Jack Frost

by Diane Capri

  Mitchell said, “Not yet.”

  When they went back into the kitchen, Woody and Noah were still sitting across from each other at the farmhouse table. The uneaten congealed breakfast was more unappetizing than before.

  Kim said, “Noah, any chance you could help me make coffee while we wait for your dad?”

  The kid seemed relieved to have an excuse to move. “Sure. The coffee maker’s over here.”

  He pulled the plug from the stainless steel percolator and rinsed out the old coffee. He put the grounds into the disposal and flipped the switch for a couple of seconds. While he worked, he pointed his chin toward a stainless steel canister set on the counter beside the stove. “The coffee’s in the middle one.”

  Kim grabbed the canister and brought it to Noah, who scooped the coffee into the basket. She put the canister back while he replaced the top of the percolator and plugged it into the wall.

  “Do you want milk? Sugar?” Noah asked.

  “Black is good for me,” Kim replied. She looked up toward the others crowding the kitchen. “You guys?”

  They shook their heads, and Smithers said with a grin, “Black’s good for me, too.”

  The comment caused Noah to crack a smile. The first time Kim had seen him relax at all since they’d arrived. The kid had finally begun to loosen up. Which could be helpful.

  The coffee finished perking. Noah poured it into chipped stoneware, handed the first cup to Kim. and then passed the others to Woody, Mitchell, and Smithers.

  While he was busy with his tasks, Kim leaned her back casually against the counter. “I want to find your mom, Noah. Do you have any idea where she is?”

  His face pinched up again and he shook his head.

  “Your mom’s a good person, Noah. She’s a lawyer, right? I’m a lawyer, too. I understand how hard her job is, even if other people don’t.” Kim spoke quietly as if she didn’t want the others to hear the kind words. “She got locked up in the prison last night. I’m sure that must have been terrifying.”

  Noah nodded. As much as he wanted to be an adult, he was a boy, not a man. Not yet. And he was worried about his mother. For good reasons he knew about and believed that they didn’t. Kim’s kindness was unexpected. He squeezed his eyes closed in an effort to keep the glassy tears from rolling.

  “Some of the men who escaped yesterday, men we haven’t been able to find, were your mom’s clients. She tried to help them before. We think they might come here,” Kim said, observing Noah.

  He kept his head down, and one of his tears dropped onto his lap. But he listened.

  So far, Kim had simply said what she knew to be true in the most sympathetic way possible. Moving on into the realm of speculation would be trickier.

  “These men might think your mom would help them get away. Because she’s a lawyer, and she represents them.”

  He shook his head slowly.

  She realized she was on the wrong track. “None of her clients came for help? Are you sure, Noah?” Kim asked, placing a hand on his arm.

  He nodded again.

  “But someone came here. Tell me about him, okay?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Saturday, May 14

  Newton Hills, South Dakota

  5:30 p.m.

  Noah shrugged. Another tear fell. The fidgety nervousness returned, but he replied this time. “He helped us with Grandpa. After he f-fell off the porch. He wasn’t a client, though.”

  “Did he take your mom away with him?”

  He shook his head. “No. She offered. She wanted to help.”

  “How could she help him?”

  “Not him. His friend. His friend was hurt. Got snakebit. He needed a doctor. Mom offered to drive him to get help,” Noah whispered.

  Kim glanced toward Mitchell. He nodded and said, “Rattlesnakes are all over this area in the spring. Easy to get bit. He’d need treatment right away. Best hospital is down in Bolton.”

  “Have you heard from your mom since she left?”

  Noah shook his head.

  “Did he tell you his name?”

  “Thomas Judd,” Noah said quietly. Calmly. Neither the name nor the man seemed to frighten him.

  Kim pulled her phone out and found Denny’s headshot photo again. She showed it to Noah. “Is this him? Thomas Judd?”

  Noah looked at the photo. His eyes widened, and he gasped. His entire body began to shake. “No. No. Not him. No. Definitely not.”

