputy said, “You two know each other?”

“No,” the woman said quickly. Probably a little too quickly.

“You sure?” Parker asked.

“Yes.” Then, turning, “I have to go.”

“Then go.”

The young woman hurried up the aisle and pushed her way through another door without looking back once.

Small world, Allie thought.

Then: Smaller town.

Parker flashed Allie a wry smile. “That’s one strange girl. Wish I could say today was different, but she’s always like that.”

“Who is she?” Allie asked.

“Melissa. Works in the records department. You two know each other?”

Allie shook her head. “No.”

“You sure about that?” Parker asked, with the same I think you’re lying look she’d given Melissa earlier.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Allie said.

“Okay then, if you’re sure.”

Allie didn’t think the deputy actually believed her, but Parker didn’t pursue it. Instead, Parker led her out the same door Melissa had just run through. There were no signs of the girl on the other side.

I guess she really was in a hurry.

Either that, or she wants to really, really avoid me.

Allie wasn’t sure if she should feel a little insulted by that.

Or maybe a lot insulted.

They walked through the same open lobby where Allie had been processed earlier. This time, even more pairs of eyes gawked at her from every side of the large room. One of those pairs belonged to Evans, the young deputy who Allie had had that standoff with this morning at the Don’t Stop In. Evans stopped what he was doing to straighten up from his desk and stare across the room at her. If Evans’s partner, Trent, was anywhere nearby, Allie couldn’t see him. She found it amusing to imagine the veteran deputy hiding from everyone, even her.

“Bill’s still trying to live down what you did to him,” Parker had said earlier.

Good luck with that, Bill. But at least you’ll always have Cynthia and her stacked chest.

She ignored the looks but couldn’t do the same to the group of people visible through the glass front doors. Reporters. They were camped outside, and when they spotted her being led out of the holding area, they attempted to storm the doors. There were too many deputies on guard for them to get past.

Camera lights flashed in the corners of Allie’s eyes as Parker grabbed her by an arm and quickly led her through the lobby and toward another hallway on the other side.

“What’s it feel like to be famous?” Parker asked when they were safely beyond the reach of the cameras. “Or is that infamous?”

“Either/or,” Allie said.

“You don’t seem very worried.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong, so I don’t have anything to be worried about.”

“Uh huh,” Parker said, not even trying to hide her doubt that time.

The deputy walked her to, then through a door marked Interview Room Two near the middle of the hallway.

“Make yourself at home if you can,” Parker said. “They’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

“Of course they will,” Allie said, and took a seat.

She made herself comfortable because no one was coming for a while, despite what Parker had said. She knew how all of this worked, just like she knew why it was so damn cold inside the room, so much so that the metal table felt like icicles against her skin.

Allie sat back in the hard metal chair and, with nothing else to do, waited.

Eighteen

“What’s your name?”

“Aubrey White.”

“That’s the name you gave us. But that’s not your real name, is it?”

“Of course it’s my real name. It’s on my driver’s license, isn’t it?”

“Then why doesn’t the California DMV have any record of you? Or, for that matter, why doesn’t any state in these United States have any record of you ever existing?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I exist. I’m sitting right here across from you, aren’t I? Besides, you know how everything’s in computers these days. One state employee downloads a file they shouldn’t have, and the next thing you know, records get lost. They’re just digital, after all. Ones and zeroes.”

“You know about computers?”

“Probably more than you do, Detective. No offense.”

The detective smirked. It was probably an involuntary reflex, because smirking at a suspect was not a very good interrogation technique. And that was exactly what she was: A suspect. Allie didn’t pretend otherwise. Pretending didn’t do anything to help her. Right now, she needed information, because as much as she hated to admit it, there was a lot out there that she still didn’t know.

And Allie hated not knowing.

Who set me up? Why?

The detective and his partner had entered the room about an hour after Parker dropped her off. They had a small digital tape recorder with them that they placed in the middle of the table and turned on. Two men, one in Levi’s and the other in khaki chinos, sporting identical white shirts underneath; ties and identical dark black blazers finished the ensemble. They weren’t armed, but they didn’t have to be; Allie could see the two hulking deputies that had been escorting her and Parker back and forth all day standing guard outside in the hallway when the door opened.

The men had come in with folders, maybe even the same ones that Melissa had been carrying. The older of the two identified himself as Dawson. His partner, who was younger by about ten years, was Shannon. They hadn’t bothered with first names. Dawson was doing all the talking as he sat across the table from her, while Shannon leaned against the wall next to the door, hands across his chest, eyes boring into her from the side.

Shannon was supposed to be intimidating. He was certainly big and broad-shouldered enough. In fact, he could have become the third member in the Big Deputy Boys Club that included the two outside.

Well, Shannon was supposed to be intimidating, anyway. Allie had no trouble pretending he didn’t exist, and instead concentrated on Dawson.

The older detective was clearly in charge. Watching him closely ever since he entered the interview room, Allie wondered if Dawson was trying to put on some kind of Columbo impersonation. Not that he was shabbily dressed like the famous TV cop, but in the way he asked his questions and spent more time staring at his files, scanning the contents behind thin bifocal glasses, than at her.

They wanted her to think this was routine for them. She didn’t buy the act for a second. Murder didn’t happen in a place like Wells City very often. Even rarer still, the murder of a man like Tom Marshall.

Dawson finally looked up from one of the folders he’d been flipping back and forth as if he were having trouble reading the small type on them. “So. You’re going with Aubrey White.”

“It’s my name,” Allie said.

“Where are you from originally, Aubrey?”

“I was born and raised in Anaheim.”

“So what are you doing up north?”

“Work.”

“The same work that took you to Seattle? And then later, on your way home to Tulsa, Oklahoma?” Something that almost looked like a gotcha smile. “So is it Anaheim or Tulsa?”

“Can’t it be both?” Allie said without missing a beat, even as she thought, Of course Deputy Trent would have made his report by now; and of course, he would have included all the lies I’d told him at the Don’t Stop In. So what else did he tell them?

“Can it?” Dawson was asking.

“A girl can live in more places than one, the last time I checked.” She leaned slightly forward. “How’s Deputy Trent doing?”

“He’s glad he got his service weapon back.”

“I couldn’t help but notice that I didn’t see him out there.”

“Are you concerned about him?”

“We spent some time together, got to know one another. I feel like we became friends.”

“You took him hostage.”

“That’s not true. I just took him along for a ride.”

Shannon smirked. Too loudly.

Allie looked over at him. “You have something to say, Detective Shannon?”

“Not yet,” Shannon said.

“Speak your mind.”

“Not yet,” the younger man said again.

“There’s also the matter of evading a police helicopter,” Dawson was saying.

Allie turned back to the older detective. “Is that what they said I did? I was just going out for a drive after dropping Deputy Trent off.”

“He said you put him in the trunk of your car.”

“Did he?”

“You deny it?”

“Of course.”

“So why did you fail to stop for the police helicopter?”

“I didn’t know it was a police helicopter. It was bright out there, and my eyesight isn’t what it used to be.”

“What did you think it was?”

“Some idiot with a helicopter going around spying on people? I’m not from around here; I don’t know what kinds of crazy things you guys do for fun.”

“Really? That’s what you’re going with?”

“Anything’s possible these days.”

Dawson closed a folder and replaced it with another one. He didn’t look up at her when he said, “Are you sure you don’t want an attorney?”

“Why would I need an attorney? I just explained to you that this is just a big mistake.”

“So that’s your answer. No to an attorney?”

“I don’t need one.”

“I didn’t ask you if you needed one; I asked if you wanted one.”

Allie shook her head and leaned back in her seat. “Not yet.”

“Just so you’re aware of your rights. Whenever you’d like me or Detective Shannon to get you an attorney, all you have to do is tell us.”

“Thank you,” Allie said. She glanced over at Shannon. “You should take a seat, Detective. Take a load off.”

“I’m fine,” Shannon said.

“You look tired.”

“I’m fine.”

“It can’t be very comfortable standing like that. I have a feeling we’re going to be doing this for a while.”

Shannon forced a smile. “I’m…fine.”

“Suit yourself.” She turned back to Dawson. “It’s Deputy Trent’s word against mine about what happened at the Don’t Stop In.”

“Deputy Trent’s, Deputy Evans’s, and the bartender’s words against yours, actually,” Dawson said.

“Oh.”

Shannon snorted.

“Did you have something to add?” Allie asked the younger detective.

Shannon shook his head, but she could tell that he had a lot of somethings to add, but either he had been told to keep quiet or—Yeah, that was probably it. Dawson was the man in charge here. Shannon’s job was just to stand around and watch and, if possible, intimidate.

“Tom Marshall,” Dawson was saying. He had folded his hands on top of the folders and was watching her closely now.

“Who?” Allie said.

“Tom Marshall.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“You don’t know who Tom Marshall is?”

“No. Should I?”

“He was found shot to death in his home this morning.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Did you find out who did it?”

“We’re working on it.”

“I hope I’m not wasting your time. Time that could be better spent out there looking for Mr. Marshall’s killer.”

“Oh, we have plenty of time. Don’t you worry.”

“Plenty of time,” Shannon added.

Allie ignored the bigger and younger detective and said to Dawson, “I’m confused. Why are you asking me about this Tom Marshall? I thought this was about that misunderstanding at the Don’t Stop In.”

“Because your car was seen outside his house very early this morning,” Dawson said. “It’s the reason Deputies Trent and Evans went into the Don’t Stop In to look for you.”

“My car? My exact car? Are you sure about that?”

Dawson opened another folder and adjusted his glasses to read the contents, as if he hadn’t already read it, probably a dozen times before coming in here. “White Ford sedan. Isn’t that what you were driving this morning, and then later this afternoon when the police chopper spotted you on the hillside?”

“There’s a lot of white sedans out there. A lot of white Ford sedans, too.”

“That’s true.”

“I’m glad we can finally agree on something. So this is all just one big misunderstanding? Someone saw a white Ford sedan outside this Tom Marshall person’s place, and you think it’s mine?”

Dawson ignored her question and asked instead, “What about Sarah Marshall?”

Finally. Sarah.

Where are you, Sarah? And did you have something to do with setting me up?

She said, “What about her?”

“Do you know who she is?” Dawson asked.

“No. But I’m guessing she’s related to Tom. Same last name and all. Who is she?”

“Tom Marshall’s wife.”

“Ah. Is she okay?”

“We don’t know yet; we can’t find her. Or her baby.”

“They’re missing?”

“Yes, they are.”

“Shouldn’t you and Detective Shannon be out there looking for them instead of wasting time in here with me?”

“We don’t consider stealing a police officer’s gun and taking him hostage to be a waste of time.”

“Surely it’s nothing compared to a missing mother and her child.”

“No, you’re quite right about that. Finding mother and son is our top priority.”

Yours and mine, Dawson. Yours and mine.

“But speaking of Sarah Marshall, you sure you don’t know who she is? You’ve never met her before?” Dawson asked.

“That’s right,” Allie said. “Just like I’ve never met her husband, Tom. Or know anything about what happened to him.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Absolutely.”

“So when the forensics lab comes back with the results for those bloodstained clothes we found in your cabin and all over one of the bathroom sinks, they won’t belong to Sarah Marshall?”

Allie didn’t react. She had already expected this. A bloodstained Sarah Marshall had been at the cabin last night, so of course she was going to leave evidence of her presence everywhere.

“When are those results due back?” Allie asked.

“Soon,” Dawson said.

“How soon?”

“Sooner than if this wasn’t a case involving a family with the surname Marshall.”

“Weren’t,” Allie said.

“Excuse me?”

“Sooner than if this weren’t a case involving a family with the surname Marshall. It’s not wasn’t.”

“I thought you were a medical equipment saleswoman from Tulsa—or is it Anaheim?—and not a grammar teacher.”

Allie smiled. Deputy Trent again. What else did the veteran cop put into his report? Was there anything in the files about the conversation she’d had with the deputy during their long ride together? Would Trent even remember or care to include those?

“No, but I paid attention in class,” Allie said. “Besides, what does the name Marshall have anything to do with how fast lab work gets done?”

“You don’t know?” Dawson asked.

“Why would I know?”

“You sure?”

“Yes. If you ask a third time, I’ll answer the same way: No.”

Dawson was trying to scare her, but it wasn’t going to work. The lab results wouldn’t come back for days. Twenty-four hours at the soonest, and it hadn’t been twenty-four hours yet. It didn’t matter if the Marshalls were whispering in all the right ears. Money wasn’t going to rush forensic science.

“Right. Because you’re not from around here,” Dawson said. “Naturally, not being from around here, you wouldn’t know who the Marshalls are.” The way he had said it told her he didn’t believe her for a second and didn’t care if she knew it.

“I have a feeling they’re important people,” Allie said.

“They are.”

“Good for them. But what does that have to do with me?”

“It has a lot to do with you. When powerful people want something to happen, it usually gets done. Like, say, finding a missing wife and a child that shares the same last name.”

“We’re back to this Sarah person.”

“We are.”

“I can’t help you with that, Detective. Like I’ve said, I don’t know her. And besides, I don’t own the cabin where you found all those bloodstained clothes that may or may not belong to Sarah Marshall.”

“You were staying in it. Aubrey White’s name is on the rental agreement.”

“That’s right. I rented it. I can’t be responsible for people who might have used the place before or after I left.”

“So if you don’t know who the Marshalls are, and you don’t have anything to hide, why did you assault Deputies Trent and Evans at the Don’t Stop In when they asked about your vehicle?”

“I didn’t assault them.”

“Three eyewitnesses said otherwise.”

“Haven’t you heard, Detective? Eyewitnesses are the least dependable evidence in court. Are you familiar with the Mandela Effect?”

“Can’t say as I am.”

“Well I’ll be sure to introduce it in court to educate you and Detective Shannon here. People sometimes think they remember something one way—sometimes they’re adamant about it—when the truth is something else entirely. Human beings are faulty creatures, easily tricked—sometimes by their own minds.”

Dawson’s lips twitched slightly. Was that anger or annoyance?

“You sure you don’t want a lawyer?” Dawson asked. “If you don’t have one, we can assign a public defender pro bono. That means free.”

Allie smiled. “I know what pro bono means.”

“And your answer is…”

“No. I don’t need a lawyer at this time.”

Dawson looked over at Shannon. “Just to confirm that the interviewee Aubrey White has declined her right to an attorney twice now.”

“Confirmed,” Shannon said.

“You’ve asked me a lot of questions, and I’ve answered them to the best of my abilities,” Allie said. “I think it’s fair I get to ask some questions in return.”

“Is that so?” Dawson said. He eased back in his seat, and this time Allie was certain the expression on his face was one of amusement. “What kind of questions do you have, Miss White? It is miss?”

Allie nodded. “It is.” She leaned forward. “When did Tom Marshall die exactly?”

“Why do you ask? Since you don’t even know the man. What does his death matter to you?”

“Every life matters to me. But beyond that, isn’t it obvious why I’d like to know?”

“Enlighten Detective Shannon and myself, if you would.”

“Obviously, if I know the time of his death, I can tell you where I was at the same period. I can’t very well kill the man if I have an alibi now, can I?”

Dawson slipped out another folder and opened it. It took him a few seconds to find the right information. “The first officer at the scene found Tom Marshall’s body at exactly 4:26 a.m. We’re still trying to pinpoint the exact time of death, but it’s believed to be somewhere between eleven p.m. the previous night and this morning. He was seen alive at dinner with his wife at around eight the previous night, then later, at the Don’t Stop In at around ten when they were on their way home.” He closed the folder. “So where were you during that time frame?”

“You said a police officer found the body at 4:26 a.m.?”

“That’s right.”

“What was the police officer doing there?”

“We received a call of a disturbance in the house. Someone reported that they heard screaming and what might have been the possibility of gunshots coming from within the residence.”

“A neighbor called?”

“We don’t know. It was an anonymous tip. The only reason the dispatcher took it seriously was because she recognized the address and the name.”

“When did this call come in exactly?”

Dawson leaned on the table and stared back at her. “I think you have this backwards. You’re not here to interview me. It’s the other way around. Now. Do you have an alibi for me or not?”

Yes, but anything I tell you would just dig a deeper hole for me, Allie thought as she sat back in her own uncomfortable metal chair.

“Well?” Dawson said. “Do you have an alibi for this morning and would you like to share it with me and Detective Shannon here, Miss White?”

“No,” Allie said.

“No, you don’t have an alibi; or no, you do, but you don’t want to share it with us?”

“I’m thinking about it.”

Dawson smiled. “Think faster. Things are about to get really bad for you, Aubrey. You’re still going to stick to that name, by the way?”

“It’s my name.”

“Of course it is. So what’s your answer?”

Allie glanced over at Shannon. “I’m officially invoking my Fifth Amendment rights. Please confirm my request out loud, Detective Shannon.”

Shannon looked confused before glancing over at Dawson for confirmation.

The veteran detective smirked, as if it’d just dawned on him what Allie had been doing. “Cute. That was cute.”

“I insist Detective Shannon confirm my invocation of my Fifth Amendment rights out loud for it to be put on the record, Detective,” Allie said.

Dawson looked over at his partner and nodded.

“Confirmed,” Shannon said, though Allie could barely hear him because he’d said it through clenched teeth.

Nineteen

Allowing Dawson to interview her without a lawyer hadn’t exactly gone as she had planned, but it wasn’t a complete debacle, either. She’d managed to learn some vital pieces of information here and now, when she could still do something about it. Yes, she would have discovered all of this anyway once the trial began, but Allie had a feeling the people setting her up weren’t going to be sitting around waiting for her to catch up to them. No, she had to work fast because she was already so far behind the eight ball. And that, unfortunately, meant taking risks. A lot of risks.

So what did she know now that she didn’t before? A couple of things:

One: Tom had died last night, either before Allie arrived at the Marshall home or sometime afterward. He’d been shot, which just about confirmed her theory that the revolver at the cabin was the murder weapon. She had no evidence, of course, but it was probably a safe assumption.

Two: Sarah was still missing. So was her child. Someone had either taken them from the cabin, or they’d run off on their own will. But if it was the latter, then why hadn’t she resurfaced yet? Why would she continue to hide? There were two possibilities: She was involved in the setup, or she was afraid to reveal herself. Right now, it could be either one.

Allie replayed the last conversation she’d had with Sarah back in her head. It was still fresh in her mind; after all, it hadn’t even been a full day yet.

“They call the shots,” the housewife had said about the Marshalls. “Nothing happens around here without their okay. Mayors, assemblyman, even state representatives.”

“They’re that powerful?” Allie had said.

“They have that much money. Everyone knows it…including everyone in the WCPD. That’s why I can’t go to them. Why I couldn’t, before last night, and why I still can’t, this morning.”

