Tempting Evil

by Allison Brennan

  Aaron didn’t need to tell Doug that.

  “It’s the only way this will work. Do it.”

  A sound. A snowmobile. He jumped up, parted the curtains a fraction. Joanna had just started her snowmobile. She was looking at the cabin. Stay away. Stay back.

  “I have to go. Do what I say, Doug.”

  “Or what? You going to kill me like you killed O’Brien?” Doug had his hand on his gun.

  Aaron glanced at Vicky Trotsky. Almost felt bad for her. She didn’t ask for this, not like other women. “Kill her before you leave. She can identify you, and me.”

  Vicky tried to scream and fought the ties. Aaron turned from her, unbolted the door. “If you fuck this up, Chapman, you’re dead.”

  “Ooo, big threat.” But he didn’t sound so tough—he knew Aaron was dead serious. “Fine. But I have all day, right?”

  “No one will be out here tonight, I’ll make sure of it. Be out before seven tomorrow morning.”

  “That’ll give me plenty of time for some more fun.”

  Vicky whimpered and strained, the fishing wire cutting deep into her wrists.

  “Keep that up,” Aaron told her, “and you’ll kill yourself.” He turned to Doug. “Don’t make her suffer.”

  Demo version limitation

  TWELVE

  It took Tyler nearly thirty minutes to drive down the interstate to Monida, and it would be at least two hours before he, his two deputies, and the Feds hit Lakeview. If the snow didn’t fall heavier than the few wisps that started as they left Monida.

  He was about to radio Bonnie to patch him into the lodge. The ringing phone had to have been a glitch, or no one could hear it. Phone lines simply didn’t go out in the valley. They were buried, and he’d never heard of a problem.

  Bonnie came on almost immediately. “I have Wyatt on the radio.”

  “Patch him through.”

  A minute later, Wyatt said, “Tyler.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Karl Weber radioed me. Jo is on her way now.”

  “When did you talk to Karl? I talked to Trixie earlier this morning, but haven’t been able to reach anyone by phone since.”

  “About ten, fifteen minutes ago. He was having radio trouble earlier, but it’s fixed.”

  Tyler didn’t like the coincidence of radio trouble coupled with not being able to reach the lodge by phone, but at least Wyatt had spoken to Karl.

  “Karl didn’t sound worried or distressed?”

  “Not really—he asked if I knew about the escaped prisoners, and I told him that we had talked.”

  Tyler said to Wyatt, “Don’t tell me that Jo left the lodge alone.”

  “No. She brought several men with her. Karl said the weather was too unpredictable for the scouts to hike to the lodge, so we’re going to double up on snowmobiles and probably arrive before you get there.”

  “Who did she leave with?”

  “Karl didn’t say. Must be guests from the lodge. Any word on the prisoners?”

  “No,” Tyler said. “But Nash said two of his snowmobiles are missing.”

  “Stolen?”

  “Appears so. I wanted to give Jo another warning. She’s a smart woman, but she’s also stubborn.”

  Wyatt agreed. “Yes, she is.”

  “Is there anywhere other than the lodge where you can take the boys? What about that place near Elk Lake? Or the Worthingtons’?”

  “Both places are too difficult to reach with an injured boy,” Wyatt said. “The valley is nearly four hundred thousand acres. The chances that two killers will stumble over us, slim to none. And I’ll hear a snowmobile from miles away. Sound carries extremely well out here. I’ll be cautious.”

  “Tell Jo about the theft when you see her.”

  “Anything else you want me to pass on?”

  “Nothing I won’t tell her myself when I see her. We’re about four miles from Lakeview. We should meet up around the same time at the lodge.”

  “Do you really think these guys are a threat?” Wyatt asked.

  Tyler glanced at Hans Vigo in the seat next to him. Why would the Feds have come all the way out here unless they thought there was a real threat? There was something to their concerns, and his own fear.

  “Just keep your eyes and ears open, Wyatt.”

