“He’s got a tire out,” Beth said.
“One of my shots must have hit.”
Beth continued to advance.
Frane swerved into the rear of a car he was approaching, sending it sideways in the interstate. Frane’s pickup passed the car as it slid. Beth stepped on the gas to get ahead of the car, which came past the rear of our truck and planted its nose into the cement barricade behind us. Beth’s and my attention went from the sliding car back to Frane, ahead of us.
The brake lights on his truck went solid red, and we rear-ended him. My cell phone flew from my hand, bounced off the dash, and hit the floor. I reached down for it and heard five or six pops, which were accompanied by metallic-sounding slaps and cracks of bullets splintering glass.
“Shit!” Beth yelled. “Stay down!”
Beth yanked the wheel to the right and bounced us off the concrete barricade at the interstate’s edge to the sounds of metal crushing and scraping. Then Beth and I lifted our heads. My eyes followed a row of bullet holes up the hood of our truck and into our windshield.
Frane had put a few car lengths between us, so Beth sped up. Other motorists slowed and moved to the far-left lanes. Frane leaned out his window, looking and firing back at us, but none of the shots hit us. I looked back at the other motorists on the interstate—most had pulled to the far left and were out of harm’s way. Frane fired two more shots, one of which ripped through the driver’s-door mirror of our Suburban. Then he threw the gun out the window and sped up.
“That tire isn’t going to last much longer,” I said. “The truck will throw it, be down to the rim, and spin out.”
“Which could put him directly into other motorists,” Beth said.
I glanced back over my shoulder and saw police cruisers’ lightbars flashing in the distance. “Go for a pit.”
Beth sped up and got us in position. She brought the nose of our suburban perfectly into the left rear quarter panel of the pickup. Beth slowed as the back of his truck swung right and made contact with the cement barricade. The truck Frane drove fishtailed, regained traction for a moment, and then made a hard left across all three lanes of the interstate in front of us. I watched his truck bounce down into the grass median separating northbound and southbound traffic.
“Did he lose it?” Beth asked.
The truck was keeping a steady course for the other side.
“No,” I said. “He’s going for the oncoming cars.”
I looked behind us. Two patrol cruisers were a few car lengths back. I imagined they were on their radios with additional backup and possibly air support. We moved to the far left lane and kept pace with Frane. The two patrol cruisers followed. The pickup truck bounced up from the median toward the first lane of oncoming traffic. The rear of the truck slid before grabbing. Frane picked up speed and barreled down the interstate’s shoulder, against traffic. He swerved into the first oncoming lane, narrowly missing a car that slid sideways and plowed grass into the median. I didn’t know if he’d intentionally swerved at the car or was struggling to control the truck.
“Get over there behind him.”
“Are you serious?” Beth asked.
“He’s going to kill someone. We need to wait for a gap in the cars and try another pit.”
Beth put the wheels of the Suburban into the median and kept speed as we crossed. Our truck hit some ruts and bounced as it tore at the grass. Beth got two wheels up on the far shoulder, facing oncoming traffic, and sped up to close the gap, which had increased to ten car lengths. A pair of tractor trailers were approaching in the two far lanes. Nick swerved into the center lane of the freeway and pointed the truck toward the oncoming semis.
“Slow down!” I shouted.
Beth hit the brakes, bringing us back down to thirty miles an hour. I glanced right to see a sheriff’s cruiser speed past on the other side of the freeway, trying to get ahead of us. I looked back at Frane’s truck, which hadn’t veered off its course toward the semi. One of the rig’s air horns wailed. The semi in Frane’s lane split for the lane nearest us. Beth yanked the steering wheel right, sending us down into the median seconds before the oncoming tractor trailer flew past on our left. Frane never left his lane, seemingly prepared to go head on with the rig if he hadn’t swerved. I glanced back to see the semi, like the car before it, plowing through the grass median.
“We have to end this,” I said.
Beth gave me a hard head nod, got us back onto the shoulder, and sped up. We closed the gap again. The cruiser that had passed us on the other side of the interstate crossed the grass median up ahead and got next to Frane on the shoulder. Frane swerved to the right and brought his front right fender into the police cruiser’s rear—a pit maneuver of his own. The patrol car spun into the grass and whipped past on our right. The oncoming cars in the distance all looked as if they were pulling to the side. We had the gap we needed.
“Take him out!” I yelled.
Beth sped up and went for another pit. The rear of his pickup truck slid right and then snapped back, regaining traction.
“Again!” I said. “Push his ass off the road.”
Beth stepped on the gas and poked the front of the suburban into the first oncoming lane. She yanked the wheel right and kept the nose of our truck planted into his quarter panel. Frane’s truck’s rear end slid, and the front of his truck whipped around, back into the nose of our Chevy. Beth kept her foot in the gas. Frane’s rear tires left the shoulder, his truck being pushed sideways by ours.
“Brakes!” I shouted.