Maybe that was it—the reason Sarah hadn’t resurfaced willingly. Fear could make people do some crazy things, including run into the woods with your infant son. Was it enough to make her stay in there, though?

The other, more depressing possibility was that Sarah was a part of the setup, and had been from the very beginning. Except that didn’t explain why she was running from the house covered in blood with her baby in the back seat last night. Surely she couldn’t have expected Allie to show up and take mother and son back to the cabin. Could she?

The interview with Detective Dawson and his mostly-silent partner, Shannon, had ended as soon as Allie invoked her Fifth Amendment rights. After that, she was taken back to her cell by Parker and the two behemoths, and Allie sat on the bench at the back now, recycling every bit of information Dawson had provided—whether unwittingly or not—and what she already knew.

While she was lost in her thoughts, trying to make sense of her predicament, night creeped silently up on her. Soon, activity in the building dropped to a crawl and she could hear her fellow detainees next door snoring. There was no window back here, so she had no idea if the media was still gathered outside waiting for a glimpse of her. She guessed they probably were. Wells City didn’t have anything approaching a twenty-four-hour news cycle, but Allie imagined this was going to keep a lot of them occupied for days to come, or however long until it got resolved.

Parker had left after her shift ended and was replaced by a younger woman named Jackson, who checked on Allie twice before vanishing for a long spell. There were also new deputies coming and going, and though she couldn’t confirm it with her own eyes, Allie could feel the station emptying out except for the necessary personnel. A big murder or not, people still had to go home to their families.

Allie finally came to the conclusion that there wasn’t anything else she could learn from inside her jail cell. It wasn’t as if she’d allowed herself to get arrested, but she’d made the best of a bad situation. The answers were out there, waiting for her, but to get from here to there was going to involve violence.

She loathed the idea. Parker, Dawson, and even Parker’s replacement, Jackson, were just doing their jobs. Allie had spent so much of her second life avoiding hurting innocents that to start now, just to get her own neck out of the noose… It left a big knot in her gut.

But what choice did she have?

There was Melissa. Could she get the young secretary to help her? It would be payback for Allie rescuing her from the bikers last night. Then again, given how fast Melissa had run off—and pretended she didn’t know Allie before that—Allie was probably barking up the wrong tree. Besides, she’d need to make contact with the girl first, and that didn’t seem likely. Maybe she could ask Parker to give Melissa a message…

So what other options was she left with?

Not much. Not much at all. At least, not tonight. Not sitting on a bench in the back of a jail cell, in a police station that, if not filled with cops, then enough of them to make it hard to get out of here without hurting at least some of them…

It was a bad situation all around.

Allie lay down on the hard surface and let her legs dangle off the edge. She was a foot taller than the bench, not that she thought she was going to get any sleep anyway. Even with the lack of rest she’d gotten the previous day, there was no way she was going to…

* * *

Allie opened her eyes, the thoughts, I fell asleep. I can’t believe I actually managed to fall asleep! racing through her mind once, twice, three times.

There was no fourth time, because her mind had shifted gears.

Something had woken her.

Allie sat up on the bench and swung around to face the cell bars.

There were three figures in the hallway looking back at her. The lights had been dimmed sometime after she closed her eyes, so the men—and she was sure they were all men from their broad shoulders—had either picked an excellent spot to stand and watch her sleep, or they had gotten lucky. She couldn’t make out their faces, just their ghostly shapes.

One of the men was wearing a Wells City deputy’s uniform, but the other two were in civilian clothes. Allie didn’t recognize the deputy, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary; just as Parker had left after her shift was over, so too would the others. This was a second-shift deputy—but who were the other two with him?

Allie stood up when the uniformed figure tossed a pair of handcuffs into her cell. The manacles skidded across the floor, the dimmed lights from outside glinting off their smooth metal surfaces.

“Put them on,” the one wearing the deputy’s uniform said.

Allie didn’t move to pick up the cuffs.

“Now,” the deputy said.

Allie still didn’t move.

“If we have to go in there to put them on you, it’s going to hurt,” the man to the right of the deputy said. He was slightly taller than the other two, though not by much. The words were an obvious threat, but the way he’d said them suggested otherwise.

Now that her eyes had adjusted to her new, darkened surroundings, Allie could make out more details on the trio. The deputy was a stranger, and it was still too dark for her to read the name on his uniform. The civilian that had threatened her was wearing black slacks and a blazer with a white shirt—but no tie—underneath. His short blond hair stood out against the dark hair of the deputy and the second civvie, who was wearing thick khaki pants and a gray windbreaker. She couldn’t see enough of their faces to guess their age.

“Put them on,” the deputy said. He was holding a key in one hand, waiting for her to obey his orders.

Allie finally did, picking up the handcuffs and slipping them around her wrists. She’d already decided there was nothing to be gained by staying in here and going through the legal process, which she was pretty sure she’d lose anyway. Even if they never managed to pin Tom Marshall’s death on her, there was still Mickey the bartender and Deputy Evans to testify in court that she’d taken Trent hostage.

She had no idea what these three wanted, but they were going to help her with her biggest obstacle at the moment: Getting out of her cell.

Besides, if they’d wanted to hurt her, they could have done it while she slept. There was no telling how long they’d been standing out there watching her. If any one of them was armed, they could have already shot her as well. Or come inside and suffocated her with a pillow. Allie could think of a hundred other ways to silence someone.

But they hadn’t done any of those things.

“Where we going, boys?” Allie asked.

“For a walk,” Blondie said. There it was again; like he was having a good time here and wasn’t taking any of this seriously.

Asshole must think it’s a game.

“Isn’t it a little late for that?” Allie asked.

“Not tonight,” Blondie said. “You’ll love it. There’s a full moon out.”

The deputy, all business, opened the cell door and pulled it out. “Step outside.”

Allie did as instructed. The deputy didn’t let her outside until he’d checked her restraints.

Up close, she guessed that Blondie was in his mid-thirties, younger than Windbreaker by about ten years. The two civilians looked her up and down, Blondie with something that could almost pass for a wry smirk. Windbreaker just looked bored, like he’d rather be somewhere else. Or sleeping.

Allie glanced at the wall clock behind them: 1:14 a.m.

She hadn’t realized how long she’d slept. That explained why, despite the situation, she felt so much better. And no wonder the entire building was so quiet right now. It was the dead of night.

Next to the wall clock was the security camera. The light underneath it was green, just as it had been all day. So whatever was happening right now was being recorded. That, for some reason, made her feel a little better.

The deputy closed the cell and nodded at Blondie. “She’s good.”

The deputy—Lincoln was stenciled across his name tag—led them up the hallway, passing the other holding cells. A few detainees were snoring on the bench at the back—it was wider than hers—leaving the rest to spill out on the floor. No one opened their eyes or woke up as Allie’s group passed. Either they were all asleep or were too smart to be caught noticing.

At first Allie thought Blondie and Windbreaker might have been detectives, but that didn’t make any sense. Cops didn’t work this late, even if Tom Marshall’s murder was the kind of thing that only happened once in a lifetime in a place like Wells City. Besides, neither men had introduced themselves as detectives, which they would have done.

No, this wasn’t official police business. Not by a long shot. So what was it?

Whatever it was, they weren’t trying to hide it, because more active cameras watched them moving up the hallway.

Allie sized up her chances and decided that she didn’t like them very much. Not that she could have done anything to prevent this and whatever “this” led to. If she’d refused to put on the cuffs, they would have probably done what they’d threatened—come in and made her. Even if she’d fought and made a scene—woke up the other inmates and whoever was still working in the other parts of the station—what would that accomplish? She was almost certain Lincoln was the real deal, which meant he could explain away anything. Who would take her word over his? She was already tainted after that stunt with Trent, and was now under suspicion for Tom Marshall’s murder, not to mention his missing wife and child.

At least this way she was out of her cell. That was something. Now all she had to do was figure what the rest of this was.

“You boys have names?” Allie asked.

“Yes,” Blondie said.

“And what would they be?”

“Yes.”

“You’re very friendly, aren’t you?”

“I try to be.”

“Try harder.”

“Nah, I think this is good enough.”

Lincoln led them out of the detention area, but instead of turning left the way Parker had done earlier to take Allie through the station lobby, he turned right.

Both Blondie and his partner, Windbreaker, were at least a foot taller than her. They were also much bigger. She could probably take one—probably, if she had the element of surprise and a weapon—but two? Then there was Lincoln. The deputy would also be a problem. He was also the only visibly armed one among them. That was assuming neither Blondie nor Windbreaker had a concealed weapon on them.

But that baton… If she could get her hands on it, she might have a chance. Lincoln was ahead of her, and all she’d have to do was walk a little faster and lunge for the weapon at just the right moment—

The deputy suddenly stopped and stepped aside, revealing another door at the end, marked EXIT.

Too late.

“Bring her back before dawn,” Lincoln said to Blondie.

“Sure thing, boss,” Blondie said with all the manufactured respect of someone who wasn’t trying very hard. Then, to Allie, “Ladies first.”

“So what are you waiting for?” Allie asked.

Windbreaker snorted.

Blondie smirked. “Cute.”

Allie rolled her eyes back at him.

“Outside,” Blondie said. “Don’t make us carry you out.”

“What a gentleman,” Allie said.

There was supposed to be a large metal bar over the exit, but it had been pushed to the side. Windbreaker took the lead, opening the door. Chilly night air rushed inside, and Allie bristled for a moment. She had forgotten how cold it was out there after sitting in her warm cell for most of the day.

They exited the police station into the same rear parking area they’d used to sneak her in earlier in the day. It would have been empty this early in the morning, except for a massive black GMC parked in the shadows, straddling multiple parking spots as if it owned the entire lot.

“Nice car,” Allie said.

“Get in,” Blondie said.

“Who’s driving?”

“Me,” Windbreaker said.

“Can I drive?” Allie asked.

Blondie chuckled. “She’s a comedian, this one.”

“So funny I forgot to laugh,” Windbreaker said.

The older man walked on ahead to the vehicle, and Allie followed. Slowly. She took in her surroundings, looking for an opportunity. Blondie remained behind her, close enough that he could probably reach out and grab her if she took off, but far enough back that she couldn’t swing at him with her elbows.

They were the only three people in the parking lot, with the rest of Wells City asleep around them. Allie had expected a media crew out here, but they were either all camped out front or they, like the cops and detectives, had gone home for the day. If she made her move now, all Allie would need to do was deal with Blondie. He was bigger and taller and stronger, yes, but if she could put an elbow into that square jaw of his—

“Don’t even think about it,” Blondie said behind her.

Shit.

“Think about what?” Allie said.

A chuckle. Or what sounded like one.

“You’re imagining things,” Allie said.

“Oh, definitely,” Blondie said.

Blondie’s partner had opened the rear passenger side door of the GMC for her, and Allie walked toward it.

“I thought we were going for a walk,” Allie said.

“We did go for a walk,” Blondie said. “Now it’s time to go for a ride.”

“What about these handcuffs?”

“Too tight?”

“A little bit.”

“Too bad.”

Allie sighed. “Don’t be an asshole.”

“Sorry, it’s in the job description.”

And what job is that? Allie thought, but didn’t get the chance to ask because she was already at the GMC.

She leaned in through the open door.

There was a man already inside the back seat, looking across the plentiful plush upholstery at her. He was older than Windbreaker by at least twenty years, wearing a suit with a bloodred tie and a jacket over that. The man screamed “money,” and the luxurious confines of the SUV didn’t hurt that first impression.

“Try anything, and you’ll come back here in two pieces,” Windbreaker, holding the door open next to her, said.

Which means they intend to bring me back here alive, Allie thought as she climbed into the vehicle.

Blondie slipped into the front passenger seat while Windbreaker jogged his way around the large vehicle and got in behind the steering wheel.

Allie settled into the back next to the mysterious older man. Even after Windbreaker had closed his door and the ceiling light clicked off, Allie could make out the streaks of gray in her back seat companion’s hair. She could also see the lines on his face, pale lips, and hard gray eyes.

Windbreaker started the SUV and drove off, turning away from the front of the police station and into some kind of back street. They apparently knew their way around the area, so they were either locals, or they’d scouted ahead of time.

“Aubrey White,” the older man said.

Allie focused on him. “And you are…?”

“But that’s not your real name.”

“I have a driver’s license that proves otherwise.”

“Let’s cut the bullshit,” the man said. Then, to Blondie in the front passenger seat, “How long do we have?”

“Till dawn, sir,” Blondie said.

“More than enough time,” the older man said.

More than enough time for what? Allie thought, testing out the handcuffs around her wrists. They were just as strong now as they’d been when she slapped them on earlier in her cell.

And yet, Allie wasn’t afraid. It was the vibe in the car. Allie had been in trouble more times than she’d liked; she’d sat in vehicles with killers of a dozen stripes, and she had a sixth sense when it came to danger.

But here, now, there wasn’t any of that. Either her internal alarm wasn’t functioning properly and her survival instincts, honed from countless life-and-death situations, was on the fritz, or this wasn’t one of those moments.

So what was it?

“You said let’s cut the bullshit,” Allie said to the older man. “So let’s do that. Who are you, and what do you want with me?” And how the hell did you just walk me out of a police station with the cameras rolling the entire time? she thought.

The older man settled his hard gray eyes on her.

“My name is Archibald Marshall,” the man said. “They said you killed my son.”

Twenty

She waited for her survival instincts to kick into high gear, for her fight or flight reflex to demand commitment to one or the other. Except it didn’t happen, despite the presence of a man whose son she was supposed to have murdered sitting next to her and his two very large bodyguards up front.

Allie had been in so many scrapes, and faced with too many life and death situations that she had developed an intimate understanding of danger. Except she didn’t recognize it here. She didn’t know why, given all the criteria available, but try as she might, she couldn’t taste the growing fear in the back of her throat.

Instead, there was calmness. From herself, from Marshall, and his drivers.

What’s happening here?

“My question is, why?” Marshall was asking her.

“I didn’t kill your son,” Allie said.

“The evidence says otherwise.”

“The evidence is lying.”

“You were at the house.”

“But I wasn’t in the house.”

“So you admit you were at the house.”

“I parked down the street in my car. There’s a big difference.”

Allie took a breath, then pushed it back out. It was warm inside the SUV. Maybe a little too warm.

“I didn’t kill your son,” she said again, wondering why she was telling this man the truth.

Would he even believe her? What reasons did he have to assume anything but guilt? She knew what the police had on her, and though it might not be ironclad, she’d seen prosecutions succeed on much less.

And yet, here she was, in the back of a moving GMC telling a stranger the truth about his son’s murder while two men—bodyguards, she knew now—drove them around the dark streets of Wells City. And it was dark out there. She wasn’t sure if that was just her imagination, or if Windbreaker had purposefully chosen the darkest parts of the city he could find for effect.

“If you didn’t kill him, then who did?” Archibald Marshall asked.

“I don’t know,” Allie said. “That’s what I plan to find out.”

“How?”

“I don’t know that either. But I’ll find out.”

“Why would you care who’s responsible, if you didn’t do it?”

“Because someone’s pinning the crime on me. And I don’t like that. I don’t like being set up.”

“Is that what’s happening here? Someone is setting you up?”

She couldn’t tell by just the sound of his voice if he believed her or not. She couldn’t tell much of anything about the man. There was a steadiness to his words that, if she didn’t know better, she wouldn’t have guessed he’d just lost his one and only son not more than twenty-four hours ago. And that said nothing about the disappearance of his daughter-in-law and grandson.

“Yes,” Allie said. “Someone is setting me up.”

“Who would do such a thing?”

“That’s the question I have to find out.”

“And why should I believe you?”

“I frankly don’t care if you believe me or not,” Allie lied, hoping it was somewhat believable.

The truth was, she did care, she just didn’t want him to know it. Right now, this man sitting next to her held her fate in his hands. If he gave the order, would Blondie pull out a gun he’d been concealing all this time and shoot her in the head? Were Blondie and Windbreaker more than just bodyguards?

She didn’t want to find out.

“Fact is, if Blondie and Windbreaker were going to hurt me, they would have done it already,” Allie said.

She glimpsed Blondie out of the corner of one eye glancing over at Windbreaker, sitting across from him. She couldn’t quite see their expressions, but it looked like confusion. For a brief second or two, anyway, until Blondie “got” it. Windbreaker, on the other hand, still appeared to be in the dark.

“That can still change,” Marshall was saying. “The night is young.”

“You’re not going to tell them to do anything except take me back to the police station when we’re done having our little chat,” Allie said, and thought, Jesus, I think I almost believed myself that time.

The older man turned to look at her (was that for the first time?), narrowing his eyes slightly as he did so. “You seem very sure of that.”

“You didn’t come here to harm me. We both know that.”

“Do we?”

“You’re Archibald Marshall. Your family was here before there was even a Timber Creek County. Yes, you could have me killed, but you’re not going to. Besides the fact that you don’t have to get your hands dirty, if you want me found guilty of Tom’s death, I’ll be found guilty. I think we both know that.”

Marshall didn’t confirm or deny, but there was something on his face—almost a smirk, but not quite—that told her she wasn’t wrong.

Which Allie wasn’t sure was good or bad.

Oh, who was she kidding? It was bad. It was very bad.

“You came here for answers,” Allie said.

“I thought that was obvious,” Marshall said. “I came to find out why you killed my son.”

“You already know I didn’t kill your son.”

“You’re being very presumptuous for someone wearing handcuffs.”

“You don’t look like a dumb man to me. Everything I’ve heard about you says that you’re not. You’ve probably already seen all the evidence. Or what’s passing for evidence. That means someone has given you the files on my arrest.”

Marshall said nothing, and instead turned to look out his window. Allie couldn’t quite make out his reflection in the tinted glass. It was as dark out there as the last time she’d looked. Where was Windbreaker driving them? They were still within the city limits; she could tell that much by the occasional red lights. Whenever they parked, they were the only vehicle for what seemed like miles. If Blondie or Windbreaker took out a gun now, there would be no one to stop them. Certainly she couldn’t in her current position.

Or could she?

Yes, she was handcuffed, but this wasn’t a completely new situation for Allie. Her only way out was Marshall next to her. Figuratively and literally. For a man his age—sixties, though she couldn’t be sure if that was early or late sixties—he looked to be in relatively good shape. But he was still much older than her, and sitting close enough that she could envision herself grabbing him and using him as a shield against his men. Thankfully the handcuffs were in front of her, and if she could get them over his head and around his throat…

Allie flexed her fingers, glad that both hands were hidden in the shadows of the back seat. Not that Marshall was keeping an eye on her, but she did catch Blondie looking up at the rearview mirror from time to time. Windbreaker only had eyes for the very desolate streets around them.

“You’ve read the police reports,” Allie continued. “You know things don’t add up. The most obvious is why a woman that has no ties to Wells City or your family would show up one day and kill your son, then abduct his wife and child.”

