White Out: A Thriller (Badlands Thriller)

by Danielle Girard

  Cannon took a step away from her. “Five minutes?”

  “Do it, and call my cell the second you find that car.” She stabbed his chest with her finger. “And no one lets Gilbert out of there until I say so.”

  “Wait!” Gilbert cried out. “I think my car’s parked on the street.”

  Kylie wished Davis were there. Or even Ross. With no options left, she pointed to Larson. “You come with me.” She started for the door and turned back to Gilbert. “And the candy you’re eating—it’s black licorice. Same thing that Lily Baker smelled when you attacked her on Thursday.”

  Gilbert’s eyes narrowed. “What? You’re insane. You’re screwing this up. We had the right guy.”

  But Kylie wasn’t listening anymore. She was already halfway out the door.

  CHAPTER 56

  LILY

  Lily stared at the gun in Abby’s hands, aimed in her direction.

  “Why do you have that?”

  “It’s his.”

  Lily said nothing as Abby took Lily’s hand. “You’ll come?” Abby asked, eyes wide and hopeful.

  Lily forced herself to nod. “Of course,” she said, the words a hoarse whisper. Her ragged breathing might have given her away, but Abby shoved the gun into her pocket and threw her arms around Lily.

  “Oh, thank you. Thank you, Lily. I need this so much.”

  Lily held Abby with one arm as her other hand snaked around to reach for the gun. Get the gun away, then get Abby out of these woods, into the bar. Her fingers reached the zipper of the coat, but Abby pulled back, hand fumbling in her pocket to bring the gun back out. Her eyes narrowed at Lily.

  “You lied to me,” Abby shouted. “You lied about wanting to come. You’re just trying to escape.”

  Lily shook her head. “Please.”

  But Abby was distraught now. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she aimed the gun. “I should never have trusted you.”

  Lily took a step back as Abby wailed on, her voice rising.

  “I needed you,” Abby shouted through the sobs. “Someone we could trust. I said it had to be you.”

  Without shifting her head, Lily scanned the woods. We? Where was the man? Or was there a man at all?

  Abby stopped crying and leveled the gun, taking a deep breath, as though regaining control. “You don’t have a choice, Lily. You’ll do what I say, just like I did for him.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  But Abby didn’t answer. “You’ll help me find the new girls, the same way I helped back then.”

  The way she had . . . back then.

  “You?”

  Abby smiled. “Me.”

  But it made no sense. They’d been prisoners together. Abby had been kidnapped just like Lily.

  Lily’s body and mind warred in opposite directions. She needed to get away, to run. To get hold of Abby’s gun. At the same time, she was desperate to know the truth. What had Abby done? Was this the alcohol talking? The drugs? Who knew what sort of drugs Abby had been taking. Was she simply delusional? The victim of some sort of psychosis? The kind of trauma they’d experienced could do that. It could literally make them insane. Lily had felt that insanity.

  “You’ll do what I say,” Abby said, jamming the gun into the soft flesh under Lily’s ribs.

  Lily lost her breath, doubling over. As she fought to draw air into her lungs, the soft crunch of boots in the snow filled the small clearing. She froze, listening, but it was Abby, looking around. Looking for him.

  “You there?” Abby called.

  When Lily raised her head, Abby had turned away, putting her back to Lily. Escape. With a painful breath, Lily gathered her strength and drove her elbow into Abby’s side.

  But it wasn’t Abby’s side anymore, because Abby had turned back to face her again. Lily’s elbow struck Abby in the chest, and the gun went off. Lily waited for the tearing sensation, for the pain. But none came. Instead, she saw the dark form of the gun drop into the snow and sink down.

  Abby was off balance as Lily rose to her full height. The sound that came from Lily was more animal than human as she gripped Abby’s shoulders and shoved with every bit of strength she had.

  Abby swung out an arm in an effort to regain her balance, and her wrist struck a tree with a thwack. But she didn’t catch herself. Instead, Abby fell backward, her blonde hair swinging into her face as she dropped. There was a crack, and Lily ducked, thinking it was another gunshot. But the sound was low and muffled. Abby lay in the snow, eyes and mouth open as though stunned. There was the sound of boots in the snow, and Lily snatched the gun from the ground. She stood and froze, listening. Abby’s breath stuttered, and Lily bent to her. Only then did she see the rock beneath Abby’s head. And then the blood.

