Dead Line

Book 7: Arliss Cutter Novel

by Marc Cameron

Genres: Thrillers; Terrorism & Assassination Thrillers

Synopsis

Deputy U.S. Marshal Arliss Cutter and his partner brave the unforgiving, brutal Alaskan wilderness of snow and ice to save a government witness from cold-blooded assassins . . .

In the White Mountain Wilderness of Interior Alaska, twenty-four-year-old protected witness Sam Lujan is lonely for his old life. So much so, the young Apache not only breaks the cardinal rule of the Witness Protection Program—by revealing his whereabouts to his mother, he invites her to join him to see the Northern Lights. It’s her lifelong dream. No worries. It’ll be safe.

When Deputy U.S. Marshals Arliss Cutter and Lola Teariki discover Sam has gone missing, they’re asked to make a quick trip into the remote wild to make sure the witness is indeed protected. But there’s no such thing as a quick trip. Not when they’re plunging headlong into the frozen unknown at fifty-eight degrees below zero. And not when they aren’t the only ones searching. Valeria Kot, the vengeful daughter of the criminal Sam testified against, has been waiting and watching for years for just the opportunity to strike back. She’s found it—and has dispatched a sadistic hit squad to make sure Sam pays in the most savage way possible.

Once Arliss and Lola reach the trailhead it doesn’t take long for them to realize they’re dealing with more than a witness who’s broken protocol. Tracks in the snow and tell-tale signs signal an armed team—one that’s already a step ahead of them. For Arliss and Lola, and a desperate mother and son on the run, the death-defying, frigid temperatures are the least of their worries.

Release date: July 29, 2025

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 464

Sample

SUPERVISORY DEPUTY US MARSHAL ARLISS CUTTER STOMPED HARD on the gas, drifting his government-issue Ford Escape through a tight right turn off Baxter Road and onto the icy side street. He hadn’t heard his partner on the radio for two full minutes. That much dead air was a long time during a pursuit—an eternity for someone as talkative as Lola Teariki. His window down despite the bitter wind, Cutter scanned the surrounding yards and houses as he straightened the wheel and poured on the gas, searching in vain for any sign of his partner’s whereabouts.

It wasn’t like Lola to go dark. She was smarter than that, especially when they were chasing a hired killer. Butch Pritchard had murdered a twenty-five-year-old woman in her sleep in Missouri. His victim was four months pregnant at the time of her death. This guy wouldn’t think twice about killing a deputy US marshal.

Cutter was a big man, six three and a shade under two hundred and thirty pounds, barely able to fold himself behind the wheel of the little SUV.

He hammered the wheel with his fist. His grandfather taught him to take care of his partner at all costs—and now Lola was NORDO—no radio—alone and on foot after a murderous bastard who from all accounts would be happy to pick his teeth with her bones.

Cutter tapped the brake, slowing a hair, listening, scanning motley patches of snow for fresh tracks as he sped through the neighborhood. A biting wind burned his face and brought tears to his eyes. He didn’t care.

Cheney Lake lay ahead, hidden from view by a stand of frosted spruce and bone-white birch. The twenty-two-acre gravel-pit-turned-lake was now a sheet of ice tucked in among the evergreens at the dead end of Colgate Street. Locals cleaned off a good portion of it for hockey when the ice got thick enough. Christmas was only a few weeks away and the cedar-sided houses, built during the pipeline boom of the 1970s, looked like so much gingerbread with twinkling lights and candy cane lawn ornaments.

A warm Chinook wind had barreled in shortly after Thanksgiving, making the ice iffy. Most of the snow was gone, leaving only a few grimy drifts, mainly where city plows had thrown up berms. Lawns were left patchy and blighted. Now a high-pressure system had camped out over southcentral Alaska, gripping Anchorage in bone-numbing cold with no snow to insulate the ground. Inflatable reindeer sagged in the cold, doing little to chase away the brooding darkness of midwinter. A white Christmas wasn’t in the cards.

Cutter snatched up the radio as he sped toward Lola’s government Tahoe parked in the wood line at the end of the long block.

There was no sign of her—or Butch Pritchard.

He keyed the mic. “Hello, Lola!”

Nothing.

He tried again, this time reaching out to task force Deputy Sean Blodgett. According to Lola’s last transmission, Blodgett was in the middle of arresting someone who’d come out of the target residence with Butch Pritchard.

“Sean, Sean, Cutter,” he said, using the “hey you, you, it’s me” format to communicate.

Dead air.

He pounded his fist against the steering wheel again, pouring on as much speed as he dared on the slippery street.

The thermometer on his dash read nine above—seven degrees colder than it had been when he came to work that morning. The forecast said temps were going to drop hard over the next few days. White crystals drifted through the flat light, as if materializing out of the winter air. The little Ford’s defrost roared like an oncoming storm.

Cutter scanned more frantically. “Come on, Butch,” he growled out loud. “Where did you go . . . ?”

Pritchard wasn’t even their top priority. That line on the dance card went to Royce Decker, a former St. Louis Metro PD SWAT sniper who’d hired Pritchard.