“It’s a crazy world,” Marshall said. “People do crazy things.”

“Then why did I stick around? In fact, why did I walk into a bar on the side of the highway, hours after supposedly committing such a heinous crime? None of it makes any sense. And you know it.”

Marshall didn’t say anything, and Allie thought, He knows more than he’s saying. A lot more.

How much more, was the question.

“Go on,” Marshall said.

“The truth is, I didn’t kill your son,” Allie said. “I went there last night to stop him.”

“Stop him?” Marshall said, turning back to her.

And into the breach we go, Allie thought.

Then: You better hope you’re right.

“His wife, Sarah, left a message for me at the Don’t Stop In bar,” Allie said.

“The same bar you took the policeman hostage,” Marshall said.

“The one and same.”

“What about Sarah?”

“She left a note for me at the bar last night that read, and I quote, ‘My husband is going to kill me tonight.’”

“Where is this note?”

I ate it, Allie thought but said, “I destroyed it.”

“That’s convenient.”

“It’s the truth.”

“So you keep insisting.”

“Your son beats his wife, Mr. Marshall. Did you know that?”

Marshall narrowed his eyes at her just before he turned back to the window and looked outside.

He knows. Because Tom has a history.

She said, “That’s why I went to the house. But I didn’t go in. I didn’t get the chance. Sarah came out with the baby first. She got in her car and drove away, and I followed. But she was hurt and didn’t get very far.”

“Hurt?” Marshall said.

“She had a fight with Tom. She was bleeding. Half of her face was covered in blood.”

Marshall kept quiet. He also hadn’t defended his son, and Allie thought again, Oh yeah, he definitely knows about Tom’s past.

She continued: “I put her in my car, along with the baby, and took them to the cabin I was renting, where the police found her blood when she cleaned herself last night. I wasn’t sure what to do, and she wouldn’t go to the hospital. She said no one would believe her if it came to her word against Tom’s.”

More silence from the other side of the vehicle.

How long have you known about your son? she wanted to ask but didn’t.

She said instead, “The next morning, I went to the Don’t Stop In to try to find some news about what had happened last night. That’s when I found out Tom was dead.”

She considered telling Marshall about the man that had tried to break into the cabin, then later, took a shot at her in the woods. It was, she realized, something that only she and Sarah knew about. (The breaking in but not the shooting part, anyway.) Even the police didn’t know, because Dawson had never brought it up during the interview yesterday.

“That’s quite a story,” Marshall said after a while.

“It’s the truth,” Allie said.

“Your truth.”

“The truth is the truth.”

“Where is she now? Sarah and baby William?”

“I don’t know. They weren’t at the cabin when I returned after the incident at the Don’t Stop In. Before I could look for them, the police were everywhere. They got there very fast. Too fast.”

“You took a cop hostage at the bar.”

“Yes, I did, but they still shouldn’t have known where I was staying that quickly. Also, there was a gun there, under my bed, in my room. It wasn’t there when I left.”

“A gun?”

“A revolver. It wasn’t mine.” Then, “What caliber weapon was your son killed with?”

Marshall said, “Frank.”

Blondie turned around in his seat to look back at them. “Forensics said a .38 caliber weapon was used, sir.”

“The revolver I found was a .38,” Allie said. “Someone put it in my cabin before they called the police. That same someone probably also took Sarah and William.”

“Probably?” Marshall said. “It sounds like you don’t have any answers, just theories.”

“It’s not like I’ve had a lot of time to look for those answers. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been a little busy.”

Allie heard Blondie, a.k.a. Frank, chuckle softly to himself in the front passenger seat.

“You’re right,” Marshall said. “I’ve seen the police files, and there are many unanswered questions.”

I knew it.

So what else do you know that you’re not telling me?

She didn’t believe that Marshall had scanned the evidence and concluded from just that that she wasn’t guilty. No, it couldn’t have been that simple. There had to be more. The man knew something—maybe a lot of somethings—that he wasn’t telling her.

“What do you know?” Allie asked. “You know more than even the police, don’t you? You were already convinced that I didn’t kill Tom even before I stepped into this car. So what do you know, Mr. Marshall?”

“That’s for you to find out,” Marshall said.

That’s not a denial. Definitely not a denial.

“Why don’t you just tell me now? Save me a lot of time,” Allie said.

“It’s your neck on the line. It’s only fair you do all the legwork.”

“Meaning?”

Instead of answering her, Marshall said, “Frank.”

Blondie opened the glove compartment and took something out before turning around in his seat again and holding a thick manila folder out to her. Allie took it—it was heavy, weighed down with pages and pages of content—and flipped through a few of the ones on top. Even with minimal light, she could tell they were official police reports and forensics results.

“Are these what I think they are?” Allie asked anyway, just to be sure.

“Copies of everything collected so far by the Wells City PD and special county investigators,” Frank said.

Allie looked up and over at Marshall. “County investigators? What are they doing down here?”

“Assisting the WCPD,” Marshall said.

“Why?”

“You know why.”

Right. Because you’re Archibald Marshall, that’s why.

“Who’s in charge of the investigation now?” Allie asked.

“Officially, it’s the WCPD,” Frank said. “Detectives Dawson and Shannon, who I think you’ve met.”

“We have.”

“Nice guys. Bad at poker. So many tells.”

“You said officially they’re in charge. And unofficially?”

“Special county investigators, but they’re working behind the scenes. But rest assured, they’re out there. After tonight, there’ll be even more of them in town.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means watch your back.”

She waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.

Allie held up the folder at Marshall. “What’s going on? Why are you giving me these?”

“You’ll need them if you’re going to find the people that killed my son and took his wife and child,” Marshall said.

“Me?”

“You have as much incentive to find them as I do, don’t you?”

Allie nodded. “Yeah, I do.”

“Good. Then you should get to work.”

Get to work? Allie thought, but before she could ask it, Windbreaker pulled the GMC over to the curb and stopped.

Frank got out, then walked over to her door and opened it. The bodyguard leaned in, and when Allie stared daggers at him, he produced a key from his pocket before nodding at her handcuffs.

“You want out of those things or not?” he asked.

Allie held up her hands and he unlocked her manacles, a smug look on his face the entire time. She didn’t bother asking where he got the keys. Frank took the cuffs off her wrists and tossed them into a trash bin on the sidewalk.

“Your prints are on those,” Allie said.

“And your point is?” Frank asked. He didn’t look worried at all.

Right. Because he works for Archibald Marshall. And what does Archibald Marshall have to be worried about?

“Here,” Windbreaker said.

Allie glanced over. The man was holding out a cell phone. Allie took it.

“It’s untraceable,” Frank said. “Call if you need anything.”

“Like what?” Allie asked.

“Anything.”

Allie climbed out of the SUV and rubbed at her wrists while glancing around at the emptiness. Wells City was dead asleep, and they were the only living souls standing around in any direction. Even the stoplights seemed to flicker with less enthusiasm nearby.

“Follow me,” Frank said.

She did, to the back of the vehicle, where the bodyguard opened the trunk and took out a white shopping bag embroidered with the logo of a store Allie had never heard of before.

“You went shopping?” she asked.

“Actually, yes. They’re a change of clothes for you. Hopefully they’ll fit. If not, there’s some money at the bottom to buy more, or whatever else you might need.”

He handed the bag to her, and she took it.

Allie stepped back and onto the sidewalk. She looked after Frank as he returned to the front passenger seat of the SUV.

“That’s it?” Allie asked. “That’s all you’re going to tell me?”

“I’m pretty sure you’ve already figured out what’s happening,” Frank said. “You being you, I mean.”

Me being me? Allie thought as Frank climbed into the SUV.

The bodyguard stuck his head back out a second later, and with that same smugness that made her want to punch him in the face, said, “Good hunting, Allie Krycek.”

Frank slammed the door shut, and the SUV drove off.

Allie stared after them in silence for a few seconds, watching as the big luxury vehicle lumbered its way slowly down the street, red taillights fading, fading…

Then:

“What the hell just happened?”

Twenty-One

There was no way she was going to use the phone Marshall’s men had given her. It was a cheap plastic flip, the kind used with bought minutes, then tossed away. A burner. There was a single number programmed into the contacts listing when she checked, after she’d gotten out of the street and slipped into an alley between a diner and bakery, both of which were closed.

The risk that Marshall had given her a bugged device was too great, but she didn’t throw it away. She didn’t think she would need it, but you could never tell. After all, if Marshall really did believe that she didn’t kill his son, then he was a potentially powerful ally. The man had, literally, walked her out of her jail cell.

The money at the bottom of the shopping bag would come in handy, though. She counted the cash in the semidarkness with only the glow of a streetlight on the sidewalk nearby to lend a hand. Two thousand dollars exactly, in one hundred bills.

Next, Allie tried on the clothes Frank had bought her. Or said he’d done the purchasing himself, anyway. She didn’t actually believe him. There was something about the bodyguard that was hard to take at face value.

She moved even farther into the rear of the alley before she undressed. The shirt—a plain black tee—was a little big, but that didn’t matter too much when she added a medium-size denim jacket over it. The pants, too, was one size too large. She added a belt before tossing her jailhouse clothes into the bag and walked back to the light.

The streets were as quiet now as they’d been since she’d escaped from it moments ago. Allie walked along the sidewalk, listening for sounds of vehicles. Downtown Wells City remained asleep without another soul in sight, which could prove to be a problem if someone spotted her out here—a woman walking alone. A police car driving by might decide to stop and question what she was doing out at such a late hour.

She wasn’t entirely sure which part of the city Marshall had dropped her off in. She’d stopped paying attention to the roads about halfway into the conversation; not that she would have recognized the streets anyway. Back when she was still a free woman, Allie had only driven through the whole town once, and that was to look for a diner to eat some breakfast. She’d found that on the south side of town, which she wasn’t sure was behind or in front of her now.

The absolute silence, save for nearby traffic lights, made reliving every aspect of her conversation with Marshall easy. It also made remembering what Frank had said to her before they drove off just as easy:

“Good hunting, Allie Krycek.”

He had called her by her real name, not Aubrey White, the fake identity the WCPD had on her. How did they know who she was?

The more she thought about it, the more Allie was surprised why she was so surprised someone had finally uncovered something she’d gone to great lengths to erase. Her fingerprints, birth certificate, Social Security number, work history—anything and everything that could point to her true identity had been wiped from existence years ago. It hadn’t been cheap, either, but at the time Allie had come into a large sum of money. In today’s world, money could buy you a lot of things, including a fresh new start.

Or, at least, it was supposed to be a fresh new start.

She made a mental note to get in touch with Randall when this was all over. He had a lot to answer for, not least of which was his not-all-that-subtle obsession with Lucy.

You and me gotta have a talk, Randall.

What else did Marshall know about her? Not just the person she was, but what she’d done?

“Good hunting, Allie Krycek.”

Marshall had given her money and clothes and freedom, and essentially told her “Now go catch my son’s real killer,” without actually coming out and saying those words.

That meant he knew more than just her real name. He knew about her. About what she’d done.

And, maybe more importantly, what she was capable of.

* * *

There were still a lot of hours to go before Wells City woke up. When that happened, the police would discover that she wasn’t in her cell, and Lincoln, who’d told Frank to bring her back before dawn, would have a lot of explaining to do. Then again, the chances were good Lincoln wasn’t the only one who knew about what Archibald Marshall wanted and were willing to make it happen. Maybe they wouldn’t “discover” her disappearance for a while.

Could she really hope for that, though? Was Marshall’s reach that powerful?

I guess I’ll find out in the morning.

That was still a few hours to go, which left Allie with nothing to do but to find a place to scour the files Marshall had procured for her. She had to stay out of the open but also needed lights to read with. She settled for a dirty bench next to a warehouse with exterior lights, and did just that for the next sixty or so minutes.

There was nothing inside the first few pages that she didn’t already know, because she’d told them to the police herself—Aubrey White’s fake (and very short) history, the cabin, and a lengthy transcription of her interview with Detectives Dawson and Shannon. The most promising information came from the transcript of the 911 call that alerted the WCPD to potential trouble at the Marshall home.

Allie read that now:

Dispatcher: “911. What is your emergency?”

Caller: “I think something’s happening at 2011 Stoner Street. You should send a car right away.”

Dispatcher: “What’s happening, sir? What do you see?”

Caller: “I heard screaming, shouting, then something that might have been a gunshot.”

Dispatcher: “Did you say a gunshot?”

Caller: “Yeah, a gunshot. You should send a police car.”

Dispatcher: “We’ll do that, sir. First, I need to get your information.”

Caller: “I saw a white Ford sedan parked outside the house at the time. I don’t think it belongs there.”

Dispatcher: “Did you get the license plate of the vehicle, sir?”

Caller: “No. It was too dark.”

Dispatcher: “And you’re sure it was a Ford model white sedan?”

Caller: “Definitely. I got a pretty good look at it.”

Dispatcher: “Okay, that’s good. Now, I just need to gather some of your info—”

[Caller hangs up]

There was a notation that the dispatcher had attempted to reverse-call the number, but no one had answered.

Burner phone, Allie thought. It’s probably buried in a landfill right now. They know what they’re doing.

The caller had been a man, but the transcript didn’t mention if he sounded young or old, or any other descriptions. The call itself had arrived at 3:56 a.m. A police car was dispatched quickly, the officer arriving at the Marshall residence at 4:05 a.m. It took almost twenty minutes later before that same officer called in a dead body at 4:26 a.m., just as Dawson had told her during the interview.

The important time was 3:56 a.m., when the anonymous call came in. Where was she at 3:56 a.m.?

Already back at the cabin with Sarah and her baby. By 4:16 am, she’d been alerted to an intruder at the cabin.

Twenty minutes between the call to the WCPD dispatcher and the event at the cabin. It was enough time for the same person to have been responsible for both. More than enough, actually. It didn’t even have to take half of that; just one extra minute to make a phone call. The man could have done it while standing in the woods outside her cabin. That was the “miracle” of cell phones these days.

Allie flipped through more of the files. There had to be something that she could use as a jumping off point to search for the real killer, or killers. Even something that could tell her if Sarah was involved. Allie still wasn’t sure about that one. The possibility was too real: Sarah was being abused, so maybe she saw this as her only way out. Kill Tom, pin it on someone with no history in town, and live happily ever after with her accomplice—the man at the cabin.

It was all too possible, and that was the problem. Anything was possible right now. She was still too far behind whoever was behind this, and had been for two days now.

Again, that annoying feeling of helplessness, of being manipulated…

Allie stopped shuffling through the copies when she saw something she hadn’t expected: A color photo of her leaning against the counter at the Don’t Stop In.

What the hell?

It was daytime in the picture, and from the clothes she was wearing, taken the same morning that Allie had stopped into the bar hoping to find some news on the TV. Instead, she’d run into Deputy Trent and his partner.

Sonofa…

There was a security camera in the Don’t Stop In, positioned somewhere at the back, and high up, judging by Allie’s pose in the picture. She hadn’t seen it the night before or the morning after.

And there was Mickey, in the process of pouring her coffee.

Allie found another photo, this one showing Trent and Evans entering the place.

Another photo: Allie taking Trent hostage with his own gun.

…bitch.

Dawson had slyly not mentioned the existence of the camera or the photos it’d snapped of her during the interview. She replayed their confrontation back in her head, this time seeing it in a whole new light:

“So if you don’t know who the Marshalls are, and you don’t have anything to hide, why did you assault Deputies Trent and Evans at the Don’t Stop In when they asked you about your vehicle?” Dawson had asked.

“I didn’t assault them,” she had answered.

“Three eyewitnesses said differently.”

“Haven’t you heard, Detective? Eyewitnesses are the least dependable evidence in court. Ever heard of the Mandela Effect?”

“Can’t say as I have.”

“Well I’ll be sure to introduce it in court to educate you and Detective Shannon here. People sometimes think they remember something one way—sometimes they’re adamant about it—when the truth is something else entirely. Human beings are faulty creatures, easily tricked—sometimes by their own minds.”

She thought she was being clever with that retort, and Dawson had just sat there and took it.

…Because he already knew the truth and he was letting her dig her grave even deeper.

“Dawson, you slick motherfucker.”

The veteran detective had played her. The entire time.

Allie couldn’t help it and smiled to herself. She couldn’t really hate Dawson. She’d played a game, hoping to extract information about Tom’s murder from him, and instead the detective had just gotten her to admit she was at the Don’t Stop In. That, combined with the photos…

“Well played, Dawson. Well played.”

She shuffled through more of the files, but there were just a lot of police documents, many of them pertaining to her fake identification. She skipped over them to get to Tom Marshall’s official forensics results.

Tom had been shot in the back of the head with a .38-caliber weapon from close range. The bullet didn’t exit his forehead but had rattled around inside his skull. A .38. Just like the revolver that had been planted in her cabin.

In the crime scene photos, Tom was wearing his pajamas and had blood on the front of his clothes. It didn’t look like his; aside from the gunshot to the back of the head, he had no other visible wounds that would have contributed to the splatters at the front. DNA test results on the extra blood hadn’t come in yet. When they did, Allie suspected it would be Sarah’s, given how badly she had been bleeding from the gash on her temple when Allie found the other woman in the street.

Allie continued sifting, but it was more official paperwork and police reports; nothing that would get her closer to undercovering the identity of the conspirators. And Allie was convinced it had to be more than one person involved. Yes, one man could do all these things, but it was more likely there was a party here. Was Sarah one of them? Or was she an innocent victim that desperately needed Allie’s help, even now?

It took her a while before she realized it, but there was something about the photos from the Don’t Stop In that nagged at her. For some reason, there were only still shots of her during this morning’s hostage situation with Trent but nothing from the night before. That would have confirmed she’d been in the same room as Tom and Sarah Marshall, which if not proving that she knew them before Tom’s death, or had motive, would establish they weren’t complete strangers.

Was it the lack of interaction between her and the Marshalls that kept Dawson from including the photos in his official report? Or were there even any photos of that night? And if not, why not?

Allie went through the files again just to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. She hadn’t.

No photos from the night Sarah left me the note. Why not?

She placed the folder down on the bench next to her and stared at the empty street for a moment.

Tom’s death. Murder, now.

Sarah’s disappearance.

A conspiracy to set her up.

Who was involved? How many people?

And how much did Marshall know that he wasn’t telling her? The man clearly knew a lot and had either come to his own conclusions that she was being framed based on the evidence, or he knew something else that convinced him of that fact.

“Good hunting, Allie Krycek,” Frank, Marshall’s bodyguard, had said.

And that was it. No clues on where she should start her “hunting.” It was almost as if they needed someone to do the grunt work for them but couldn’t get their hands dirty themselves.

Why not?

That was the problem: The whys. There were too many of them.

