Burned Bridges

by A. J. Stewart

  “How do you know stuff like that?” asked Beth.

  Flynn shrugged. “I read.”

  “So what do we do?” Hutton asked.

  “It’s Ox all over again. If things go bad, retreat to home base.”

  “You think she’s gone back to the family farm?”

  “I do.”

  “So we’re going to Pennsylvania?”

  “Excuse me,” said Beth, “but shouldn’t we be calling the police at this point? Or more specifically, shouldn’t we have called them last night?”

  “The police can’t help with this,” said Flynn.

  “What are you talking about? That’s their job.”

  “No, their job is to protect taxpayers from local crime. This is bigger. This is beyond their remit.”

  “John, I don’t exactly understand what you did before, but this isn’t that. This is now. You are not that guy anymore.”

  Flynn shifted in his seat to look at Beth. “That’s what I thought too. That’s what I hoped. But I was wrong. I am that guy. I was always that guy. But more importantly, I know these guys. They are bad people. And we need to stop them.”

  “No, John. The police need to stop them. I need to go home.”

  Flynn turned back in his seat. Took a breath and glanced at Hutton.

  “Let’s go back to the house.”

  The house looked quiet and peaceful. The road was still damp and the trees were waterlogged despite not holding many leaves. Hutton drove past the house on the right and past the house on the left and parked in the driveway of the house at the end of the cul-de-sac.

  “This is crazy, John,” stuttered Beth. “They might still be there. They probably expect us to come back.”

  “They’re long gone, and they think we’re even longer gone. I’ll check it out first, okay?”

  Flynn got out and wandered around the back, and after about thirty seconds, the front door opened and he walked out and back to the Yukon.

  “Nobody’s home.”

  “I don’t want to go back in there.”

  “I know you don’t. And I don’t want you to have to. But you need to understand. You need to see this.”

  “See what?” Beth’s face contorted with fear.

  “Nothing. Come on. You can stay right behind me.”

  He opened the door and half helped, half dragged Beth out of the vehicle. Hutton got out and followed them up to the front door. From the outside there was no trace of the previous evening’s events. The porch was clear and damp, the door unharmed.

  The inside wasn’t much different. Flynn walked into the open living area and stepped aside. The pale floorboards shone as if they had been freshly cleaned. There were no bodies. There was no blood. The floor and the walls were pristine. Except for the sections that had been removed. Square sections of drywall had been cut out of the walls, leaving holes that looked like they might become built-in shelves for sculptures. Flynn had seen such alcoves in museums.

  Beth wandered slack-jawed into the dining space at the end of the kitchen. There was more missing drywall, and a large section of crown molding along the rear of the house had been removed. The floorboards were all intact, but she saw a darker patch in the wood where it looked like the lacquer had been removed. A large section was dull wood against the shine of the rest of the floor.

  She turned and looked at Flynn. He stood looking at a similar dull patch opposite the door that led to the basement where she had been held.

  “What happened?”

  “Quick thinking,” said Flynn. “But quick and dirty. They removed all traces of being here. Found all the spent rounds, in the walls, in the molding, and cut them out.”

  “The floors?”

  “My guess is a hydrogen sulfide solution. Sulfuric acid. They cleaned up the blood and then washed the areas in acid. Messes up DNA processing, if that was ever going to happen.”

  “They are professional,” said Hutton. “This is a good job.”

  “Yes and no. They are pros, no doubt. With four guys down, most people would just flee. But they didn’t. They cleaned up. But no, it’s not a good job. This is not the work of a cleanup crew.”

  “Who did it, then?”

  “They did.”

  “At least three had GSWs and the other was most definitely DOA,” said Hutton. “You think they bandaged up their wounds and got the bleach out?”

  “No. It was the fifth guy.”

  Hutton frowned. “What fifth guy?”

  “In a team of four, there’s always a fifth guy. The point guy. The guy back at the vehicle, directing things. The head guy. The unit leader.”

  “So this fifth guy comes in with a mop?”

