Thief River Falls

14

Lisa had five seconds to decide what to do. She smiled at the two deputies. She shoved down her fear and summoned complete calm to her face. If she exposed the truth, Will would send help, but help was miles away. There was no FBI to rescue her in this place. Meanwhile, these two men would kill her and kill the boy. Life or death was going to happen in the next few moments, and a voice on the phone couldn’t save her. She had to act alone. She didn’t care about herself, but she wasn’t going to let them harm Purdue.

“Thank you for the information, Will,” she said in the calmest voice she could muster. “I really appreciate it.” Then she hung up the phone and said to the two men, “Sorry about that.”

“Is there a problem?” Deputy Garrett asked her.

“Oh, no, it was a work call. That was my agent in New York. We’ve been going back and forth on one of the clauses in my latest contract.”

“The boy, Ms. Power,” the deputy reminded her. “Please.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Where is he?”

Lisa’s mind raced as she tried to decide what to do next. She was cornered, with nowhere to run and no way to grab Purdue and escape. They wouldn’t believe her if she lied and told them that he was somewhere else. They also outnumbered and outsized her, and they both had guns.

“Ms. Power?”

She gestured over his shoulder. “He’s in that little shed behind the garage.”

Deputy Garrett’s gaze flicked to the large aluminum shed and its latched door. He flagged the other deputy to accompany him, and then he stepped forward to Lisa and extended his hand to be shaken. She was nervous about taking it, but she let him crush her own hand with a fist that looked like a bear’s paw.

“I know this was hard for you, Ms. Power, but you’re doing the right thing. We’ll take good care of him.”

She forced a smile onto her face. Liar. “Remember your promise, Deputy. I’m coming with you. I don’t want the boy to be alone.”

“Yes, of course.”

Then she glanced down at Deputy Garrett’s hand, where something bright white drew her eyes. When she saw it, she struggled to hide her reaction. He had a tattoo emblazoned on the back of his hand, starting at the bumps of his knuckles and winding onto his wrist.

It was an alligator.

A snow-white, albino alligator, its mouth open, showing long teeth, its eyes black and beady, full of violence. When the deputy dropped Lisa’s hand and flexed his fingers, the jaws of the alligator snapped open and shut. As his wrist moved, the tail seemed to swish, as if it were pushing the reptile forward to its next helpless prey.

She heard Purdue’s voice. The white alligator shot him in the head.

“Is everything okay?” Garrett asked, watching her face.

“Yes. Everything’s fine.”

“Deputy Stoll and I will go get the boy.”

“Of course. I’ll come with you.”

She tried to make her legs move to follow them, but her limbs felt like rubber. She had to act right now. She had to do something. If she and Purdue got in the SUV with the two men, their next stop would be a grave site. The remote lands offered plenty of places to hide bodies that would never be found. Evil men dug up the ground all the time in her books.

Deputy Garrett headed across the gravel toward the shed, with his partner following just behind him. With horror, Lisa realized that they were going to walk right by the driver’s door of her pickup, and she held her breath to see if they would glance inside and spot Purdue hiding below the passenger seat.

They didn’t.

They were focused on the aluminum shed.

Lisa rushed to catch up with them, but she let them walk ahead of her. Deputy Garrett got to the metal door and undid the latch, and as he pulled the door open, the hinges squealed. Even with the door open, the shed was dark and deep. There was no light. The rusty machines sat on the floor like dead animals, and the smell of dust and fertilizer seeped into the fresh air.

Garrett filled the doorway with his bulky frame. “I don’t see him.”

“He must be hiding at the back.”

The deputy glanced over his shoulder at her with a vague suspicion, as if trying to gauge whether she was lying to him. He squeezed inside, and a few seconds later, she saw the bright glow of a flashlight he’d taken from his belt. It wouldn’t take him long to realize that Purdue wasn’t in the shed.

