Manhunt in the Wild West

by Jessica Andersen

  It wasn’t your fault, Chelsea tried to say. Don’t blame yourself. I’ll be okay—Fairfax saved me. But the words didn’t come out. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but let the world slip away as the paramedics loaded her into the waiting ambulance.

  Everything faded to the gray-brown of unconsciousness.

  She surfaced a few times after that—once as she was being wheeled through the hospital corridors, the fluorescent lights flashing brightly overhead, and once again during some sort of exam, when she heard doctors’ and nurses’ voices saying things like, “That doesn’t make any sense” and “Check it again.”

  She didn’t come around fully until early the next morning. She knew it was morning because of the way the light of dawn bled pale lavender through the slatted blinds that covered the room’s single window, and the way her body was suddenly clamoring for breakfast and coffee, not necessarily in that order.

  A quick look around confirmed that she was, indeed, in the hospital, and added the information that homicide detective Tucker McDermott was fast asleep in the chair beside her bed.

  The realization warmed her with the knowledge that her friends had closed ranks around her already.

  She knew Tucker through the ME’s office, and more importantly through his wife, Alyssa, who was a good friend. Alyssa, a forensics specialist within the BCCPD, was quick-tempered and always on the go. In contrast, Tucker was a rock, steady and dependable. He might’ve had a flighty playboy’s reputation a few years back, but marriage had settled him to the point that he’d become the go-to guy in their circle, the one who was always level in a crisis, always ready to listen or offer a shoulder to lean on.

  He made her wimpy side feel safe.

  She must’ve moved or made some sound indicating that she’d awakened, because he opened his eyes, blinked a couple of times, then smiled. “Hey. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m—” She paused, confused. “That’s weird. I feel fine. Better than fine, actually. I feel really good.” Energy coursed through her alongside the gnawing hunger, but there were none of the lingering aches she would’ve expected from her ordeal. Lifting a hand, which didn’t bear an IV or any monitoring lines, she probed the back of her head and found a bruised lump, but little residual pain. Oddly, though, she didn’t feel the brain fuzz of prescription-strength painkillers. “What did the doctors give me?”

  Tucker shook his head. “Nothing. By the time you arrived, your core temp was coming back up and your vitals were stabilizing. They decided to let you sleep it off and see how you felt when you woke up.”

  “I’m okay,” she said weakly, her brain churning. “Okay” wasn’t entirely accurate, though, because the more she thought about her ordeal the more scared and confused she became, as terrifying images mixed with the memory of the convict who’d saved her life, and the coworker who’d lost his.

  “Jerry’s dead, isn’t he?” she asked softly.

  She remembered the gunshot, remembered him falling, even remembered him lying in the van, limp in death, but a piece of her didn’t want to accept that he was gone. She wanted to believe he’d been stunned like she’d been. Not dead. Not Jerry, with his cold nose and ski-bunny girlfriend.

  But Tucker shook his head, expression full of remorse. “I’m sorry.”

  Chelsea closed her eyes, grief beating at her alongside guilt. She should’ve done something different. If she hadn’t been staring at Fairfax, she might’ve been quicker to recognize that there was a problem with the delivery. She might’ve been able to—

  “Don’t,” Tucker said. “You’ll only make yourself crazy trying to ‘what if’ this. If you’d done something different, they probably would’ve killed you, too.”

  “They did, sort of,” Chelsea whispered, her breath burning her throat with unshed tears.

  Tucker shifted, pulled out his handheld, which acted as both computer and cell phone. “You okay if I record this?”

  She nodded. “Of course.” No doubt she’d have to go through her statement over and over again with a variety of cops and agents, but this first time she’d rather talk to Tucker than anyone else.

  Haltingly at first, she told him what had happened, her words coming easier once she got started, then flowing torrentlike when she described waking up in the van and realizing she’d been kidnapped by the escapees, followed by Fairfax’s strange actions. She kept it facts only, reporting what he’d done and said, and figuring she’d leave it to Tucker and the others to draw their own conclusions.