Allie got up, adjusted her jacket’s collar, and picked up the files and dumped them into the shopping bag. It wouldn’t be long now before Deputy Lincoln realized Marshall wasn’t bringing her back. How long would it take for him to sound the alarm? His neck would be on the line one way or another.

Or would it? Maybe there was someone else giving the orders, who in turn instructed Lincoln to let her out of her jail cell?

It didn’t matter. She was out, regardless of how it’d happened. Now she had to stay out because she wasn’t going to find Tom Marshall’s real killer, or killers, by rotting in jail.

“Good hunting, Allie Krycek.”

That was exactly what she was going to do. Hunting.

And she knew where to start, too.

Twenty-Two

“Holy shit. It’s you.”

Allie smiled. “I’ve been greeted worse.”

“How’s that possible?”

“You have no idea.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I do. And I’m not sure I wanna know, either.” Mickey the bartender looked from Allie’s face to the shotgun in Allie’s hands, then back up again. “That’s loaded with blanks.”

“I replaced it with real shells.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Don’t you?”

“No.”

Allie shrugged. “You know who I am, right?”

“Of course I do. They’ve been talking about you on the news all morning. You killed Tom Marshall. And that’s not counting what you did to poor Bill yesterday.”

And I also escaped from jail, Allie thought, noticing that Mickey hadn’t added that bit, and the bartender would have if she’d known.

Allie had also been monitoring the morning news ever since she broke into the Don’t Stop In, and there hadn’t been any mentions of her jailbreak on any of the channels. And the media would have been in a frenzy over it. More salacious than the possible murder of a notable citizen like Tom Marshall would be that possible murderer’s jail escape in the middle of the night. It was the stuff of Hollywood.

But there was zero mention of it, and Allie was leaning toward the Wells City Police Department covering up her escape. That notion led her all the way back to Archibald Marshall’s influence. The man had not only arranged her release from jail but was, somehow, also keeping the authorities from reporting it.

I guess I should be glad he’s on my side.

Allie motioned with the same pump-action shotgun Mickey had fired yesterday morning, and Pete had the night before last. She’d checked the shells, and they were indeed blanks. A quick tour of the building had produced no live rounds to replace them with.

But Mickey didn’t know that, and given Allie’s growing reputation—or rather, infamy—she had a good feeling the bartender wouldn’t test her. The fact that Mickey had already seen Allie assault Trent and take his gun, before using the deputy as a human shield, probably helped with Allie’s credibility.

“Close the door and lock it,” Allie said.

“What if I don’t?” Mickey asked.

“Do we really have to do this?”

“Do what?”

“I don’t have a lot to lose, Mickey. You know that, right?”

“I guess…”

“Close the door and lock it. Don’t make me ask a third time.”

“Okay, okay, just relax.”

Mickey did as she was told, though her hands were shaking when she pushed the deadbolt into place, then also took the time to turn the tumbler on the doorknob.

The bartender turned around. “What are you doing here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, on the run?”

From a bunch of assholes that tried to set me up? No fucking way, Allie thought, but she said, “The security camera.” She pointed the shotgun at the small device perched on top of the cabinet behind the bar. It hadn’t taken very long to find it now that she knew its general location. “How does it work?”

“It sends the footage to an online cloud server, then is downloaded to the PC in Walt’s office.”

Allie had to smile at that. For some reason, she hadn’t expected a place like the Don’t Stop In to be using cloud service storage for their security cameras. She’d searched the manager’s office in the back, along with the basement for a TV setup where the footage could have been stored, but had come up empty. There was, as Mickey had said, a PC in the back room, but she didn’t have the password to turn it on.

She again motioned with the shotgun. “Let’s go.”

“Where we going?” Mickey asked.

“Back room. I want to see the security footage on that computer.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“You sure?”

Allie smiled again. “For now.” Then, with just a bit of an edge to her voice, “Let’s go.”

Mickey walked across the dance floor. Her eyes kept going from Allie to the shotgun and back again. Allie didn’t have to think very hard about what was going through the bartender’s mind: she was trying to decide if it might be worth the risk to make a run for it. Or, if she was feeling really brave, tackle Allie, though Allie doubted that one. Mickey would probably go for the door if she thought the chances were good the shotgun was still loaded with blanks, which it, of course, was.

The bartender must have decided the potential rewards weren’t worth the risk because she didn’t do anything as they entered the manager’s room. Mickey walked over to the desk and turned on the computer.

“How’d you get inside?” Mickey asked.

“You should think about getting a better lock for your back door,” Allie said. “It took me half a second to pick it.”

That wasn’t entirely true. It’d taken about five seconds. Six, tops.

Mickey sighed. “I told Walt to fix that damn lock. It’s been there as long as he’s been alive. Longer, maybe.”

Allie didn’t ask who “Walt” was. She assumed it was either the owner or the manager, or the big guy in the cowboy hat whose pictures were all over the room they were standing in now.

“The police have access to everything on that computer?” Allie asked.

Mickey nodded. “Yeah. Walt made copies for them.”

“Copies of everything?”

The bartender shrugged. “I guess.” Then, “I can’t believe you came here.”

Allie wasn’t sure if that was amusement or awe in the other woman’s voice. Maybe a little bit of both. It had been a no-brainer for Allie to return to the Don’t Stop In. She had no reasons to go back to her cabin—and besides, it was probably crawling with surveillance right now—and even less reason to stay in town. There had to be something in the footage from two nights ago that she could use. The fact that it existed at all, and Dawson hadn’t added anything from it to his files, was another mystery she needed answers to.

Right now, anything and everything was possible. She was playing catchup. What made it worse was that she didn’t know how far behind she was.

Getting to the Don’t Stop In had been easy. She’d acquired (re: stole) a bike from a bus stop, then pedaled it out of the city while keeping off the main roads. It was already morning and bright out by the time she reached the state highway. From there, she’d only had to hitch a ride with a passing semi. Allie was betting that a long haul trucker driving through the county wouldn’t have any idea about Tom’s death. She was right, when the friendly Texan dropped her off at the bar and continued on his way.

The computer in front of Mickey beeped a couple of times before turning on. Mickey leaned over it to type in the password.

“What are you looking for anyway?” the bartender asked.

“You don’t want to know,” Allie said.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” When she was finished, Mickey took a step back. “It’s all yours.”

Allie walked over. “Show me how to access the camera footage.”

“From how long ago?”

“How far back do they go?”

“Just one week. Then they’re erased with new footage, and on and on. I told Walt to pay for a longer retention period, but he said it would cost double what he was already paying. He’s a bit of a penny-pincher.”

“I don’t need one week, just from two nights ago. From eight to midnight.”

Mickey bent over the computer again and clicked the mouse. Allie stood behind the other woman and watched her work. Mickey knew her way around the PC’s desktop and had opened up a browser and was sifting through folders and links. She didn’t stop until she’d found what she was looking for.

Allie noted the long filenames, each one appended with a corresponding date.

Mickey opened the file. “That’s from two days ago. It’s a huge file, so it’ll take a while to open.”

“And the police have all of this?”

“I guess. You’ll have to ask Walt. He was the one who dealt with the detectives.”

Allie nodded. “What about just the footage from between eight and midnight?”

“It’s either all day or nothing.”

“Okay. Go take a seat.”

Mickey walked over to a couch and sat down. She put her hands in her lap and stared at Allie as she slid into a comfortable, albeit raggedy, swivel office chair.

“So, you killed Tom Marshall,” Mickey said.

“I need you to be quiet,” Allie said.

“It was just a question.”

“Quiet.”

Allie laid the shotgun on the counter next to her. Out of the corner of one eye, she glimpsed Mickey’s own eyes immediately going to the weapon.

But the bartender didn’t move and didn’t appear to be about to move, so Allie was able to focus on the screen.

The footage began with Mickey walking into frame and wiping down the counter in the morning. The camera began recording only when she appeared, so Allie assumed it had motion sensors and only became active when it detected movement. Allie made a mental note to wipe the footage of her entering the place this morning.

Fast-forwarding through the footage was easy—she just used the mouse and clicked the fast-forward button and the scenes blurred by. The camera, as she’d already noticed when seeing the stills from the police files, was a straight shot from behind the bar, so it saw everything that Pete or Mickey would from their usual spot. This included all of the bar, about eighty percent of the tables, the stage at the very back, and the dance floor in the middle. The bathroom hallway was missing, as was the front door. A second and third camera would have provided a more thorough coverage, but apparently ol’ Walt was too cheap to spring for those.

Allie paid attention to the time stamp at the bottom of the frame as customers came in one at a time in fast-motion. Some loitered for a while, and others stayed just long enough to use the bathrooms before moving on. Eventually Mickey was replaced by Pete, who repeated the process of greeting customers, serving them, and alternated between making small talk with the regulars and wiping down the counter.

Night fell, and Stan stumbled in and took his usual spot in front of Pete. The man sat and drank and didn’t seem to move at all for what seemed like hours. By the time Allie finally entered the scene, first going to the bathroom before wandering over to the bar, Stan had been camped out on his stool for over three hours.

Allie switched the footage back to normal speed as Pete came over and made small talk with her before bringing over a beer. Stan finally perked up, sensing prey, and made his move on Allie. Or slurring in her direction while trying mightily—and shockingly, succeeding in—not falling off his stool. Allie hadn’t realized how precarious the man was perched on that seat of his until she could see it from a stationary angle. Of course, she also wasn’t trying to pretend he didn’t exist at the moment, so that helped—

Recorded Allie was turning in the direction of the door.

There, she thought, remembering when Sarah and Tom first entered the place. The door had slammed, which had drawn Allie’s attention. Even Pete, behind the bar, glanced over at the couple, though he was back to cleaning a pair of pitchers a few moments later. Neither Sarah nor Tom entered the frame because they had taken a table near the corner, out of the camera’s view, but Allie remembered the moment well.

Nothing happened for a while after that, so Allie fast-forwarded through five endless minutes of Stan hitting on her. Then another five more minutes of the same thing. She didn’t stop until Sarah finally appeared in frame, walking across the dance floor and toward the bathroom. Allie couldn’t tell from the footage if Sarah looked frightened or not. The camera didn’t get a very good look at her face, and there was a jerky quality to the footage when recording people from a distance.

Allie let the footage play in regular speed, watching her video self as she tried in vain to pretend Stan didn’t exist. Pete, his back to the camera, was doing his best to keep Stan from, literally, falling and slobbering over her. Allie hadn’t realized how much effort the bartender had put in that night to keep her unmolested. She made another mental note, this time to thank Pete if she ever saw him again. Hopefully he wouldn’t run to call the cops the second he spotted her.

Finally, recorded Allie got up to go to the bathroom. She recalled not crossing paths with Sarah during this time. Looking back, she guessed the other woman was probably occupied in one of the stalls, possibly painfully writing her note down on those flimsy sheets of toilet paper, when Allie entered and found a spot near the back. She’d heard doors opening and closing more than once during the time she was inside.

Allie didn’t have to wait long to see Sarah walk back into frame post-bathroom. She walked across the dance floor again before disappearing to the other side. Then, about fifteen seconds later, the woman reappeared, this time walking to the bar and standing between Allie’s empty stool and Stan to her right. Sarah opened her purse and took out some money and handed it to Pete. The bartender turned to get change, but Sarah smiled and said something to him before turning and walking away.

Sarah smiled and said something to Pete, before turning and walking away.

“What?” Allie said out loud. She hadn’t meant to and saw Mickey glancing over in curiosity.

“You say something?” the bartender asked.

“No.”

“I swore you said—”

“Be quiet.”

“Geez, okay, don’t have to be rude,” Mickey said. She crossed her arms across her chest in annoyance.

Allie focused on the screen again. She rewound the footage and watched again, leaning forward to get an even better look.

Sarah, paying Pete with money from her purse.

Pete, turning to make change.

Sarah, smiling and saying to keep the change, before turning to go.

But she hadn’t left anything underneath Allie’s coaster.

She hadn’t even touched it.

Then Sarah was gone, walking off frame.

A few seconds later, recorded Allie appeared, looking in the direction of the front door—after Sarah and Tom Marshall. But mostly Sarah, because Allie had seen the other woman standing next to her stool seconds earlier.

Recorded Allie sat back down at the bar and picked up her glass of beer to drink, and as she did so, noticed something underneath the coaster. The note. The same note that wasn’t there before.

So she hadn’t imagined the whole thing after all. For a moment, just a brief moment, Allie was entertaining the idea that she might have conjured up the note in her mind, maybe as some part of a delusional episode. But she hadn’t. There was recorded Allie picking up and staring at the two pieces of tissue paper. She read it once, then again, before looking toward the front door, then back to the note…

“What the hell?” Allie said, again out loud.

“Huh?” Micky said.

Allie rewound the footage, stopping only when Sarah appeared at the bar to pay the bill. Allie leaned in even closer, waiting for Sarah to take something other than money out of her purse.

Except she never did.

The camera, at this range, was almost crystal clear, and Allie would have seen it if Sarah had put the note under her coaster.

But she did no such thing.

Allie rewound the footage once again, until she was back to sitting at the bar next to Stan a few minutes before she’d gotten up to go to the bathroom for the second time that night.

Sarah appeared behind her, walking across the dance floor toward the bathroom.

Then recorded Allie got up and walked in the same direction.

Allie squinted at the screen, trying to see if she could spot the note underneath the coaster.

Nothing yet.

Nothing yet…

Then Pete appeared onscreen on the other side of the bar, his back to the camera. He was standing between Allie’s now-empty seat and Stan’s. The bartender reached for Allie’s coaster and picked it up, then slid something underneath it.

Allie clicked the mouse to freeze the video.

Sonofabitch.

Pete. It was Pete who had slipped the note underneath her coaster, not Sarah.

Allie sat back and stared at the screen. There it was, in color. Pete, sliding the note underneath her coaster.

Not Sarah, but Pete, the bartender.

The friendly, handsome bartender.

“Pete,” Allie said out loud.

“Huh?” Mickey said. “Did you say Pete?”

Allie looked over. “What’s his last name?”

“Williams. Why?”

“How long has he worked here?”

“You mean here, here?”

“Yes. Here, here.”

“Not too long. Maybe three months?”

That jived with what Pete had told her about his employment status at the Don’t Stop In. So at least the man hadn’t lied about everything. The question was: What else did he lie to her about?

“So he just moved into town,” Allie said.

“I guess,” Mickey said. “We didn’t exactly sit down to talk about his history or anything. He’s just the other bartender who works here when I’m not. He’s not my type, if you know what I mean.”

Allie ignored that last bit of unwanted commentary and clicked the mouse to let the footage play again. She watched as Pete the bartender casually turned away from Allie’s coaster to talk to Stan, who had just picked his head up from the counter in response to something.

Pete.

It was Pete the entire time. The same Pete that had helpfully filled her in on the Marshalls when she told him about the note that he conveniently didn’t know anything about. Stan had also shared information, but was that just because he happened to be there? If Stan wasn’t there, would Pete have filled in the same role? The man had been helpful, and in many ways even convinced her that following up on the note was the right thing to do.

You lying sack of shit.

And yet, Sarah had confessed to having left the note. Why would she lie about that?

Easy: She was a part of this. She was likely working with Pete. The way she had smiled at him when she paid the bill earlier…

Who else was working with them? Was Dawson? The detective had access to the same footage Allie was looking at right now, and yet he hadn’t included anything from two nights ago into his report. Maybe she should pay Detective Dawson a visit, too.

Who else was involved? Right now, it could be anyone—and everyone. All she knew was that she couldn’t trust a single soul in Timber Creek County. Not even Marshall. For all she knew, the man had his own agenda that didn’t involve her finding his son’s killer. He hadn’t looked all that broken up about it when they talked last night. Then again, maybe Archibald Marshall was just a naturally stone-faced sonofabitch.

Allie sat back in Walt’s squeaky chair and stared at the freeze frame of Pete—handsome, square-jawed Pete—as he smiled at a miserable-looking Stan.

She finally looked up at Mickey. “You know where he lives?”

“Who?” Mickey asked.

The asshole who got this ball rolling, Allie thought, but she said, “Pete Williams. I need to talk to him about something.”

Twenty-Three

She had an address for Pete Williams (if that was even his real name; at this point, Allie wasn’t so sure there was anything real about the man), but she couldn’t just go there yet. There was the matter of Mickey, who knew what Allie had been doing since this morning and would probably blab to the cops at the first opportunity. Of course, Allie couldn’t just kill the bartender—even if she had a shotgun that wasn’t loaded with blanks—and there wasn’t any scenario she could come up with that would justify such a cold-blooded act.

So how to deal with a witness who probably knew more than she needed to and would definitely tell the police where Allie would be headed next?

Allie stood up and picked up the shotgun. “Let’s go.”

Mickey didn’t move from the sofa. “Go where?”

“Pete’s.”

“But you already have his address.”

Pete’s employment information was in one of the desk drawers. Despite being a cheapskate, Walt kept very good records. If Pete was even still there. Allie had a very strong feeling he hadn’t been home since all of this began. Though, if that were the case, the man was keeping a very good front because according to Mickey, Pete had showed up for his shift last night.

“I need a car,” Allie said. “Your Jeep outside should do.”

Mickey stood up and quickly produced the keys from her pocket. She held it out to Allie. “Here. Take it.”

“You’re coming with me.”

“But why?”

“Because it’s either that or shoot you.”

“Oh,” Mickey said.

Allie turned off the PC before walking out from behind the desk. “And I’d prefer not to do that. You did give me free coffee yesterday.”

Mickey frowned. “It was really bad coffee.”

“Yeah, well, it was still free. And I’d really, really prefer not to shoot you.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Now that we’re in agreement, let’s go.”

The bartender sighed and lowered her hand. “Just to Pete’s place, right? And then that’s it?”

Probably not, Allie thought, and the other woman likely already knew that, even when Allie said, “Yeah, sure. Get me to Pete’s, then you’ll be off the hook.”

“For real?”

“For real.”

“For real, real?”

Allie smiled. For a second there, Mickey—a woman in her late thirties—sounded a lot like Lucy, who had yet to escape her teenage years.

“Yeah,” Allie said. “For real, real, real.”

* * *

Mickey drove Allie in the Jeep to the north part of town, which according to the bartender was not where you resided if you could help it. Although her chauffeur wouldn’t come right out and say it, Allie understood that to mean north Wells City was where you lived if you didn’t have a lot of money. The poor section. Not that its existence surprised her. It didn’t matter how small or big a city was, there were always separations between the rich and poor and everyone in-between. The only differences were how obvious the locals wanted to make it look.

That divide was very obvious in Wells City.

They drove past battered old homesteads and broken-down cars along the shoulders of a two-lane road. There was rusty farm equipment out in the open, as unloved as the empty fields that surrounded them. There were multiple trailer parks, each one seemingly more distressing in appearance than the previous.

