by Sam Sisavath
“You can’t keep running,” Trent continued. “You need to stop and face the music sooner or later. That time is now. Don’t make it any worse for yourself.” He held out his right hand, the palm facing up. “Give me the gun, and I’ll do my best to put in a good word for you. Heck, I’ll even leave out the part where you took me hostage and used my own service weapon on me. That’ll save me a lot of embarrassment, too, so it’s not all Good Samaritan on my part.”
Allie decided that she did believe Trent to be a man of his word, and he probably would do everything to help her out. The only problem with that was how much his word was worth compared to everything she’d done since this morning. Unless he had a magic wand… Which he didn’t.
“Come on,” Trent said, still holding out his hand. Those brown eyes, that had looked so hard back at the Don’t Stop In, were softer now underneath the shade of the woods. “Give me the gun, before it’s too late.”
“It’s already too late,” Allie said.
“Not yet, it’s not.”
“You forget about what happened at the bar this morning?”
“We can fix that.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet, but we can fix it.”
Allie smiled at him. “I need you to get in the trunk, Deputy.”
“Come on, kid. Don’t do this. Let me help you. Help me, help you.”
“You got that last part from a movie, didn’t you?”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“Get in the trunk,” Allie said, motioning with the Glock.
Trent again sighed heavily as he turned around. “Will you at least do me a favor?”
“Will you get in the trunk if I say yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then what is it?”
“Don’t tell anyone you took my gun?”
“Evans already knows I took your gun. He saw me take it back at the bar.” And so did Mickey the bartender, Allie thought but didn’t add.
“I’ll convince him to leave it out of his report,” Trent said.
“And why would he do that?”
“We’re partners. Plus, I basically taught the kid everything he knows.”
Including how to get taken hostage with your own weapon? Allie thought but decided the deputy probably didn’t need the extra ego bruising. Besides, it would likely come across as kicking a man while he was down.
She clicked a button on her key’s fob, and the trunk snapped open. “Inside.”
“The gun?” Trent asked. He was this close to begging.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
“How come I don’t believe you?”
“You don’t have any choice. Now get in on your own, or I’ll have to push you in there. And I’m not going to be gentle.”
Trent climbed into the trunk and lay down on his side. He pulled his long legs inward until he looked almost like a child lying in a fetal position before her. “This is embarrassing.”
“Relax. It could be worse.”
“How’s that?”
You could have been set up for a murder and didn’t even know it until the cops were all over your front door.
“Trust me, it could be worse,” Allie said.
“I don’t see how,” Trent said. “By the way, did I tell you I’m claustrophobic?”
“Is that true?”
“Would it help if I said yes?”
“No,” Allie said. Then, “Watch your head,” just before she slammed the trunk closed on Trent’s amusingly depressed face.
Well, it was amusing to her, anyway. She was sure Trent didn’t find it all that funny.
She didn’t even think about giving up. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She had entertained Trent’s offer—for a few fleeting seconds, anyway—until the reality of her situation took over: There was nothing at the end of this rainbow that didn’t involve her in handcuffs and standing trial for Tom Marshall’s murder. The revolver that had magically appeared in her cabin at the same time that Sarah and her son disappeared and cops were swarming the place were undeniable proof of that.
She was being set up, and it was a damn good setup, too.
Note to self: Congratulate the assholes responsible when you catch up to them.
The problem—one of many, but one of the bigger ones—was that she didn’t know the players or the reasons behind any of this. She had never met Sarah or Tom before. She’d never even been in Wells City until last week, didn’t even know the town existed. So there was no history here, no mastermind trying to get revenge for a past wrong that she might have committed against them.
And Allie had committed plenty of sins in the past to a number of people and organizations and law-enforcement agencies. But most of the people she’d “wronged” were dead or behind bars, and the ones that weren’t had their own problems to deal with that didn’t include her.
No, this wasn’t personal. Nothing about it smelled like a grudge. She wasn’t sure why she was so certain about that, but she was. The whole thing felt like a crime of convenience.
Unless, of course, she was missing something.
Was she?
No. I’m not.
…or am I?
She didn’t know. Not yet. But she’d find out.
God help her, Allie would find out one way or another.
That was going to be a little hard with the WCPD on her ass, though. Maybe they might have even gotten help from the county like Trent had opined. Or, if she was really unlucky, state troopers were already involved. How many forces could the Marshalls, if they believed she had killed one of their own, send after her? That would probably depend on how much influence they actually wielded. According to everyone she’d talked to, the answer was plenty.
I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
Allie drove in silence, lost in her own swirling thoughts. She hadn’t gone back down the road they’d taken to get to the cabin, because that would have led her to the state highway. At this point, with the cabin discovered, Allie fully expected an ever-expanding net looking for her. The cops would either know about the roads she’d taken already—including the one she was currently on—or run across them eventually.