Beth locked them up. Frane’s truck continued its sideways slide through the median. I locked eyes with him right before the wheels on the far side of his truck caught. The next thing I saw was the underbelly of his truck as it launched from the ground in a roll. The truck made a full revolution before landing on its tires in the grass and barrel rolling through the median. Grass, dirt, glass, and plastic shards flew through the air. The truck came to rest on its roof a hundred yards from where we’d stopped. I yanked open the passenger door and advanced. Beth’s door slammed shut behind me. Two patrol cars pulled into the grass median from the other side of the Interstate, and the deputies exited. Someone appeared to be in the back of one of the cruisers. I rounded the rear of the truck toward the driver’s-side door. My gun sights stayed fixed on the crushed window opening. I heard moaning from the front of the truck and brought my gun to the area as I rounded the corner. Nick Frane sat flat on his butt in the grass at the front of the truck. His head was covered in blood, his eyes open, blinking rapidly. His arms hung down and rested on his thighs—his left one covered in blood from where he’d been shot by Agent Kronke, I assumed. His hand on his right thigh was resting on a pistol.
“Nick Frane, get your hand off of that gun!” I commanded.
He turned his head and looked at me. I stood ten feet away, gun bearing down on him. Beth came to my shoulder, her gun also aimed at Frane. A bloody Lieutenant Whishaw and another deputy were jogging across the median toward us.
“Now!” I instructed.
He lifted his hand from the gun and reached up to his face.
Lieutenant Whishaw, who had gaping lacerations across his forehead and hairline, and the other deputy stood on Frane’s opposite side, guns drawn.
Frane rubbed the blood from his eyes and then ran his hand over his bloody bald head. He let out a chuckle. “Oh, what the hell. May as well make this interesting.” In a single motion, he scooped the gun from his leg and turned it toward Beth and me.
We both fired—three shots each, hitting him center mass. I heard more shots from Lieutenant Whishaw and his deputy. Frane’s hand with the pistol dropped, squeezing off a single round into the dirt beside him. His body jerked, and a cough sent a mouthful of blood down his chin. His head fell left against his shoulder, and his body went limp. I kicked the gun from his hand. We sat silent for a moment.
Then a sound caught my ear. I looked at the police cruiser parked across the median. McC
oy was screaming and staring at us from the back window of Whishaw’s car.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I caught the time on my watch—a quarter after eight in the morning. I grabbed my suit jacket from the back of the hotel room’s chair, put it on, and headed to the lobby. I tossed a wave to Claire, the girl working the front counter, as I headed for the coffee station near the hotel’s entrance. Bill and Scott were seated in the lounge area, waiting near the coffee machine. I headed over.
“What time did you guys end up getting in?” I asked.
“A little after two in the morning,” Bill said.
“And this hotel was able to accommodate you?”
Bill smiled. “Yeah, we got the same treatment.”
“How was the flight?”
“Well, we missed our first flight and then had to sit and wait around for another. That flight bounced us down to Houston, where our connection was delayed.”
“I heard you were dealing with something that made you miss your first flight, but I only got bits and pieces from Beth and Ball. Somehow you had another vehicle and body that were connected with the truck Frane was driving up here?”
“Yeah.” Scott shook his head. “I’ll give you the quick version, but basically, we have a couple more to add to the body count. So security from a wayside finds a classic Corvette parked for too long. It’s not something you would leave sitting. Security guy calls the local PD to see if they can get in touch with the owner prior to him having the vehicle towed. Well, he rounds the back of the Corvette to get the tag number to give to the PD and sees blood all over the rear bumper. The local PD comes out, gets in to the trunk of the vehicle, and finds a body. The DB had ID on him. Registered vehicle of the DB was the truck the couple had up here. Well, they still didn’t know what they were dealing with and were still missing the Corvette owner. The local PD goes to the man’s house, which was just a few miles from where we’d lost McCoy and Frane and finds the Corvette owner dead and our BOLO orange-and-white pickup from the farmhouse in the man’s garage. They called in to the local FBI, and then Gents and Makara called us. We spent pretty much all evening going over that, which is what made us miss our flight.”
“I see,” I said. “So we have these two on how many murders now?”
“Too many,” Bill said. “One of the local agents was shot, I heard?”
“Buckshot at a distance. I got an update on him last night. He went to the hospital and got patched up—nothing too major, thankfully. Frane assaulted a lieutenant that was working with us as well—just stitches and probably a concussion there. Both should be fine.”
“That’s good,” Bill said. He brought his soda to his mouth and took a drink. He made a sour face and dropped the can in the garbage bin beside him.
“Something wrong with your soda?” I asked.
“Yeah, unleaded,” he said. “The wife has been nagging me that all the caffeine from the energy drinks and coffee is going to give me a heart attack. She gave me a yarn about my kids not having a father and the whole works. She legitimately seemed worried, so I figured I’d at least try to appease her. If I go narcoleptic at the jail, at least you’ll know why.”
“What time are we supposed to be over there?” Scott asked.
“Nine,” I said and walked to the coffee machine to fill a cup, catching a look of envy in Bill’s eyes. “We can head out as soon as Beth comes down. The place is only a couple minutes away.”
“The locals there know we’re coming?” Scott asked.
“Yeah. I spoke with the lieutenant that Frane assaulted, about an hour ago. The regional jail and sheriff’s department are in the same complex, so he’s going to meet us. He said he’d walk us into where she’s being held and get us set for our interview.”