  When she was done, she glanced at Tucker and was unsurprised to see a concerned frown on his face.

  “That sounds…”

  “Bizarre,” she filled in for him. “Like something from a not-very-believable action movie. I know. But that’s what happened.”

  He nodded, but she could tell he didn’t believe her. Or rather, he probably believed that she believed what she was saying, but thought her so-called memories were more along the lines of drug-induced hallucinations shaped by her penchant for spy movies that always included at least one double agent and a couple of twists.

  Then again, she thought with a start, what if he was right? She felt terrible that she’d been paying more attention to Fairfax’s butt than to her job and the potential security risks, opening the way for Jerry’s murder. What if her subconscious had taken that guilt and woven a fantasy that cast the object of her attraction as a hero, making her lapse, if not acceptable, then at least less reprehensible?

  “Maybe I’m not remembering correctly,” she said after a moment.

  “The info about Rickey Charles fits,” Tucker said, though he still sounded pretty dubious. “He was found dead in his holding cell this morning.”

  Chelsea sat up so fast her head spun. “He what?”

  Tucker winced. “I should’ve phrased that better. Sorry, I went into cop-talking-to-ME mode and forgot you knew him.”

  “What did he—” Chelsea broke off, not sure how she was supposed to feel. She hadn’t cared for Rickey and couldn’t forgive that he’d apparently made some sort of deal with the escapees, but she wouldn’t have wished him dead under any circumstance.

  “It was murder concocted to look like a suicide,” Tucker said succinctly. “I guess, based on what you just told me about what the driver said to you out on the loading dock, that Rickey was supposed to have signed off on the bodies, delaying discovery of the switch. When he turned up in the holding cell instead, someone working for al-Jihad killed him either to punish him or to shut him up, or both.”

  Which would mean that someone in the PD—or at least someone with access to the overnight holding cells—was on the terrorists’ payroll, Chelsea thought. She didn’t say it aloud, though, because the possibility was too awful to speak.

  Tucker nodded, though. “Yeah. Big problem. That’s why I’m here.”

  He hadn’t stayed with her strictly to keep her company, she realized. He’d stayed because the BCCPD had figured it might not be a coincidence that the ME who’d missed his shift that morning had wound up dead. Tucker’s bosses—and her own—thought she might be at risk, that whoever had killed Rickey might go after her next, looking to silence her before she told the cops anything that might help lead them to the escapees.

  Except she didn’t know anything that would help, did she?

  “Don’t worry,” Tucker said, correctly interpreting her fears. “We’re keeping the story as quiet as possible, and letting the media think you’re dead, too. If the escapees are following the news, they have no reason to think you’re alive.”

  Unless Fairfax had told them for some reason. But why would he, when he’d been the one to save her?

  She didn’t know who to trust, or what to believe, and the confusion made her head spin.

  She sank back against the thin hospital pillow, noticing for the first time that she was wearing nothing but a hospital johnnie and a layer of bedclothes. “Can I—” she faltered as the world she knew seemed to s
kew beneath her, tilting precariously. “Can I get dressed and get out of here?”

  His expression went sympathetic. “Yeah, you’re cleared…medically, anyway. Since your purse was still at the office, Sara used your key to grab clothes, shoes and a jacket for you, along with a few toiletries.” He gestured. “They’re in the bathroom, along with your purse. The keys are in it.”

  He didn’t offer to help her, which told her it was a test: if she couldn’t make it to the bathroom and get herself dressed unassisted, she was staying in the hospital until she could.

  She’d been telling the truth, though. She felt fantastic—physically, anyway—and was able to make it to the small restroom and get dressed without any trouble.

  In the midst of pulling on her shirt, she paused and frowned in confusion when she saw that there wasn’t any discernible mark where the injection had gone into her arm. He’d jammed the tip of that ampoule in hard enough that it should’ve left a mark. Did that mean it hadn’t happened the way she remembered?