So Allie headed in the other direction, using a web of dirt roads that snaked seemingly arbitrarily around this side of the hill. Every minute meant leaving the cabin farther behind, and along with it, the fading sounds of sirens. She didn’t know where she was going, but the GPS assured her there were more roads up ahead that she could take that didn’t lead right back to the very open highway that was, right now, probably crawling with cops.
She needed to keep moving. The wind outside helped to clear her thoughts, and the churn of the engine, along with the bumps in the road every few minutes or so, eased her nerves. There was something surprisingly calming about being here, driving down a single-lane trail flanked by knee-high grass and towering walls of trees, that she wouldn’t have discovered if none of this had happened.
Allie glanced over at the revolver, still wrapped in the handkerchief and lying on the front passenger seat. She’d considered throwing it away while running back to the Ford, maybe even taking the time to dig a deep, deep hole and bury it. But she’d decided against that. Soon the cops would figure out where she was parked. When that happened, there was the very real chance they might search the woods for evidence.
She couldn’t take the chance. There were too many scenarios where the gun could be located, and even though it didn’t have her fingerprints on it—she’d made damn certain of that by using the handkerchief—it was still evidence. She’d seen plenty of people convicted of murder—whether they did it or not—without their fingerprints ever appearing on the weapon used to do the crime.
But she had to get rid of the gun. She knew that much. How, was the question. It had to be efficient, and thorough. Even if the cops discovered it later, there had to be nothing left of it that could be used against her.
She had been driving for more than an hour when she remembered the radio and turned it on. She shouldn’t have bothered. They were too deep in the woods, and she could barely get any reception. The only station she could pick up played a seemingly endless stream of old country and Western, and even that faded in and out.
Allie gave up and turned off the radio, and was looking back up when something in the rearview mirror caught her attention—
The trunk of the car was open!
Allie slammed on the brakes. She had barely jumped out of the driver-side door when she caught a flash of tan uniform as it disappeared out of the road and into the woods.
Sonofabitch!
It was Trent. Who else could it be? Besides, the trunk was now empty.
For a second or two, Allie thought about running after him but quickly came to her senses. There was no point. It wasn’t like she was ever going to do anything with the deputy anyway. Certainly she wasn’t going hurt him in any way, so the fact that he was now out of her hair was probably a good thing. He’d done her a favor, and now she didn’t have to waste any more brain cells trying to decide what to do with him.
Allie closed the trunk back up. She didn’t bother trying to figure out how he had opened it, because it didn’t matter. The deputy was on foot, and it would be a while before he found help out here. By then, she’d be long gone.
She walked back to the open driver-side door and was about to slip inside when she heard the very faint whup-whup-whup of machinery somewhere above her.
Allie stopped, one hand on the door, and looked up as the helicopter flashed by overhead, the word POLICE stenciled across its metal belly plain as day.
If the pilot of the aircraft saw her standing in the road, they didn’t stop. The aircraft kept on going…until it didn’t.
There goes my head start, Allie thought as the chopper began to slowly turn around…
Sixteen
A helicopter.
A damn helicopter.
That was the worst-case scenario she could have thought up. A helicopter, even one flown by an inexperienced crew, could keep tabs on her from the air without too much trouble, even with all the foliage around her. Especially out here, with only two directions for her to go—front or back. Of course, she could break off from the road completely, but that would mean driving through a dense tree-populated area, and the chances of getting boxed in by trees were pretty high. That was, if she didn’t drive headfirst into one first and kill herself. The car, at this moment, had become a hindrance.
I should have ditched the car.
It would have been easier to lose the chopper if she could melt into her surroundings on foot. There were plenty of tall trees to vanish underneath. But again, that would only last until the cops from the cabin could widen their search for her. Speaking of which, the pilots would have radioed in her location by now.
Allie glanced at her mirrors. There was nothing back there.
Yet.
But it wouldn’t be long now…
She kept driving, her mind working overtime trying to figure a way out of this. There wasn’t one that she could see. It didn’t matter how long she thought or how many possibilities flashed across her mind’s eye. The chopper was going to follow her until it didn’t need to anymore—which would be when she was finally intercepted, then surrounded.
She snapped a quick look at her navigation. Yup, there was nowhere for her to go but forward for another five miles or so. After that, there was a right turn that would eventually lead back to the highway, where she would, no doubt, be met by a dozen or more cars at the exit. The phrase “a snowball’s chance in hell” came to mind.
So where did that leave her?
The gun. The revolver that someone had planted at the cabin. It bounced on the front passenger seat, mocking her with its shiny chrome body. She had to get rid of it, but how? She couldn’t stop the car. The helicopter would take note of that and, if they didn’t immediately suspect she might have tossed something out, they eventually would. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why she would have stopped in the middle of a chase.
No, that wasn’t going to work.
