It could have just been panic.
Soda spewed from a can and crumbs sprinkled to the ground as Leland grappled with Henry. The pistol slipped from his fingers, and the two of them rolled a few feet away out of the gun’s reach.
Henry was stronger than he looked, and he knew how to fight, but he wasn’t trained. Leland had twenty years to prepare for moments like these. The convict’s punches landed, but it was only a second or two before Leland was straddling Henry and pressing the man’s face into the concrete with one arm while he reached for his cuffs with his free hand.
“Just let me go. You’ve got the wrong guy!”
Maybe he isn’t that smart.
Leland got the cuffs on him and eased off his back, then he let out a deep breath of cold air as he rested on his heels. He let Henry struggle against the restraints for a minute, then rubbed his jaw and forehead. Henry had gotten two good hits on him before Leland had been able to subdue him.
He swore under his breath and looked over at the gas station attendant who stared at him, arms crossed and shivering in the night cold.
“Can I get my clothes back?”
Leland looked down and sighed. “I can’t take him out of the cuffs, sorry. I have a feeling you aren’t going to cooperate long enough to at least give him his pants back?”
Henry just grunted. “You might want to call someone and have them bring you some clothes. Can’t take any chances with this one.”
The attendant muttered to himself and hurried into the gas station, leaving Leland alone with the prisoner.
“Good effort,” Leland said. “It’s sad to think how long you must have planned to escape Lone Oak and not even get past the county line.”
Henry said nothing, and Leland didn’t expect him to. He wasn’t gloating so much as speaking his thoughts, though he knew how Henry probably perceived his words.
Honestly, Leland felt bad for the kid. Since he was a lifer, getting even five miles from the prison probably felt like true freedom, but he must have been so disappointed in that moment with the sheriff standing over him.
Leland stood from his squat and walked over to his pistol, then he dusted it off with his hand and holstered it. He was glad the night hadn’t ended in a bloodbath. He needed to call this one in and have the State pick up the prisoner, though he thought about taking Henry back himself so he didn’t have to wait.
Leland pulled Henry up to his feet and led him to the cruiser behind the garbage bins. “Watch your head.”
Leland set him in the back, then walked around to the driver’s seat and pulled the car under the gas station lights. He called in the capture and then set the radio down. There was a steel mesh cage between him and Henry, but he could see the man clearly with the harsh light of the gas station.
Leland’s eyebrows lowered and he felt a sense of genuine sadness for the criminal. It didn’t matter what he’d done. It didn’t matter what he deserved. It was hard on anyone to lose hope.
“They would’ve caught you sooner or later. It’s better to live in a place where you know when your next meal is than to live life always looking over your shoulder.”
“Easy to say when you haven’t lived there,” Henry said. “When you’re not going to grow old there.”
“Prisons take a lot of forms. Some have bars. Others don’t.”
“You think you’re in prison?”
Leland looked out the passenger window and chewed his lower lip. “Not always. Sometimes.”
“Well, it’s all the time for me.”
“What about parole?”
“That’s out the window now, wouldn’t you say?”
Leland nodded. “Maybe.” He got out of the cruiser and walked into the gas station. Figuring he would be up a while longer, he poured himself a cup of coffee and set a couple of dollar bills on the counter. He turned his eyes toward the car outside.
“Seriously?” The attendant had his arms crossed over his bare chest.
“You’re still open, aren’t you?”
The attendant shook his head, incredulous, and punched a button on the register.
“It’s three twenty-five.”
Leland reached into his pocket and produced another bill and a quarter. He placed it on the counter then he started toward the door, but he stopped when the lights went out. It wasn’t just inside either. The lights outside shut off and the glow above the pumps was extinguished.
He swore and turned toward the attendant. “This happen often?”
He didn’t wait for a response before he jogged to the car. Couldn’t have been Henry Tash. He was still in the back seat. An accomplice? There hadn’t been a report of anyone else escaping Lone Oak.
Then Leland noticed the headlights on his cruiser were off. Not just the lights, the engine. The car wasn’t running.
He got into the car and looked at the ignition. The key was still as he’d left it. He reached for the radio, but there was no sound, no crackle. He pushed buttons, twisted knobs, nothing.
“What’s going on?” Tash asked.
He glanced back at Tash but didn’t answer. He didn’t know what was going on. The power was dead. Inexplicably dead.
He tried turning over the engine with his keys again and again, and all he got were small jingles of metal. “Well, I guess we’re gonna have to wait and see.”
Chapter Five
Leland gave the gas station attendant his jacket but told him he would need it back once the power came on or after one of his friends got there with new clothes.
“I never got a chance to call anyone.” The attendant held up his cell phone. “Dead. Won’t turn back on.”
Leland fished in his pocket for his cell phone and flipped it open. He expected to see a soft glow, but a blank screen stared back. His eyebrows furrowed and he put the phone back. “What about the landline?”
The attendant shook his head. “Well, let’s give it a little time.”