Allie only spotted two police cars during the entire ten-mile drive from the Don’t Stop In until they finally reached north Wells City, and both were parked at drive-in restaurants. That was further confirmation her “rescue” was still undiscovered; or if it was known, then the WCPD was doing a very good job of keeping it from everyone, including their own patrolmen.

The more she thought about it, the more impressed Allie was of Archibald Marshall’s influence over the area. The man really did wield a lot of power.

So let’s try not to cross him unless you absolutely have to.

As if on cue, the burner phone that Windbreaker, one of Marshall’s bodyguards, had given her last night buzzed inside her jacket pocket. Mickey glanced over but didn’t say a word as Allie pulled it out.

The caller ID on the gray LCD screen of the flip phone read: UNKNOWN CALLER.

Allie opened the phone and answered it. “Yes?”

“Mr. Marshall would like an update,” a male voice said on the other end. Frank, Marshall’s other bodyguard.

“I didn’t know I was supposed to be giving updates.”

“It was implied.”

“You should have come right out and said it.”

“Does this mean you don’t have an update for us?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Working on what?”

“Something that might lead to something.”

Frank chuckled. “That’s it?”

“I can write it down and send a letter, if you want.”

“No, that’s all right. I’ll pass the word to Mr. Marshall. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.”

“You do that.”

“And just so you know, you only have one day before the fit hits the shan. Mr. Marshall won’t be able to hide the fact that you’re not currently in jail forever. You have twenty-four hours before roadblocks start going up on every road in and out of town and every police car in the county is looking for you again.”

“Wanna tell me how he managed that?”

“He’s Archibald Marshall,” Frank said, as if that should say everything.

And Allie guessed it did. Pete the bartender had probably lied to her about a lot of things, but he hadn’t about the Marshall family’s influence. Marshall had easily arranged her escape and was now, somehow, guaranteeing her a full day to work.

Yeah, definitely don’t want to cross him unless I absolutely have to.

She said into the phone, “Tell him I’m working on a lead.”

“You’ll want to keep us informed,” Frank said.

“Is that a threat?”

“It’s a suggestion. In case you might need further assistance.”

“You?”

“You have any other friends in town?”

“I didn’t know we were friends now.”

“Of course we are. After all, it’s in our best interest to be friends with Allie Krycek.”

“How the hell did you find out?”

Frank chuckled again. “I suspect you paid a lot of money to disappear.”

“Not enough, apparently.”

“Let’s just say this: As much money as you paid for your clean slate, Mr. Marshall has more to uncover it.”

“He knows more than he’s telling me, doesn’t he?”

“That’s probably a safe guess.”

“You know, this would be much easier if he’d tell me everything he knows.”

“Yes, it would be, but what would be the fun in that?” Then, before she could say anything in return, “Good luck, Allie Krycek. You’ll need it.”

The connection went dead.

Allie put the phone away. She decided that she really, really didn’t like the sound of Frank’s voice. Just imagining his face made her want to punch the empty air.

“Who was that?” Mickey asked. Amazingly, the bartender had kept quiet throughout Allie’s phone conversation.

“No one,” Allie said.

“That sure was an energetic conversation for no one.”

“Are we almost at Pete’s?”

“Almost.” Then, glancing over at her, “So, uh, where did you learn kung fu?”

“Kung fu?”

“What you did to Bill before. That was kung fu, right?” Then, before Allie could correct her, the bartender added, “Can anyone learn it? Can you teach me?”

* * *

Pete Williams lived in a trailer park that only differed from the dozen others they’d already driven past by its dilapidated state. This one looked like it was on its last legs, and maybe that was why it was so hidden from the main road and more “north” than the rest of north Wells City. If you didn’t want to be found, Allie thought this would be a pretty good option.

There was no gate, just a rough pebble road that connected what was essentially a large parking lot from a side road that, if not for Mickey’s knowledge of the area, they might have driven right past. Allie didn’t ask the bartender why she was so familiar with their surroundings. She didn’t really have to.

They drove through a row of single and double-wide mobile homes, every one of them looking as if they had surpassed their expiration date a while back. Most of them were either permanently connected to the ground or were kept erected with blocks of cement or roughly put-together concrete foundations. Only a few curious eyes peeked out from behind dirt-smeared windows as Mickey’s Jeep made its way up the path. For the most part, the park was quiet. Most of the people were either at work or didn’t feel like coming out to take an up close and personal look at them.

Allie had Pete’s address on a strip of paper, and she focused on the number now. There, up ahead. A single-wide mobile home. There were no cars parked outside and no signs of Pete. Allie didn’t think she was going to find the lying bartender inside, but maybe she’d stumble across something that she could use. If not his current whereabouts, then where Pete had been or been up to.

Mickey was unsure if Pete would come in for his shift later in the day, but he also hadn’t called in sick. Allie didn’t think he would, not after everything that had transpired yesterday. If Pete was involved in this—and the unblinking and objective videotape footage she’d seen proved that he was—he would have no reason to stick around a full day after she had been arrested. The fact that he had come into work at all last night was a mystery. One of many that she added to her pile.

Mickey turned her Jeep off the rough pebble road and parked in front of Pete’s. She put the gear into park and looked over. “Now what?”

“Come with me,” Allie said.

“Do I have to?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to.”

“You don’t have any choice.”

Mickey frowned, then looked down at the shotgun on the floor resting between Allie’s right leg and the front passenger side door. “Are there actually live shells in there?”

Allie smiled at her. “I thought we went over this. You don’t want to find out, and I’d prefer not to prove it.”

The bartender sighed. “This day just keeps getting lousier,” she said before opening her car door and climbing outside.

Allie did likewise, but not before slipping the shotgun into the shopping bag she’d been carrying around since last night. Only three-fourths of the weapon fit, with the buttstock sticking out. But unless you got close and knew your way around guns, it was probably not readily obvious that it was a shotgun in there.

“Relax,” Allie said. “It’ll be all over soon, and you can go back to your life.”

Mickey looked over the hood of the Jeep at her. “You mean that?”

“Yes,” Allie said, with as much sincerity as she could muster, and it was a lot, because she meant it.

The bartender must have believed her, because she nodded and there was obvious relief on her face. “Okay.”

“The keys.”

Mickey tossed them over.

Allie caught, then pocketed them. “Stay close.”

Mickey did, following behind Allie as she went up the rickety wooden stairs to Pete’s front door. There was an exterior mesh gate, but it was unlocked. She pulled it open, listening to the rusted metal squeak just a bit too loud for her liking. The door on the other side also opened without resistance when she tried it.

You should lock your doors, Pete, Allie thought as she gave the door a mild push before going through it.

It was empty.

Well, not exactly empty. There were clothes on the floor and draped over sofas, and there were definite signs that Pete had been living here as recently as last night. The place looked, felt, and smelled very much lived in, even if its owner was currently missing.

Allie walked farther inside, Mickey following (not exactly close, but close enough that Allie could hear and feel her breath) behind her.

“What a slob,” Mickey said before she jumped when the wind pushed the door closed behind her.

“Relax,” Allie said.

“Yeah right, relax.”

Like most single-wide trailers, Pete’s home looked more like an RV, albeit wider and longer. There was a kitchen to the right side and the front door opened up into a living room. The bedrooms—two of them—were in the back on the left. Morning sunlight from the front windows spilled over the stained carpeting and discolored walls, and the floor squeaked as she walked across them.

Allie put the shopping bag down on a yellow sofa and took out the shotgun before glancing back at Mickey. “Don’t go anywhere. This will be over soon.”

“Okay,” Mickey said.

“Remember, I have your car keys.”

Mickey sighed, then walked over to a chair next to the kitchen and sat down. “Take your time.”

For some reason, Allie believed that the bartender wouldn’t run off. Or, at least, she hoped she didn’t, because Allie was going to really, really hate to have to chase after her.

Allie walked the rest of the way to the first bedroom and pushed the door open using the shotgun instead of her hand. It might have been a second bedroom once, but Pete had been using it as storage. There were old boxes of clothes scattered on the floor, along with exercise equipment. A push-up device of some kind and barbells occupied a corner. That explained Pete’s athletic build, for a bartender.

Allie let the door close and moved on to the next one. She guessed this was the main bedroom, and was proven correct when she opened it to find a big queen-size bed in the middle and what looked like reasonably clean living conditions for a single guy. Unless Pete didn’t live here by himself, though nothing she’d seen so far pointed to that. Of course just because Pete didn’t have a permanent live-in girlfriend didn’t mean he didn’t have one that dropped by every now and then.

She glanced back at Mickey. The bartender was staring off at an old painting that had been hung crookedly on a wall. If she was still scared of Allie, it didn’t show on her face. She looked more bored than anything at the moment.

Bored’s good. Better than terrified and on the verge of running off.

Allie stepped into the bedroom and flicked on the light switch. She gave the interior a quick glance before heading to the closet. Clothes hung inside, most of them men’s pants and shirts, but Allie quickly spotted something that confirmed Pete wasn’t a complete bachelor: A woman’s small size pink camisole. When Allie sifted through the hangers, she found more women’s clothing.

Who’s your friend, Pete?

Allie closed the closet and looked for, and found, the dresser next to the bed. More clothes—both men’s and women’s—but nothing that could help her find Pete or clues to his female friend’s identity.

There was a nightstand, and Allie pulled it open. A Gideon Bible, of all things, was underneath a pile of letters. Allie picked up a couple of the envelopes and flipped through them. Business mail from a utility company, a phone service, and one from a local bank. She opened the one from the bank and scanned it.

The contents were addressed to Peter Williams and was warning him of late payment on a car loan. Allie didn’t have to guess what the other letters were. Ol’ Pete hadn’t been paying his bills.

Was that enough for him to get involved with a scheme to set her up? Was this all about money? Why not? She’d known a lot of people who did some very stupid things for money. Sometimes for a very small sum. Money made the world go ’round, just like how money got her out of jail last night; and now, a twenty-four-hour reprieve.

The only other reason for Pete to do anything was love. Allie had seen a lot of people do some very stupid things for that, too.

She was still flipping through the envelopes from Pete’s nightstand when a door banged outside.

The front door!

Goddammit, Allie thought as she hurried across the bedroom.

She’d been hoping Mickey would stick around, that Allie’s threats—and sincere promise to let her go after this—would be good enough to keep her from running off, but that was clearly not the case. Allie was not looking forward to chasing the bartender down. But she was going to have to, because she couldn’t afford to have Mickey roaming around out there knowing what she knew.

Allie lunged outside, shotgun in hand, fully expecting Mickey to be gone and to have to run after the woman. Except the bartender was still there, standing next to the wide-open front door.

Mickey’s face was frozen in terror because she wasn’t alone.

There were two other figures inside the single-wide that hadn’t been there before, and both were wearing Devil’s Crew MC jackets. The biggest of the two stood behind Mickey, holding a pistol to the side of her temple.

“Looky, looky, looky,” the one with the gun said. It was Mitch, the asshole from two nights ago. “Now ain’t this a small world!”

Twenty-Four

Mitch. The same asshole that had tried to rape Melissa outside the Don’t Stop In two nights ago. Mitch and his buddy, whose name Allie didn’t know. The buddy wasn’t here today, and in his place was a slightly overweight asshole with a bald head and greasy lips who didn’t entirely fit the pair of denim jeans he was wearing but did manage to fill out the Devil’s Crew MC jacket just fine. Well, maybe “just fine” was being generous. Allie could make out slabs of fat sticking out from odd angles.

“Goddamn, that’s her, that’s the girl from the news,” Greasy Lips was saying even as Allie tried to figure a way out of this without both her and Mickey dying in the process. The other two, she couldn’t care less about.

It was going to be tricky, and that was understating the situation. Especially since the shotgun she had aimed at Mitch and his new buddy was loaded with blank shells. But did the bikers know that? Had Mitch taken note when Pete fired off a warning shot two nights ago to send him scurrying off? No, probably not, or he wouldn’t have retreated.

“What the fuck is she doing out of jail?” Greasy Lips continued.

“Who gives a shit,” Mitch said. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about anything else she did. This is the same bitch that fucked up Hillbilly and me’s party with that barely legal chick outside the Don’t Stop In.”

“That’s her?”

“Yeah, that’s her.”

Greasy Lips chuckled. “She’s a girl.”

“No shit she’s a girl,” Mitch said.

“You mean to tell me you let a girl stop you from bringing that fine piece of ass back to the club so we could run a train on her?”

“She had a shotgun. It kinda looked like that one.”

“Oh, well, that’s different,” Greasy Lips said, though he didn’t completely lose the smirk on his face.

Allie didn’t bother correcting Mitch—it was Pete who had pulled out the shotgun, not her—because it didn’t matter. Right now, she needed the bikers to believe that the weapon in her hands was lethal.

“What are you two jackasses doing here?” Allie asked.

She hadn’t lowered the shotgun or moved it away from Mickey and Mitch. The biker didn’t seem all that concerned, but the same couldn’t be said for the bartender, who looked like she was caught somewhere between terrified and, well, even more terrified. Allie wasn’t sure if she was afraid of the shotgun or the silver-chromed semiautomatic 1911 Mitch had pressed against her temple. The pistol was so shiny that sunlight from the windows nearby gleamed off its smooth barrel. No doubt the blingy nature of it was the whole point. Allie wondered where Mitch had that gun two nights ago. Maybe he’d acquired it after being chased off by Pete’s shotgun, determined not to let it happen again.

Not that the motivations mattered, because the biker had a gun that Allie was pretty sure—as in 100 percent sure—was loaded with real live bullets, while she was carrying around a piece that could only make very loud noises.

But Mitch and Greasy Lips didn’t know that. Mickey probably did, but Allie hoped the other woman kept that bit of suspicion to herself. She had to know that was the only move they had left against the bikers. Or, at least, Allie hoped she did.

Besides the 1911 pushing violently against a shaking Mickey’s temple, Mitch had his left forearm wrapped around her throat in a tight vise. Mickey’s face was starting to turn a little bit blue, but somehow the bartender kept what must have been a tornado of wild emotions bottled up inside.

For now, anyway.

“Why the fuck should I tell you?” Mitch was asking her. “Put down the shotgun, bitch.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Allie said.

She took a quick step, then two more forward. Because shotguns had limited range and maybe Mitch and Greasy Lips knew that, this way she was increasing her chances of hitting them if she unloaded.

Or that’s what she wanted them to think.

“The fuck you doing, bitch?” Mitch said, slightly alarmed.

“What do you think I’m doing?” Allie said. “I can hit the both of you from here with one shell. If one doesn’t work, I have more that’ll do the trick.”

That statement had the intended effect Allie was hoping for on Greasy Lips, and the biker glanced quickly over at the door just a few feet to his left before turning to Mitch. “The fuck, man, I don’t wanna get shotgunned to death.”

“Relax, she’s not gonna shoot,” Mitch said. “Not with this little bitty in the way. Ain’t that right?”

Allie didn’t bother responding.

“What’s this bitch doing here, anyway?” Greasy Lips asked.

“Why don’t you fucking ask her,” Mitch said.

Greasy Lips turned to Allie. “So? What the fuck you doing here? Shouldn’t you be busy running from the cops or something?”

“I’m looking for someone,” Allie said. “Same person as you, I’m guessing.”

Telling the truth was a calculated move but one she was sure was the right approach. The bikers’ presence, coupled with Mitch and Greasy Lip’s surprise to see her in the trailer, told her they hadn’t expected her to be here. It was more likely they had come here for another reason that didn’t have anything to do with her: Pete.

They were here for Pete. Why, was the question.

“Pete?” Greasy Lips said, confirming her suspicion. “You looking for that fucker, too?”

“That’s the one,” Allie said.

Mitch chortled. “What do you want with him?”

“I want to talk to him,” Allie said.

“About what?”

“Business.”

“What kind of business?”

“The none of your goddamn business kind.”

Mitch might have rolled his eyes; Allie couldn’t really tell because he was keeping half of his face hidden behind Mickey’s head. “Damn, you’ve got an attitude on you, you know that?”

“So do you. Let the girl go.”

“Fuck if that’s gonna happen. You drop the gun.”

“And you really think that’s going to happen?”

“You know how to use that shotgun?” Greasy Lips asked.

“This is a Mossberg pump-action shotgun,” Allie said. “At this range, I can blow both of your heads off with one shot. Hell, this is probably overkill, but that’s all right. I got plenty of shells for the both of you.” Then, specifically to Greasy Lips, “Or three for you.”

Mitch cackled and said to his buddy, “She means because you’re a fat fuck.”

“Yeah, yeah, I knew what she meant, fucker,” Greasy Lips said. Then, to Allie, “So you want Pete, too, is that it? I’m assuming since you came outta there alone that he’s not here.”

“Great deduction,” Allie said. “Why are you looking for him?”

“None of your business,” Mitch said.

“Let’s just say he owes us some money,” Greasy Lips said.

“Yeah, Pete tends to do that,” Allie said, recalling all those late payment bills in the bedroom behind her.

She focused on Greasy Lips, who seemed not only more willing to talk but didn’t have a gun on him. Of course that didn’t mean he didn’t have one concealed, but Allie doubted it. He would have shown it by now if he did.

“This isn’t going to get us anywhere,” Allie said. “We’re both looking for Pete, but the shithead isn’t here.”

“So where does that leave us?” Greasy Lips asked.

“You tell me.”

The biker shrugged. “Way I see it, we don’t have any issues with you.”

“The fuck we don’t,” Mitch said, and just to prove his point, tightened his grip around Mickey’s throat further until the bartender’s body seized up and her face got even more discolored.

“You got issues with her,” Greasy Lips said. “Not us. The club got business with Pete, that’s it.” He looked over at Allie. “Besides, she’s bad news. I don’t know how she got out of jail, but they’ll be looking all over the county for her. We don’t need that kind of heat on us. Not now.”

“I’m not letting her go,” Mitch said.

Greasy Lips turned around until he was staring at Mitch. He might have been older, overweight, and didn’t look as if he could take Mitch in a fistfight, but the man apparently knew he had the upper hand.

“What did Casper say?” Greasy Lips asked.

Mitch didn’t answer.

“Find Pete, that was the order,” Greasy Lips continued. “He didn’t say shit about getting involved with this bitch here. She’s bad news.” He glanced over at Allie, and with a smirk, added, “No offense.”

“None taken,” Allie said.

“Come on,” Greasy Lips said back at Mitch. “Let the girl go. Casper needs to know Pete’s flown the coop.”

“Shit,” Mitch said.

“Come on, man. We got jobs to do. You can take care of your personal shit later, when we’re done with everything.”

“Shit,” Mitch said again, before relaxing his grip on Mickey and lowering his 1911.

Mickey didn’t move, clearly too afraid to do anything besides stand perfectly still. But she did breathe easier, and color slowly returned to her cheeks.

Mitch put his pistol away and snarled at Allie. “Next time, bitch.”

