Dead Too Soon: A Thriller (Val Ryker series Book 3)

by Ann Voss Peterson

  “She figured it out sooner than I’d planned,” Dixon said.

  Carla had never heard him speak of anyone with that note in his voice. Something almost like admiration. “I thought you hated Val Ryker.”

  “It’s not about hate, Carla. What’s between Valerie and me, it’s bigger than that.” He gave her a bored glance. “You’re going to have to take Grace on your own.”

  A nervous tremble seated itself in Carla’s stomach. They’d made such careful plans. Now that it had come to completing them, Carla felt a little shaky.

  “You have a problem with that?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then go get her. We don’t have much time. And I want to leave Valerie’s soldiers something to remember me by.”

  Chapter

  Twenty-Seven

  Val

  It took Lund only seventeen minutes to drive from the Dells to the old Baraboo train depot, even without lights and sirens. And yet, by the time they stopped on the hill overlooking the red brick building, Val had a horrible feeling they were too late.

  She eyed the hulk of a building along the tracks below and rubbed her numb hand and arm. Three stories of red brick and arched windows, the depot had been around since the 1800s. No doubt it had been bustling back then, when the most efficient mode of travel was by train and Baraboo had been home to the Ringling Brothers Circus. Now cinderblock filled spaces that were once windows, some painted red, some unadorned gray. The structure’s west end held two graffiti-scarred garage doors, a small steel door tucked beside one. To the east, a single small door was the only way out.

  She and Lund joined the county emergency response team at the edge of a scraggly clump of barren trees.

  “We’ve been seeing far too much of each other lately, Val,” Bobby Vaughan, the county’s ERT commander, said. “Sorry to hear you resigned as chief. After yesterday, I sure can understand the decision. Helluva bad day.”

  Val focused on a smear of mustard clinging to the man’s upper lip, apparently a leftover from lunch. She doubted he knew what her retirement was really about, but this time she managed to avoid blurting out an explanation. “Let’s make today a helluva good day, okay?”

  “Copy that. If your niece is inside, I give you my word we’ll—”

  “Do everything you can to get her out safely. I know,” Val said.

  He gave her a brisk nod.

  Val was grateful that he picked up her point. All she asked was that Vaughan and his team do the efficient, professional job she’d witnessed them perform before. Where emotion was involved, mistakes often followed. And with all Hess’s attacks on police officers, there was already enough emotion crackling in the air without layering on more in the form of a heartfelt promise to a worried aunt.

  Lund had started pacing, a muscle along his jaw flexing with tension. “What are we waiting for?”

  “A second team,” Vaughan said. “Don’t worry. No one’s leaving that building. Our sniper’s set.”

  Val eyed the neighborhood below. The sniper would set up in a neighboring house, like one of the vacant bungalows across the street. The second-story windows of both were dark, no movement inside. But that didn’t mean the sniper wasn’t present. Positioned as far back from the window as he could get, he would be invisible from where they were standing now.

  Val hadn’t breached a building in a while, not until her own house yesterday. The train depot was a lot larger, and that made her nervous. The rule of thumb was that once the hostage taker knew officers were there, they had roughly three seconds to act.

  Three seconds or Grace died.

  “If this place is used for storage, won’t it take a while to clear?” Lund asked, obviously thinking along the same track as Val.

  “That’s why we’re waiting for another team,” Vaughan explained. “Believe me, Chief Lund. We know we only have one chance at this.”

  Val forced all the things that could go wrong into the closet in the back of her mind and shut the door tight. Vaughan and his team were good. Very good. She had to believe they could get Grace out safely. There was no other choice.

  From the time the second team assembled, it took only seconds for them to get into place. Officers stacked to the right of the breach point. All wore body armor. In addition, the first two each carried a Level IV ballistic shield. The shields weighed a good forty pounds and were substantial enough to stop rifle rounds. Val could barely carry one with both hands. These officers held a shield in one and a service pistol in the other.

  The officers following the shields were armed with Heckler & Koch UMPs. A final officer toted a battering ram. He moved to the front of the stack, positioned the long, steel bar at the base of the lock, and waited for the silent signal from his commander.

  Val counted in her head, forcing herself to breathe.

  One…

  Two…

  The ram swung back.

  Three.

  Then forward. One blow and the lock gave.

  The officers filed in behind the shields. They moved quickly, knees bent and weight balanced in a tactical walk, rifles to their shoulders, lining them up with their master eye. One after another, they flowed into the building.

  Val’s pulse pounded in her ears, half hum, half whoosh. Her left palm was sweaty. Her right, she couldn’t feel at all. A tree above her dripped rain, pat, pat, pat on the back of her coat. Seconds ticked by, each slower than the one before.

  Finally the fuzz of static broke over her radio.

  “All clear. The building is clear. All clear.”

  Val stared at Lund, not knowing how she should feel.

  “If she’s not there, she’s okay,” he said. “He’s not going to hurt her. Not until…”

  “Not until I can witness it.”

  Lund reached for her, but she didn’t move. He skimmed his hand down her sleeve, then focused on the commander trudging up the slope.

  “Someone was here recently,” the commander said when he reached them.