He almost added that he was sure it was nothing, but he stopped himself. Lights going out in the station or even in the car would have been one thing, but lights going out, cell phones shutting off, the engine not turning over…that was strange.
“Why don’t you try your car?” Leland said, though he didn’t expect the attendant’s car situation to be any different. He walked to his cruiser and tried the radio again in vain, then he shook his head. “Looks like someone doesn’t want you going back to jail.”
“You should probably just let me go.”
Leland smiled briefly. “Afraid I can’t do that.”
“You’re not from around here, are you?” Henry asked.
“Not originally. Been here about ten years, but I grew up in Texas.”
“I didn’t think Texas boys ever left Texas.”
Leland looked back at Henry, thinking. “They do when they need to. Sometimes a change of scenery is good.”
“It’s cold here. The winter lasts about seven months. Why would you come here?”
“To catch you.”
“Seems like you were running from something, too.”
“Ain’t everybody?”
“I don’t think so,” Henry said.
“I tend to think so.”
“What are you running from then?”
“A life of chasing drug smugglers. Not the best job when you have a family. Too dangerous.”
“You’re afraid then?”
“I have been, sure. Not so much these days.” Leland tinkered with the radio on the dash, then turned the switch for his lights over and over. He knew Henry was trying to get under his skin, though he wasn’t sure to what end. Probably trying to get him to make a mistake.
Instead of taking more questions from Henry Tash and mindlessly pushing buttons in hopes they would do something, Leland got out of the car, shut the door, and leaned against the hood.
Darkness surrounded him and he could only see vapor from his lips because of the moonlight above. If the situation wasn’t so unnerving, he might have enj
oyed the quiet and peace of the night, but he was stuck in something he’d never experienced.
He looked at the attendant stepping out from his car and shook his head. The kid’s skinny bare legs stuck out from under Leland’s coat, and he thought about just letting him keep it.
Leland went around to the other side of the car to face the road. He’d called in the capture, so someone from State should have been there by now. They would at least get there soon. Henry’s escape was high-profile, and Leland couldn’t imagine anything more important that was going on in the area.
Unless this power outage is spread over the whole county.
His eyes were tired despite the bitter coffees. It was late, and it looked like this might turn into an all-nighter. The occasional odd hours didn’t bother him so much as long as he had a chance to spend some time with his daughter, Gwen, for at least a little while during the day.
Keeping up with an eighteen-year-old in her last year of high school was harder than policing, he thought. He didn’t understand her or anything she was going through, or at least that’s what she told him almost constantly. He figured he probably didn’t and had resorted to simply asking about her day. He tried not to ask her too many specific questions. It had been mostly the same story with his oldest daughter, Cora, though Cora wasn’t as hot-headed as Gwen. Gwen was a lot more open before their mother, Melanie, died. She was even happy before their son, Travis, died.
Travis’s death four years ago kicked them all in the gut. Then, three years ago, when Melanie told them about her breast cancer diagnosis, Leland thought the devil or somebody was out to get him. He remembered feeling guilty for thinking it. His family was dying one-by-one, and he thought the devil was out to get him.
Melanie died last year. That left just him and Gwen at the house, and Cora rarely came home even though she lived just three hours away in Chicago.
He tried not to think about personal matters when he was on a job like this—not that he was often arresting fugitives. But he found his mind wandering all the time lately. Travis would be halfway through college by now. Leland wondered what his son would have majored in or if he would have joined the Marines as he’d talked about a few times. He was seventeen when he died and should have been twenty-one now.
The other two kids took after their mother more, but Gwen took after Leland.
Poor girl.
She had a temper like Leland did, though less controlled. Leland had years of marriage, a job, and kids to train him how to calm himself whenever he got angry. Gwen somehow turned out pretty, though. There were hints of Melanie in her eyes and around her cheeks, but she was Leland’s child through-and-through.
Of course, Leland had mellowed some in the last few years. Death will do that to anyone. You lose a son, you lose a big chunk of yourself. You lose a spouse on top of that, there isn’t much left of you, and there isn’t much left to offer whoever’s still here. He was sure Gwen and Cora felt that. Gwen especially since she was still living at home.
Leland didn’t feel the thrill of being an officer like he used to either. He didn’t get nervous because the only thing he had left to fear was losing his daughters. There wasn’t much he could do for them when it came to raising them. Cora was grown up now and gone, and Gwen could take care of herself if something happened to him. It was only a matter of months until she moved out of the house and he would be truly alone forever.
To Leland, it felt like the life of an eighty-year-old, not someone who had just turned forty-five last month. He actually hoped he didn’t make it to eighty. Having to endure for those many years without Melanie, without Travis… It was unthinkable.
But at least he had tried to make a life with them. That was more than he could say for someone like Henry Tash. In prison for life at twenty-three? Leland couldn’t imagine it. He wondered what Henry had done. Murder, he knew, but that didn’t always mean a man was ruthless. It didn’t necessarily even mean he was in the wrong.