Decker had contracted his wife’s murder with the full knowledge that she was fifteen weeks’ pregnant with their first child. Pritchard shot her to death as she lay sleeping on the couch. Authorities in Missouri had the idiot coming and going on the doorbell camera. The day after the murder, twelve thousand dollars had shown up in his bank account. Had Pritchard known that eight million in seized cash had disappeared from a vehicle in police storage shortly before Decker dropped off the radar, he might have charged a lot more than twelve grand to do the killing.

A murder-for-hire case involving a dirty cop threw the media into a frenzy. Worse yet, it gave the district attorney’s political rival ammunition in his election campaign. The DA pulled out all stops to get Royce Decker behind bars—which included calling in the United States Marshals Service Eastern District of Missouri Metropolitan Fugitive Task Force. The deputy leading the MFTF was an old classmate of Cutter’s. A court-authorized phone dump of Decker’s cell records revealed twenty-nine calls to IP addresses and cell numbers that appeared to be coming from inside Russia. Analysts at US Marshals Headquarters Enforcement Division linked at least two of these cell numbers to a man named Fyodor Pugo, a Russian businessman with a fleet of offshore fishing vessels based in Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk. Decker’s new girlfriend appeared to have ties to Alaska, and it was feared he would use some of his newfound wealth to flee to Russia where he would be out of their reach. For all Cutter knew, he was already there.

The Missouri task force sent a collateral lead to Alaska via Capture, the Marshals Service internal fugitive and prisoner tracking database. Cutter and the Alaska Fugitive Task Force (AFTF) hit the ground running.

A known cell number for Decker’s girlfriend, a former middle-school teacher named Suzi Massey, had pinged near Ester, Alaska, a small community south of Fairbanks. Shortly after, that number had gone dark. The Air Guard warrant analyst assigned to the task force had identified five addresses in the Fairbanks area with a possible connection to Massey or her known associates. All of the locations were rural.

Royce Decker was a trained police sniper facing the death penalty with eight million bucks in his war chest—not an easy man to approach. Rather than have Fairbanks sub-office deputies stir up neighbors and alert Decker by checking the individual addresses, Cutter planned to take the entire task force to Fairbanks for a more methodical approach.

Then a day before they were scheduled to fly north, Suzi Massey’s cell phone went active again just long enough to call a cell that came back to the target house near Cheney Lake. Lola spoke to her contact at the post office and learned that a man who looked like Butch Pritchard had been seen at the residence earlier in the week.

USMS HQ insisted that though Pritchard had been the one to pull the trigger on a sleeping Heather Decker, her husband, Royce, was the focus of any manhunt. Both men needed arresting, and both appeared to be in Alaska—but politics dictated priorities. Fortunately for Cutter and the rest of the fugitive task force, the chief deputy for the District of Alaska believed that good sense trumped politics. Pritchard crossed their sights, so they focused on him.

There was a possibility Decker was also there, but even if he wasn’t, nabbing Pritchard would get them a step closer.

Cutter put the Fairbanks trip on hold for the time being and set up on the Cheney Lake residence, rotating surveillance for three solid days.

No joy.

Deputies Teariki and Blodgett were on the house this morning. Cutter liked to lead from the front, sitting surveillance and kicking doors alongside his people, watching over them, ensuring that they were safe. Supervisory duties had pulled him away, forcing him to schmooze with Alaska State Trooper brass on Tudor Road. He’d ordered the deputies on Cheney Lake to sit tight if they saw any movement and wait for other members of the task force to back them up.

That was the plan anyway, until Lola got eyes on Pritchard and her ass magnet took over. At least she’d had the good sense to send a text.

Cutter quit his meeting before he’d finished reading her message and contacted Task Force Officer Nancy Alvarez, a TFO on loan from the Anchorage Police Department. Alvarez left the federal building with Paige Hart, a court ops deputy the chief had temporarily assigned to the task force. Alvarez and Hart were still five minutes away by the time Cutter turned off Baxter Road.

According to Lola, Butch Pritchard had come out of the target house with a second white male. She couldn’t identify the other man except to say he was too big to be Royce Decker.

Butch Pritchard was six one and tipped the scales at around two-sixty—no small fry—but Lola described the mystery associate as over six five and pushing four hundred pounds. Cutter’s grandfather would have called such a man a butterbean. From the sound of the radio traffic, Sean Blodgett was dealing with Butterbean while Lola chased after Pritchard.

Alone.

Cutter slid the little Ford to a stop at the end of the street and keyed the mic again.

“Talk to me, Lola!”

He resisted the urge to hurl the handheld through his windshield. She had to quit running off on her own like that.

A moment of garbled squelch poured from the radio before Teariki came through. Her voice crackled, wobbly from the chase. “. . . still on foot . . . trail . . . running toward lake . . . west.” Her Kiwi accent—always stronger when she was under stress, transformed west into wist.

Cutter bailed out of the G car, squinting against the cold. He snugged a black wool hat over shaggy blond hair, then keyed his handheld with one hand while he tapped the Colt Python in the holster over his right hip. He trotted toward the trees as he spoke.

“Nancy, Nancy, Cutter,” he said.

