Eye for an Eye (An Owen Day Thriller)

by Rachel Ford

  I didn’t go slow. I went as fast as I dared, without breaking our necks or the truck’s frame. I’d closed the gap between us to maybe two hundred feet. I wasn’t sure they even realized we were after them. Her driving hadn’t changed at all.

  Then she reached one of the neighbors’ properties. There were woods and swampland to the right of us, and long fields of corn ahead.

  The terrain changed too. Instead of the deep furrows of the Millers’ property, the cornfield was relatively smooth. We stopped bouncing and jostling.

  So did they. But even with an easier ride, they didn’t pick up much speed. Probably because they were driving blind into a cornfield, in the relative dark. If there was a vehicle or a piece of farm equipment here, they wouldn’t find out about it until they were on top of it.

  I stepped harder on the gas. We were close now. Cornstalks flew back at us, bouncing off the windshield and hood.

  Wagner was rigid in the seat beside me. “Jesus, slow down. You’re going to kill us.”

  I ignored him and stepped on the accelerator. We were going just over fifty miles an hour. It felt like a hundred, with corn whipping past and dirt and pebbles pelting the windshield. But I felt pretty sure Shannon didn’t realize we were on her tail.

  Not yet, anyway. Not with the dirt and corn and general chaos.

  I got to fifty yards, and then twenty. Then, I veered to the right and stepped on the gas. Jimmy would be in the passenger side. He’d be hurting, maybe delirious by now. She might be checking her side mirror, but I doubted he would.

  The old V8 sang with a throaty bass hum. The corn pelted the truck, hard and furious. It sounded like someone was throwing rocks at us. The deputy flinched. I flinched.

  He said nothing, and I kept driving, faster and faster. I could see the red glow ahead, bigger and bigger. I could make out nothing else at this point, nothing but the dark green of stalks and leaves, and the wispy creams of cornsilk.

  But I could see the red lights. I drove on, until the lights were alongside my hood. I kept going, until they were at my door.

  Then I turned the wheel, hard and fast and leftward. The nose of the truck pitched. Metal screeched against metal. Corn pelted the windows in every direction. But now I saw the side of a truck bed, the paint looking dusky in the dim light.

  I stomped the accelerator, and then the brakes. Shannon’s truck spun in a one-eighty semi-circle, and came to rest facing the old farmhouse. I stopped facing the opposite way, in generally the direction she’d been heading: toward some county road, I supposed.

  I leaped out of the truck while Wagner was still fighting his seatbelt. Both of the headlights had been knocked out, but I could see pale airbags spread across the truck dashboard.

  I headed to the driver’s door and yanked it open. Shannon Braden blinked at me in a stunned way. She started to reach for something.

  I didn’t wait to find out what. I grabbed her by the front and back of the skull and twisted her head as hard and as fast as I could. All kinds of things that aren’t meant for snapping and popping and breaking snapped and popped and broke. She died pretty much instantaneously.

  Then I heard a voice, small and frightened. “Uncle Owen?”

  I peered behind the driver’s seat, into the back bench. I saw what Shannon had been reaching for: her handgun, that had fallen down by her feet. Behind her I saw Maisie, tucked in behind the passenger seat, behind a glassy-eyed Jimmy Braden.

  Jimmy stared straight at me. He held a gun in his lap, angled somewhere between me and his dead sister.

  “It’s okay, Mais,” I said. “You’re okay now.”

  “He’s got a gun,” she said.

  “I’ll kill her,” Jimmy said. He started to move the gun, but weakly, without much control. It wobbled and wavered. “I’ll kill you.”

  Maisie whimpered.

  “Close your eyes, sweetheart,” I said. She stared at me. “Now. Cover your ears.”

  She did. Jimmy went on moving his gun, trying to make up his mind who to shoot.

  Deputy Wagner called, “Come out of the vehicle with your hands up. You are under arrest.”

  At the same time, I grabbed the gun at Shannon’s feet, raised the barrel until it was level with Jimmy’s face, and pressed the trigger.

  Maisie jumped and whimpered, but kept her eyes pressed shut and her hands firmly over her ears. The window behind Jimmy’s head blew outward, and a pink cloud of blood misted the interior of the truck.

  * * *

  Deputy Austin Wagner, 8:33 PM

  It was self-defense. That’s what I told the other deputies, and the sheriff, and the FBI team. And it was, really. Jimmy Braden had a gun. He still had it in his hands when we were pulling the body out of the truck.

  And yet, I’d seen the look in Day’s eyes: the look that said the Braden’s wouldn’t be leaving that truck alive. And they hadn’t.