Most crimes were done out of passion or stupidity or both. Both were equally dangerous, but they weren’t merciless. A cold killer was a different breed. If there was any fear left in Leland, it was for that kind of criminal—the kind that could look into your eyes while they killed you and not feel a thing. Leland wasn’t sure if souls existed, but he knew that kind of killer didn’t have one. He’d stared into those eyes before. It was like facing death itself—all you could think to do was look away.
Leland didn’t think Henry was ruthless. There were all kinds of criminals, and some could put on masks easier than others, but he didn’t think Henry had a mask. Not a good one, at least. Ruthless killers didn’t usually show fear in their eyes, and there was fear etched all over Henry’s face. He tried not to show it, but it was there.
The academy, along with his first few years on the force in El Paso, had driven a lot of Leland’s fear from him. He was already prone to anger, so whenever fear threatened to creep in, he tried to transform it.
He had earned a nickname in the academy that followed him through his career in El Paso.
Red.
Back then, anything could set Leland off, especially with other cadets. They could always tell when it was happening, too. It started in his neck and worked its way up to his cheeks and forehead—red skin with purple veins sticking out.
Fortunately, Leland was good—really good—at his job, and didn’t get into too much trouble. He eventually learned to channel his intensity when facing off with drug cartels.
He tried not to take it home with him, but he wasn’t always successful. He never laid a hand on his wife or the kids, but he did drink and yell some in those days.
When he looked back at his twenties, he felt embarrassed, even though he had nobody reminding him of the way he once was.
It took a lot more to get him riled up than it used to, and he was usually pretty good about getting alone and letting it roll off his shoulders with a walk or a drive. Every now and then, however, the anger came back.
The intense anger hadn’t happened in years, maybe a handful of times. But sometimes it was a rage so severe he would scare himself—sometimes it caused him to go too far.
Leland had banished that side of him, but he couldn’t seem to make it stay away. Not for good. He guessed as long as he was alive, that part of him would always be there. In the shadows. Waiting.
For some reason, that anger threatened to come back now. He didn’t know if he was just tired or annoyed or both, but part of him wished he would have simply patrolled Hope for a few minutes, then gone to bed. If he was angry at anyone, he was angry at himself.
How long was this going to take? This wasn’t a standard power outage, he knew that already, but surely this would be over soon.
The twinge of anger was enough to warm him in the cold night. He looked back at the gas station attendant who stood inside the glass doors, with Leland’s coat wrapped tightly around him, tapping at the black screen of his phone. Leland sighed and decided to let him have the coat.
Chapter Six
They waited at least an hour before Leland opened Henry’s door and bent low to look at him.
“I think we might have to go on foot.”
“To where?” Henry asked.
“To find some help. If we can’t find it, to the prison.”
Henry felt his insides go cold. It was one thing to be taken to a station, or to a jail, but the thought of going back to Lone Oak so quickly…
“That’s five miles away.” Henry’s face burned.
“Then we better find some help. Get out.”
Henry stepped out of the back of the cruiser and cracked his neck from side-to-side. His wrists ached from the cuffs and throbbed when Leland grabbed them and guided him forward.
“It will take us a long time, you know.”
“Not if we keep a good pace,” Leland said.
“Have you ever tried to run with your hands cuffed behind your back?”
The sheriff smiled at him. “I�
�m guessing you have a few times, haven’t you?”
Henry didn’t answer but watched as Leland moved to the front of his cruiser and grabbed a portable radio and a flashlight. The sheriff pressed the button on the flashlight a few times and it did nothing. He tossed it to the floor of the cruiser, then grabbed the pump shotgun that was mounted between the seats.
“Planning on trouble?” Henry asked.
“Planning on not having any.”
Henry looked toward the road and wondered how far he could get before Leland overtook him again. Charging him had been a calculated risk. Having watched him for the last hour, and judging by their first encounter, Leland didn’t seem trigger-happy. He seemed to be wary of his gun. Now, Henry wished he would have taken off toward the woods. Leland probably wouldn’t have shot him in the back.
If they didn’t find help and they were going to walk the next five miles, he had an hour or two to convince Leland to either take off his cuffs or at least let him move his hands in front of him. The first scenario wasn’t going to happen and the second was unlikely, but either would allow him to run better. Of course, Leland would know this too and probably wouldn’t even consider it.
Henry could get his arms in front of him with some time and space. He was flexible enough. And in this rural area, it wouldn’t be crazy for him to find a farm with some tools to cut the metal off his wrists.
Fantasies.
He wasn’t going to get what he wanted by playing nice. He was going to have to get what he wanted by force. If it came down to killing Sheriff Leland West or going back to prison…
He shook his head at the thought. He had been around so many ruthless killers for far too long. There was a part of him, a big part, that would do anything to keep away from that hellhole. Could he kill again? Could he kill a cop?
The two of them made it to the road after Leland said something to the gas station attendant about staying put and keeping the coat for warmth.
Leland motioned ahead with his shotgun. “I’m gonna walk behind you. You just keep heading north.”
Fallen Earth | Book 1 | Remnants Page 2