by Rick Mofina
“What for? I need Norris here, to help me with the tractor.”
“Clydell and Eva weren’t at church. The younger ones weren’t at school. And remember, that killer escaped from Stony Mountain prison in Manitoba and was supposed to be headed west.”
“Vida, we got our own business to mind.”
“You mind it. I’m going out to see if Eva needs help. Maybe they’re sick.”
Vida’s husband grunted the way most men did whenever they considered Clydell Rudd and anything related to him.
The Rudd place was at the edge of Newell County where Clydell kept his wife Eva, their five daughters and young boy, Deke, isolated from the community.
Except for church and school, they rarely left their property.
Clydell never permitted his girls, including the two who were full grown and unmarried, to go into town.
Clydell didn’t care for other people; which suited other people just fine.
Earlier on, there was talk that one of the Rudd girls had become pregnant, then came rumors that Clydell had a criminal past, or owed money to the Chicago mob. Somebody claimed that some nights people had seen Clydell drunk on his own brew, running naked on his land raging at the moon.
No one knew the truth about Clydell Rudd.
Vida didn’t care. She put no stock in childish folklore. She wanted to be sure Eva and her kids were all right. That’s what you did out here where living could be hard with men who couldn’t understand a woman’s heart.
Vida took stock as the Rudd’s ranch house with its peeling paint came into view. Their battered green Dodge was there all right, but no clothes were pinned to the line.
Odd.
With five children, you’d count on Eva and the girls doing a wash every day.
Norris halted the truck, shut it off, got out and released a whistle that normally summoned the dogs.
Nothing.
The chickens seemed agitated, clucking up a storm in the coop. As Vida approached the house, the air felt wrong, like something had been taken. The front door was open, swaying and creaking, as if beckoning Vida to continue.
Or warning her to turn right around and go home.
“Eva?” Vida called. “Clydell?”
No one responded.
Three fat mice darted out the house, over the threshold.
“Anybody home?”
Nothing.
Passing through the door, Vida and Norris met a wave of foul air.
“Whoa,” Norris said.
As their eyes adjusted to the light, they moved through the small living room. Vida’s calls filled the quiet. Nothing seemed out of place, but for the stillness. It was too quiet, as if all life in the house had stopped.
Then they heard the humming.
Vida and Norris exchanged a glance.
As they approached the first bedroom, the humming grew louder. Norris pushed the door open wider and they saw the source of the sound.
Vida’s scalp tingled.
Norris felt the little hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
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Text Copyright © 2009 Rick Mofina
Cover Art Copyright © 2009 by Harlequin Enterprises Limited.
Text and cover art used by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A. and Harlequin Enterprises Limited ® and TM are trademarks owned by Harlequin Enterprises Limited or its affiliated companies used under license.
Author’s note on The Panic Zone
The Panic Zone concerns the story of Emma Lane, young mother in Wyoming who survives a car crash, which claims her husband and baby boy. In the confusion she thinks she sees someone rescue her son. But in the hospital she's told she's enduring trauma and that her husband and baby are dead. A few nights later, while grappling with her grief, a stranger calls, telling her: "Your baby is alive." Eventually, Jack Gannon, a wire service reporter based in New York City, helps her search for the truth about her baby. They learn that the tragedy may be tied to deadly conspiracy that reaches around the world with chilling implications and their pursuit becomes a panicked race against time.
The Panic Zone is the second book in the Jack Gannon series. Thriller fans met Gannon in the first book in the series, Vengeance Road when it was released in 2009. The International Thriller Writers (ITW) has named Vengeance Road a finalist for a 2010 Thriller Award in the category of Best Paperback Original and The Private Eye Writers of America also selected Vengeance Road as a finalist in the category of Best Paperback Original.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the creation of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book is for
Laura and Michael
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
– Revelation 6:8
The Panic Zone (Excerpt)
Chapter One
Big Cloud, Wyoming
Emma Lane whispered a prayer for her baby son Tyler, cooing in his car seat behind her.
Her miracle.
Over the last few days, he’d been pale and had run a fever.
“Just a little cold give it another twenty-four hours,” the doctor had told Emma, who, succumbed to the anxieties of being a new mother until Tyler’s illness had passed.
Now, with her worries eased, Emma smiled, reached back to adjust his straps as their SUV cut across Wyoming’s rolling plains.
“Everything good?” her husband Joe asked as he drove.