  It didn’t take too many minutes of staring at her own reflection in the mirror for her to conclude that she didn’t know, and she wasn’t going to figure it out standing in a hospital bathroom. She emerged to find Tucker waiting for her, with his cell phone pressed to his ear.

  “You shouldn’t be on that thing in here,” she said automatically, her med-school training kicking in even though the actual risk was relatively minor.

  “I’m off,” he said, flipping the phone shut and dropping it in his pocket. “You ready to go?” He indicated the door with a sweep of his hand.

  He didn’t offer to let her in on the phone call that’d been so important he’d broken hospital rules to take it, but his eyes suggested it was something about her, or the escapees.

  Have you caught them? she wanted to ask, but didn’t because she feared it would come out sounding as though she hoped the men were still at large. Not that she did—her terrifying ordeal had more than convinced her that al-Jihad, Muhammad Feyd and Lee Mawadi were monsters who didn’t even deserve the benefit of an autopsy.

  “The man who helped me, or who I think helped me, anyway…that was Jonah Fairfax, right?” she couldn’t help asking.

  She hadn’t wanted to say too much about him, lest Tucker read too much into her words. But it wasn’t like she was going to be able to ask anyone else either.

  After a long moment, he inclined his head. “Yeah. The description fits.”

  “Have they been caught yet?”

  “No.” Tucker paused. “Maybe it’d be better for you to stay in the hospital a little longer, for observation.”

  Translation: I think you should go upstairs to the psych ward and have a nice chat with a professional about the definition of Stockholm syndrome.

  “That’s not necessary,” she said quickly. “I’m feeling fine. Hungry, but otherwise fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” she said, summoning a smile. “I’m not confused about Fairfax, and I’m ready to do the debriefing thing. I figure I might as well get it over with.” She took a deep breath and beat back her nerves. “I promise I’ll hold it together.”

  And she did. She held it together while they returned to the BCCPD by way of a breakfast sandwich to soothe her hunger pangs. Once she was at the PD, she held it together through several more rounds of questioning. The worst of it came from Romo Sampson, a dark-haired, dark-eyed suit from the Internal Affairs Department, but she stayed strong and answered his questions fully on everything except the way her heart had bumped when she first saw Fairfax. That much she kept to herself.

  After the questioning, Chelsea also held it together—more or less—through a tearful reunion with Sara and her other coworkers, and a trip down to the morgue to say goodbye to Jerry. She held it together through a phone call to Jerry’s devastated girlfriend, and then through calls to her own parents and sister. Each person she spoke to or saw was cautioned to pretend they hadn’t heard from her if asked; her survival was being kept very quiet because the escapees—three of them, anyway—thought she was dead. The fourth was still an enigma.

  Once she was off the phone with her mother, Chelsea thought about calling her father, but didn’t. Despite her mother’s best efforts to keep the family together, her parents had divorced when she was in her early teens. Her boat-captain father, a charismatic man with a wandering heart, had called and visited a few times a year for the first few years after the divorce, but that had dwindled and eventually stopped. Last Chelsea had heard, he was living with a woman twenty years his junior, running charters off the Florida Keys. He didn’t have a TV, and if he happened to hear about the escape, he probably wouldn’t even remember she lived in Bear Claw.

  Besides, she figured he’d lost the right to worry about her, in the process teaching her a valuable lesson that had only been reinforced in the years since: men who seemed larger than life usually cared more about that life than they did the people around them.

  Chelsea, on the other hand, cared very deeply about her mother and sister, and the friends who had become her extended family in Bear Claw.

  Just because she cared, though, didn’t mean she was going to let them run her life; she stood her ground when it was time for her to go home, and each of her friends had a different theory on where she should stay, none of the answers being “at home,” which was where she wanted to be.

  Mindful that Tucker was still watching her for signs of collapse—or Stockholm syndrome—she held it together through the arguments that ensued when she insisted on going home that night, and refused to let any of her friends stay over.