  “Is there any way we can get a look?” Val said. She was a civilian now, and if Hess had been keeping Grace in the depot, the place was a crime scene. “We won’t touch anything. Promise.”

  “Oh, hell, Val. Go ahead.”

  Val and Lund followed him down the hill and into the building. While the Baraboo train depot might have been grand once, it was now anything but. The dusty scent of warehouse hung thick in the air. The checkerboard tile floor was so covered with grime and bird droppings that it was hard to discern the black from the white. Cobwebs hung from the balcony and window arches the way Val imagined curtains once had.

  “Krause was quite a collector, all right,” Lund said, gesturing to the dusty jumble of items lining the periphery. Many of the items were from the old depot. Ornate benches waiting to be restored. A porter’s cart. Others were circus themed. A cast iron clown. A pair of old stilts. A set of hoops some big cat might have jumped through while they were on fire.

  Val could imagine the circus-train-themed restaurant Harlan Runk had talked about. Too bad it was a vision Mr. Krause would never see to completion.

  There were no vehicles present, but even in the dim light, Val could discern the tracks of wet tires.

  “There’s a room upstairs that’s set up for housekeeping,” Vaughan said. “Bed, makeshift kitchen. It’s obvious someone has been living here. We’ll get the state crime lab up here, do a thorough examination of the place.”

  “Can we take a peek?”

  “Of the living quarters? Sure. But there’s something else you’re going to want to see first.”

  Val followed the commander across the concourse and to a small ticket booth, Lund one step behind. The ticket window was closed, a piece of plywood nailed over the ornate steel grate.

  Vaughan gestured to the open door. “If you’ll just wait a second, we can get some floodlights in here.”

  Lund pulled out his phone. A couple of swipes of his fingers, and the device beamed a bright light
into the room. “No time to lose.”

  Val and Lund stepped inside. The room smelled like vomit, the mattress on the floor old and stained. A radiator lined one wall, white paint worn off it in some places, and in others…

  Rusty brown smudges.

  Blood.

  Not enough to be from a fatal wound. Not even enough to be serious. But smeared in an unusual pattern.

  “What is that?” Val’s heartbeat picked up pace. Squinting, she leaned forward and stepped into the room. She stopped when her foot hit the mattress.

  Lund directed his phone beam to illuminate the radiator.

  The smears seemed far from random. But try as she might, Val couldn’t make out a discernable pattern. She focused past the smudges and on the old paint. “Do you see those scratches?”

  “Yeah. Those are letters.” Lund moved his phone, the light beam falling at a different angle. “I see a B.”

  Val stepped onto the mattress, trying to get a closer look. Her weak leg wobbled on the unstable surface, the sole of her boot pressing down on a hard lump under the springs.

  “Wait, Val,” Lund said. “Don’t move.”

  He shifted the light away from the etched message. His beam highlighted a small, olive drab package about the size of a lunchbox. The face was slightly cupped toward them and emblazoned with writing.

  FRONT TOWARD ENEMY.

  “Is that…”

  “One of Kasdorf’s Claymore mines,” Lund said. “We need to get out of here. Now.”

  Val looked down at the stained mattress. She shifted her foot, feeling the lump under her boot. Breath left her lungs in a whoosh. “I… I can’t.”

  “We’ll call the bomb squad. They can send their robot in, get a picture of those scratches. We can analyze it from a safe distance.”

  Val wished it were that simple. She’d been so eager to see what was scratched in the radiator, so desperate for it to be a message from Grace.

  “No, I mean I can’t move, Lund. I think I’m…” She swallowed into a parched throat and forced herself to go on. “I think I’m standing on some sort of trigger.”

  Lund

  If Lund thought his adrenaline was high when he spotted the Claymore, he’d been mistaken. A fresh batch surged through his bloodstream, making his heart pound and head throb. He directed the flashlight beam to highlight Val’s feet.

  The mattress dipped under the sole of her boot, shadow filling the depression. At the edge of the mattress, a cord snaked out from beneath and connected to the Claymore.

  Oh, shit.

  “You have to clear the building.” Val’s voice sounded strangely calm.

  “You okay?” Stupid. Of course she wasn’t okay. “I mean—”

  “Please, Lund. Get the officers out of here.”

  Lund reeled in his thoughts. He couldn’t let himself think. Not now. Not when he had a job to do. “I’ll be right back. Stay still.”

  “I don’t have much choice, do I?”

  Lund took one last look at the Claymore, at Val, then forced his feet to carry him out of the ticket booth. Most of the officers were upstairs; he could hear the murmur of voices, the drum of boots on the floor above. He turned in that direction and nearly collided with Bobby Vaughan.

  “Got that floodlight for ya,” Vaughan said, holding up the apparatus.

  “We have to clear the building and call the bomb squad.” Lund filled Vaughan in on what they’d discovered and the mess Val was now in.

  The commander’s complexion went pale. He thrust the light into Lund’s hands. “I’ll handle it. You make sure she stays calm.”