“Everything’s good.” Emma caressed Joe’s firm shoulder then kissed his cheek.
“What’s that for?”
“For suffering me.”
“Do I have a choice?” he chuckled.
They gazed at the Rockies before them, a majestic reminder that some things stand forever, while others lasted no longer than a shooting star. And after what they had gone through to have Tyler, Emma took nothing for granted. Life did not come with guarantees. It was as indifferent to you as those mountains out there.
Emma thought it was funny how the things she’d dreamed of had come to her in ways she never expected. She was thankful for the blessings she could touch, hold and love forever: her son and her husband.
Today, they were headed to a pretty spot north of town, for a picnic beside the Grizzly Tooth River. This would be a break for Joe, who had been putting in twelve-hour days for the last three weeks straight, building houses in Big Cloud’s new subdivision.
Lord knows they needed the overtime cash but fretting over Joe’s long hours, and Tyler were just two of many concerns that had kept Emma on edge over these last few weeks.
Next month, her maternity leave ended and she would return Rocky Ridge Elementary School where she taught children in the first and second grades. They were little sweethearts and Emma had missed school but how would she ever endure being apart from Tyler?
Joe guided the SUV along the empty highway, a meandering back route few people took. With the exception of a couple of cars that had passed them earlier, the road belonged to them. It was soothing. As the wheels hummed, Emma thought of other matters, like the spate of wrong number calls to their house over the past month. They had come at all hours; in the day, when Emma was home alone with Tyler, or in the middle of the night. The callers never said anything. They were quick hang ups and the number was always blocked.
Like someone was checking in on them, she thought.
But Joe shrugged it off as, “Just people who can’t dial.”
Eventually, Emma stopped worrying about it too until the episode with the mystery car.
One day last week after she had finished shopping downtown and was leaving her parking spot, she noticed the a white sedan that had arrived at the same time she had arrived.
It was a few cars back and it seemed to be following her.
; When she drove to the mall, it was still a few spots behind her. After Emma parked and got Tyler into his carriage, she saw the sedan, parked off in a far corner. It was still there when she returned to her car and left the mall’s parking lot. Emma was not certain if the sedan left when she did because she had lost sight of it in the drive home traffic.
A day later when she took Tyler out for a stroll to the park, Emma saw the same white sedan at the end of their street.
“Do you think maybe you’re being a little paranoid?” Joe had said when she told him about it later. “It’s the mama grizzly syndrome kicking in.”
When she didn’t smile at his teasing, he got up from the kitchen table, left his receipts and job estimates, and put his arms around her.
“Em,” Joe understood, “Big Cloud has nine thousand people. We bump into most of them every other day. You’re likely seeing someone new.”
She pressed her cheek to his hard chest and nodded.
“Besides,” he said, “you’re one of the most fearless people I know. Woe to anyone, or any thing, that comes between you and Tyler. If it was a mama griz, I would fear for the bear.”
Emma smiled at the memory and turned to Joee behind the wheel. He was her rock, her protector, her hero because of what he’d gone through for her.
Tyler did not come to them the usual way.
Joe was a proud man and what he did for her was not easy. But he had put her happiness before his own and no matter what happened Emma would always love him for that.
Always.
She studied Joe’s strong jaw stubbled just the way she liked. She looked at the tiny lines at the corners of his eyes that crinkled when he laughed, or searched the horizon as he did now.
Emma was about to tell him that she loved him but the words never left her mouth. A sharp blast of their horn jolted her. Joe’s expression switched to a surprise. An on-coming car had veered onto their side of the road leaving them no escape from a head-on crash.
“Hang on, Em!”
Joe twisted the wheel, swerving to miss the collision.
“Joe!”
The SUV was airborne with the world churning, glass breaking, metal crunching, sparks flying as it rolled and rolled before everything went black.
When Emma came to, she was outside their vehicle, face down on the ground. Her vision was blurred. Something was ringing in her ears. Their horn was blaring.
Tyler was screaming somewhere but Emma couldn’t see him.
She saw Joe.
He’d gone half-way through the windshield. Emma crawled to him, reached for him and took his hand.
“Stay with me, Joe. Don’t leave me.”
Emma passed out, came to, then did it again and again.
Time stopped.
She could smell gas, burning rubber. Something was hissing, she heard car doors, people running, someone shouting. Someone was checking the wreckage. Everything was hazy.
Emma’s heartbeat thundered in her ears.
“Hurry!”