  Kim frowned and slid the images across her screen. Eight headshots. The prisoners who remained at large. “Was it one of these men?”

  Noah looked at each one and shook his head.

  Until she showed the photo of a man he recognized.

  “That’s him,” Noah said, clearly terrified now. He burst into tears. “That’s Judd. He’s got my mom.”

  Kim showed the image of Duff Keegan to Smithers, Mitchell, and Woody. “Okay, Noah. We’re going to find your mom. I promise.”

  Noah nodded, wiping tears with the back of his hand.

  “But to help me find her, you have to tell me everything that happened,” Kim said.

  Noah shook his head violently. “No. No.”

  Frissons ran up Kim’s spine and tingled the hair on her neck. The kid knew more than he was telling, but he was trying desperately to conceal whatever he knew. “I can’t help your mom if I don’t know what happened to the man upstairs, Noah.”

  Noah gasped, then clamped his lips together and refused to say anything more. His entire body quivered. He looked down at the floor and refused to make eye contact.

  Burke came in from the cold through the back door just as Noah stopped talking. “There’s no truck in the garage.”

  “I gave him the code to open the garage door,” said a man following close behind Burke.

  Bolton PD Detective Ned Turner. Had to be. His son Noah looked just like him.

  “That truck’s ancient and the springs are shot. It runs on diesel, which isn’t easy to find around here. And it’s not all that easy to drive, either. Shouldn’t be hard to find. I issued a BOLO on Fern and the truck,” Detective Turner said before he asked, “What happened here?”

  “Looks like two inmates, Ryan Denny and Duff Keegan were here. They were cellmates at Bolton. Fern left with Keegan,” Chief Mitchell said. “And Denny’s lying dead upstairs. Looks like Fern shot him.”

  “Fern?” Turner asked bewildered. “Fern killed Denny?”

  Noah jumped up from his seat, looking wildly at Kim before he announced, “Dad, she had to! He attacked her!”

  “Slow down, Noah,” Turner said, placing a calming hand on his son’s shoulder. “Tell me what happened. Don’t leave anything out.”

  The kid started talking, and it took him quite a while to get the story told. Kim listened to his tale with a practiced ear. She’d heard countless stories from crime victims and perpetrators before. This one sounded basically true.

  Noah admitted that he’d stabbed Denny after the inmate attacked Fern. And then she’d shot him in self-defense.

  Noah’s report made sense based on the evidence Kim had seen upstairs. But his tale didn’t answer all of her questions.

  Smithers asked a few follow-ups, mostly trying to tease out memories the kid probably didn’t realize he had until Kim heard a helo landing out front.

  “That’ll be my guys,” Smithers said. “I’ll get them started upstairs.”

  Mitchell’s backup teams began to arrive and tightly controlled chaos reigned. Various law enforcement and crime scene personnel deployed throughout the house and grounds, collecting data and evidence. The process unfolded slowly and meticulously and would continue for hours. Maybe longer.

  After a while, an ambulance arrived to collect old man Olson, and Woody volunteered to take charge of Noah.

  Smithers, Mitchell, and their teams were fully occupied with handling what had become the never-ending fallout from the prison break.

  Kim walked out onto the back porch. She neede
d to think things through. And she wanted to talk to Gaspar. Hours ago, she’d asked him to gather the intel from Fern’s phone and anything else he thought relevant. He should have something to report by now.

  Her muscles felt knotted and stiff from inactivity as well as the constant tension. She missed her daily run and the yoga routine she’d recently adopted. She stretched in the late sunlight like a sleek Siamese cat, reaching high and then bending low from the waist to touch the floor.

  She glanced at her watch. It would be dark in a few hours. The season of longer days and shorter nights was upon South Dakota along with the rest of the country. Sunset tonight was forecast shortly after eight o’clock. Searching for Olson and Keegan in the dark wouldn’t be an easy task. They needed to get going.

  Burke came outside to join her. “They’ve still got a lot of work to do in there.”

  Kim nodded.