  Still, they’d drawn on him. Maybe, if things had played out differently, we would have had to make an arrest that night. They hadn’t, though.

  So I didn’t arrest Owen Day. Instead, we drove him and the kids to the hospital. We took their statements and called their mom. I told her he was a hero.

  We took the Millers to the hospital and took their statements; and we took the Carters to the hospital and took their statements too. We poured over every inch of the Miller home, and every inch of the Carter campsite.

  We fingerprinted, and photographed, and checked and rechecked everything.

  Curt Travers hadn’t appreciated missing the action, but he seemed mollified when his men apprehended the SUV’s with survivors. Finding Matthew Callaghan buried in the back, alongside Joey Rabbit and one of his crew, sealed the deal.

  It was a big win for the Bureau, and a big win for Travers.

  It was just two o’clock in the afternoon when I got home. I was dead tired, and my personal phone had run out of battery hours earlier.

  Jade’s message hadn’t even crossed my mind. Not until I saw her car in the drive. She’d said, “I love you too, Austin. I want to work it out.”

  And I’d left her on read for the last eighteen hours.

  I rehearsed what I was going to say on my way to the door. I figured, after a stunt like that, I’d be lucky to get a few seconds of speaking time in before she dropped the inevitable we’re through. I wanted to make them good, so maybe I could stave off the worst of it until she understood why I’d ignored her.

  I got nowhere. The situation was too complex to boil down to two or three seconds, and there was no soundbite I could offer that would convey the gravity of what we’d been dealing with.

  So that was it, then: we were done. As soon as I opened that door, it would be official. I hovered on the step, searching my mind for some kind of Hail Mary phrase.

  Then, the door opened, and I saw Jade on the other side. She looked good, like she always looked good. My mind went blank. I stared at her, trying to form some kind of coherent thought. But I was pushing close to two days with no sleep at all, and only a few hours before that. I was all out of coherent.

  She hesitated, like she was waiting for me to say something first. Then, when I didn’t, she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me: a full, deep, powerful hug.

  She didn’t say anything at all. She just stood there holding me for a long moment. And somewhere in the interval, the power of speech returned. “I want to make it work too,” I said.

  She squeezed me tighter, and let out a long, trembling breath. “Me too.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  We spent a long time talking to cops, and FBI agents, and doctors. All of which paled in comparison to talking to Megan. Our first conversation didn’t go well.

  She was in hysterics, alternating between sobbing and screaming. She was going to get tickets right away, she said. She’d be there first thing in the morning. She couldn’t leave her babies with me for another minute.

  This prospect of an early return had in turn elicited tears and screams
from Ben, which required the call being cut short.

  The second go-round went a little better. She’d spent some more time talking to the cops, and they’d apparently had only good things to say about how I’d handled the situation. But it was the kids who really sealed the deal.

  Maisie insisted that she was fine, and that she wanted to go swimming. “Uncle Owen promised we could go to the big lake.”

  “And he’s taking us for a bike ride,” Daniel said.

  She thought long and hard about that. She mentioned the cost of flights back for everyone, and how they’d need to get brand new tickets. “The airline won’t switch. We already checked. Which is ridiculous, since it’s only a few days early.”

  Then she thought about how disappointed Ben and the girls were going to be if they had to leave early. “They are having such a good time.

  “But are you sure you don’t want to come home, baby?”

  They insisted they did not, and, all things considered, Megan took their insistence very easily. Since they were sure – but only since they were sure – she’d stay where she was. No sense traumatizing the entire family. And, really, it was better to face fears right away, wasn’t it? “Like getting back on a horse.” And she didn’t want them to have a lifelong fear of camping, so this probably was best anyway.

  Then Ben started to complain about something in the background, and she had to go. Maisie and Daniel grimaced as I hung up.

  “Are you sure you don’t want your mom back early?” I said. “I can always text her if you change your mind.”

  She wrinkled her nose, and he snorted. “Can she leave Ben there?”

  “Maisie,” I warned. “That’s not nice.”

  She shrugged. “Neither is he.”

  I decided to let it go. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay going back to the campsite, though? You won’t be scared going back?”

  Maisie shook her head and Daniel grinned and declared he wasn’t scared of anything.

  “Not even zombies?” I asked.

  He shook his head again. “You know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’ll shoot them too. Just like I knew you’d shoot Jimmy.”

  Thank you!

  Thank you for reading Eye for an Eye. To find out what happens next in Owen’s world, check out the next book in the series, Apple of My Eye.

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