“Looking forward to it,” Allie said, and lowered the shotgun. She fought the instinct to breathe a loud sigh of relief.

Goddammit, I can’t believe that worked. Jesus Christ.

Mitch walked over to the door while Greasy Lips turned to Allie. “You wanna tell me how you got out of jail but no one seems to know about it?”

“Magic,” Allie said.

“Yeah, right.”

“Hey, believe what you—”

The pop-pop-pop of a fully automatic rifle firing cut Allie off.

The first few rounds tore through Mitch as he was about to take his first steps down the rickety wooden steps outside. His body was tossed back, and his now-lifeless hand let go of the door. It swung closed, not that that did anything to stop the barrage.

More bullets cut through the flimsy material and the wall around and struck Greasy Lips as he was trying to recover from Mitch backpedaling into him. Bullets nearly sliced Greasy Lip’s right arm off at the shoulder while two more rounds found his face. He, too, dropped lifelessly to the floor next to Mitch’s already bullet-riddled body.

“Get down!” Allie shouted at Mickey even as she lunged forward and down to the stained carpeted floor herself.

The pop-pop-pop, which had stopped temporarily, came back to life, the renewed torrent of gunfire sending round after round into one side of the single-wide trailer and out the other. The cascade of shattering glass filled the house along with screams coming from somewhere in front of Allie.

Mickey.

Allie glanced up as pieces of furniture in the living room flitted across the air above her, raining chunks of foam, feathers, and fabric like dancing cobwebs. Allie couldn’t see Mickey anywhere in front of her, but the bartender was still screaming, her voice coming from somewhere inside the kitchen, behind the counters. Allie hoped whoever was out there doing the shooting didn’t decide to refocus their fire on Mickey’s screams.

It didn’t go on for very long, but it seemed much, much longer. Ten seconds, tops, maybe even less than that. It had only lasted that long because the shooter had temporarily stopped firing after taking out the bikers in order to move his rifle to aim at the living room so he could pick her off. Allie hadn’t realized it before, but in the spot where she was standing, she would have been visible through the front windows.

Once the last shot echoed, Allie scrambled up from the messy floor and crawled over behind a large oak bookshelf near the door. It was also close to Mitch and Greasy Lips’s bodies, the latter laying over the former in an almost T-shape.

Allie grabbed Greasy Lips and rolled him off Mitch. It wasn’t easy given how much the biker weighed, but she managed to get him off his fellow Devil’s Crew member with some effort. It helped that adrenaline was rushing through her veins, giving her more strength than she normally had.

Mitch was covered in blood, his face frozen in shock. She did her best to ignore his wide-open eyes staring up at the ceiling in order to grab the 1911 from his waist before hurrying back to cover behind the bookshelf. Not that she expected the oak furniture to completely protect her from another fusillade, but it was a better option than standing around in the open with only the paper-thin walls for protection.

Mickey had stopped screaming by now and was chanting “Oh God, oh God, oh God” from somewhere in the kitchen. Allie still couldn’t see the other woman, but she must have gotten through the gunfire unscathed because she wasn’t screaming about a wound.

Just to be sure, Allie said, “Are you okay? Mickey, are you okay?”

Mickey stopped her chanting but didn’t reply. Maybe she was trying to decide if she should answer Allie.

Or maybe she wasn’t capable?

“Yes, yes, I’m okay, I’m okay,” Mickey finally said. She was somewhere behind the island counter near the back of the kitchen.

“Stay where you are, and don’t come out.”

“Okay, okay,” Mickey said. Or gasped. Then, with what sounded a lot like alarm, “Wait, wait. Where are you going? You’re not going to leave me, are you?”

Allie had to grin at that. Apparently Mickey had either forgotten that Allie had taken her hostage or she’d decided Allie was the better option when confronted with a shooter that had just murdered two bikers in front of her eyes.

She didn’t answer the bartender right away. Instead, she listened, hoping to hear something outside in case the shooter tried to come in to finish the job.

But all she heard was silence, mingled with her own labored breathing, though it wasn’t nearly as loud as Mickey’s from all the way in the kitchen.

Then, after about ten seconds of silence, the sound of a car engine turning on, followed by that same car speeding off on the loose gravel floor outside.

Allie got up, her back against the bookshelf, and sifted through her options. She had only two choices that she could see: Stay where she was and make absolutely sure the shooter was gone, or take her chances out there.

She would have preferred option number one. It was the safer choice, and right now, she could do with a little “safe” in her life. Except it was also the wrong one. One of Pete’s neighbors must have already called 911. If they weren’t already on their way, then the WCPD would be coming very soon.

Allie flicked off the safety on Mitch’s 1911. She didn’t have to bother checking the magazine to know the gun was fully loaded; the weight gave it away. And she didn’t have to think very hard or long about whether the bullets were real. There would be no reason whatsoever for the biker to be running around out here with blanks.

“Mickey,” Allie said.

“Yes?” Mickey said. She still hadn’t come out from her hiding spot, and it was probably going to take the Jaws of Life to get her to do so. Allie didn’t really blame her after the morning the bartender had gone through.

“Stay here until the cops show up.”

“Okay,” Mickey said. Then, again with obvious alarm, “Wait. Are you leaving? Don’t leave!”

“I have to.”

“No, don’t leave!”

“Sorry,” Allie said.

She got up, stepped over Mitch and Greasy Lips’s bodies, and pushed the bullet-riddled door open. It was still hanging on its top two hinges but looked as if it might fall off at any second.

Allie peered out, sunlight hitting her in the eyes.

Mickey’s Jeep was still there, but there were no signs of the bikers’ motorcycles. She wondered if they’d parked it far away and then proceeded on foot so Pete wouldn’t hear their loud bikes coming. If so, then the two dead men were smarter than they looked. Not that that’d helped them, as it turned out.

She had exposed herself for five seconds, and no one had fired a shot yet. If the shooter was still out there and he still had a loaded rifle, he would have already taken her head off by now.

Except he hadn’t. That was all the motivation she needed to hurry down the steps.

“Don’t leave me!” she heard Mickey shouting from inside the trailer home. “Don’t leave me in here!”

Allie ignored her and dug out Mickey’s car keys. She was opening the Jeep’s driver-side door when sunlight glinted off something behind her. Allie glanced back.

Brass casings on the gravel road, right where a pair of tires had been parked not very long ago.

The shooter.

Had the man shown up while she was engaged in the Mexican standoff with the bikers? Allie had been so engrossed with Mitch and Greasy Lips that the entire Wells City Police Department could have snuck up on the trailer and she wouldn’t have noticed until it was too late.

Speaking of which…

She could already hear police sirens in the background. They were getting louder.

She climbed into the Jeep, put the key in the ignition, and turned it. For a second—just a split second—Allie was convinced the shooter would have also disabled the vehicle. She was in such a hurry that she hadn’t even taken the time to check if the tires were still in one piece.

The engine roared to life.

Hallelujah.

Allie backed up and onto the road, then sped away in the direction opposite the one they’d entered the trailer park from earlier. The car was moving just fine, and there were no telltale signs of punctured tires underneath her.

Double hallelujah.

Sirens grew louder from behind her as Allie stepped on the gas, following the EXIT signs. From the tire trails she’d spotted earlier, it was the same direction the shooter had gone. Not that Allie expected to catch up to him. Or wanted to. Whoever he was, he’d come to Pete’s place with a fully automatic rifle. She’d have to be extremely lucky for him to have only brought one magazine with him, and right now, she wasn’t going to push her luck.

A few curious eyes peeked out from behind filthy windows as she passed, but no one came out to get a better look.

The sirens were much louder by the time Allie found the exit and turned into the side road. She stepped on the gas as the first of many police lights became visible in her rearview and side mirrors.

The police were now involved, and once they found Mickey inside…

“There goes my twenty-four hours,” Allie said out loud.

Twenty-Five

“Mr. Marshall won’t be able to hide the fact that you’re not currently in jail for very long. You have twenty-four hours before roadblocks start going up on every road in and out of town and every squad car is looking for you again.”

Not more than twenty-four hours, as it turned out. Four, maybe five hours, tops. And in all that “free” time, she’d managed to uncover Pete’s role in setting her up and that was it. She was no closer to finding him or his accomplices—or even knew for a fact it was accomplices and not accomplice, as in just one—or get any further insights into why she had been chosen as the sacrificial goat. Was it all a case of wrong place at the wrong time? Or was there something more that she wasn’t seeing? Was she targeted? Or was she just unlucky?

It had to be bad luck. What else could it be? She’d never been to or come anywhere near Wells City or Timber Creek in her life. She’d never even heard of the Marshalls or seen Pete or Sarah or Tom. She had no ties to this place, to these people.

So why her?

It had to be a case of shit luck. After all the good fortunes and lucky breaks she’d been handed over the last few years, maybe she was due for some bad turns. But just because she could accept this as a cosmic rebalancing of sorts when it came to her luck jar, it didn’t mean she was going to just sit down and take it.

No way.

No way in hell—

She heard the faint, almost muffled pop! half a heartbeat before the round punched through the windshield of the Jeep and pinged! off the steering wheel directly in front of her. Another inch down or up, and the bullet would have slammed right into her chest.

Allie had seen it from a distance, but she hadn’t really paid attention to it. A black truck parked on the right shoulder of the two-lane road up ahead. It was very clearly a civilian vehicle, so her alarms hadn’t gone off. There were also no signs of the driver, but that, too, hadn’t triggered her paranoia. Not out here, with nothing for miles except open road and empty farmland.

Too late! Too late!

She clutched the steering wheel and spun it, all the while slamming down on the brakes. At the same instant, Allie ducked as a dark figure appeared from around the truck and opened fire, the pop-pop-pop of semiautomatic gunfire fighting for her attention. The noise was lost among the very loud squeal of the Jeep’s tires as they skidded against the hard asphalt and the smell of burnt rubber already stinging her nostrils.

The Jeep came to a sudden halt at a horizontal angle—its front half well into the incoming lane of the flat and low-to-the-ground road. The windshield was pockmarked with bullet holes, and though Allie couldn’t see the shooter anymore, she knew he was still firing because she continued to hear the (now much louder) pop-pop-pop of his very deliberate gunfire.

Bullets pinged! and pierced their way through the front passenger side door, one blasting out the window over the seat and floor, even as Allie pushed open her door and all but threw herself outside.

She landed on her right shoulder, rolled over, and crawled quickly—or as fast as she could move—to the front tire to use it as cover. The other alternative was the rear tire, but it was farther away. Then there was the middle of the Jeep, but the shooter, if he were smart—and right now, she couldn’t risk him not being—might decide to sneak a peek underneath the vehicle for a shot.

Another bullet found its way across the front seats on her left side and disappeared down the same road that she’d been driving up seconds earlier. Allie searched for and found Mitch’s 1911 behind her back, thankful that she hadn’t dropped it in her mad scramble to get out of the vehicle.

The last shot echoed and died, fading into the vast field that surrounded this stretch of road. There was nothing in view for miles in any direction except for the gray artificial ground she was sitting on. There was a lonely red barn somewhere in the distance to her left, but even that required intense concentration just to make out its shape.

The spot, she suddenly realized, made for a perfect ambush point.

Pop! as another round echoed, and Allie felt the Jeep’s rear dip slightly.

Sonofabitch, she thought when it became obvious what had just happened: The shooter had just taken out one of her rear tires.

Another pop! and this time the dip, from the front passenger side, was more noticeable because it was directly behind her.

Two tires, gone. That left her with two. She wasn’t going to get very far on just two working tires. Like every Jeep out there, there was a spare tire in the back. Of course, she’d have to take it down and put it on, and that was going to take time—

The tap-tap-tap of heavy footsteps.

Boots.

Someone wearing boots was moving slowly—and toward her!

Allie dropped to the cold, gray floor and rolled over until she was at the front of the Jeep, and looked out.

A man wearing a ball cap with the Dixie flag embroidered at the front was moving steadily toward her, a black M4A1 carbine with a Trijicon ACOG scope on top leading the way. He hadn’t gotten very far from his truck—maybe ten yards, with twenty more to go before he would reach her. The man wore shooting gloves and had one hand under the rifle, clutching the pistol grip, while the other remained in the trigger guard. The rest of him—especially his face—was hidden from her by the sun in the background staring daggers into her eyes with blinding rays. She was, though, able to make out his jeans, white T-shirt, and denim jacket.

The rifle in the man’s hands moved, and Allie rolled back behind cover just as he squeezed off a burst, pelting the other side of the Jeep with bullets. A couple of rounds pinged! off the engine block, and one shattered a headlight.

Allie stuck her hand out into the open, just past the front grill of the Jeep, and squeezed off two shots from the 1911 in the shooter’s direction. She didn’t expect to hit anything—though she wouldn’t have been terribly displeased if she did—but the point was to let him know that she wasn’t unarmed and he wasn’t going to be able to just walk up and put her out of her misery like some wounded animal.

More hurried tap-tap-tap!, these ones much louder and more rushed than the previous ones, as the shooter did what Allie wanted: He retreated. She wasn’t sure how far he went backwards—

Sunlight, glinting off moving metal in front of her.

A police car? Responding so quickly?

No, it wasn’t a police car.

It was a truck. A big one. It was moving fast, until it suddenly started to slow down.

Then, for some reason, it stopped completely in the middle of the road.

A delivery vehicle, with aqua blue colors all around. A civilian.

The shooter would be seeing the same thing and probably know that his opportunity to take her out—because that was what he’d been doing, lying in wait for her after Pete’s trailer—had just vanished with the delivery truck’s arrival. If he were smart, the man would run back to his vehicle and take off.

If he were smart. Of course, if he were really determined to finish her off…

Allie kept waiting to hear the black truck behind her start up and drive off, but it never happened. Either the shooter was taking his time or he, like Allie, had seen it was just a civilian delivery truck and knew he still had time before the police responded.

She kept waiting for the deliveryman to get the hint and reverse down the highway. The driver would be able to see Allie’s Jeep—if not its bullet-riddled state, then how haphazardly, not to mention suspiciously it was parked across the two lanes. Anyone with common sense would steer clear.

So why was the truck just sitting there?

What is he waiting for? Get out of here!

Allie waved her hands to get the driver’s attention. She could just barely pick him out inside the vehicle. Was he leaning forward against his steering wheel? Trying to get a better look at her? The sun would be in his face just as it’d been in hers when she tried to spot the shooter earlier.

Then, finally, the truck started moving again…

…but instead of reversing, it continued forward.

What are you doing?

As the vehicle neared, she was able to confirm that it was definitely a delivery truck. There were water cooler bottles in the back, and AQUA-something was written across its front hood. Just a guy going about his job. Another day, another dollar.

Now if only he’d turn around and get out of here…

Could the driver see the gun in her hand as she waved it over her head, trying to get his attention? She needed him to stop. She needed him to make a U-turn, if that was possible, though given the limited space, probably not. Still, he could always reverse back the way he came, because surely he could see that something wasn’t right about all of this. It was obvious. Wasn’t it?

The truck stopped again, this time about forty yards away.

Allie breathed a sigh of relief…

…when the driver opened his door and began to climb down.

No. No. What are you doing? What are you doing?

Allie waved her arms even more frantically above her head, hoping he’d see the gun in her hand. She also shouted, “Don’t get out of your truck! Get back in your truck!”

The man hopped down to the road and took a moment to adjust his cap. He was wearing a brown uniform and was shielding his eyes against the sun.

“Get back in your truck!” Allie shouted. “Get back in your truck!”

The man started walking toward her. “What?” he shouted. “You okay? You hurt? What’s wrong with your car?”

“Get back in your truck! Get back—”

There was a single pop! and the driver staggered before collapsing like a marionette with its strings snipped.

“No!” Allie shouted.

She heard laughter coming from behind her, on the other side of the parked Jeep.

The shooter. He was laughing after murdering the driver.

Allie stared at the body. It lay on its chest, hands folded underneath its stomach where they’d been clutching—where he’d been shot—when the man finally gave in and fell. His cap was on the ground next to him. There wasn’t any blood that Allie could see, but then she was too far away. Besides, most of the bleeding would be underneath the body, temporarily hidden from view.

And the sonofabitch that had shot him was laughing.

He was laughing.

Allie stood up and spun around, lifting the 1911.

She didn’t know why she did it, or what came over her. There was no tactical advantage to be had. Surely the shooter would be waiting for her. If he hadn’t left when the delivery truck showed up, he wasn’t going anywhere now, after killing the driver. He’d still be there, waiting—

But he didn’t expect her to do what she’d just did, because he was standing next to his truck, rifle pointed down at the road, when she popped up from behind the Jeep.

Allie squinted against the harsh sun and glimpsed sharp blue eyes looking back at her. The face underneath the ball cap came into full view, and though she couldn’t make out the buzz cut, she knew exactly who the shooter was:

Pete.

It was fucking Pete.

The bartender’s eyes widened noticeably at the sudden sight of her popping up and out from behind the Jeep. She had caught him by surprise. He hadn’t expected her to pull such a stupid move.

Because it was stupid. It was so, so stupid. Except Pete had pissed her off, and she wasn’t thinking clearly.

Allie had one, maybe two seconds of surprise on her side, and she used all of it.

Her first shot nailed Pete in the shoulder, and as he spun, she fired again. But his body was moving, turning in reaction to getting shot, and her second round missed. It shattered the truck’s side mirror instead.

Pete lifted his rifle with one hand even as he was spinning and squeezed the trigger, his return fire stitching the asphalt between him and Allie until—

She turned and leaped back down to the ground as bullets slammed into the Jeep’s hood repeatedly, the ping-ping-ping! of rounds bouncing off the engine block and front grill fighting against the shrill noise of metal tearing against the onslaught.

Allie landed on her chest, and pain slammed through her entire body. She ignored most of it and pushed herself back up, because the shooting had stopped. She understood why pretty quickly: Pete had fired on full-auto and had emptied his entire magazine in less than four seconds flat.

Which meant he now had to change!

She was on her feet again and looking over the battered Jeep’s hood—smoke was coming out of the holes that riddled it—at the black truck as Pete climbed into the front seat and slammed the door after him.

Allie stepped out from behind her vehicle and fired, aiming for the truck’s back windshield. She glimpsed Pete ducking even as he turned on the engine and stepped on the gas, and the pickup lurched forward. For a second—just a second—the car veered toward the edge of the road and almost off the asphalt, before Pete managed to right the tires in time.

She ran after the vehicle, continually firing, knocking out the rear windshield. She didn’t bother aiming for the tires. She wasn’t going to hit them on a moving vehicle with a pistol from this distance. She concentrated instead on the driver side, putting every bullet she had left into the spot where Pete would be if he wasn’t making himself small. The man had all but vanished from view but was somehow still able to guide his truck forward anyway.

