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

by Ann Voss Peterson

  Lund’s legs gave out, and he lurched forward, falling to his knees. He didn’t cover his face. He didn’t cry. He didn’t even breathe. All he could do was stare… at the last place he’d seen her… and wish the explosion would have taken him, too.

  “Maybe she got away,” Olson was saying. “She must have gotten away. We need to look. Get some dogs out here. Search the woods.”

  Stepping around Lund, the newly minted police chief headed up the trail in the other direction.

  Lund didn’t follow. He didn’t move.

  The slide of the wooden structure had taken trees with it, toppling some over the edge, leaving others scattered on the steep slope like broken toothpicks.

  And then he saw her. Resting facedown against the trunk of a pine on the edge of the destruction. The dark outline of a body against decaying snow.

  Lund jolted to his feet. Bellowing Olson’s name, he skidded down the incline, mud, leaves, and pine needles greasing his way. Her skin was cold to the touch, colder than it should be. Her pulse was weak but there.

  “You found her?” Olson called from above.

  “Get a backboard,” Lund yelled to him, and the cop took off.

  Lund struggled out of Olson’s coat and draped it over Val. He gently smoothed her blond hair from her scratched and battered face. Throat thick and vision blurring, he leaned down and kissed her cheek.

  “You hold on, Val. Okay?”

  She didn’t answer. Didn’t move.

  She had to make it. She had to.

  “We need you, Val Ryker. I need you.”

  Her eyelids fluttered, ever so slightly, but it was the best thing Lund had ever seen.

  “Hold on, Val.”

  Her lips parted. “Lund… you are… my…”

  “Don’t talk. You don’t need to talk.”

  “…respirator.”

  Grace

  They didn’t call an ambulance, but instead David and Sergeant… er, Chief Olson drove Aunt Val and Grace to the hospital themselves.

  Aunt Val was in bad shape, floating in and out of consciousness all the way there. Grace didn’t know what had happened with the explosion, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to ask. But when David reassured her that Hess had died in the blast, at least she could breathe.

  In the pit, Grace had been too cold to feel pain. By the time they’d arrived at the hospital, she hurt all over, her hand, her ankle, her face. She was worried about Aunt Val, but most of all, she was grateful the three of them were alive.

  So many weren’t.

  No one told Grace Oneida was dead, not the whole first night she spent in the hospital, locked in a drugged haze. Grace could understand why. They probably thought she was too fragile. That she’d be too upset. That if they waited until she was stronger to break the bad news, it might help her handle it. But what they didn’t realize was that Grace figured it out anyway. That part was easy. If Oneida was okay, nothing would have kept her from the hospital.

  The next morning, when the nurse encouraged her to get up, move around, try out her new crutches, she’d hobbled to Aunt Val’s room. She looked worse than Grace felt, her arms all bandages, the IV dripping into the inside of her elbow. Grace sat on the edge of her bed, and her aunt told her what had happened to Oneida, and holding each other’s battered hands, they cried.

  Then Grace had gone back to her own room, taken a nap, and when she woke up to a timid knock on the door, she got another shock.

  “Brad?”

  He approached her bed, his wheelchair rolling silently across the waxed floor. “Hi.”

  “I thought you were…” Grace shook her head. She had believed what Hess told her, thought what he wanted her to think. “I’m so glad to see you.”

  “I’m glad to see you, too.” Brad stopped by her bedside and took her hand in his. But he didn’t meet her gaze.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Do I look that hideous?”

  “You’re beat up.”

  “And you’re in a wheelchair.”

  Grace had been so glad he was alive she hadn’t realized the obvious until she’d said it out loud. “State. You’re going to miss state.”

  Brad’s mouth wobbled a little before he got it back under control.

  “I’m so sorry, Brad.”

  “Yeah.”

  “When Hess shot you… at first, I worried it was my fault. Something I said.”

  Nothing from Brad, not a word, not a look. A machine beeped from the nurse’s station in the hall. Someone with no musical sense whatsoever whistled a tune as he walked by the open door.

