by C. J. Box
For the first time Cassie had seen since she met him, Kyle grinned as he listened.
He had said there were three—and possibly four—bad guys inside the house. The idea was to isolate them, confuse them, then engage them with overwhelming force. It was the only way, Kirkbride said, they could possibly save the lives of Rachel and Lottie. Otherwise, they’d be looking at a hostage situation at best, a double homicide at worst.
But they’d need Kyle’s help. Kyle had readily agreed, despite Cassie’s misgivings.
The idea was to surround Lottie Westergaard’s home before Kyle arrived and the exchange was made. Kirkbride knew the terrain intimately, and he positioned his deputies using old roads and game trails through the trees from the river.
When the intruders exited the house to get the duffel bag, they’d be apprehended by the four deputies hiding in the front. Simultaneously, Kirkbride would give the order and the SWAT team behind the house would throw flash-bang grenades and tear gas canisters through the windows before storming it and rescuing Rachel and Lottie. By putting the most pressure on the back side of the house, Kirkbride said, it would force the remaining bad guys to flee out the front where they’d be in the open.
* * *
CASSIE CLIMBED out of the Tahoe and helped Davis get Kyle’s bike out of the back. They filled the left newspaper pannier with the duffel bag and balanced the right pannier with several heavy rocks. Kyle stood to the side pulling on his gloves, fitting his stocking cap to his head, rocking from side to side in anticipation and fear.
She approached him and slid her handheld radio into his parka pocket.
“This is on,” she said. “But it’s set to transmit only. You won’t hear anyone talking. But this way we can hear what is said.
“If you get into trouble,” she told him, leaning down so their faces were inches apart, “start yelling for help. We’ll be there in seconds. Do you understand, Kyle?”
He nodded that he did.
“Are you ready, then?”
“Yes.”
“Remember—just deliver the bag and get back here.”
She leaned forward and hugged him. He felt small, even through her parka and his heavy coat.
* * *
AS CASSIE watched Kyle mount his bike and ride away through the snow toward the house, she had trouble breathing.
So much could go wrong.
“I don’t like involving the boy,” she said.
“I know you don’t,” Davis said. “But none of us could ride up there on a bike in his place. They’ve got to see that it’s him.”
“If something happens to him I’ll never forgive myself.”
“I know,” Davis said. “I feel the same way. But he’s a willing participant and we’ve got every deputy in Bakken County here to protect him. He could have said no.”
“He’s twelve years old, Ian.”
Davis had no answer for that.
Kirkbride talked to his team, keeping them apprised.
“Kyle is on his way to the house,” the sheriff said in a whisper. “Pray for the little guy.”
Through the radio, Cassie could hear Kyle’s muffled breathing as he pedaled. She raised the binoculars.
“Can you see him?” Davis asked.
“Yes.”
Cassie kept her field of vision on Kyle as he progressed down the snow-packed road. The light from the stars and moon had turned the road aquamarine. He looked so small.
“He’s stopping,” she said as Kyle reached the house. She watched him fumble for the kickstand with his heavy right boot. Finally, he found it.
“He’s going to take the duffel bag out,” she said.
“I hope they know he’s there,” Davis said.
Cassie shifted the binoculars up over Kyle’s head and the front of the house came into view. Someone had parted the blinds to see out the front window. Then they snapped shut.
“They see him,” Cassie said.
When she shifted back to Kyle, he was still standing on the side of his bike. The duffel bag was still in the panniers.
“Get ready,” Kirkbride said to his deputies over the radio.
Cassie could feel her own heart beat, and it made the binoculars vibrate. She tried to steady them by resting the barrels on the top of the half-opened passenger window.
The front door opened and two figures came out on the portico. The first man was Caucasian and heavily muscled. She couldn’t believe he was wearing only a tight black T-shirt. The second was thin and dark and bundled up in an oversized coat. Their breath fused with the glow from the porch light.
“Take the bag out and drop it,” Cassie whispered as if Kyle could hear her.
“I’ve got a visual on Willie Dietrich and an unknown male on the front porch,” one of the hidden deputies reported.
“Roger that,” Kirkbride responded in a whisper. “We see him too. The other guy must be one of the MS-13 peckerheads.”
“Take the bag out, drop it, and turn around and come back now, Kyle,” Cassie said aloud. “Ride the hell away from them like we talked about.”
Cassie saw the blinds in the front window pull up. Another man, short with protruding ears, watched what was going on outside in front of him with his hands on his hips. He was so still it was eerie, she thought.
Over the radio, they heard Dietrich say, “Well, you must be Kyle. Did you bring our property?”
“Yes,” Kyle said.
“Kyle, damn it, get the hell out of there,” Cassie said, nearly shouting.
“What’s he doing?” Kirkbride asked, sounding as exasperated as Cassie felt. “He’s supposed to clear the scene.”
To his team, Kirkbride said, “Nobody take any action until the boy is clear.”
“Kyle,” Cassie said aloud, “run away.”
“So where is it, Kyle?” Dietrich asked. “Is it there in that bag?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you need to take it out and give it to my friend Silencio here. He’s got to check that everything is there like we expect. We know your old pal T-Lock and your mom sampled the product, but the rest of it better be in there.”
