She cranked up the Jeep and wrestled it around onto the road, tromped on the accelerator, and sped off. By the time she burned past the dude ranch she was doing sixty. She hit the highway and turned right, skidding around the corner, not caring, then rolled to the top of the nearest ridge, and waited.
She thought about the implications of all that fire. No fingerprints, no DNA, no knotty pine. Thoughts swirled. Adrenaline pumped.
To hell with the feds.
Again, she thought of the innocent kids, of the pictures she’d seen, the images she could never erase from her mind. Then her own kids, the older two when they were in elementary school, the baby.
Her back teeth ground together and she heard a rushing in her ears, her own blood pumping through her veins. For a second, everything went dark with the insidiousness of it all.
She blinked again. Focused. Amped up.
No way would she let that sick fuck get away.
She had her window down, listening for the sound of an engine. She squinted and smelled smoke. Although the sky was bright, the woods were getting darker, and Drake had to turn on his headlights to plow out of the timber road. She saw him coming when he was still fifty feet back, and then he bounced out of the trees, down through the roadside ditch and up on the highway. He turned right, as she had, and sped away from her. She followed, staying back for a minute, then hit her flashers and dropped the hammer. She knew these roads, that was her advantage, that and a bigger engine in her Jeep.
Drake made a run for it.
Speeding through the ever-closing night, his taillights burning bright.
She drove faster, feeling the tires hum and her heart pound as images of those innocent kids played through her mind.
On a straightaway, heading to a sharp corner, she roared up behind the older, overmatched Jeep until she was no more than six feet behind him. At the corner he swung wide, hit gravel on the far shoulder, a tire catching on the edge of the asphalt. As she slowed she watched his Jeep spin back across the road, headlights arcing, cutting through the night.
“Die, you bastard,” she said, hitting the brakes.
Drake’s Jeep slid off the side of the road, the front-right headlight smashing against a pine, the hood crumpling with a groan, an axle breaking.
Her vehicle slid to a stop on the shoulder.
Service weapon in her hand, she stepped onto the asphalt and screamed at his vehicle.
“Get out. I want to see your hands, and I want you out.”
He didn’t move.
“Now! Get out.”
She advanced, crouching, wishing she was wearing a vest.
He kicked open his door, then slowly, hands over his head, he emerged from the Jeep. He was dressed in black from head to toe. Black dress shirt, black slacks, black shoes.
“What’s this about?” he called out. “You nearly killed me. You some kind of psycho cop?”
“It’s about all those children,” she said, her throat raw. “Keep your hands over your head, and back away. I want you out in the headlights, or, I swear to God, I’ll shoot you.”
“I don’t know anything about any children,” he called to her, but did as he was instructed, and backed away. “I got a bad fire up there, my phone doesn’t work, I was going to get the volunteer fire department. Could you call them for me?”
“Shut up,” she said.
She was at the back of his Jeep and saw through the plastic window the rifle stacked up between the two front seats, ready to use.
“You were going to shoot your way out, if you didn’t get clear, weren’t you?”
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So why hadn’t he tried to shoot her? Something wasn’t computing.
“I wasn’t going to shoot anybody,” Drake said, hands still over his head. “I’ve never committed a crime in my life. The worst thing I’ve ever done is let that fire get out of control, and I don’t even have insurance. I think that goddamn Weeks started it, I found out he was doing something in my cabin while I wasn’t here.”