  “You think it’s my fault.”

  He looked up at her, tears glistening in his eyes. “You saved my life, Grace. If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have even made it to that barn.”

  “I was trying to make him think you didn’t matter to me so he would let you go. I never thought he would shoot you. I’m so sorry.”

  “Not your fault.”

  “What did the doctors say?”

  “That I’ll never play basketball again.”

  “You don’t know that. Did they tell you that?”

  “They didn’t have to. It’s my senior year. The season is almost over.”

  “But in college…”

  “I’ll miss freshman year. My leg won’t be strong enough. They might even pull my scholarship.”

  “Oh, Brad.”

  “I… My dad says we shouldn’t see each other anymore.”

  Grace didn’t know how she even had tears left, but they stung the rims of her eyes. “Oh.”

  “My dad is an asshole.” Brad leaned forward in his chair.

  The touch of his lips on hers was light, just a brush, really, but Grace felt it like a shiver in her soul.

  “I have to go. Doctor’s appointment. Are you going to be around tonight?”

  “The nurse said they might release me.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “David Lund said I can stay at his house.”

  “Okay. Well, I’ll call you. Maybe we can sit on the couch and watch a movie. I don’t think either one of us is going to be doing much for a while.”

  They made plans, nothing exciting, but to Grace they sounded just right. Then they said good-bye. Another kiss. A little hug. And then he was ready to go.

  “Don’t give up on basketball, Brad.”

  He smiled that sweet smile of his and gave her an awkward nod. Then he wheeled his way out into the hall.

  After a lunch of chicken noodle soup, lime Jell-O, and some kind of dessert made from stuff that tasted like raw pumpkin from a can, Grace practiced using her crutches again, hobbling back to Aunt Val’s room. She’d only been there a minute when David walked into the room, a little slowly, a little stiffly, but with a grin on his face and Ethan in his arms.

  “Gace!”

  “Hi, Ethan. How are you doing?”

  “Gace. Ice cream.”

  Grace laughed. “I told you I’d find ice cream, didn’t I?”

  “Mine!”

  “I hope someday you and I will have more to talk about than your love of ice cream, buddy.” Grace looked to Aunt Val and then to David. “What happens to Ethan now?”

  David’s expression sobered. “He goes back to foster care, and they try to find him a family looking to adopt.”

  “How about us?”

  “Us?” Aunt Val said.

  “I know it would be weird, that Ethan is his son, but he’s a great kid.”

  Aunt Val looked tired. “I know he is, Grace. But we can’t give him what he needs.”

  “Who says? He’d have me, too, you know. It would be like he had two mothers.”

  “And when you go off to college? What then?”

  Grace let out a heavy breath, her excitement dissipating with it. She hadn’t thought about college, about Aunt Val’s MS, about the fact that her aunt didn’t even have a job anymore.

  David put a hand on Grace’s shoul
der. “I’m going to keep track of him this time, Grace. I want to stay in his life if I can. Maybe you can, too.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Then we’ll make sure that’s what happens.”

  Ethan smiled at Grace, then David. “Ice cream?”

  Grace laughed. “Can we get some for him? I did kinda promise.”

  “When this was all over, I promised myself I would take you for a big dinner at the Supper Club. But I suppose for now we can settle for ice cream in the hospital cafeteria.”

  Ethan patted David’s cheek. “Lump? Ice cream?”

  Aunt Val let out a laugh. A welcome sound. “Did he call you Lump?”

  “Lump! Lump! Ice cream! Mine!”

  David groaned. “We never should have let McGlade near the boy.”

  Grace raised her eyebrows. “Who’s McGlade?”

  “Right here,” boomed a voice from the doorway. “Someone call?”

  Lund

  Lund was happy to see Jack, annoyed to see Harry, and fascinated with their story of rescuing people from the swirling waters of the Wisconsin River.

  Actually fascinated wasn’t the word.

  Incredulous, maybe.