“Where’s my mom?”
“She’s inside, Kyle. She misses you.”
Cassie couldn’t believe Kyle was confronting them. She couldn’t breathe.
“Where’s Grandma Lottie?” Kyle asked.
“Mare’s granna?” Dietrich mocked. Then, with a laugh: “Why, she’s in the kitchen making some of that good lefsa for me and the boys.”
Silencio had moved down from the porch and was descending the steps and walking toward Kyle and his bike. There was a flash of steel in the moonlight.
Before she could scream that Silencio had a blade, Kyle extended his arm and a pistol flashed.
Pop-pop-pop-pop.
Silencio crumpled to the snow.
“Kyle has a gun!” Cassie shouted. As she said it she flashed back on the box of .25 ammunition in Rachel’s drawer.
Pop-pop-pop.
Willie Dietrich staggered back until he hit the house. Then he slid down the siding until Cassie couldn’t see him through the binoculars.
“Now!” Kirkbride shouted into the radio, “Go now.”
Cassie saw the figure at the front window vanish to the side as three loud concussions flashed from inside the house. The explosions were so bright that for a moment all she could see was an afterimage imprint in the dark.
She was jerked forward as Davis reversed the SUV out of the trees, and when her vision came back she realized they were speeding down the road toward the house behind Sheriff Kirkbride’s unit.
Thick yellow smoke rolled from the open door and vents of the house. Heavily armed cops in tactical vests, helmets, and gas masks were swarming the house. All three units approaching the house from the front access road hit their lights and sirens within seconds of one another, and suddenly the night turned from cold and dark to cold and throbbing.
“Where’s Kyle?” she asked Davis.
>
“I lost him,” Davis said.
* * *
CASSIE WAS frantic when she finally saw Kyle being escorted out the front door of the house by Deputy Klug. The boy was hunched over, stumbling, his gloved hands covering his face.
She ran up the steps and took over, leading Kyle into the front lawn toward her vehicle.
“I can’t breathe!” Kyle cried.
“It’s the gas,” she said. “It stings your eyes and lungs for a while. But don’t worry, it will get better now that you’re out of it.”
She could tell by the way his back was heaving that he was crying. She didn’t know whether it was because of the gas or something he saw inside the house.
“Give me your gun,” she said, opening the door of her unit.
With his eyes clamped tight and fluids streaming out of his nose, Kyle fished through his coat like a blind man and handed the .25 pistol to her without argument. She dropped the gun in the pocket of her parka while kicking herself for not even considering that he might have taken it from his mother’s drawer and hidden it in his bulky coat.
Cassie climbed into the backseat of the Tahoe next to Kyle and shut the door.
She said, “Stay here and keep warm.”
He didn’t argue. He seemed spent, and he collapsed onto her. She held him while watching out the windshield and listening to the radio.
She clearly heard one of the deputies say, “There’s a body here.”
Kyle’s body racked with silent sobbing. He tensed as Kirkbride said, “We might have as many as four victims.”
Cassie knew of the two outside. Who was inside?
Although there was too much excited chatter and cross talk, Cassie discerned that the officers inside had found two females. One was alive but injured and the other was dead. The woman found alive was described as “elderly.” She covered Kyle’s ears with her arms, and he burrowed into her.
She realized Kyle had seen his mother’s body through the smoke and gas. He was in shock.
Her eyes watered because she’d gotten a whiff of the gas as well. At least that’s what she told herself.
Then a deputy cried, “Shit! There he goes!”
Cassie looked up in time to see a man hurl himself through the glass of a side window and land on all fours in the snow. It was the man who’d been standing at the picture window in front. The man scrambled to his feet and turned her way. There was a snarl on his face but his eyes were calm.
“Stay down!” Cassie shouted to Kyle and pushed him flat on the seat. She drew her weapon and opened the back door and braced behind it.
For a brief second, her eyes locked with the MS-13 gangbanger and he started toward her. There was a gun in his hand and he raised it and she saw the muzzle flash and felt the bullet hit the door.
Cassie aimed through the opening between the body of the SUV and the open door and fired four shots as fast as she could pull the trigger.
The man stopped, wheeled, and vanished in the dark brush on the side of the house.
A second later, a deputy appeared at the broken window, pointing outside.
“He’s on the run,” someone said.
“Which direction?”
“West toward the river. He’s on foot.”
Jim Klug appeared at the front door and saw Cassie, who still had her weapon pointed.
“Did you hit him?”
The target may have jerked to the side when she fired, but she wasn’t sure.
“I don’t know. I think so.”
“Are you hurt?”
She looked down at her parka. “No.”
Kirkbride came on the radio and said, “Find that son of a bitch.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE FARTHER Fidel Escobar ran from the house, the more quiet it got. He crashed through wicked brush that pulled at his clothing and cut his hands. It was so cold his face felt as if it were on fire. His boots crunched in the snow.
When he pushed through a thick bank of scrub into an opening, he paused to look back. He could see blue and red strobes of light on the tops of the trees, and he could hear shouting. But no pursuers.