And yet, she had to get rid of the damn thing. Bringing it with her from the cabin had been a mistake, but she hadn’t wanted to risk ditching it so close to where all the police were. Fortunately, Trent hadn’t seen her return with the gun. Allie had wisely put the weapon in her jacket pocket, so if she got rid of it now, the veteran deputy wouldn’t alert a potential search group that there was a missing revolver out there.
That, as far as she could tell, was the only upside to any of this.
And it was a shitty one, too.
I’ll take it. Not like I have any choice.
She leaned forward to get a better look at the chopper. It had already caught up to her and was now hovering above, easily keeping pace with the Ford. It could have flashed on ahead but hadn’t, because it didn’t need to. It was also definitely keeping an eye on her, likely to make sure she didn’t throw anything out of the window.
Definitely not an inexperienced crew, then.
The cop leaning out the side hatch was cradling a rifle but didn’t appear to be in shooting form. They would have realized she was fleeing them—after all, she hadn’t stopped after it was plain to see they were shadowing her—but might not have gotten any orders to immobilize her at any cost. They didn’t have to take such drastic measures. There would be plenty of opportunities for that up ahead.
Because she had no place to turn. No place to evade.
She was…stuck.
Goddammit, she was stuck.
Allie kept driving. Not too fast that she ran the danger of hitting a pothole and puncturing a tire. The last thing she needed right now was to get stopped in her tracks. She grabbed the revolver from the seat and put it in her lap even as she scanned the road up ahead.
Trees, a lot of trees, with nothing but more trees to the right and left of her.
And beyond those, even more trees.
Damn, there were a lot of trees.
She sneaked another peek at the police aircraft. It was still up there—but of course it was still up there—and every now and then its silhouette flashed across her sedan’s hood only to disappear when she drove underneath a heavy canopy of tree crowns.
That was it. The canopies.
Or, more specifically, the shade they provided. The invisibility, no matter how temporarily. They didn’t just give her some respite from the sun but also kept the helicopter from seeing her. Not for very long, unless she decided to stop, but it was enough that if she could find a lengthy stretch of cover…
There, up ahead. A series of towering trees forming something with their extending branches that almost looked like a tunnel.
It would do. It would have to do.
Allie unfurled the revolver from the handkerchief and waited.
And waited…
Then she was underneath the canopy!
Allie gripped the revolver by the barrel with her left hand, her right controlling the steering wheel, and flung the gun underhanded with everything she had. She glimpsed the weapon disappearing between two large trees, said a silent Thank you, Lord when it didn’t bounce off one of the tall sentries and land right back in the road. If that were to happen, she would have had no choice but to stop and retrieve it.
But it didn’t, and the gun vanished into the dark shade of the woods.
She couldn’t be sure exactly how far she’d managed to fling the weapon—throwing it underhanded wasn’t exactly ideal—but she couldn’t locate it readily when she glanced at her side mirror. That had to be good enough.
Damn, I hope that’s good enough.
She continued driving, keeping a steady pace—and was out from underneath the canopies and back in the sunlight a mere five seconds later. The helicopter remained in the air, but now just slightly ahead of her. She hoped her constant pace had prevented them from marking her brief di
sappearance as suspicious. After all, it wasn’t as if she’d gone looking for it; the “tunnel” was just naturally there.
Allie maintained her speed, taking Trent’s service semiautomatic out from her front waist and placing it on the passenger seat. She hadn’t gotten rid of it because it wouldn’t have done her any good. In fact, it would have been problematic to ditch it, too. They already knew she had taken his gun, and if they couldn’t locate it on her person, they would have a very good reason to search the route she’d taken from the cabin for it. As far as she knew, the police had no idea someone had planted the snub-nosed revolver. She’d stumbled across it before the setup could fully come to fruition.
That’s it, look on the bright side.
Navigation told her that the turn that would take her back to the highway was coming up in half a mile.
Then one quarter…
She took the turn, and the helicopter did likewise in the air above her. Not that Allie ever thought she could lose the pilots, given the too-damn-straight nature of the back roads she was on. Besides, the ones up there probably had a better understanding of her surroundings than she did.
Allie drove on, steeling herself for what was ahead. She wasn’t going to make the highway. Well, maybe she’d make it, but that would be it. The chopper would have already radioed ahead, and if there weren’t already a dozen squad cars waiting for her, then they would be arriving very soon. The lack of car pursuit so far was a bit of a surprise, but maybe it shouldn’t have been. She had put a good distance from the cabin, and it would take them a while to catch up.
She fished her cell phone from her jacket pocket and pressed the Recent Calls list. It would have been difficult trying to punch in the numbers with one hand on the steering wheel, but it helped that she’d only made two calls total on the phone, so there were only two numbers to pick from. She scrolled past the most recent one, which was Hank from last night, and auto-dialed the second.
While the phone call connected, Allie snuck another glance up at the chopper. It was still up there. As if the damn thing was ever going anywhere. It paced her like a silver metallic hawk waiting to pounce.