  She loved them, she really did, but her self-control was starting to wear seriously thin. She just wanted some alone time, some space to fall apart. Permission to be a wimp.

  “Seriously,” Sara persisted, “I don’t mind.”

  You might not, but I do, Chelsea thought, her temper starting to fray. She just wanted to go home and cry. “I’ll be fine,” she said, pulling on her coat. “I’ll be under police protection, for heaven’s sake.” Tucker had arranged to have a patrol car watch from out front of her place, just in case. She shook her head and said, “Honestly, what can you do that the cops can’t?” Like her, Sara was an ME. They didn’t carry guns, didn’t live in the line of fire.

  Not usually, anyway.

  “I’ll listen if you want to talk,” Sara said softly, quick hurt flashing in her eyes.

  “I’m all talked out,” Chelsea said firmly. But she leaned forward and pressed her cheek to Sara’s. “I’ll call you if that changes, I promise.”

  She held her spine straight as she marched out of the ME’s office, and made herself stay strong as she drove home in her cute little VW Bug, hyperaware of the Crown Vic following close behind her, carrying the surveillance team.

  After an uneventful commute, made unusual only by the fact that she couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing some mention of the jailbreak and her own supposed death, she pulled her cherry-red Bug into her driveway.

  The small, cottagelike house faced a side road and had large-lot neighbors on either side, with a finger of Bear Claw Canyon State Park stretching across her back boundary. The rent was on the high side, but she liked the feeling of space and isolation. At least she usually liked it. Given the events of the day, she wondered whether she might’ve been better off in a hotel for the night.

  No, she decided. She wanted to be in her own space, surrounded by familiar things. Besides, she’d be safe. The cops would see to it.

  The Crown Vic pulled in behind her car and two officers got out; one stayed with her while the other went into the house first and looked around to make sure she was safe and alone.

  Wrapping her arms around herself, she waited, shivering slightly even though the car’s heater was going full blast. Then again, why shouldn’t she shiver? She’d been kidnapped and nearly killed, and had gotten away only by the grace of God and the unexpected help she’d received fr
om the fourth escapee. Or so she thought.

  Fairfax was as much of a monster as the others he’d been caged with, Tucker had told her pointedly earlier in the day, and Chelsea knew he was right. She also knew he’d been warning her not to romanticize, as though he’d picked up on the fact that she kept thinking about the man who’d protected her, even though she knew she shouldn’t.

  Fairfax’s angular face was fixed in her mind, and the sound of his voice reverberated in her bones. She couldn’t help thinking that if they’d met under different circumstances she would’ve found him handsome. Heck, even under the current circumstances, she was having serious trouble reconciling the facts with her perception of the man.

  Then again, she’d never had very good instincts when it came to guys. Or rather, her instincts were okay; she just tended to ignore them. She’d seen what her mother had gone through with her father. And she’d been through a couple of near-miss relationships that had only reconfirmed that she needed to find herself a guy who might not be all that exciting, but was loyal and relationship-focused.

  Yet here she was, practically fantasizing about an escaped double murderer. Maybe she should be checking out the hospital’s psych ward.

  The cop who’d stood guard by her car knocked on the window, making Chelsea jump.

  “Sorry,” he said when she opened the door, “didn’t mean to startle you.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not your fault. I was spacing out.” She glanced at the front door, and saw his partner waiting there. “The house is all clear?”

  “I’ll walk you up.” He escorted her to the front door, where he and his partner turned down her offers of coffee, food or a restroom, and then left her to return to their vehicle, where they would spend the night, making regular patrols to ensure that the escapees didn’t try to contact her, or worse.

  When the cops were gone, Chelsea shut the front door, and locked and deadbolted it for good measure.

  Then she turned, leaned back against the panel, and burst into tears.

  She’d held it together like she’d promised Tucker she would. Now that she was alone, she gave herself permission to fall apart.