  “More or less. They got lucky, and they know it. They know this property is REO. They know it’s not on the market. It will go to auction unseen, and probably be snapped up by one of your flippers. An investor. For cash—that’s what you said. And an investor is going to open the front door and find this damage and blame the last owner. Maybe cuss a little bit. Then they’re going to add a thousand bucks to the budget and they are going to patch the drywall and fix the molding, and they are going to sand and restain the floors. The investor will do the final cleanup for them.”

  Hutton looked around. The floors were damaged, but not badly. Drywall could be replaced in a day. She turned around 360 degrees and looked at it all.

  “That was smart.”

  “That was lucky. It tells us something. They’re a skeleton crew. If they had backup, they would have done a better job. There wouldn’t be any damage. We’re only an hour from Manhattan. But there is no cleanup crew. So they did it themselves. And you’re right—four down, at least one permanently. So they did what they could. Good work in the circumstances. Professional. But I like the math.”

  “What about the math?”

  “Four down. The fifth guy had to do the cleanup. So the fifth guy is the last guy operational. There’s only one guy left.”

  “Unless they get reinforcements. These guys are connected, remember.”

  Flynn shook his head. “Reinforcements aren’t coming. Think about it. It’s New York. I’m not saying they didn’t have a cleanup crew available. If they have one anywhere, they have one in New York City. Stands to reason. But they weren’t called. The assault team didn’t call for backup.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s the question.” Flynn turned to Beth. She was watching him and Hutton talk. She was slack-shouldered, as if being back in the place of her imprisonment had drained the life from her.

  “You see now?” Flynn asked her. “The police need evidence. They don’t move without it. They can’t move without it. And there is none. It’s gone. So they’ll call it vandals.”

  “I wasn’t abducted by vandals.”

  “You were at a hotel. Had you been drinking? You’re a lawyer. Lot of pressure, right? Do you take recreational drugs? Maybe something harder, or something to make you sleep.”

  “You know I don’t.”

  “I know. They don’t. And they will look for the most obvious answer. They get more crackpot calls than you can imagine. And there’s no proof. No kidnapper. And why would the kidnapper let you go? There was no ransom paid.”

  “Because you rescued me.”

  “Then three of us end up in interview rooms for days, maybe longer. Maybe they find a terrorism angle. It’s a handy law. Can be bent a lot of ways. And they could easily bend it to say I was behind it. That Hutton helped me. It wastes time we don’t have. And in the end, there’s no evidence of a crime being committed. No autopsy, no foul. You’re a lawyer, think about it from the DA’s point of view.”

  Beth stayed still, but her eyes flickered around the room. Thinking, processing. Then deciding.

  “What’s to stop them from trying to get me again?”

  “Me. I’m going to get them first.”

  Beth blinked hard and ran her hand through her hair.

  “So we’re going to Pennsylvania,”
she said.

  The fifth man was angry.

  Angry with himself, angry with his team. But mostly angry with the eight. They had given the orders. They had put him in this position. They’d had him chasing ghosts for years. It could have been worse. He knew that. He was on the good end of the deal. But they had been adamant. No harm must come to Fontaine. Or Flynn. Or whatever he wanted to call himself. The team leader told them he could take him out with a leg shot, a sniper round from a thousand yards. They had said no. Might hit an artery. He might bleed out. And they needed him alive. No doubts about it.

  So his team had gone in with mixed rounds and lost. He knew Flynn was good. But Flynn had the advantage. He was prepared—no, allowed—to use deadly force. The woman, Hutton, had killed one of his team. Unlucky. Off the shoulder bone and into the ear canal. And Flynn had ended one other. The other two would be no good for some weeks. So now it was up to him. That was okay. That was just fine. It was a one-man job, really. He didn’t want backup and he didn’t need backup and he certainly didn’t need them doubting him again. He knew that for sure. They had made that clear. Further doubt would be the end of it. There was no coming back from it. And he couldn’t hide from them. Not forever. So it was up to him.