  “Yes, Sheriff.” Wyatt hung up and Tyler winced. He hadn’t meant to sound so bossy. It came with the territory. Was that why he and Wyatt couldn’t regain the brotherhood they’d shared as kids? Because they had both grown up into strong-willed, stubborn men who didn’t like to explain themselves?

  Tyler was about to radio Bonnie again to patch him into the lodge—he’d like to talk to Karl Weber himself, tell him about the personal threat to Jo—when Mitch Bianchi shouted from the backseat, “Stop!”

  Tyler slowly braked. Slamming on the brakes could have put them into a skid or spin. Before they fully stopped, he saw the same thing Mitch Bianchi had.

  A car roof.

  Tyler motioned for everyone to remain silent as they exited the police 4X4 truck, guns drawn. If there was someone in the car, it was doubtful they were alive. But if somehow a killer had survived, he was trapped, and trapped animals attacked first.

  They approached slowly by necessity, the snow soft under their boots. The car was off the road, but barely. Most likely it had gotten stuck. Tyler remembered that, according to the anonymous caller, the killers were driving a Ford 250 truck.

  The vehicle looked like a truck, the bed full of snow, the cab almost completely covered as the wind had blown drifts of snow around it. Tyler motioned for his deputy to get into the bed, and Bianchi took the front. Tyler approached the side and kicked the snow off the window.

  Empty.

  “It’s the same type of truck that Chapman and Doherty were last seen in,” Bianchi said. “What are the odds?”

  “It’s theirs.” Tyler took a shovel from his vehicle and scooped snow away from the door so he could open it.

  “How can you tell?”

  “Look.” He pointed to a map on the floor. It wasn’t just that it was a map of eastern Idaho and southwest Montana. There was blood spatter on it.

  Bianchi came around and held the door open against the pressure of the snow while Tyler picked up the map. There was more blood on the dashboard, much of it smeared as if someone had tried to clean up. As if to prove the point, Bianchi gestured to the rear bench seat. Bloodstained napkins from a fast-food chain had been tossed into the back.

  “I think this confirms that our anonymous caller was Tom O’Brien,” Bianchi said.

  “How so?”

  “Let’s say the ‘accident’ Tom O’Brien talked about was that his two buddies were onto him,” Bianchi said.

  “Onto him? I don’t get it,” Tyler said.

  “We told you earlier that we have reason to believe that Tom O’Brien has been tracking the fugitives on his own, detaining them until authorities arrive. I’m thinking that somehow O’Brien slipped up, maybe said something he shouldn’t. Chapman has a hair-trigger temper. We suspected he’d stolen a gun. So O’Brien slips up and Chapman shoots him. Tosses him from the truck outside Pocatello.”

  “O’Brien is one lucky son of a bitch,” Grossman said. “To survive with a bullet hole for hours in this weather.”

  “Could be he ran, passed out somewhere—a public restroom? Maybe he stole another car? We don’t know,” Bianchi said. “But it makes sense, including his waiting half a day to call it in.”

  “O’Brien said he was in an accident,” Tyler said, considering what Bianchi was saying and trying to reconcile that to the facts as he knew them.

  “Accident my ass,” Bianchi said. “Accident in that he slipped up accidentally. But he didn’t say car accident, did he? No, they shot and dumped him, thinking he was dead or dying.” He slammed his fist on the roof of the truck. “If I was only in Pocatello, I could find him!”

  “Mitch,” Vigo said quietly. The other Fed took a step away, hands f
isted, but didn’t say anything. “We need to get to the lodge as soon as possible.”

  “Let’s go,” Tyler said. The abandoned truck was only a mile from where the snowmobiles were stolen. The killers had more than enough time to make it to the Moosehead Lodge. Unless they had been injured or lost. With luck, they were dead in the snow.

  Vigo didn’t move.

  “What are you thinking?” Tyler asked, eager to get moving.

  “His body would be here,” Vigo mumbled. He stared at the interior of the truck, deep in thought.

  “Hans?” Bianchi asked after a long minute.

  “Chapman was driving. O’Brien was in the passenger seat. Doherty was in the back. Doherty shot O’Brien.”