  “Think we still need to locate Fern Olson?” he asked. “Or are we looking for Keegan now?”

  Olson’s files hadn’t painted her as particularly threatening. The files were wrong about that point. What else were they missing?

  Fern Olson was no longer simply a witness to be interviewed.

  Whether she’d acted in self-defense or in defense of her family or not, Fern Olson had killed a man three times her size.

  Shot him seven times in the chest.

  Olson was much more dangerous than she had at first appeared. Which meant Kim needed a new plan. Simply making an appointment with Olson and walking in to discuss Reacher was no longer an option.

  “I haven’t heard from the Boss that our assignment has changed,” Kim said.

  “Our assignment is to find Reacher. In pursuit of that assignment, our task was to interview Olson and then move on to the unnamed inmate who has an unknown tenuous connection with Reacher. It seems clear that inmate was Keegan,” Burke replied, as if he was lecturing a new recruit on matters even a newbie should already know.

  Kim frowned and narrowed her eyes. This guy had a high opinion of himself, for damned sure. Before she had a chance to reply, the Boss’s phone vibrated in her pocket.

  As always, Cooper’s timing was impeccable. Which probably meant he was eavesdropping on their conversation.

  As she reached to answer the phone, Burke said, “I called Cooper when I discovered the farm truck was missing from the garage. He’s probably calling to say he’s located it.”

  “That would be a first. He’s never that helpful,” Kim said, noticing the gnawing in her belly, probably caused by Burke’s easy relationship with Cooper.

  Given a choice, she wouldn’t have told Cooper about the truck, and she was annoyed that Burke had done so. Asking Cooper for help was never a good plan. He’d made it plain that he expected her to work independently, anyway.

  “I’ve got ten bucks that says you’re wrong,” she said.

  Burke lifted his eyebrows and nodded to accept the wager.

  The cell phone continued vibrating insistently.

  Before she could hit the green button to answer, Smithers joined them on the porch. “We’ve found the truck parked at a local doctor’s office. Back parking lot. I’ve got a team on the way. Probably ten minutes out.”

  “Keegan and Olson?” Burke asked.

  Smithers shrugged.

  The Boss must have grown tired of waiting and the phone stopped vibrating.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Saturday, May 14

  Newton Hills, South Dakota

  6:25 p.m.

  Fern Olson wiped her sweaty palms down her jeans again. Sweat soaked her bra under her breasts. Her breathing became rapid and shallow and nothing she had tried to do had calmed her nerves since Judd shot that cop.

  She had been frightened before in her life. Doing the work she did, living out in the country with Noah and her dad, being afraid was normal. Hell, it was almost her regular state of existence. She’d learned to handle it, most days, and carry on.

  But the level of terror she felt now was almost beyond enduring.

  She wondered how much adrenaline her body could produce and absorb. At some point, wouldn’t she collapse from the overload? Perhaps her heart would simply stop the painful, rapid pounding.

  Wasn’t that what the doctors called sudden cardiac death? She thought it was. All of a sudden. The heart just stops. The end.

  What would that feel like? Another long shudder ran through her body.

  When Micah had said Walsh might die with or without the antivenom, Fern’s tension had ramped up to a level beyond her endurance. She’d had to sit down and try to calm herself. No success. Her heart pounded harder than a frenzied rock band.

  She’d suspected that Judd was not the guy’s real name the moment she’d seen Walsh unconscious in that Land Rover. Then Judd shot that cop, and she’d been too freaked out to think clearly at all.

  Her suspicions were confirmed when Judd gave the cop at the roadblock two fake IDs, one for Walsh and one for himself. Whoever he was, his name was not Thomas Judd.

  But she didn’t know who he was or what else to call him, even in her head. Judd would have to suffice for now.

  Micah had come back into the exam room with a plastic tray containing several vials of antivenom. He administered the drugs and then monitored Walsh closely while Fern and Judd watched.