“And no clue on what she wants to deal with?” Scott asked.
“I don’t know what she has to deal with, which is what makes her asking to talk to someone about a deal, um… I guess, intriguing.”
“I guess it’s worth finding out,” Scott said.
“I agree.”
I heard the clack of footsteps against the tile floor, and Beth rounded the corner. “Morning, ladies,” she said.
I grabbed my coffee from the machine and moved to the side so Beth could fill a cup. She did and turned to Bill and Scott.
“Are we ready to go?” she asked.
They both stood.
“Yeah, let’s roll,” Scott said. “Get this over with and get back home.”
“Do you guys just want to follow us?” I asked.
The pair nodded.
We left the hotel a moment later. Beth drove our car, with Scott and Bill following.
“I got an update on the boy, Mark,” Beth said.
“Good or bad?”
“They found an aunt, mother’s sister, that’s going to take him in.”
“That’s good,” I said. “At least I’ll have something good to tell Karen.”
“Have you guys ever considered adoption? I know that you’d mentioned you were trying, and then you mentioned that you were no longer trying.”
“Well, if there was ever something that was going to stoke Karen’s coals on the topic, it would be something like what happened with this boy. I actually can’t believe we haven’t had an adoption conversation since I told her about it in the first place.”
“Maybe it’s coming, and she’s waiting for the right time to bring it up,” Beth said.
“That’s probably not too far off from reality.”
“Did you ask her about the dinner with Scott and me?”
“She said that would be fun,” I said.
“Okay. Good, because I already got us some reservations at a steakhouse in Arlington. I looked over their menu. Seems like they’ll have something Karen will like if she’s into the organic stuff.”
I found that thoughtful of Beth. “She’ll appreciate that. Completely different topic, but there has been something that I wanted to ask you.”
“Shoot.”
“Did you take some kind of self-defense training other than what was taught by the Bureau?”
“What do you mean?” Beth asked.
“Molly McCoy. The moves you put on her. That didn’t look like anything I remember being trained on—PD or Bureau.”
“Um.” Beth paused. “Yeah. I’ve been taking some classes a couple times a week. Well, actually more than a couple times when I can.”
“Classes? Like self-defense?” I asked.
“Yup. A couple different ones, actually. After the whole thing with Brett Bailor, I wanted a little more training than the standard. So I enrolled in a few self-defense classes. Tuesdays is my Advanced Defense Concepts class, Wednesdays are my close-combat classes, and Thursdays are tae kwon do.”
“Remind me not to piss you off,” I said.
Beth chuckled. “I might actually stick with the tae kwon do and see how far I can advance. It’s fun.”
Beth went on to tell me more about her training, the rest of the ride. We exited the freeway and pulled into the Cascade County Sheriff’s Department and jail complex half a mile down the frontage road. We found parking spots, and Scott and Bill followed Beth and I to the front doors of the sheriff’s facility, which spread out to our right in a two-story-long rectangular building. Behind the sheriff’s building sat what I figured to be the jail—three stories and looking more like an office building than a prison, aside from the areas that were barbwired.
I pulled the front door for our group to enter and filed in behind them. We stood in a small lobby that looked like any police station—walled off with a window and a metal door. I approached the glass window.
An overweight man appearing in his sixties and dressed in uniform adjusted his glasses on his nose. “Help you?” he asked.
“We’re looking for Lieutenant Whishaw. He’s expecting us.”
“Ah yes, the FBI guys.” The man looked past me. “Sorry—and gal. Sure, let me get him paged for you. Just a second.
”
He made a call over the PA and told us the lieutenant would be up in a moment. I spent the time reading over a flier for a county-food drive they had set for the next week. Lieutenant Whishaw appeared from the metal door a couple minutes later.
I pointed at the bandages stuck to his forehead. “How’s the head?”
He knocked on the side of his head above his ear. “Hard as a rock. Just a few stitches, thirty or so, a few staples, nothing too serious.”
“They didn’t give you a day or two off?” Beth asked.
“The hell with that. I’m fine,” he said.
Beth and I introduced the lieutenant to Bill and Scott. Whishaw held the metal door open with his heel and shook Bill’s and Scott’s hands. He waved us in and walked us through their station.
Whishaw spoke to me over his shoulder as he walked. “I called back to the detention center after we spoke this morning to let them know that you guys would be here to interview her. I got a call back about a half hour ago that her attorney was present. They should be ready for us by now.”
“Sure,” I said. “Hear anything about what she’s trying to deal with?”
“No. Nothing,” he said.
We zigged and zagged through the station and past their bullpen to a long corridor at the back of the building that led us into the detention center. We got checked in, and Whishaw showed us through the complex to their interview rooms.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
We sat in the observation room and watched as a pair of guards seated McCoy, chained, in the room beyond the mirror. She wore an orange jumpsuit with black numbers across her chest. One of the guards chained her to the table in the room, and the pair exited. Her attorney entered and took a seat at Molly’s side. The two said something quietly to each other. We heard a knock on our observation room door, and it opened. One of the guards stood in the open doorway—the other remained in the room.
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