An engine raced.
“Find my baby!”
Emma felt Joe’s pulse stop as people carried her away.
“Get my husband out! Find my baby!”
The air around them spasmed as if hammered by an invisible fist that delivered the heat flash and fireball as the SUV ignited.
Someone rescued Tyler. Emma saw them carry him clear.
Hadn’t she?
Where was her baby?
Oh god! Tyler had to be safe. He had to be, because he wasn’t screaming anymore.
Emma was.
-Buy The Panic Zone for Kindle-
Text Copyright © 2010
Cover Art Copyright © 2010 by Harlequin Enterprises Limited.
Text and cover art used by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A. and Harlequin Enterprises Limited ® and TM are trademarks owned by Harlequin Enterprises Limited or its affiliated companies used under license.
Headlong Into the Panic Zone
From the Author: The Stories that inspired The Panic Zone
By Rick Mofina
So there I was, a two-hour drive outside of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia staring down this aggressive little dog, tethered to a chain at the entrance to a village of mud huts.
“Watch out, he’ll try to bite you,” the network news camera guy ahead of me warned.
I waved but glanced at the countryside.
The village was perched on a gentle sweep of land where some twenty or so Canadian journalists were visiting as part of the Prime Minister’s multi-nation tour of Africa. I was part of the pack, enjoying the panoramic view until something jerked my pant leg and I feel a sting.
The little dog had managed to nip my calf.
Just a scratch, what could come of it?
No big deal.
I shrugged it off and joined the others touring the huts. Inside it was cool, the interior walls were dark. One owner, an old woman, showed us proudly how the walls were smoothed by hand. She ran her gnarled fingers along the mud and dung surface.
Dung?
Yes.
It was actually quite comfortable, very clean and beautiful.
As honored guests we enjoyed our stay before we climbed back into our air-conditioned press van, headed back overland, through the slums of the capital to our five-star hotel and a full-course Western-style meal served with silverware.
Guilt often ate at us during the trip.
My attention shifted when someone mentioned to the two doctors near our table, travelling with the Canadian delegation, what had happened to me with the little dog.
They both stopped eating.
“Don’t you guys ever read the alerts we post in the press room?”
No, we don’t.
We were pin-balling from country to country across the continent and time zones to places like Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, so we were a bit punchy.
“Roll up you pants, please.”
The doctors took a quick look at the scratch on my leg then ordered me to one of their hotel rooms as my press friends teased me.
In the elevator the doctors take the smile from my face, telling me that we had just tracked through a 90 per-cent risk zone for rabies, one of the highest on the continent, on earth, in fact. The dog could have been exposed, bitten by a bat in the night which would explain its aggressiveness.
In the hotel room, one doctor examined my wound, then my medical papers logging which shots I’d had for the trip. I had received a lot of shots prior to the trip, turned out I had no proof of vaccination in case of exposure to rabies. Some of my press friends did, others like me, didn’t.
“This is not good,” one doctor said.
My stomach started to tighten at their sober tone.
One doctor got down on her knees and cleansed my little scratch while the other was on the phone to medical clinics in Addis Ababa for diplomats – “The Swedish clinic will take us. Do you have cash on you, U.S. cash? This is going to cost a few hundred bucks.”
So there I was with a doctor on either side of me in the back of a new SUV, weaving its way through the jammed streets of one of the world’s poorest cities. At traffic stops, dozens of children crowded up the car; climbed on the running boards and lampposts, hands out for money.
I recall seeing hands and eyes, hands and eyes.
Our driver closed all of our power windows and my guilt rose again.
The doctors were experienced at working in foreign countries. They’d noticed my reaction and told me not to think about it. One of the doctors recounted her work with medical staff in Guyana dealing with farm workers infected with rabies.
“There was nothing they could do. Ultimately they put them in cages.”
The part of me that was the middle-class suburban father and husband half a world away from home got a bit pensive.
What if that little dog had been infected?
Then the author part of me started thinking, I have to use this.
The other do
ctor said that I should be fine, the wound is a long way from my brain and they were going to give me a pre-exposure vaccine.
The Swedish clinic was in a very nice neighborhood. There, I jumped the line, where a third doctor took me into an examination room right away. She gave me a shot in my behind and took nearly $200 .U.S. cash and all three doctors give me advice on what to do when I got back to Canada. They also stressed that I keep taking my anti-malaria drugs because we are also travelling through a high risk zone for malaria.