by Emery Hayes
Jordan didn’t move, and Benjamin took a step in his direction.
“You asked me why I brought you here. It was more than just chance. It was serendipity. Everything else went to shit tonight, but not this. A bullet is boring, Jordan. I’m better than that at expressing myself. When she finds your body, I don’t want her to cry. I want her stomach to crawl up her throat and choke her. I want her to scream. I want her to bleed. And a bullet won’t do that, but Fillet of Jordan will.”
He took another step, and Jordan shuffled backward.
“I had this planned before I left Georgia. There’s something special about a wind farm, isn’t there, Jordan?”
He raised his arm and gestured behind them. “I have a man who works for me. His job is to get here first and find out everything he can about the place. I don’t mean points of interest, Jordan. I mean, where’s the best place to dump a body? Where do accidents happen? You know what he told me about the wind farms?”
“That they’re as exciting as the botanical gardens?”
“You’re a funny guy, Jordan. No, he told me gruesome stories about this place. Slice ’em and dice ’em stories.”
“Already heard them,” Jordan said.
“But not your own. You want to hear how that one goes?”
“Does it have a surprise ending?”
“Am I boring you?”
“I’m on the edge of my seat,” the kid said, and Joaquin admired his spunk.
“I’m choosing to believe that,” Benjamin said. “Because I’m the storyteller.” And he continued. “Wind shear. That’s what this place is all about, collecting and using wind to power America. But wind shear causes updrafts and downdrafts and even backdrafts, none of which are very good. All of them kill. They bring down airplanes and suck firefighters into the flames. And all those drafts, they occur regularly right here in turbine country.”
Joaquin looked beyond Jordan, beyond Benjamin. He had to shift his position, take a few steps away from the foundation of the turbine that was sheltering him. And then his gaze swept over the field, looking for shelter, for the covering of darkness, but it was too far away.
“I doubt it,” Jordan said. “There have been accidents, but not a lot. Not every day.”
“There are some dos and don’ts, of course,” Benjamin agreed. “All those safety regulations we won’t follow.”
“You can’t cause a backdraft to happen,” Jordan said. “They’re an act of nature.”
But Benjamin was shaking his head. “I’m a planner, Jordan. Remember? Oh, I didn’t know it would happen tonight, but opportunity is a beautiful thing. And this wind farm, it’s a perfect symphony, isn’t it?” He turned slightly and gestured behind him with his arm. The masts creaked. The blades spun overhead with deceptive calm. “All it takes is a sudden change in momentum. One small hesitation. No more than a hiccup.” He stepped closer to Jordan. “I figure I can do that with a single bullet. And a boy your size, the draft will suck you right into the blades.”
Jordan was silent.
“Good thinking, right?” Benjamin asked. His face beamed with pride. “Your mother will love it, and we have just enough time to get you in position before she arrives.”
“She’s not coming.”
“Of course she is,” Benjamin returned. “You have your cell phone with you, don’t you, Jordan? Your mom has been following us, gaining on us for a while now. Don’t you just love GPS?”
Jordan’s response was visible. His body shook.
“I want her to watch you die, but I’ll settle for watching her discover your body. Well, what’s left of it. That’s a lot for her to live with. I don’t think she can do it.”
The guy took another step, keeping the gun on Jordan, and Joaquin knew he was going to have to move fast. He had to leave the safety of the turbine and grab the kid. Keep moving. Find things to hide behind as they ran for the trees and the darkness within. That was the best plan he could come up with. Keep moving and get out of the light.
He slid along the base of the turbine, heard the nylon in his parka scrape against the concrete and his boots crunch in the snow, and then he was visible. Benjamin caught the movement and turned toward him, and Joaquin spoke.
“Run, Jordan. Run!”
Jordan froze for a moment, then looked over his shoulder at Joaquin, who was running toward him, and he was just putting his feet into motion as Joaquin grabbed his arm and pulled him along.
For the third time that night, Joaquin heard the crack of the gun and put more fire into his feet. He’d heard that being hit by a bullet was like taking a solid punch. It could knock him to the ground. He expected it, but it didn’t happen. He had Jordan by the wrist. The boy tried to keep up, but Joaquin was taller, his legs longer, and he pulled the boy along with him.
Bullets hit the snow and sprayed it into the air. They pinged off the metal of the turbines. He heard another, heavier round that could have come from a cannon, it was so loud, but maybe it was a play of sound, as it echoed through the valley and bounced off the surrounding mountains. And then the wind shrieked and the earth shook, rolling beneath their feet so violently that Joaquin and the boy were knocked to their knees. He felt a force drag against his body, pulling him backward, peeling him off the earth, and he yelled to the kid.
“Keep moving. Stay down and crawl.” And he didn’t let go. Pieces of metal began falling around them, hitting the snow like rain. Small slivers of metal, some big enough that they fell on his back and shoulders like fists. It felt like the whole damn wind farm was coming apart.
39
Nicole left her cruiser on the side of the road, just short of the wind farm. The trail had been easy to follow. So easy that she knew Benjamin was expecting her. She called her position in to Lars, took her Colt Commando from its holster on the console, and shouldered into the night air.