  Lund couldn’t believe it. McGlade was a hero, having rescued more than a hundred people from drowning. Apparently, beer cans could float. So the people he couldn’t save in his duck, he threw cases of Grain Belt, like impromptu life preservers. And to hear McGlade tell it, after everyone was saved, he threw one helluva party.

  And now the village president had asked Harry and Jack to return for Lake Loyal’s Spring Fling Weekend, something about presenting them with an award for their bravery at the annual spring festival.

  “So, Jack,” Lund said, “we’ve heard Harry’s version of events. What really happened?”

  Jack smiled. “Long story. I’ll tell you some other time.”

  “Thank you so much, Jack.” Val hit the button on the hospital bed, moving the mattress into a sitting position. “And thank you, too, Harry. I mean it.”

  “You owe me one.”

  “I do. However, I can imagine what you expect in return. And the answer is no.”

  “I’m not interested in sex as favors. That’s pitiful. Like all men, I pay for sex upfront. But I’m thinking some other, more personal favor. I babysat Ethan for you, so maybe you babysit my kid one day.”

  “You have a child?” Lund said, not just incredulous this time but concerned.

  “No. That’s where the one day comes in.” Harry looked to Val, crooking the thumb of his mechanical hand at Lund. “You keep him around for his muscles, I take it, not his brains.”

  “Harry, you’ve got to admit…”

  “What are you trying to say, Val?”

  “Nothing. Just that you becoming a father seems… unlikely.”

  Harry grinned. “You never know…”

  Lund turned to Jack. “And I suppose we could babysit for you too, some—”

  She held up her hands and shook her head. “Now that is never going to happen.”

  A few minutes later, McGlade took his leave. Lund found a wheelchair to make things a little easier for Grace, and took her and the ice cream-obsessed toddler down to the cafeteria for a cone, leaving Val and Jack a little time to talk.

  He’d settled the kids at a table with a little soft-serve chocolate when he noticed a woman standing on the patio outside. The hood of her coat was up and sunglasses covered her face. She pinched a cigarette between two fingers, but although she made the motions of smoking, Lund noticed that she never actually took a drag.

  “Uh, can you watch Ethan for a minute, Grace? I have to check on something.”

  “Sure.” The teenager gave him a little smile and licked a drip dribbling down the side of the little boy’s cone.

  He stepped out into the cold and joined the mystery woman at the outdoor ashtray. “Thank God you’re alive.”

  Chandler’s lips remained in the same flat line. “God had nothing to do with it.”

  “What happened to you? Where have you been?”

  “Swamped.”

  “Funny.”

  Her tone sobered. “I did what I could with Burke. He didn’t have the detonator.”

  “Hess did.”

  “Right.”

  It had been a guess, on Lund’s part, but it added up. As messed up as Burke was, he didn’t seem like someone who would willingly work for a man like Hess. And if Hess was forcing him, threatening his family or something, why would the psychopath ever trust him with the detonator? Why when he could kill him in the flood instead? Nice and neat.

  Rescue workers had found Burke downstream, still in the fire rescue truck, drowned. It was a miracle Chandler had survived the flood. But then, Lund had seen her perform miracles before, things no human being should be able to do. “Hess is dead.”

  “I know.”

  Lund tilted his head. There was something about how she’d said the words, as if she hadn’t merely heard it on the news, as if there was a weight to them.

  “I’ll be sending Val something in a week or so,” Chandler said. “She might say she doesn’t want anything from me, but she’ll want this. Make sure she opens it.”

  “What is it?”

  “Make sure she opens it.”

  Lund watched Chandler. Her emotions were difficult to read on a good day. The sunglasses made it impossible. “When you say you know about Hess… how do you know?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Were you there?” The idea was improbable. If it were anyone else, Lund would say impossible. The dam had given way just a matter of yards from her. She’d been swept away by the water. That she could somehow escape that and get all the way downstream to Tower Hill Park was a long shot. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling. “Did you kill Hess or did Val?”