His partner, Deputy Stoll, hovered near the doorway. His back was to her, but he was still at least two steps outside the shed, and he showed no sign of following his partner inside. He was a big man. If she pushed him, even from behind and with the element of surprise, she didn’t know if she could jar him off his feet.

She was running out of time.

“Ms. Power,” Deputy Garrett called, and she could hear the change in the tone of his voice. It was low and angry now. “He’s not here.”

“Are you sure? Did you check everywhere?”

“He’s not here.”

“Well, maybe he sneaked off. He does that.”

“You’re playing games with us, Ms. Power. That’s really not a good idea. You have to tell us where you’re hiding the boy.”

Lisa watched Deputy Stoll begin to turn around to face her, and she could see the beam of Deputy Garrett’s flashlight as he retraced his steps toward the front of the shed. She realized she had no choice. There was nothing else to do. She took her right hand out of her pocket, with her fingers clutching the grip of the Ruger and her index finger hovering under the trigger guard.

“Stop!” Lisa barked at the second cop. “Stay where you are, and don’t move.”

Stoll froze and shouted to his partner. “Garrett, she’s got a gun.”

Lisa heard the clang of Deputy Garrett’s boots on the metal floor. His face appeared in the shadows of the shed behind his partner. “Ms. Power, what the hell are you doing? Put away that gun. Put it on the ground, and back away from it right now. Don’t make things worse for yourself.”

“Get in the shed!” Lisa shouted. “Both of you! Put your hands up!”

“Listen to me. We’re not going to hurt you.”

His voice was as smooth and sweet as honey. She didn’t believe him for a minute.

“No, you’re not. You’re not going to touch me, and you’re not going to touch the boy. Keep your hands in the air! Back up!”

The two deputies showed her their hands, and they took several steps back into the shadows of the shed. She was conscious of the guns on their belts. And their radios. She thought about having them strip off their gear and toss it out, but she didn’t want to give them any chance to trick her.

“All the way back,” she told them coldly. “Against the rear wall.”

“Ms. Power, don’t do this. There’s no way this ends well. Let’s talk, okay? All we want to do is talk. Put down the gun, and tell us where the boy is.”

“He’s safe. And he’s going to stay that way.”

She clutched the gun tightly in her right hand, and she grabbed the padlock off the nail where she always kept it. She felt clumsy and terrified, and she tried to keep her fingers from trembling. She thought about how to do it all in one smooth motion. Keep the gun on them. Latch the door. Lock it. All before they could charge her, crash through the door, and topple her backward.

“I don’t know who the two of you are,” she said. She kept talking, because she wanted them listening to the sound of her voice. She didn’t want them thinking about their guns or about rushing the door.

“I don’t know if you’re dirty cops,” she went on, “or whether you’re even cops at all, but you’re not getting anywhere near that boy. I know what you did. You and your red-haired friend, Liam. I know about the bullet in the man’s head. The fingers. It’s all coming out. Whatever this is about, believe me, it’s all coming out.”

Neither of the men said a word. Their faces were dark in the shadows.

Lisa moved fast. The lock was ready in her left hand. She used her other hand, the hand that still held the gun, to grab the aluminum door. She fought the strong wind to close the door, but her hand struggled to do two things at once, and the gun slipped out of her grasp and fell to the gravel.

They saw it. They heard it. She heard them shout and heard the stomp of their boots as they ran toward her.

She slammed the door shut and closed the steel latch around the bar. She fumbled with the shackle as she threaded it through the hole in the latch, and at the very instant the lock snapped shut, the entire structure shuddered as the combined weight of the two men landed heavily against the door. Lisa screamed and jumped backward. The hinges groaned.

The door held, but it wouldn’t hold for long. It was an old shed, and the metal was rusted and weak. As she stood outside, she heard the two cops back up and charge the door again. Again the door refused to open, but she could hear the awful screech of metal tearing away from metal.

Soon they would be free. She needed to get away now.

Lisa scooped her gun from the ground and ran for the pickup truck. She ran for Purdue.