  Lily opened her eyes with a start. She was still in the trunk, but somehow the cold air burned her cheeks as the wind howled around her. The feel of Abby’s shoulders in her grip, the tension in her arms as she’d pushed her friend. The crack of Abby’s head on that rock and the realization that Lily had been there, in the woods. She’d shoved Abby. She recalled the panic and heat as she’d run, his gun tight in her fist. The struggle to be fast in the snow, the voice calling out to her. Him. The same man she’d heard in her nightmares, the voice on the phone.

  She stilled, listening. The engine was off, the car cold. A howling wind screamed, and the car rocked from its force. Get out now. She kicked at the trunk lid, but it was solid and unyielding. How did you get out of a trunk? Kick out the lights and wave her hand out the back of the car. Someone might see her. If they were driving. But they were not driving.

  A release. Some cars had a trunk release. She blinked, willing her eyes to adjust to the dark, but it was penetrating, blindingly dark. She closed her eyes, drew a breath, and rolled onto her side, facing the back of the car.

  Forcing herself to move slowly, she walked her fingers along the surfaces, the process awkward with her hands bound. She covered one strip, then moved closer to the bumper. Tears burned her eyes. It was taking too long. He would come back. He would kill her.

  Shaking, she kept searching. Her breathing hurried, she wanted to scream, to cry out. And then her left index finger caught on something. A lever or a clip. She gasped and worked her fingers around it, pulling and turning and twisting.

  It clicked, and the trunk popped open, the wind suddenly sharp and painful on her cheeks. And she’d never been more relieved.

  “Oh, good. You’re awake.”

  Her relief burned into a fiery coal of dread.

  CHAPTER 57

  KYLIE

  Even with the wipers working full speed, snow collected on the windshield almost immediately. Kylie gripped the steering wheel while Iver sat at the edge of the passenger seat, alternately peering into the storm and studying the screenshot Steve Cannon had sent them. “There should be a bend up here,” he told her.

  They had driven north past the man camp and the fracking sites, then turned off the main highway. Now they were navigating a series of dirt roads.

  She’d sent a copy of the map and their destination to McIntosh as well as to Davis. There had still been no word from Davis. Not in hours. Where the hell was he? That wasn’t like him.

  McIntosh had texted that he was about thirty minutes out. That was ten minutes ago.

  Kylie rarely traveled north of Hagen this way. Technically, this area of town was within the jurisdiction of the Hagen police, but the drilling companies kept a tight watch on their territory. If there were crimes up here, the Hagen police never found out. “Where the hell are we going?”

  Larson looked down again. “This is the right way. You’ve got a straight shot before the road bends to the left.”

  “How much farther?”

  “Looks like it’s another couple miles up this road.”

  The car bumped down the road, across potholes and ice and snow. “What the hell is even out here?”

  “Mostly oil fields,” Iver said. “Growing up, I had some friends who
lived out this way.”

  She took the next bump slowly, glancing at Larson. “Was Carl Gilbert one of them?”

  “I was never friends with Carl Gilbert,” Larson said. “I have no idea where he lived.” With that, he rolled down his window and stood on the floor to lean out of the car.

  “What are you doing?”

  Gripping the edge of the windowsill, Larson swept his arm across the windshield, pushing the snow off the glass. Then he got back in the car and rolled the window up, shivering.

  For a moment, the windshield was clear, giving them a full view into the blizzardy darkness. Visibility was as bad as she’d ever seen it. The road curved in an endless series of lefts and rights, following the path some ancient river had cut into the low hillside. They were only traveling at twenty miles per hour, and still Kylie had to resist the urge to brake around the turns. There was no way to see what was coming.

  The snow had begun to accumulate on the edges of the windshield again. Damn this storm.

  “There should be a road up to the left,” Iver said.

  Kylie focused through the windshield, gripping and twisting the leather on the steering wheel until it was painful on her hands.

  “She’s going to be okay,” Iver said.