Yet.
The cop bitch had hit him twice. One through his left shoulder and the other in his guts. That one burned like a blowtorch.
There had to be a house or a car ahead, he thought. He wasn’t that far out of town. If he got to a road he’d stand in the middle of it and stop a car and throw the driver out into the snow. Or take a hostage to bargain with. If he found a house, he’d force himself inside.
Anything to get warm and stop the bleeding.
* * *
HE FELT the cold grip him even as he stood there catching his breath. But as long as he kept moving, as long as he kept his blood pumping, he had a chance.
He knew how bad a gutshot could be, but he knew guys who had survived them. He didn’t plan to die here in this place, this unnatural setting. He was La Matanza.
Vehicles were moving out back at the house. Would they try to cut him off?
If he could get to one of the sheriff’s department SUVs he’d shoot the driver in the head and take it.
A spotlight swept through the trees right behind him, and he started to run again. There was a shout, and as he ran he ducked forward covering his head with his hands, waiting for a gunshot that didn’t come.
There were all kinds of trails and openings in the brush, he found. Animals had probably made them. As long as he stayed low he could keep going forward. A few times he dropped to his hands and knees and crawled through holes in the thick brush. There was no way they’d try to follow him through this stuff in the dark, he thought, even though his tracks wouldn’t be hard to find.
He looked behind him. There were a few specks of blood but he wasn’t bleeding heavily. Escobar knew that happened sometimes with gutshots. They bled inside, not outside.
* * *
AND THEN the brush gave way and he was suddenly in the open beneath the slice of moon and the cruel hard stars. He staggered forward, crossing a two-track road that had been driven on recently by several vehicles.
He realized why the brush had abated when he saw the big frozen river across the road. It was wide and still, the ice on top of it reflecting the stars. He could see the lights of a house across the river on the side of an embankment. Although it was more than a quarter of a mile away, he could even make out the blue square of a television screen through a window.
He heard a vehicle coming from his left. A wall of dense brush on the side of the road was suddenly lit up by headlights.
Escobar crossed himself with a hand he could no longer feel and stepped down the embankment to the edge of the river. Shards of ice had been pushed into the bank and had frozen in place there, and he scrambled over them. He looked out and saw that the ice in the middle of the river was smooth as glass, and he thought he could be halfway across it before the men in the vehicle saw him, if they saw him at all.
He didn’t step so much as slide one foot in front of the other so he could keep going forward. He held his arms out to the side for balance. He had to look over to make sure his 9mm was still in his hand. It was, but he couldn’t feel it. He wondered if he’d even be able to pull the trigger if he had to.
Through the window across the river, a fat woman got up from a chair and looked out. No doubt, she saw the cop lights in the distance. But Escobar didn’t think the woman could see him.
Somewhere upriver, the ice moaned and Escobar stopped, terrified. But nothing happened. He didn’t know ice moaned, just like he’d never walked across a frozen river in his life.
Behind him, he heard a squeal of brakes and a shout.
He shuffled faster, his arms pumping at his sides. His shoulder was starting to hurt now, and his belly screamed red at him. His wounds were holding him back.
The texture of the ice changed. It was grittier now, and he could actually get traction to walk. He was a lucky man!
Escobar started to run, even as the whit
e light from a spotlight hit him in the back. Twenty more feet to the other side …
When the ice cracked open beneath his feet and he dropped through.
For a moment everything was unbelievably quiet. He was underwater. He saw streams of white specks floating upward looking like pearls on a necklace. He realized they were bubbles.
Escobar’s boots softly hit the bed of the river. So it wasn’t deep. He bent his knees and pushed off.
His head came out of the water and he reached for a handhold on the lip of the hole in the ice and found one. There was a small ridge of ice he grabbed on to. His wet head and shoulders were exposed to the frigid air.
It was so still he could hear one of the deputies talk on his radio.
“Sheriff, we found him. He tried to cross the river down around the bend and he fell through the ice. We can see him out there trying to crawl back up on top.”
“He fell through?”
“Roger that.”
“Must be right where that thermal springs comes up. The ice there is always unstable. If it wasn’t so damned cold that spot would be open and there would be a bunch of geese sitting on it.”
Escobar could no longer feel his body or his legs. The bullet in his guts no longer hurt. But he didn’t think he could kick himself up onto the ice. Was the ice ridge stout enough to support his weight if he tried to crawl out? Then he realized the ridge of ice had already snapped off. He was being held up because his hands and arms had frozen solid to the surface of the river.
He cried, “I need some help!”
This was no way to die, he thought. There was no dignity in it, nothing for his compadres to talk about. This was a bad dream. He’d always assumed he’d be shot down after killing three or four men who’d come after him. Not by a doughy woman from behind a car door. Not like this.
The deputy said, “He’s calling for help, Sheriff.”
There was a long pause. Then the sheriff said, “Tell him to hold on. We’ll send somebody out first thing in the morning.”
“Come again?”
“You heard me.”
“Loud and clear.”
So did Escobar. He closed his eyes and found when he tried to reopen them his eyelashes had frozen to his cheekbones. Seeing out was like looking through jail bars.