Allie didn’t stop shooting until she’d run completely out of bullets, and by then Pete’s truck was so far down the road that she could barely make out the white color of its license place against the all-black exterior.

She lowered the gun to her side and struggled to breathe. She was out of breath. More than that, she was out of bullets. Except Pete didn’t know that, or he might not have kept going.

Allie turned around and walked back to the Jeep. She was halfway to it when she saw the first glint of chrome in the distance. It was even farther down the road and behind the parked delivery truck.

More vehicles were on their way, moving at great speeds toward her.

And there were lights spinning on their roofs.

Allie didn’t bother running. There was no way she was going to escape this. She could probably run to the delivery truck and take it before the cruisers arrived, but how far could she get in that behemoth?

Not very far.

And the Jeep was out of the equation.

She tossed the semiautomatic as far as she could into the grass. The last thing she wanted was to get shot when the police cars reached her. Every one of those officers would be jacked up on adrenaline right now.

Allie waited for them to get closer, and when they were finally within view—and she, to the driver of the lead vehicle—she knelt on the cold asphalt and put both hands behind her head, and waited.

It was a long, excruciating wait, and every second of it was filled with the sound of Pete laughing after he’d gunned down the deliveryman…

Twenty-Six

“Why did you kill the driver?”

“I didn’t.”

“We found a gun in the field. You didn’t throw it away far enough.”

“Did the ballistics come back on the weapon?”

“Not yet. But it shouldn’t be too long.”

“When it does come, you’ll know it wasn’t the same gun that killed the driver.”

“I said, we found a gun in the field. We just haven’t found the one you used on the driver yet.”

“And you won’t, because I didn’t kill him. Someone else did.”

“A man in a Dixie cap.”

“A ball cap with a Dixie flag on the front.”

“Who you say is a bartender at the Don’t Stop In bar named Pete Williams.”

“That’s the name he’s going by.”

“You think it’s an alias?”

“I’m 100 percent sure it is.”

“And this Pete Williams was the one who killed James Kale? The deliveryman?”

“Yes. I was exchanging fire with Williams when Mr. Kale drove up and stopped his truck. I tried to tell him to get back into his vehicle, but he wouldn’t listen. He was killed trying to help me.”

“But not by you.”

“No.”

“But by a bartender at the Don’t Stop In.”

“I know how ridiculous all of this sounds.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“And this Pete Williams was also the same one that shot up the trailer earlier.”

“Yes.”

“His own trailer.”

“Yes. Mickey can tell you I wasn’t responsible for that.”

“Who?”

“Mickey, the bartender.”

“Another bartender?”

“Are you telling me you haven’t talked to her yet?”

“You mean the woman you kidnapped and took hostage?”

“Yes. What did she tell you?”

“Now why would I tell you anything?”

“It doesn’t matter if you tell me or not. I didn’t kill the two bikers. Someone else did. Mickey will tell you the same thing, if she hasn’t already.”

“We’re not talking about two lowlife bikers right now. We’re talking about James Kale. We’re talking about the wife he left behind. The two kids that won’t be able to see their father come home tonight.”

“I didn’t kill him, and the truth won’t change regardless of how many times you keep asking the same question.”

“What about Tom Marshall?”

“What about him?”

“You still don’t know who he is? What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”

“I’m done talking to you.”

“Are you invoking your Fifth Amendment rights?”

“You’re goddamn right I am.”

* * *

The second interview with Dawson hadn’t gone very well. It was also much, much shorter. Not that Allie was very surprised by how it’d turned out. They had her dead to rights. Even if they couldn’t get her on the deliveryman’s murder—and she had a feeling they were going to push for that anyway despite the lack of evidence—they had her for escaping custody. Never mind that she hadn’t orchestrated the whole thing; she had taken the opportunity, so it wasn’t going to really matter how she got out, only that she had.

There were other hosts of charges they could bring against her that no one had mentioned yet. Breaking and entering at the Don’t Stop In, then taking Mickey hostage, were just two more. The bartender could swear Allie wasn’t the one who had shot the bikers dead at Pete Williams’s trailer home, but she would also be able to swear that Allie had taken her there at gunpoint.

Allie had thought about telling Dawson about the security video at the Don’t Stop In, about how Pete had slipped the note that had started all of this underneath her coaster. But she didn’t, because that wouldn’t have done very much to help her innocence. The truth was, she wasn’t innocent. At least, not against most of the charges they were preparing to throw at her.

But all of that was for the days, weeks, and months to come, and didn’t mean squat as she sat on the same bench in the same private cell in the back of the same holding area. Except this time there was a permanent guard stationed outside her cell bars—Parker, the chatty female deputy from yesterday. Parker had either been instructed not to engage in conversation with her, or she’d come to the conclusion that the overt friendliness she’d shown Allie yesterday was not a good idea today. Allie had tried to talk to her, but Parker had stayed silent.

I guess we’re not buddies anymore.

That left Allie to sit in the small room by herself, surrounded by brick and mortar on three sides and steel bars on the fourth. Even her cellmates hadn’t tried talking to her. Everyone, it seemed, had realized that things were getting very serious and that Allie was a person to stay very, very far away from.

Not that she blamed Parker or the others. They didn’t even know about half of the mess she’d found herself stuck in. If they only knew the rest, they probably wouldn’t even want to be caught in the same building with her.

So where did all of that leave her?

Shit city, that’s where.

Dawson hadn’t mentioned anything about the phone they’d found on her person when she was arrested, and the detective hadn’t even bothered to ask her how she’d “escaped” in the first place. Allie had a feeling, though she couldn’t prove it, that he either already knew or he suspected. Whatever the reason, he hadn’t broached it, though she was very certain neither he nor the DA were going to let that stop them from charging her for the crime anyway.

They could charge her with another ten felonies for all she cared. Allie wasn’t concerned about court appearances or upcoming trials. What happened weeks or months from now was the least of her worries.

Right now, her mind was on Pete.

It had to be him who had taken out Mitch and Greasy Lips back at the trailer park. Who else could it be? He had the opportunity, the weapon…

So what else are you capable of, Pete?

A lot of things, as it turned out. He definitely wasn’t just a bartender. Pete had known what he was doing. There were no amateur qualities to the way he moved or handled his weapon. He’d switched between fire selectors on the M4A1 rifle—from full-auto to semi—depending on the situation to conserve ammo. He was also a cold-blooded killer. There was no denying that. He’d shot James Kale down like a dog and then laughed about it.

James Kale…

“We’re talking about James Kale,” Dawson had said. “We’re talking about the wife he left behind. The two kids that won’t be able to see their father come home tonight.”

Sure, there was a chance that Dawson was lying about Kale’s family, but she didn’t think so. Kale had left two kids and a wife behind, all because he’d stopped and got out of his vehicle when he saw Allie in the road. He was trying to be a Good Samaritan, and it had gotten him murdered for it.

“We’re talking about the wife he left behind. The two kids that won’t be able to see their father come home tonight.”

James Kale. The name was permanently etched inside Allie’s mind.

I’m sorry, James Kale. I’m truly sorry…

* * *

The wall behind her shook.

It wasn’t very much, but enough for Allie to be aware of it. The absence of any noise or activity inside her cell, the hallway outside, or seemingly the entire building, didn’t hurt.

She was sitting slightly forward on the bench when she felt it again.

This time it wasn’t just the wall behind her but the floor and ceiling, too. They trembled for a second or two, as if caught in the aftershock of an earthquake.

Earthquake? Can’t be.

She got up and walked over to her cell bars. Parker was still outside, but instead of leaning against the wall where she’d been all day, the deputy was farther up the hallway, talking into her radio.

“What’s going on?” Allie asked.

Parker didn’t answer or turn around. She was too busy listening to a muffled voice on her radio.

“Parker,” Allie said. “What’s going on? What was that trembling?”

The deputy glanced over her shoulder. “You felt that too?”

Allie nodded. “Twice.”

“I knew it wasn’t my imagination.” She turned around and clicked her radio, and said into it, “It’s not just me, other people felt it, too. Anyone know what’s going on out there?”

Allie leaned against the cold metal bars but couldn’t make out the voice that responded over Parker’s radio. Instead of interrupting the deputy, Allie waited patiently.

About five or so minutes later, Parker put her radio away and walked back over.

“What happened?” Allie asked.

“Some kind of explosion a few blocks from here,” Parker said.

“An explosion?”

“A vehicle in a strip mall parking lot. Someone planted a bomb inside and detonated it.”

“Who was it?”

Parker shrugged. “The pros are on the scene now.”

“Anyone hurt?”

“Not that I know of. They evacuated the area before the explosion.”

“They evacuated the area?”

“Apparently the bomber called in a warning thirty minutes before, so they were able to get everyone out of the place. The blast was strong enough it still took out most of the windows along the shops and cars, though.”

An explosion. A premeditated one, where the bomber warned them ahead of time. Did it have anything to do with her? Did she want it to have anything to do with her?

Parker was standing outside her cell bars now and giving Allie a stare that told Allie the deputy was wondering the same thing.

“What?” Allie said anyway.

“You know anything about this?” Parker asked.

“How would I know?”

“That’s not a no.”

“No. I don’t know anything about this, Parker.”

Parker didn’t say anything, but kept staring at Allie for a moment or two.

Finally, the deputy nodded, before walking over to the wall next to Allie’s cell to resume her position.

“So?” Allie said. She could just barely see Parker’s side profile from inside her cell, and even that required pressing her face against the slick—and disgusting—bars.

“So, what?” Parker said.

“What else did they tell you?”

“That’s all.”

“Someone put a bomb in a car and parked it in a strip mall, then told the authorities to evacuate the area?”

“That’s about it.”

“That’s odd, don’t you think?”

Parker chuckled. “You think that’s odd?”

“Don’t you?”

“After the week this town’s been through? I’d say that’s the least odd thing that’s happened.”

Allie smiled. She had to admit, the deputy made a good point.

Parker turned around and leaned over as if afraid someone might eavesdrop on their conversation. “Tell me. How’d you get out of there last night?”

“They didn’t tell you?” Allie asked.

The deputy shook her head. “No one knows. The deputies on duty last night said they didn’t see or hear anything.”

Except for Deputy Lincoln, who is apparently a very believable liar, Allie thought but didn’t interrupt Parker.

The other woman continued. “All the security footage from last night was erased. I mean, all of them, including the ones in here. No one could figure out how you did it; how you just walked out of here.” Parker leaned in even closer. “How did you do it?”

Allie didn’t answer right away. Was Parker trying to entrap her? Was all of this an elaborate charade to find out the truth of last night or to get her to admit guilt on camera?

She glanced up at the camera on the wall near the ceiling across the hallway from her cell. It was pointed right at her and Parker.

“So?” Parker said. “How’d you do it? How’d you just walk out of here?”

Allie smiled. “Are you sure you want to know?”

“Yes.”

“Are you really sure?”

Parker didn’t answer quite as quickly the second time. She seemed to be thinking about it, before pulling slightly back and shaking her head.

“On second thought,” Parker said as she resumed her position against the wall. “Forget I said anything. All of this is way above my pay grade.”

Smart woman. Wish I could forget about all this, too.

“You married, Parker?” Allie asked.

“Divorced,” Parker said.

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Why? I’m not. He was a major league twat and whoremonger. I’m glad I kicked his ass to the curb when I did.”

“Good for you.”

“Damn straight,” Parker said, when there was a loud banging noise from up the hallway.

Allie pressed her face against the bars to get a better look, but there was no chance of seeing what was happening all the way up the other side of the corridor. Parker had no such difficulties, and she turned around to check the commotion before glancing back at Allie.

That’s not a good sign, Allie thought when she saw the expression on Parker’s face. It looked worried. Very, very worried.

She found out why when Dawson appeared, surrounded by six heavily-armed SWAT commandos in full urban assault gear.

Definitely not a good sign.

“What’s going on, sir?” Parker asked.

“We’re moving the prisoner to another location,” Dawson said.

“Why? What happened?”

“The key, Deputy.”

Parker handed the key over before stepping aside.

“Step back,” Dawson said to Allie.

She did, retreating from the bars. “Why am I being moved?”

“There’s been a bomb threat on the station,” Dawson said. He nodded at the commandos, and one of them opened the cell door with Parker’s key. “We’re evacuating everyone, including you.”

“Turn around and get down on your knees,” one of the commandos said as he entered the cell.

Allie did as instructed. Not that she had any choice. Her chances against one heavily-armed and fully-geared SWAT was low enough, but six of them?

One of them grabbed her wrists and bent them behind her back without an ounce of TLC.

She grimaced, but instead of whining about it, said to Dawson—even though she couldn’t see him behind her, “Why would someone want to bomb a police station?”

“We’ll be sure to ask the bomber when we catch him,” Dawson said.

The commando jerked her back up to her feet and turned her around. Two of them flanked her, thick, gloved hands grabbing each one of her arms before they led her outside.

Dawson walked up the hallway, and Allie’s entourage followed. Allie locked eyes with Parker, who mouthed “Good luck” as she passed.

The occupants of the general cells were at their bars looking out at her with curious eyes. One of them was the man with the mullet that had tried to strike up a conversation with her the previous day. He wasn’t very curious today.

Up ahead, uniformed deputies entered the holding area. Allie guessed they would be moving the other cell occupants next.

She focused on Dawson, walking in front of her. “I don’t know anything about this, Dawson. I’ve been in here all day, remember?”

“I didn’t say you had anything to do with this,” Dawson said.

“Then why am I being moved?”

“I told you: We’re moving everyone. The entire station is being evacuated. You just happen to be a very special case.”

“All this over a bomb threat?”

“Not a bomb threat, but the latest bomb threat.”

“Wait. How many have there been?”

“Three. The first one was on an abandoned trailer outside the city limits. The second one was at a strip mall parking lot. Now the station. We’re not taking any chances.” Then, without any conviction, “But of course you don’t know anything about this.”

Allie shook her head. “I don’t know anything about this.”

“Maybe you do, and maybe you don’t. But if you have friends out there who are trying to help you escape again, they’re going to find out very quickly that it’s not going to be so easy the second time around.”

Dawson grabbed the door and pulled it open, revealing a hallway filled with even more SWAT commandos that stared back at her from behind their Kevlar helmets and goggles. Ten, maybe twenty of them. It was difficult to count the number with everyone squeezed into the small corridor, their bulky urban assault gear and military-grade weapons taking up all the space.

“Let’s move!” Dawson barked as the door behind Allie slammed shut with the force of a bomb.

Twenty-Seven

Three bomb threats, including two that were already carried out. The one outside the city limits had gone unnoticed by Allie because of the distance, but not the one at the strip mall parking lot. And now, the police station. It was as if the bomber wanted the WCPD to know that he was serious, and that he was getting closer, almost like a…well, ticking bomb.

“Maybe you do, and maybe you don’t,” Dawson had said. “But if you have friends out there who are trying to help you escape again, they’re going to find out very quickly that it’s not going to be so easy this time.”

There wasn’t a question in any of that. The detective clearly didn’t believe her when she said she had nothing to do with this or even knew anything about it. Maybe she shouldn’t have expected anything but doubt. She had, after all, been lying to Dawson for two straight days now. Why would he believe her now?

Besides, not that this changed anything for him or the rest of the police department. The bomber had made his intentions clear and had already proven capable of doing exactly what he’d threatened: set off bombs at designated spots. What she didn’t know was the bomber’s final goal.

Was it her? It couldn’t be…

…could it?

No one she knew would do such a thing. Even though Parker had said no one was injured in the strip mall bomb, the possibility of injury, or even death, was there. Shopping centers were popular places. Neither Hank nor Lucy would take such a risk even if they were capable of this, which they weren’t. Hank was an ex-cop and maybe knew his way around explosives, but Lucy was just a teenager trying to finish her senior year of high school. Allie could trust the girl around a computer, but not a bomb.

So it couldn’t have been anyone she knew, which meant this didn’t involve her. Besides, she wasn’t the only one being held at the station. There were two other cells, both nearly full of people, including three Devil’s Crew MC bikers. Now those were people capable of something like this. For all she knew, any of the others could have a crazy friend running around out there blowing things up to get them moved. It was suicide to assault a police station filled with armed cops, but if you could get them outside and on the move...

And that was precisely what was happening now. She wasn’t the only one being relocated; the others were as well. She just happened to have the biggest entourage, with the biggest guns to make sure she didn’t escape again. If Dawson and the others only knew how she had simply walked out last night, they wouldn’t have gone to such extremes and concentrated so much of their manpower on her.

Allie thought about trying to convince Dawson that this didn’t have anything to do with her, but he didn’t appear to be in any mood to talk. The detective sat next to her on the metal bench inside the back of the armored transport, cleaning his glasses with a small square cloth that he kept inside one of his jacket pockets.

They weren’t the only two in the moving vehicle. There was a SWAT commando sitting on her left and another one to Dawson’s right. Three more occupied the bench opposite from them. They carried rifles—two Colt AR-15s and an M4A1 that looked similar to the model Pete had used earlier today, except the man holding it was bigger than Pete in the shoulders.

The commando stared back at her, maybe wondering why Allie was looking at him so closely. “You got a problem, lady?”

“No,” Allie said.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“All right, then.”

The truck rocked slightly as it came to a brief stop. When it continued, it was turning. She’d lost count of how many times they’d done that.

“Where are we going?” Allie asked Dawson.

“You don’t need to know that,” the detective said without looking up from cleaning his glasses.

“I know you don’t believe me, but I don’t have anything to do with this.”

“Then you don’t need to worry.”

“I do, because you have about fifty SWAT guys surrounding me.”

“Don’t be so dramatic. It’s just fifteen.”

There were five of those fifteen inside the armored vehicle with her, with the rest outside.

Three had climbed into a huge SUV waiting in the parking lot with a driver already inside, so that was four—nine total. The other six, she guessed, were in the trailing vehicle. She’d only spotted one as they rushed her out of the rear station door and into the transport. Ironically, it was the exact same parking lot that she’d been brought out last night to meet with Archibald Marshall, and then later “escape.”

Not that it mattered very much how many commandos were in the truck or outside to make sure she didn’t go anywhere. Allie couldn’t do anything with her hands cuffed anyway. (At least they’d switched the cuffs from behind her back to in front, to make the trip easier on her.) And then there were the leg manacles they’d put on after she’d been put inside. Walking, never mind running, was going to be very cumbersome with chains on her wrists and ankles.

And then there was the matter of fifteen SWAT commandos armed to the teeth.

Yeah, she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. At least, not without some help.

Oh, who was she kidding. She was going to need a lot of help to get out of this one. Maybe Archibald Marshall might have some ideas. Could she count on the man to pull her out of custody a second time? Where did his influence stop?

Marshall had seemed pretty convinced, even before they met last night, that she had been set up. Why he was willing to go through the trouble of letting her do all the legwork, while keeping him up to date via Frank, was another mystery in a long line of mysteries. One of these days, she’d have to sit down and have a good, long talk with the man. She had a feeling he knew a lot more that he wasn’t telling her.