  Lund nodded, although he suspected keeping himself calm was going to be his biggest challenge. Pausing outside the ticket booth, he took a few deep breaths before returning to Val. It didn’t help. As soon as he saw her, his heart accelerated, each beat throbbing through his head. His hands trembled. His mouth was dry. He’d been a first responder for years, and at this moment, he felt like a damn rookie again. Unable to manage the adrenaline. Unable to see what to do next.

  “They’re getting out?” Val asked when he stepped into the room.

  “Vaughan said he’d handle it.” Lund set up the light the commander had given him, chasing the shadows. In the bright light, the room looked even shabbier than before, and the thought that this was where Grace was held, where Val might die, was too much to bear.

  “Lund, you need to go, too.” Her voice wobbled a little.

  From where Lund was standing, he couldn’t see Val’s eyes, just the side of her face, blond hair draping over high cheekbone. “The bomb squad… they’re on their way,” he said.

  “They have to come all the way from Madison. The drive alone will take almost an hour.”

  Of course. Dane County’s bomb squad covered many counties in the west and center of the state. Standard procedure when encountering something suspected of being an explosive was to clear the area to a safe distance and wait for the bomb squad to arrive. A good plan, but not if it meant leaving Val standing here alone.

  “You know, Val, I’ve been thinking. Things have been happening so fast lately that we really haven’t had much chance to just hang out for an hour or so. Chat.”

  “My leg, Lund. The mattress is unstable. I’m not sure how long I can stand here.”

  Of course. The MS. The damn MS. Lund offered his arm. “So I’ll help.”

  “I’m not going to last an hour, Lund.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “You need to get out of here. You need to leave me.”

  The whoosh in Lund’s ears grew louder, until it drowned out everything else. He couldn’t leave Val. He wouldn’t. There had to be some other way.

  He examined her feet, the bulge under her boot, her trembling legs. If only he could take her place. If only…

  Lund knelt down as close to the mattress as he dared. He reached for her boot, grasped the laces, and started untying.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting you out of here.”

  “Lund, you don’t know if that’s going to work.”

  “I don’t know it’s not going to work, either.”

  “And if you get my foot free, what then?”

  “Then I hold down the trigger until the bomb squad arrives.”

  “It’s too risky.”

  “Not doing anything is too risky. You said it yourself, you can’t last for an hour.”

  “And you can? In that posture?”

  He ripped the lace through the last grommet. Taking hold of the boot’s tongue, he spread it open.

  Val was probably right. What he was trying was a little crazy. He might not be able to keep enough pressure on the trigger for that length of time. His back might start cramping. His hands might grow numb. He might shift his weight, and that would be enough to set off the mine. But whatever happened, it was better than leaving Val, waiting for her to die.

  Lund gripped the edges of the boot and pressed down. “Now on three, begin inching your foot out. One…”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You have to leave, Val. I think I can hold the boot down, but if I can’t, you need to be a safe dist—”

  “Lund, knock it off. I’m not leaving. I’m not even taking my foot from the boot.”

  “You have to.”

  “You said that before, and—”

  “Grace is depending on you.”

  “Grace is depending on both of us.”

  Val wasn’t getting it. Of course she wasn’t. She was used to protecting other people. Protecting herself was much harder to wrap her head around.

  Lund twisted, trying to catch a glimpse of her face. Trying to meet her eyes. “Val, listen to me. If you get yourself blown up here, Grace is dead, too. If you’re not around, Hess has no reason to keep her alive.”

  Val didn’t answer. Her breathing hitched.

  Lund craned his neck, struggling to meet her eyes, but all he could see was the blur of her face in his per
ipheral vision. “You okay?”

  He picked up the movement of her head.

  “Okay, then brace yourself on my shoulder. You’ll need to pull your foot out very slowly. Ready?”

  “Lund… I…”

  “You love me. I know. And if we get out of this alive, you want to marry me as soon as possible and make love to me every day for the rest of our lives.”

  It wasn’t a laugh, exactly, just a forceful exhale through her nose.

  “And we’ll have kids.”

  “Kids?”

  “I figure five or six.”

  “Lund—” Val’s voice broke. “I’ve always suspected you were out of your mind. Now I know it.”

  Lund tried one more time to smile up at her, hoping she could see his intention, even if he couldn’t get a good look. “I love you, Val.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “This is going to work. You’re going to get away from the building and fill the bomb squad in when they get here. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “On three, you pull your foot out. Slowly.” He grasped the edges of her boot and shifted his weight forward, pressing it into the mattress. “One.”

  Val braced herself on his shoulder.

  “Two.”

  “I’m so sorry, Lund.”

  He shook his head. “No time for that. Are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay then… Three.”

  Her foot started moving.

  Lund shifted one hand onto the toe of her boot, pressing down in the spot Val’s toe had vacated.

  She lifted her heel… slid another inch… two… and finally slipped her foot free.

  Lund leaned forward, his weight bearing down on his hands, doing his best to keep the pressure steady. A second ticked by. Two. Three.

  “Now get out of here, Val,” he said. “And if I don’t make it, give my best to Grace… and my worst to Hess.”

  Chapter

  Twenty-Eight

  Machiavelli says it is better to be feared than to be loved. And I believe that with everything that is in me. I have lived the proof.