With Benjamin, only bold would do. And if things hadn’t changed, he was a bad shot unless the target was at point-blank range. So Nicole didn’t try to hide her arrival. She slipped under the barbed-wire fence, following the trail left for her but not disturbing the prints. She noticed that there were three distinct sets—two close together, sometimes tangling; other times a drag pattern appeared. She knew these belonged to Jordan and Benjamin. The third set followed, parallel, and these puzzled her. They were unexpected, but she didn’t break her stride. She walked at a clip, across the sloping field and toward the turbines, progressing at an angle that allowed her a greater field of vision and reaction time.
Three sets, as with Beatrice’s murder. Two of them tangling, one following. As they were at the lake. There had to be some significance in that, but she couldn’t find it. Not in that moment. Because she was a hunter after prey. She had come to kill, and this time she would follow through.
She was within fifty yards of the first turbines when she caught a blur of cobalt blue as a figure dashed from one concrete foundation to another, deeper into the farm.
She recognized the parka, the figure of the young man wearing it. Joaquin Esparza. But what was he doing here?
She quickened her steps. Released the safety on the Commando’s trigger.
The closer she drew, the stronger the wind generated by the tilting blades overhead became. And because of it, she could hear nothing else. Until she reached the perimeter of the first masts.
“Good thinking, right?” Benjamin’s voice, patting himself on the back for a job well done. “Your mother will love it …” And those words put a tic in her blood. The tone was absolute glee. Whatever Benjamin had planned, he knew it would cause Nicole the deepest grief. “I want her to watch you die …” The draft from the turbines became a force, and she pressed into it as she advanced. “… your body, what’s left of it …”
She opened her angle, walking sideways, until three figures appeared, forty yards away. She’d hit center mass at sixty. Didn’t matter, she told herself, that that had been at the range. She stopped, raised the rifle, and looked through
the scope.
Jordan, alive, but standing in the line of fire.
Benjamin, gun drawn and pointed at her son.
Joaquin, hidden behind a concrete pillar but on the move.
Benjamin spoke again, a jangling of sharp words Nicole would not allow to pierce her concentration. There could be only her finger resting lightly on the trigger, the long, cold scope of her tunnel vision, and the target. No emotion.
Benjamin raised his arm, waved the gun, laughed. And she remembered the sound of it, when he lay beside her in bed, in the pursuit of dreams, confident, already a winner. And again, later, when he was looking into the barrel of her gun, confident, always confident and always ready to make a deal.
Another lifetime, she reminded herself. She’d made a decision then. She’d carve it in stone today. Jordan’s life was nonnegotiable.
Her finger curled around the cold metal, and she waited. She was a good shot. Center mass at this distance was a guarantee. But she needed to see daylight between Jordan and Benjamin, and she silently urged her son to move, to trip, to fall to his knees and scramble to safety.
“Run, Jordan!” The words were caught by the wind and reached her ears distorted. It was Joaquin. He dashed forward as Benjamin turned to the sound of his voice, his gun tracking the bold figure running a jagged line through the snow. Too close. Too close to a man who had no respect for human life other than his own.
Jordan moved. He staggered forward, his feet gaining traction, his legs clambering through the heavy snow. Out of reach of Benjamin, but too slow. Too easily caught once Benjamin realized he’d lost his prize.
Benjamin fired, and the snow flew up in a geyser just left of Joaquin’s feet. The young man dodged right but kept his aim steady. He was closing in on Jordan, putting himself between Benjamin and her son. And her mother’s heart fluttered with relief but also trembled as she feared now for both boys.
They were still too close. Still in the sight as she held the Commando and looked down the barrel.
Benjamin turned as Joaquin passed and fired again. This time the bullet hit a turbine, the concrete shattering and spraying into the air.
Joaquin grabbed Jordan’s arm and pulled him into a run.
Benjamin fired three more times, rapid, little thought and less aim, the bullets kicking up snow and ricocheting off the turbines. Nicole steadied the rifle against her shoulder, took a solid stance with Benjamin in her scope, then dialed back to perfect her aim.
And then the close shrieking of metal tore through the landscape, and pieces, some as big as her fist, fell from the sky. She lowered the Commando and took stock of the scene. Benjamin had hit a turbine. The bullets, the pummeling wind, were pulling apart the blades. Bolts and anchors flew from the pinnacles. Next would come the shredding of the blades themselves as they pulled apart from the nacelle. Then they would pitch through the air. One turbine, three blades. All hell.
She refocused. Peered down her sight.
And the earth shook beneath her feet, rolled the same way it did during a powerful earthquake. Nicole staggered. She held on to the Commando, but barely, and never took her eyes off Benjamin.
She wished she had.