  Kylie nodded, unable to bring herself to speak. She had to remind herself that she couldn’t have saved Abigail Jensen or Jenna Hitchcock. But Lily Baker . . . she’d had a chance to keep her safe, and she had failed. She hoped that mistake wasn’t fatal for Baker.

  As she crested a small hill on the gravel road, her cell phone rang. Davis.

  “I’ve been trying to call you all day,” she said.

  “I’m out . . . Jensen . . . family.”

  She shook her head. “You’re breaking up, Sheriff. Did you get the map I sent? Lily Baker has gone missing. I think Gilbert is involved.”

  “. . . town . . . past . . . four . . . two miles . . .”

  She put the call on speaker. “Say that again?”

  Davis repeated the words, but she couldn’t understand. She looked to Iver, who shook his head. “I’m surprised there’s any service out here.”

  Without any idea if Davis could hear her, Kylie spoke directly into the phone. “I can’t hear you, Sheriff. I sent you a screenshot. If you get it, meet us there.” Then she ended the call, dread hot in her chest.

  Neither spoke for a full minute. As they came around another bend, Iver looked up from the map on the screen and pointed through the windshield. “There’s a spur road there. Looks like it leads to a small parking area. Maybe a drilling site.”

  Kylie peered out into the driving snow, the muscles in her back aching from the drive. The headlights illuminated the clumps so that they looked like stars falling from the sky. As she edged forward, she spotted a lane where the snow level was lower. It had to be the turnoff. “Maybe this is it.”

  “I think so. Pull up a little bit, and you should be there.”

  Kylie moved slowly down the road, the car bumping and sliding on the snow. About thirty yards later, the road ended in a flat parking area, big enough for a half dozen cars or an oil truck.

  Iver glanced down at the screen again. “This has to be it.”

  There were no buildings visible. No other cars. As Kylie shifted the car into park, she realized that she was going to be searching blind.

  Iver unfastened his seat belt, hand on the door.

  “No,” she said. “You have to stay in the car.”

  “I’m trained. I can help.”

  “You’re a civilian here. Stay.”

  “You shouldn’t go alone,” Iver said.

  “I’m not going to argue,” she continued. “Stay here until Davis and Pete McIntosh arrive; then tell them which way I went.” She grabbed Gilbert’s gun off the floor where she’d put it for the drive and opened the glove box to stash it. She paused, her hand halfway there. Iver Larson wasn’t guilty of killing Abigail Jensen, but she wasn’t going to leave him with a loaded gun.

  It was obvious that Larson wanted to say something else, but he only nodded as she rose from the car, shoving Gilbert’s gun down the back of her pants. She started walking through the open lot to the far side. There had to be something out there. For some minutes, she just walked, listening for sounds to guide her.

  Soon the silence was cut by the creak of a drilling rig as it rose and fell and the gentle hiss of a flare growing louder. Now she wished she’d worn better shoes and a warmer coat. She lifted her hand to her chest, a rush of dread running through her. She’d left the patrol car without her vest. Damn it. Only ten or fifteen feet from the rig, she turned back. She had to have her vest.

  A woman cried out.

  Kylie faced the sound and aimed her weapon, squinting through the driving snow. She came through a patch of trees and hesitated, scanning the white expanse. As the grasshopper rig’s giant head lowered, Lily Baker appeared. Lily’s hands clawed at her throat, as though someone was choking her from behind. As her head lifted, the band of an arm across Baker’s neck came into view.

  Then the steel head reared higher into the air, and her captor’s face became visible through the driving snow. The smile on his lips twisted upright as he dragged Lily Baker by the neck.

  Kylie froze in place, hidden behind a narrow pine tree. Glen Vogel. What the hell was the DA doing? Even from a distance, Kylie could read the terror on Lily Baker’s face. Glen Vogel was dragging Baker through the snow. An arm against her neck, a gun in one hand. Why was he holding her?

  They knew Lily Baker was innocent. She was a victim.

  Unless she was a threat to Vogel. Unless he was somehow involved. Kylie thought about how Vogel had sent her to the scene of Brent Nolan’s accident rather than to Skål, how he had delayed the search for evidence at the bar, how he’d let Gilbert search Larson’s truck.