  Tyler stared at the cab, trying to see what Hans Vigo saw. As the senior Fed explained what he believed happened, Tyler could picture it unfolding right before them.

  “Chapman was driving because he’s the grunt man. He can’t sit still. He would have to drive. And Doherty would be fine with that because he wanted to think, to fantasize about Joanna Sutton. To build up the relationship in his mind, so that when they saw each other he would believe she felt exactly the same as he did.

  “O’Brien was looking for a chance to take control of the situation. He couldn’t take them together. That’s why he called Bianchi when he had Blackie Goethe’s gang cornered. He knew he couldn’t take them all, so he tipped his hand, put his own freedom on the line. With Chapman and Doherty, he’d probably thought he could separate them, take one of them down first, then the other.”

  “What happened? How did he trip up?”

  Hans climbed into the cab, then into the backseat. He stared at the seat belts, then settled in the middle. “Doherty sat here. That way he could see both Chapman and O’Brien. He didn’t trust Chapman because he’s a hothead. He didn’t trust O’Brien because he’s smart. And—and because he disappeared for a couple days. He left to trap Blackie Goethe’s gang. He had a good excuse, something that sounded right on the surface, but Doherty is suspicious by nature. He wouldn’t trust him. He’d want to watch him. But he didn’t shoot him because he thought O’Brien was going to turn him in.”

  “He shot him because of Jo,” Tyler said, suddenly putting the facts in perspective. “O’Brien was in the passenger seat with the map.”

  “Exactly. He was trying to figure out where they were going, who they planned on seeing. Probably joking around a bit. Trying to get them to trust him. But he said the wrong thing about Jo Sutton.”

  “Guy talk,” Bianchi interjected. “Something seemingly innocuous, like how hot she was.”

  “He knew what she looked like, but not her name,” Tyler remembered. “Doherty had a picture. O’Brien wanted to warn her, but didn’t know who she was. He started asking Doherty questions about her.”

  “He asked the wrong questions,” Vigo said. “They didn’t know O’Brien was trying to send them back to prison. Doherty thought that O’Brien was trying to steal his girl.”

  “Jo Sutton is not his girl,” Tyler said.

  Vigo shook his head as if to clear it. “Sorry. I sometimes get overinvolved in my profiles.”

  Tyler nodded, feeling a touch self-conscious by his reaction. Jo was his girl. If only she would realize it.

  Her words that night came to him loud and clear.

  “I feel like I’m still married.”

  Jo Sutton belonged to a dead man. And until she made peace with that, she wouldn’t be able to open up to him.

  But damn if he was going to let some psychopathic obsessive killer near her.

  “I may be wrong,” Vigo admitted as he clambered out of the truck. “It’s just an educated guess.”

  Bianchi said, “Your educated guesses are usually right on the money. And it fits what we know about Doherty’s personality and O’Brien’s phone call.”

  “Let’s move,” Tyler said.

  “And put these bastards back in prison,” Vigo added.

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” Tyler said, relieved to be moving again.

  Aaron rode directly behind Joanna, who led the twelve-mile trek to where the Boy Scouts were waiting. They were going at a steady 10-to 15-mile-per-hour pace, primarily because visibility was poor. But it wasn’t snowing, the few flakes falling almost as an afterthought.

  Aaron didn’t feel the cold, he barely felt the motor of the snowmobile beneath him. His jaw was locked tight and he stared at Joanna’s bright red ski jacket.

  Why had she asked two other men to join them?

  The excuse that they could bring the boys back together rang hollow. Why hadn’t she thought of that at first? Why all this deception? Why didn’t she want to be alone with him? Hadn’t they planned this lover’s interlude, time to really get to know each other as they rode to save the Boy Scouts?

  An anguished cry caught in his throat. She didn’t love him like he loved her. How could he believe he was worthy of such a beautiful, smart woman?

  (You’re pathetic, kill her now.)

  He was a convicted murderer, a man who couldn’t provide for Joanna. How could he keep her happy? How could he care for her and make sure she had everything she wanted? When they were on the run, constantly looking over their shoulders. How could he expect her to live like that?