  He drove the freeway, sitting only five miles an hour above the limit. He wanted to go faster, but caution was a valuable asset. And he was ahead now. Out in front. The scales were tipping his way. He knew what Flynn knew, and he knew what he would do. He was confident of that. So he kept his speed short of everyone else and stayed invisible and drove on.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  First stop was an outlet mall in New Jersey. Beth wanted out of the track pants. Hutton took the opportunity to buy new clothes. Flynn got an espresso and waited by the truck. He took the wheel from there while Hutton made a couple of calls and tapped away on her laptop. They were passing Easton when her cell phone rang and she took a one-sided call. Then she hung up and turned so she could see both Flynn and Beth.

  “My office. Background on Cameron Dennison. She did indeed do time in Bedford Hills for aggravated assault.”

  “Assault. Nice,” said Flynn.

  “We also have something on the driver in New York. Daniel Cust, according to his driver’s license. He did time for GTA.”

  “A car thief?”

  “There’s more. His little buddy. Davie Rankin. Did time for armed robbery.”

  “I’m betting he wasn’t the brains behind the operation,” said Flynn.

  “He got caught in the act, so maybe he was.”

  “Point taken.”

  “Anyway, Cust and Rankin’s time away overlapped. Same facility.”

  “So they knew each other. How does that connect with Cameron?”

  “She and Cust shared a parole officer.”

  “Bingo.”

  “I haven’t gotten to the good part yet.”

  “Please do.”

  “Cameron Dennison did time as a juvenile.”

  “Jail?”

  “Juvenile hall, but for a kid it’s the same thing.”

  “What for?” asked Beth.

  “She burned down her parents’ barn.”

  “Not nice.”

  “With them inside.”

  Beth almost leaped into the front seat. “She killed her parents?”

  “Apparently. They couldn’t prosecute as an adult, and they couldn’t show that it was premeditated. But she did it.”

  “And got out.”

  “Eventually. So your theory wasn’t far off,” Hutton said to Flynn. “The older sibling did time and the younger one joined the army.”

  “So who owns the farm now?” asked Beth.

  “My assistant is looking into that.”

  Flynn asked, “Do we have an address for the farm?”

  “Bent Pines, PA. That’s as specific as it gets.”

  “Where is that?”

  “Appalachian Mountains.”

  Flynn just nodded and drove. Southwest on Interstate 287 and then east on I-78. He watched the topography change, minute by minute, mile by mile. The interstate system was a modern engineering and political marvel, the likes of which couldn’t be achieved anymore. It moved millions of vehicles from point A to point B with ease and speed. It wasn’t designed for sightseeing, for taking in the countryside. It wasn’t designed to prop up the businesses of the towns it bypassed or the communities left to flounder on what were once the main thoroughfares but were now local back roads. It was a boring drive. The landscape felt flat and wide but artificially dense. As they moved across New Jersey and into Pennsylvania, the roadside changed from population centers punctuated by open space into open space punctuated by population centers. They drove by Bethlehem and Lebanon. Both places Flynn had been, just not in the United States.

  Flynn stopped for gas outside of Harrisburg. They all used the restroom, and Hutton bought a round of gas station coffees. Flynn pumped the gas, leaning against the Yukon, and Beth wandered back from the restroom.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Beth nodded.

  “You don’t have to be here for this.”

  “Where would I go?”

  He nodded. It was a fair point, one he’d run through his head for miles. She couldn’t go home. Not until this thing was done. He couldn’t be sure someone wasn’t watching their home in California. And he preferred to keep her near. He could protect her if she stayed near. She stood beside the pump and wrapped her arms around herself. Hutton returned and passed around the coffee. Beth watched Flynn take a sip.

  “Gas station coffee,” she said. “You drink that after all? Is that something else I don’t know?”

  He shook his head. “It’s dishwater. But it’s caffeine.”