That was annoying. Really, really annoying.

But that was for another day. Hopefully it would happen because then it would mean she’d gotten out of this jam.

Jam? More like a ten-car pileup, with you at the very bottom.

There were no windows in the back of the transport, so to prevent total darkness there was a single shatterproof lightbulb encased in metal framing near the top of the wall that connected the rear with the front of the vehicle. There was a slat that could be opened, but it was shoved tight at the moment. The lightbulb was dimmed, providing just enough illumination for Allie to make out the hard faces of the men assigned to watch her. There wasn’t a young one in the bunch—all in their late thirties or early forties. Apparently the Wells City Police Department put a premium on experience.

They’d been moving for about twenty minutes, with the caravan—she couldn’t confirm, but she assumed it was them and two escort vehicles, one in front and one behind, both full of SWAT guys—turning more often than it was going straight. Allie concluded that was on purpose, with whoever having put the route together—Dawson, maybe—keeping things unpredictable just in case someone might be out there waiting for this opportunity to break her out.

No one’s out there waiting to break me out. No one.

Or was she missing something? Was there someone orchestrating all of this in an effort to rescue her? She still didn’t think it could be Hank or Lucy. Especially Lucy. The teenager wouldn’t know how to even begin setting something like this up, and Hank was half a country away.

This isn’t about me. It can’t be.

Right?

Dawson thought differently. Or maybe he was telling the truth when he said everyone was being moved and she just happened to be the biggest priority among her fellow jailbirds. But she didn’t think so. The detective suspected that this had to involve her, and he wasn’t the only one, considering the manpower being spent. The other detainees were also being moved but by uniformed deputies.

It was almost enough to make a gal feel special.

Almost.

Allie looked over at Dawson again. He was still cleaning the lens on his eyeglasses with the same now-stained cloth. “You have a family, Detective?”

“That’s really none of your business,” Dawson said without looking up. He seemed to take pride in getting that cloth over every inch of his lens, even though, from Allie’s perspective, he was making more of a mess than actually cleaning them.

“Just trying to make friendly conversation.”

“You can stop.”

“You still think this has something to do with me, don’t you?”

This time, the detective didn’t answer. He held his glasses up and squinted to check the clarity. Dawson decided they still weren’t clean enough and went back to work.

“It doesn’t,” Allie said. “I don’t know what’s going on, and that’s the honest truth.”

A smile creased Dawson’s lips. “Lady, I don’t think you’d know the truth if it was standing right in front—”

A loud THOOM! cut Dawson off in midsentence.

At the same time, the armored truck lifted into the air and careened onto its side, smashing into the asphalt street with such force that Allie, Dawson, and the two SWAT guys flanking them went flying across the narrow space and into the three other commandos across from them.

She wasn’t sure when the lightbulb cut out, but suddenly the entire rear of the transport was bathed in darkness as Allie struggled to right herself. She’d been tossed straight into the same commando she’d exchanged words with earlier and could feel the man scrambling frantically underneath her while the others did the same all around.

“We’re under attack!” someone shouted. It might have been Dawson, but the voice was just a little too shrill to be the veteran detective. “Jesus, we’re under attack!”

No, it was definitely not Dawson. One of the SWAT guys.

“Stay calm!” someone else said from somewhere behind Allie. She had no idea of distance or spacing, so it could have come from the commando (or was that Dawson?) that had landed on top of her in the crash.

Allie wasn’t the only one stuck in the dark trying to get a grip on her surroundings. The barrel of a rifle jammed into her ribcage, and Allie almost screamed. She would have thought it was intentional—the owner’s way of keeping her in line—but everyone was moving so much, with arms and legs and the cold parts of weapons being thrown everywhere. Not being able to see a damn thing as they attempted desperately to adjust to their new positions certainly didn’t help any of them.

She managed to find the floor—was that the wall or the ceiling? How many times had they rolled over?—and righted herself somewhat, even as boots stamped around her, one coming dangerously close to crushing her fingers. She jerked her hands up from the cold metal floor to prevent that from happening. Commandos—and Dawson among them—were scrambling against her huddled frame, hot, warm breaths striking her in the arms and neck and face from every direction.

A radio on one of the commandos squawked, and a voice shouted through the speakers: “We’re under attack! Command, we’re under attack! Send help! I repeat, send help right away!”

Instead of a reply to the desperate shouts for assistance, there was just a loud squeal like metal fingernails scraping against a chalkboard. The radio had cut out.

Was that by accident? Or was someone jamming their signals?

“Get off me!” someone shouted to her right.

“I’m trying!” someone else said from behind her.

“Calm down. Stop moving and breathe. Breathe!” A third voice. Dawson. She was sure it was Dawson that time, trying to settle everyone down. “Give it a second. Let your eyes adjust.”

There was an echoey click followed by a beam of light slicing through the back of the overturned truck. It struck Allie in the face before veering away a second later. One of the commandos had found his flashlight and was moving it around.

In all the chaos, Allie couldn’t recall if there’d only been one explosion or more. The caravan was clearly under attack, but how far-reaching was the assault? Was it just the armored vehicle she was in that had been taken out or the escorting SUVs as well? If the call for help she’d heard earlier was any indication, then there were still some SWAT mobile enough to radio out.

The buttstock of a rifle glanced off her temple as a commando stood up too quickly. It wasn’t on purpose—or, at least, she didn’t think so—but it hurt nonetheless. She reeled slightly, falling down on her butt as a large black-clad figure turned around. The same SWAT she’d been trading words with earlier.

The man might have snarled at her when he said, “Stay down. Don’t do anything stupid.”

Like what? Allie thought, the chains on her arms and legs jingling as she struggled to get back up into a crouch, before retreating toward the wall that separated the rear and front. She hadn’t bothered trying to stand up. If they were under attack—and all signs pointed to exactly that—then the floor and as far away from the doors was the safest location, especially in her captive state. Thank God they’d landed on the roof of the transport; if it’d been the side, she’d be struggling to maneuver around those metal benches with their very hard edges right now.

“You guys hear anything?” the one with the flashlight was asking.

Two more clicks, followed by two more flashlight beams spearing the darkness around her.

“Explosions,” another SWAT said.

“You heard explosions?” the first one asked. “More than one?”

“Yeah. I think two, or three.”

“Which one is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Gunfire?”

“Maybe.”

She hadn’t heard any gunfire. Or had she, but just didn’t remember?

“What was that?” one of the commandos said.

What was what? Allie thought. She hadn’t heard anything.

But the commandos apparently had. They were all standing now and were turning toward the back of the truck, reflexively lifting their rifles at the same time. Dawson was among them, his pistol in his hand, but he’d lost his glasses in the tumble—

BOOM! as both transport doors blew open.

Jesus! Allie’s mind screamed as her ears began ringing from the blast.

Three of the commandos standing between her and the doors were tossed backward by the concussive force. Two others, standing too close to the doors, took the full brunt of both metal objects as they swung dangerously inward at incredible speeds. Goggles shattered as bodies crumpled like falling dominos.

Allie had gotten lucky. She was too far from the explosion and was spared the impact, and aside from the continued thrumming noise in her ears, the only pain was one of the commando’s Kevlar helmet smacking into her knee as he landed. The others were sprawled on the floor in front of her, their rifles scattered—

Rifles! Their rifles!

Allie reached for the nearest one—the M4A1—lying on its side, and had almost gotten her hands on it when a voice shouted, “Stop!”

She did, freezing with one hand hovering over the rifle. Allie looked up at Dawson, squatting in the middle of the truck. Like her, he’d gotten through the explosion in relatively one piece, though there was a cut along his temple and blood oozed from it. He looked noticeably unsteady, as was the hand that held the gun pointed at her. If he hadn’t shouted, she might not have heard him over the ringing in her ears. Even so, Dawson’s voice sounded almost like a fading echo.

“Get back!” Dawson shouted. “Get back now!”

The detective was shouting at the top of his lungs. Even as she scooted back to obey his command, Allie understood why: She wasn’t the only one whose ears were ringing. They were probably bleeding, too, just like Dawson’s right ear was. He probably didn’t feel it, but Allie could make out blood dripping down the side of his face.

She hadn’t noticed it before, but as she continued to back up, with Dawson crab-walking unsteadily after her, Allie finally saw the smoke. There were clouds of them, and they hadn’t just come from the blast that had taken out the doors. There were massive plumes outside, their gray-white tint making them stand out against the darkness of the Wells City street. Whatever had happened out there, it’d involved smoke grenades. A lot of smoke grenades.

She quickly grabbed her shirt with both hands and pulled them up and over the lower half of her face. Unfortunately, that still left her eyes exposed and they began tingling. She could already feel tears starting to well up in both eyes…

Dawson was blinking too, but not from the smoke, even though she could see he was already starting to be affected by it, too. The detective was wiping at blood that had dripped into his eyes from the cut on his temple with the back of one shirt sleeve. A couple of the SWAT commandos that hadn’t been knocked out by the blast were rolling around on the floor, coughing their lungs out. Unlike Allie, they hadn’t been quick enough to cover their mouths and nose and were now suffering for it.

“Don’t move!” Dawson was shouting at her. “You hear me? Stay where you are! Don’t do a goddamn thing!”

His voice was still coming through as faded echoes, managing to make their way through the continued thrumming in her eardrums. And it wasn’t just her hearing that was in trouble. It was all her other senses as well. The smoke continued to stab at her eyes as she tried desperately to regulate her breathing from behind her shirt’s fabric—

The truck rocked slightly as a black-clad figure stepped inside the vehicle.

Allie saw the man—and it was a man, judging by his shape—over Dawson’s shoulder, appearing out of a swirling sea of smoke like some avenging specter of death. He wore all black, his face hidden behind a gas mask, its breathing apparatus like tusks jutting out from underneath his chin.

“Dawson—” Allie said, but the detective quickly sensed the new presence too, and began turning around.

The shadowed figure was armed with an MP5SD, and he smashed its buttstock into Dawson’s temple, maybe even in the same spot where Dawson was already cut and bleeding. The detective rocked backward and fell onto his butt, but somehow managed to maintain his grip on his weapon. He tried to raise it (Don’t, Dawson, you idiot, he’ll kill you!), but instead of shooting him, the attacker struck Dawson in the face, again with the butt of his weapon.

This time the detective dropped to one side, his gun vanishing underneath one of the SWAT guys rolling around nearby.

Smoke continued to flood the vehicle, tendrils like fingers swarming past the dark figure and surrounding Dawson’s limp body on the floor, before moving gradually toward her as if they were a living thing. Allie kept her mouth and nostrils covered, but it wasn’t nearly enough and she began coughing, the smoke gouging at her eyes and making every inch of her face burn and itch. She wanted desperately to rip at the skin.

Fight it. Fight it!

She tried to get up but fell back down on her knees, her chest heaving with every painful cough that sputtered out of her. She managed to look up as the dark figure stepped around Dawson’s body, then the commandos. One of them tried to get up, but the attacker kicked him in the helmet with a boot, sending the man sprawling. Another attempted to reach for his sidearm, but before he could manage it, the attacker slammed his helmeted head into the sharp end of one of the benches, knocking him out.

The rest of the policemen remained unconscious, but she didn’t know if that was because of a concussion from the blast or the smoke. Because there was something in the smoke. She could feel it, making her drowsy at the same time it attacked her exposed skin.

Fight it!

You have to fight it!

Allie searched for a weapon among all the bodies. There, the same M4A1 she’d been reaching for earlier. It was right in front of her!

She was reaching for it when the gun seemed to slide away from her extended fingers. No, the rifle hadn’t gone anywhere. It was still there. So why couldn’t she grab it? Why was her vision suddenly so blurry and just blinking was difficult, never mind trying not to tip over—

She tipped over and landed on one side of her face. She was closer to Dawson than she’d thought, because she could see the detective’s face just a few inches from her own. There was blood all over his broken nose and around his mouth, and more welling up around his forehead and dripping from both ears. How had he even managed to stand up earlier?

And was he dead? Was he still breathing?

She couldn’t tell because she was having difficulty focusing. Dawson was so close to her, and yet, she couldn’t even be sure if he was even still breathing.

Focus, damn you! Focus!

The dark figure had reached her. She rolled over onto her back to look up at him. (Or did she just turn her head slightly? She couldn’t be certain of that, either.)

Was it Pete? Had the lying sack of shit come back to finish what he’d started on the road earlier? The man hovering over her now was about the same height as Pete and had the same build, but the eyes were different. Where Pete had blue eyes, these were hazel. Or were those brown? Gray? It was hard to say for sure, with all the smoke and the mask’s lens obscuring her vision.

Although she couldn’t see the man’s mouth because it was hidden by the lower half of his mask, Allie swore the bastard was smiling as he hunched over her, knowing that he could do anything to her right now and she wouldn’t be able to stop him. How could she? She could barely lift her handcuffed arms, and just breathing seemed to take all the strength she had left in her body.

The man shook his head in a chastising manner. “You’ve looked better,” he said, his voice muffled by the mask.

“Looked better?” Allie thought but couldn’t bring herself to say.

The man stood back up, and Allie found herself rising with him.

No, she wasn’t moving on her own power. The man was lifting her off the roof of the overturned armored transport.

Why was he lifting her? Why was he cradling her like she was some sad sack that needed his help to move?

Maybe because she was, and she did.

That makes sense, she thought just before she closed her eyes and, thank God, didn’t have to deal with the choking smoke clawing at her face and every other exposed part of her body anymore.

Epilogue

“How many?”

“One.”

“No, really. How many?”

“Really. One.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“One guy did all that damage?”

“Affirmative.”

“Holy shit.”

Frank stared at the tablet screen. He’d seen the footage at least five times and still couldn’t believe it: One guy had ambushed the SWAT caravan and taken off with Allie Krycek. Or Aubrey White, as the WCPD knew her.

Two security cameras had captured the action from different sides of the same street. The one positioned on the side of a nearby warehouse had the best angle, while the other camera, from a gas station about half a block away, provided additional coverage of the sequence of events.

“I still don’t believe you. Let me see it,” Banks said.

The older man passed Frank the box of donuts and hot coffee he’d been getting while Frank sat in the back of their SUV and reviewed the footage. He put the sweets and coffee down and pressed play again and watched the whole thing for the sixth time. The footage was a copy sent to them from their contact inside the WCPD.

The ambush opened with the first vehicle in the caravan—a black GMC—appearing in frame from the right and stopping at a red light. The armored carrier came next, but it was slowing down when the first explosion flipped it onto its roof. The second escort vehicle, another GMC, was out of frame at the moment. For a brief two seconds or so after the initial explosion that took out the APC, the screen went bright white.

“Whoa,” Banks said, biting into a glazed donut. “What was that?”

He sipped his coffee. It was black and bitter, just the way he liked it. “He either knew the route the caravan was going to take, or he’s a damn good guesser.”

“How would he know the route?”

“Be sure to ask him that when we catch up to him.”

“We’re chasing him?”

“He’s got our prize.”

“I didn’t know she was our prize.”

“She is now.”

On the tablet’s screen, the commandos in the leading vehicle were scrambling to get out of their car when some kind of projectile appeared in the frame and struck the windshield before disappearing inside the SUV. Smoke immediately filled the interior of the GMC. The sight of heavily-armed professionals struggling to open a door, gloved fists banging on windows in panic, was not something Frank saw every day.

Neither had Banks, who asked with a mouthful of more donuts, “What was that?”

“If I had to guess, it was a grenade round loaded with some kind of incapacitating agent,” Frank said. “All the SWAT guys were still unconscious when backup arrived on the scene and found them.”

“Nice shot.”

“It gets better.”

“Damn.”

A dark black-clad figure wearing a gas mask appeared from the left side of the tablet and walked casually past the first escort vehicle.

“That’s him?” Banks said.

Frank nodded. “That’s our man.”

“One guy…”

“Just one guy, yeah.”

The attacker walked past the GMC as if the heavily-armed cops inside weren’t worth a second of his time. And he was right, because not a single one of the SWAT guys got out to stop him. One of them did manage to get the rear driver-side door open, but no one came through it. Instead, smoke that had enveloped the interior of the SUV flooded out into the street, expanding outward like some kind of eerie supernatural mist.

The dark figure stopped and fired again from a multiple-shot grenade launcher. One shot—two—three shots in all, before he dropped the weapon and unslung a submachine gun. It looked like a Heckler & Koch MP5SD. The man had good taste in weapons.

The black-clad shape continued striding confidently toward the overturned truck before vanishing behind it. More clouds of smoke appeared from the right side of the screen and were starting to swallow up the street, making it harder to see what was happening.

“First the shooter on the road that took on Krycek, now this dude,” Banks said. “We sure it’s not the same guy?”

Frank shrugged. “Could be anyone behind that mask. Could be you.”

“I wish.”

Another explosion, this one taking place at the back of the APC.

“What’s he doing now?” Banks asked.

“He just took out the doors,” Frank said. “He knows what he’s doing, and he came fully prepared.”

“Looks like it. Who is this guy?”

“That’s the million-dollar question.”

The man reappeared into frame, this time cradling Allie Krycek in his arms. Not that Frank could really tell that was an unconscious Krycek, but he already knew she was missing post-attack, and put two and two together.

The attacker disappeared off the other side of the screen with Krycek, leaving a smoke-filled carnage in his wake.

“Mr. Marshall know about this?” Banks asked.

“He’s been made aware,” Frank said. “Wants us to start looking for her.”

“Where do we even start?”

“Not his problem. That’s why we get paid the big bucks.”

“Maybe you get paid the big bucks, but I’m pulling in minimum wage here.” Banks finished off his donut and grabbed another one. “We need to start with those bomb threats from this afternoon. That’s how they got her moved and out in the open.”

Frank nodded. “Find the bomber, find the guy. Find the guy, we find our girl.”

He rewound the footage and froze the screen on the attacker, covered from head to toe in black and carrying Krycek in his arms while his MP5SD hung from a strap. There was no way to tell who it was, and none of the cops that were there had been able to get a good look at his face to give a description. The only way Frank could even tell he was looking at a man was the way he moved.

“He’s a professional,” Frank said. “He knew what he was doing. How many people in this world can pull this off? And he couldn’t have had a lot of time to set it up, either. Krycek was arrested this morning, and by nightfall, this.”

“Definitely a professional,” Banks said. “So how does that help us find him?”

“It doesn’t.”

Frank stared at the figure frozen on the tablet. Or, more specifically, at Allie Krycek’s limp body in the man’s arms. Frank had read all about Allie—the things she’d gone through, the things she’d done—and to see her like this, helpless…

“This just got a lot more interesting,” Banks said.

“Yeah,” Frank said. “A lot more.”