  Nothing happened at first. After an hour, Judd had demanded, “How much longer before he revives?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never had a patient like this before.” Micah snapped his reply and slammed his palm down hard on the counter. “I’m not God. I’m just a country doctor. My resources here are limited. He needs hospital care. I’ve told you that already.”

  “You did.” Judd leveled the gun at Micah’s chest. Steadily, coldly, without a trace of doubt, he said, “And if you want to live until supper time, you won’t say that again.”

  Fern’s breath sucked in of its own accord. It felt like her heart had stopped beating in her chest at that point. Intense pain doubled her over.

  Her vision darkened at the edges. Her entire body trembled uncontrollably.

  She’d never had a full-on anxiety attack before, but she hoped she was having one now instead of a massive heart attack.

  “What is your problem?” Judd turned his gaze, and the gun, toward her. “Go get coffee and something to eat. Dr. Warner and I need to talk.”

  Fern somehow stood on wobbly legs and took a few steps toward the doorway, holding onto the wall to keep her balance.

  “Fern!” Judd said sharply. “Do anything stupid and the doc dies. And your kid. Your dad, too. Got that?”

  She didn’t trust herself to speak. She simply nodded and kept moving toward the kitchen. With every step away from Judd, her anxiety lessened. She didn’t normally suffer from extreme emotional reactions. But she’d never been faced with circumstances like this, either.

  In the kitchen, she found the coffee maker and the coffee and got the pot brewing while keeping one ear trained toward the exam room. Inside the small house, Fern would hear the gunshots if Judd made good on his threats. Which she absolutely knew he was capable of doing.

  She went to the bathroom and washed her face with cool water. When she returned to the kitchen, she glanced toward the back door.

  A pegged board held Micah’s coats but not the keys to his two vehicles parked in the garage. He’d probably left them in his Jeep and his truck. She looked out the window. Dad’s old beater was parked out there on the driveway where she’d left it, too.

  She had options. She could run out the back and get away before Judd noticed, maybe. He could flee in Micah’s Jeep. It was newer and easier to drive.

  If he could get away, maybe that would be enough for him.

  For half a moment, she considered the option seriously.

  And then she shook her head.

  If she ran now, Judd would make good on his threat to shoot and kill Micah, for sure. She’d known Micah Warner all her life. He was a few years
older, but they’d always been friends. They’d even dated a few times when she was in college. Before she’d fallen in love with Ned Turner.

  “No,” she murmured aloud, rejecting the brief plan.

  It was her fault Micah was in this position. She’d brought Judd and Walsh here. Micah’s fate rested squarely on her conscience.

  She couldn’t give Judd an excuse to kill Micah, either.

  Not only was Micah a good friend, but the community also needed a physician, and not many were willing to live way out here. He didn’t deserve to die.

  Fern watched the coffee drip into the pot and inhaled its life-affirming aroma. Which steadied her breathing and calmed her anxiety a bit. Her heart rate slowed, no longer thumping like a giant jackrabbit.

  When she’d managed to peel herself off the ceiling, she admitted that things with Micah could go either way. If the antivenom worked and they could get Walsh away from here…

  She searched the kitchen until she found cheese and crackers and an opened package of salami. She grabbed a few napkins, too, and put everything on a tray.

  When the last of the coffee dripped into the pot, she collected three empty mugs from the cupboard. She noticed that her hands didn’t shake as she carried the tray toward the exam room. Progress.

  She’d left the exam room door open in case she needed to run back quickly. No alarming noises had reached her while she’d been gone, and she heard no conversation of any sort as she returned.

  Perhaps the quiet was a good sign, too. She hoped.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Saturday, May 14

  Newton Hills, South Dakota

  7:05 p.m.

  Fern walked into the exam room and set everything down on the counter next to a small stainless steel tray containing a suture holder and the remnants of suture materials. She’d seen her son get stitches enough times to recognize the equipment.

  She hoped it was a good sign that Micah had bothered to treat Walsh’s wound. Surely he wouldn’t have done that if he’d thought Walsh would die, would he?