  Had Vogel been planting evidence? Were he and Gilbert in this together? But why? How? Kylie wanted to turn around and call for backup. But who could she call? McIntosh knew where she was. And Davis, too, if he’d gotten her screenshot. Plus, Steve Cannon knew where she’d been going.

  She couldn’t wait for backup. She wouldn’t forgive herself if something happened to Baker while she was twiddling her thumbs.

  As she watched, Vogel struck Lily in the head with the gun, and she dropped to the snow.

  Kylie bit back a cry. She had no choice but to pursue them, to stop Vogel.

  And yet she had no protection. Her Kevlar was in the trunk of her patrol car. She was alone with no backup. That was her fault. Because she’d thought Gilbert was working alone.

  She’d been so sure that Carl Gilbert was the only guilty one. She’d never considered that there could be two of them.

  CHAPTER 58

  IVER

  The detective hadn’t been gone two minutes when falling snow made it impossible to see out the windows or the windshield. Milliard had left the engine running for the heat, but the noise of it, along with the blinding-white haze over the windows, made Iver feel like a sitting duck. He shut off the engine and cracked his door to listen. The wind whistled around the car, whipping snow across the dash and seats. The temperature had dropped since his ride from the hospital to the police station, and now the air was bitter, the kind of cold that cut straight through the layers until it was an ache in your spine.

  Beyond the wind was the rhythmic groaning of a drill, its metal head rising and falling somewhere in the storm. The grasshopper sounded close, but the snow fell too thickly to see the beast. The flare, which would light up a clear sky for miles, was barely a dull glow in the white.

  But Iver was grateful for the dim light. Without it, he wouldn’t have known which way was up.

  Standing from the car, he made a small circle, listening. The detective had told him to stay, but knowing Lily was out there, he couldn’t just sit.

  He wished he had Gilbert’s gun, but Milliard had taken it, tucked it in her pants. Gilbert. The idea that Carl Gilbert was guilty of killing
Abigail Jensen came as a hell of a shock. Iver couldn’t wrap his head around the idea.

  Shivering in the storm, Iver noticed the sheriff’s emblem on the passenger-side door. It gave him pause. She’d taken the handguns, but there might be something useful squirreled away somewhere else. Snow pelting his hands and face, he popped the trunk, wincing at the beep it made.

  A bulletproof vest lay in the trunk, along with a police jacket and a Remington 870 shotgun. Behind those was a black Easton baseball bat. Iver pulled the vest over his shoulders, though it was too small to zip, then grabbed the police jacket to layer on top. As he lifted the jacket, he spotted a long black gun box at the back of the trunk.

  With a glance over his shoulder, he slid the box forward, unfastened the locks, and flipped up the lid. Inside was a Colt M4 carbine. Without hesitating, he lifted the rifle into his arms, the weight comforting and terrifying at once.

  His fingers knew this gun from Afghanistan. Muscle memory took over as he checked the clip for rounds and snapped it into place. The familiar sound, the weight of the weapon, and suddenly Iver was back in that building. It smelled of gunpowder and dust and something burning in the distance. All five of them huddled in one room, waiting to take out the insurgents and make a run for the Humvee.

  Brolyard positioned himself at the west-facing window while Sanchez and Wykstra covered the north side of the room. Iver and Garabrant stuck to the east side—Garabrant closest to the street and Iver with a better angle to take a long shot.

  A scraping sound reached his ears, sandals on gravel. Iver spun and faced an Afghan woman who had entered the back door. Terror made her eyes black. She opened her mouth to scream. Garabrant pivoted, aimed his weapon at her.

  “No,” Iver hissed, dropping his own weapon.

  Gunfire would announce their position. Then they’d all be dead.

  The woman turned to run, but Iver grabbed hold of her, clapping a hand on her mouth, his arm across her neck.

  She kicked and screamed into his palm, her teeth snapping at the skin of his hand.

  Outside the insurgents grew closer. Another ten yards, and her voice would be audible, maybe even the noise of her struggle. Iver was their best shot. He needed to be ready to take out the insurgents. He couldn’t stand there and fight her.