Sheets of wind ripped down the slopes and through the valley. They created a churning, swirling dervish that blasted the turbines. The blades of the one damaged by Benjamin wobbled on their mast and fell forward as the tower shuddered and canted. Even from a distance, the wind pulled at Nicole’s body, pushed her to the ground, scooped her up and pulled her toward the keening turbine. She fought it, and watched the sheer drafts pull Benjamin off his feet and up, up into the loosening blades. He was screaming, his mouth open and his lips peeled back over his teeth. Rage and terror. It took a moment for Nicole to realize, as his voice came back to her off the mountains, that it carried her name.
Death like this had happened here before. More than once. But she’d never witnessed it. She’d seen the remnants. She’d helped pick up the pieces. But she wouldn’t tonight.
She turned away from what was left of Benjamin and found the trail of prints left behind by her son and Joaquin. Had they found shelter behind one of the concrete foundations? Were they clinging for life?
“Jordan! Joaquin!” she called. “Drop to your knees and head east.” Away from the drafts and their undertow. To safety.
She crouched but remained on her feet, dashing through the snow, peering behind each of the turbines she passed, looking for Jordan, for the young man who had risked his life to save her son’s. East, as she’d told them. Still, it was a long moment before she found them, well out of earshot. Joaquin still holding on to Jordan, pulling him along, laying low to the ground.
She had underestimated the young man.
The lighting in the wind farm made it almost as clear as day, and she could see their flushed cheeks and the worry etched into their features. Nicole quickened her stride, cut across the field using the pillars for cover as they did, and met them just beyond the last of the windmills. And though she knew Jordan was too old for it, she bundled him in her embrace and buried her nose in his hair, and he tolerated it.
She looked over his head at Joaquin. “He’s dead,” she told them.
Joaquin nodded. “He killed my father.”
“You saw him do it?”
Jordan pushed against her hold, and she released him but kept him within reach.
“Yes. I followed him. My father. He didn’t want me to, but I knew what he was planning. I knew I would never see him again.”
“I’m sorry, Joaquin,” she offered.
He considered her words and accepted them. “I know.”
“What was the truth about Beatrice?” she asked. “Was she a medical miracle?”
“That and more,” Joaquin said. “My father’s super cell worked. Not once, but four times. Four different cancers, each aggressively worse than the one before it.”
“What he did was wrong,” she said, and Joaquin nodded.
“Beatrice died, but her sacrifice will save many people,” he said. “Right now that’s not enough for us, but maybe someday …” He looked over her shoulder, and Nicole turned to follow his gaze. Department cruisers were arriving. They left the Lake Road and plowed through the snowy field, bar lights rolling.
“Did he kill my sister?” He nodded behind them, toward Benjamin’s body, fallen in the snow.
Nicole stepped closer and held his gaze. “No. It was Kenny King. He confessed, and we have enough physical evidence for a conviction.” But if he hadn’t gotten to her first, Charlene would have done the deed. Nicole was convinced that she was the watcher, hired along with Benjamin to squash the success of Nueva Vida. In the photo with Dr. Esparza, the woman had worn a Cossack and UGG boots. Benjamin wasn’t the shooter; he was the brains. It made sense that he would marry up. Create a partnership that would advance his insatiable need for power. They would look for her next.
She shared her theory with Joaquin, that Benjamin and Charlene were hired to kill. One stone, two birds. There had never been a moment when either Beatrice or her father was meant to live through Nueva Vida.
“Sanders,” he said. “I figured that out tonight, when she kept calling. Pharm companies like controlled advances. Big finds topple the giants.”
“Your father knew.”
“But not until this morning.” He looked over his shoulder, but only briefly, and changed the subject. “He wanted to kill Jordan.”
“And would have,” Jordan said. “He’s a planner. He was going to cause a backdraft that would suck me into the blades.”
Nicole felt the tremble that went through his body. Her joints loosened, and liquid gathered in her eyes. She pulled Jordan close and lowered her face until she smelled the pine trees and snow in his hair. She held on to him until he squirmed, and then she faced him and spoke only the truth.
“And that’s exactly what he did, but to himself. Now you never have to worry about him again,” she promised. To Joaquin she said, “Thank
you. You saved his life.”
“I helped. I left a trail, and maybe I bought us some time.”
“And you ran into the line of fire,” Nicole said. “You grabbed Jordan and you got him to safety. You saved my son. Thank you.”
He tried to shrug, clearly uncomfortable with the praise.
“No more dying. Bea was all about that. In the end, that’s what my father wanted too.” He looked into the field, where parts of Benjamin lay in the snow, though they could see none of the carnage from where they stood. “That really his father?”
Nicole nodded. “Poor judgment on my part.” She ran a hand over Jordan’s spiky hair. “But I wouldn’t change it.”
Joaquin’s eyes darkened. His lips drew thin with grief.
“My father, he would have turned back the clock for Bea. He would have given it all up for her.”
“In the end,” Nicole said, “he did.”
ALSO AVAILABLE BY EMERY HAYES
(writing as Suzanne Phillips)
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Author Biography
Emery Hayes is the author of the Nicole Cobain mystery series and the twice-monthly podcast, In My Town. Writing as Suzanne Phillips, her Young Adult novels command the attention of readers worldwide. She lives in Southern California with her family.
This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Suzanne Phillips
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.