  Hutton offered to drive. Flynn accepted. It wasn’t his favorite task. He was as good at it as the next guy, maybe better than some. He paid attention for a start. But it occupied more of his brain than he liked, and he wanted to be thinking through options and scenarios and plans. For what, he had no idea.

  “I’m wondering if we should dump the Yukon,” said Hutton.

  “You want to steal some poor civilian’s car?”

  “We could rent something,” said Beth.

  Hutton nodded at that.

  Flynn said, “We should leave as little a trail as possible.”

  Hutton shrugged. “They might know the Yukon. Might recognize it.”

  “I doubt it. This is not a crew that takes inventory of their vehicles. Besides, in this part of the world, a dirty old truck is close to invisible. A shiny new rental sedan will stick out.”

  Hutton nodded and said nothing. She took the keys and got in the truck. Beth slipped in the back and Flynn topped off the tank and then they pulled back out onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike and headed west. It took a little over an hour more. The geography changed again, even on the turnpike. Hundreds of millions of years showed their work. The elevation happened gradually. There was a subtle shift in the genus of the trees. Flynn was no flora expert, but they certainly grew thicker with evergreens.

  The Appalachian range was a nebulous term, sometimes referring to the mountain country in Virginia, sometimes in Tennessee or Georgia. Backwoods country. But the range itself was the East Coast equivalent of the Rockies, a dividing range that ran from Canada all the way to Georgia. It was famous for the eponymously named trail, over two thousand miles of hiking down the eastern spine of the country. Flynn mused that he might like to do that, after all this was done. He liked walking. He had walked more than most during his lifetime. It was the single most important factor in his making it in the Legion. The training was physical and mental exhaustion. But what got most guys was the marching. The Legion liked marching. A lot. Some guys couldn’t handle it. Day after day. The soreness and the fatigue. But mostly the monotony. It wasn’t like a walk in the park, enjoying the scenery. It was a hard slog with twenty or thirty kilograms on your back. Luckily for Flynn, he found that he loved walking. Enjoyed marc
hing. The pace and the rhythm. He found a trancelike state, ready to break into action in an instant, but happy to remain in a transcendent place in the meantime.

  The turnpike passed through a tunnel in the mountains, and not long after, Hutton followed the GPS on her phone off the interstate. The road got tighter and winding. It didn’t take long for her phone to provide a message that it was no longer in range of a tower. But the map stayed on the screen and she could see the town ahead on the one road leading in the one direction.

  Bent Pines was barely a town. Katonah was Manhattan in comparison. There wasn’t really a main street as such. The road passed the town by. There were no signals and no off-ramps. Just a service road branching off that allowed access to a strip of buildings. Most of the structures were constructed out of wood. Flynn guessed pine. There was a garage that had no gas and looked long closed up. A small church that bore a crucifix but no hint at its denomination. There was a feed store that had another dirty Yukon parked in front. And there was a diner.

  Hutton pulled into the lot by the diner. There were two other vehicles, both trucks. The cook and the waitress, Flynn guessed. Not a waiter, not out here. Not in a diner. They sat in the vehicle for a long moment. Hutton looked at Flynn. Beth looked at Flynn.

  “I’m hungry,” he said.

  They got out. The sky was wispy white cloud and the air was cold and clean. Like breathing oxygen from a tank. Each of them stretched in their own way. Looked at each other. Then Flynn led them inside.

  The outside of the diner looked like a log cabin. The inside matched it. The walls were exposed logs, long and thick from a time when trees got old. There was a laminated counter at the back, six red-topped stools overlooking the pass-through into the kitchen. There were five empty tables, all set for four diners. No booths. The chairs were wooden, the tables were wooden. The floor was unpolished, like the sections of the floor in Katonah where the acid had been applied.

  A woman of about forty was behind the counter. She was wiping down the countertop the way waitresses are always doing. Their version of make-work. She had long brown hair and her face was lined at the eyes and forehead. She wore the look of a person who had spent time at the bottom of a bottle. She watched them come in and offered a tight smile and a nod.