  Chandler pretended to take a drag off her cigarette. “You want it to be me, don’t you?”

  He had to admit, he did. “I would rather his death wasn’t on her conscience.”

  “Or yours. You left them there, Lund. You wanted her to do it. And I’m your chance to avoid taking responsibility.”

  If Chandler wasn’t there, how could she have known what he did? How could she guess what he was feeling now? “You were right. About high stakes and principles.”

  “I know.” Chandler stabbed out her unsmoked cigarette in the ashtray’s sand. “Make sure she opens the package.”

  Lund watched Chandler walk away. He didn’t know how to feel. Maybe Chandler was there. Maybe she killed Hess. Maybe she didn’t. Just by raising the possibility, she was giving Val and him an emotional out. A way to triumph without destroying who they were.

  “Thank you,” he called after her.

  She stopped. Glanced back. “For what?”

  “For being one of the good guys.”

  Then, offering him the slightest of smiles, she walked around the building’s corner and was gone.

  Chapter

  Forty-Two

  Val

  When a dog is rabid, you can’t fix it. You can’t contain it. All you can do is put it down.

  A week had passed since Jack had said those words to Val, once they were alone in Val’s hospital room.

  All you can do is put it down.

  Of course, Dixon Hess wasn’t a dog. He was a psychopath. He was a monster. But at the end of the day, he was still a human being.

  Investigators had found booby traps all over in what was left of the smelting house and the surrounding trails. Hess hadn’t guessed where Val and Lund would be as much as he’d blanketed the place with snares. Loose steps waiting to be pulled out. Railings designed to collapse. A canister of tear gas hidden in the smelting house. All waiting, clustered around the drop shaft. Once Hess had secured Grace in the tunnel, it had been nearly impossible for Val and Lund to avoid his tricks.

  The excavation crew had yet to find Hess’s body in the rubble, but Val couldn’t imagine a way he could have survived. With all t
he flooding, houses swept away, and bodies taken by the current, it might take a while to dredge him up, but he was there. He was dead.

  He had to be.

  Val had gotten a visit from a Madison detective while she was still in the hospital. It seemed a package arrived at the Wisconsin State Journal offices, postmarked the day Hess was killed. From all accounts, a bloated, angry, self-important manifesto from a killer. She hadn’t had the stomach to read it, not yet, but she was relieved to hear that the paper had decided it would never see its way to print.

  Val and Grace had stayed at Lund’s house since they’d been released from the hospital, and during that time, Val had attended funerals almost nonstop. So much death. So much loss. Officers had come from all over the state to send off Jimmy Weiss, Christopher Edgar, and the tactical team officers from Columbia County. Two more first responders had died trying to rescue the people of Sauk City and Prairie du Sac.

  And then there was Oneida, not officially an officer, but you would never guess that from all the blue uniforms at her funeral.

  Val was tired of the tragedy, exhausted from crying, and sick with loss. And that’s why she wasn’t sure she could handle a surprise.

  “I don’t know,” she told Lund when he proposed the idea of a blindfold and dramatic reveal of whatever secret he’d been working on. They’d just left the most recent funeral, a Sauk City firefighter swept away in the flood, and all she could think about was taking a nap.

  “It will only take a few minutes. And then you can rest. I promise.”

  Val heaved a sigh. “I need to tell Grace.”

  “No need. This surprise? Grace has been working on it with me. She’s already there.”

  It had occurred to her that Lund might be planning to present her with an engagement ring, something she still felt unsettled about. But if Grace was part of it, it must be the house. Grace had shown her samples of carpet, swatches of upholstery, and chips of paint while she was still confined to her hospital bed.

  Whatever it was, she owed it to them to go along. “I don’t have much choice, do I?”

  “No. You don’t.”

  Lund tied a folded bandana around Val’s eyes, then guided her into his truck. The drive didn’t take too long. Soon he was guiding her out, and she took a deep breath of fresh spring air and felt the bright sunshine caress her face.