  She’d do it if she really loved you. And if she doesn’t love you, kill her.

  (Kill her now.)

  No, no, no! He didn’t want to kill her. That was something Doug Chapman would do, kill a woman because she made him mad. He’d killed his wife to get rid of her so he could be with his girlfriend, then he killed his girlfriend when she wanted to leave him because he killed his wife.

  The irony made Aaron laugh out loud. No one heard his cackle over the loud hum of the snowmobiles. Did Doug even see the ludicrous life he led?

  What about Aaron? He was a nobody, and Joanna must see that. His nothingness was plastered over his face, in his words, an average man in an average body with an average mind.

  You’re smart, Aaron. Very smart. If she doesn’t see that, she needs to die.

  No! Dammit, he didn’t want to kill her. His chest heaved and he couldn’t catch his breath. How could he take away something so beautiful and precious?

  Tell her the truth.

  That he killed Lincoln Barnes? Then she would know he was one of the escaped convicts.

  She’ll forgive you.

  Or better yet…he could apprehend a killer. He could risk his life to save hers. Put a bullet in Doug Chapman’s gut, just like he did to that letch Tom O’Brien who was staring at Joanna’s breasts in the picture.

  He would save her life and she would fall in love with him.

  Aaron needed to figure out exactly how to set it up. And fast. Before the damn Sheriff Tyler McBride—Love, Tyler—arrived.

  Joanna looked back over her shoulder and pointed her finger to the northeast. They were curving around. He had no idea where they were, but Joanna had a marvelous sense of direction. Such a smart girl.

  His chest swelled with pride. She belonged to him.

  THIRTEEN

  Annie Erickson poured coffee for the well-dressed FBI agent who was sitting at her small oak kitchen table.

  “Thank you for agreeing to talk to me,” he said.

  She glanced at his card. QUINCY PETERSON, ASSISTANT SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE, FBI SEATTLE REGIONAL FIELD OFFICE

  “You wanted to talk about Aaron?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Have you found him?”

  “We’re closing in on him, but we need some additional information to help us pinpoint his exact location and his mind-set.”

  She glanced down. Though the federal agent looked like a nice, handsome man not much older than Aaron, his job was to put poor Aaron back behind bars.

  “Ms. Erickson? You testified at Aaron’s trial. You asked for leniency because of childhood abuse.”

  “The judge didn’t listen to me. But he wasn’t there—he didn’t watch that woman dest
roy that little boy.”

  “But you were there.”

  “From the day Aaron was born, Ginger left him with friends and family until she had no one left who would take him. I wanted to adopt him, to raise him as my own—she knew I loved him, and she took him away from me. I loved him more than she ever could!” Annie looked down at her own coffee cup, remembering the last time she’d seen Aaron as a boy. He’d been thirteen. When Ginger left with him, Annie knew she’d never bring him back.

  “How did you know Ginger and Aaron?”

  “Ginger’s mother and mine had been friends when we were kids.”

  “You and Ginger weren’t friends?”

  Annie shrugged. “Not close. We grew up in Los Angeles, went to the same school, lived nearby. Since our moms were friends, we saw each other often.”

  “Did you know Aaron’s father?”

  She’d never met Joe Dawson, but he was as much to blame for what had happened to Aaron as Ginger. If he had a backbone, he would have fought for custody of his son. His parents were good people and would have taken care of Aaron. But Joe was as selfish as Ginger.

  “Joe Dawson didn’t want to be a father. Aaron wasn’t the only child he fathered out of wedlock. Last I heard he has four kids out of four different women. His parents stepped in and he married the mother of the last child, but I don’t know if they are still together.”

  “You know a lot about the family.”

  “I did. Until my mom died two years ago she kept in contact with Ginger’s mother.”

  “Do you know if Ginger’s mother is still alive? Do you have an address?”

  “I don’t think so. The Christmas card I sent last year was returned. She was the same age as my mom, eighty-three. Maybe she went to a home. My mom thought she had Alzheimer’s, but Ginger’s mom hated going to the doctor.”

  “Do you know where Ginger Doherty is now?”