“Go for Nancy.” It was Paige Hart. Alvarez surely had her hands full careening over the slick streets.

“Y’all come in via Baxter,” Cutter said. “That’ll put you on the west side of the lake in case our guy makes it across the ice before Lola grabs him.”

“Copy that,” Hart said.

Cutter clambered over a frozen hillock at the end of the street. Fresh tracks on the frosted trail disappeared into the trees. He recognized the long oval “football” in the tread pattern of Lola’s Lowa Renegade boots.

A feral growl like the snarl of a cornered animal, came from the shadowed bushes ahead. Cutter clenched his teeth to keep from freezing his lungs as he broke into a run. He left the Colt Python holstered but his jacket unzipped, giving him quick access to reach the weapon if he needed it.

Deputy Blodgett’s muffled commands sifted through the spruce forest.

Seconds later, a giant of a man crashed out of the brush. Roaring, he barreled straight for Cutter, jowly face a bright crimson, puffing great clouds of vapor in the cold air.

Butterbean.

“STOP HIM!” BLODGETT BARKED FROM THE TREES.

St. Louis Metro PD had Butch Pritchard on video murdering a pregnant Heather Decker. He was a killer and there was a better than average chance his associates were killers too.

“US Marshals!” Cutter snarled. “Get on the ground, now!”

Butterbean kept coming.

Tasers were problematic in the deep freeze of Alaska where even the longer probes weren’t likely to penetrate thick layers of clothing.

This guy had a good three inches and well over a hundred pounds on Cutter. Getting run over by him would hurt. Beyond that, Cutter didn’t have time to mess around. Lola was out there by herself, possibly tangling with Pritchard.

Butterbean croaked something unintelligible as he attempted to chug past.

Cutter stepped off the trail like a matador. He crouched low, and then pushing off with his legs, drove his shoulder low into the big man’s thigh.

With any normal human the knee would have been toast. Take out the underpins and even a brick house will collapse. Butterbean was no normal human. Some injuries were immediately incapacitating, ending the fight on the spot. Others required time to take effect. From the looks of Butterbean, this one was apparently neither. The force of Cutter’s blow knocked the big man off balance, but it took its toll on Cutter as well. His ribs and arm had taken a severe beating while bringing his brother’s killer to justice a scant two months earlier. Everything worked, just slower and with varying effect. He’d learned years before that if you weren’t prepared to fight hurt then you might as well be out of the fighting business. Unfortunately, Butterbean was on to the same concept.

The big man rolled with a ferocious growl, quickly pushing himself up on all fours. Cutter winced through his pain to deliver what should have been a devastating knee to the man’s ribs. He may as well have driven a knee into a side of beef.

Butterbean shook off the attack and continued to his feet. Cutter knew he should have stepped away to gain distance, but his predator drive pulled him forward, a deadly but much smaller lion clamping down on the nose of an angry Cape buffalo bull.

“On the ground,” Cutter barked again. “Police!”

Butterbean shook off all two hundred and forty pounds of deputy marshal, hand on one knee to push his massive bulk to his feet. Beyond pain now, Cutter plowed into the giant again, driving forward while he was still trying to rise and knocking him face down on the frozen mud. The ground shook. Frost rained from overhead branches.

Blodgett ran down the trail, panting like he’d just finished a marathon. His parka was open, the tail of his wool shirt untucked. Blood poured from his nose where Butterbean must have clocked him. Without slowing, Blodgett jumped on a prone Butterbean’s back. The outlaw’s parka had ridden up during the scuffle with Cutter. Blodgett exploited the opening and drove the prongs of his Taser into the unprotected flesh above the man’s belt.

Butterbean howled as fifty thousand volts surged through his body. The barbed probes weren’t far enough apart to incapacitate a large muscle group, but five seconds of molten electricity coursing up and down his spine got his attention. He gave a half-hearted growl and attempted to scramble onto his hands and knees again. Blodgett pulled the trigger a second time, delivering another river of fire immediately on the heels of the first.

Cutter backed away a step and held the howling outlaw at gunpoint. His mind was still on Lola. He waited a beat while Blodgett daisy-chained two pair of handcuffs together making them long enough to cuff Butterbean behind his yard-wide back.

Lola broke squelch again on the radio. “. . . Pritchard . . . crossing the lake . . . northwest . . . Behind him . . .”

“Go!” Blodgett said to Cutter, wiping blood off his face with his forearm, patting Butterbean down for weapons. “I got this guy.”

Deputy Hart broke in, her voice buzzing with tension. “Lola! Nancy says stay off the ice! She’s not sure it’s solid enough.”

Lola came over the air with a sardonic chuckle, now crystal clear. When she wasn’t arresting fugitives, she virtually lived in the USMS gym. It would take much more than a little footrace to wind her. “Too late for that,” she said. “The ice is holding Pritchard’s fat ass. I . . . I should be—”

A hollow shout came over the air, not quite a scream—and then silence.

“I got him,” Blodgett said to Cutter. “Go.”

Cutter paused as Butterbean launched into a tirade of curses.

“Seriously,” Blodgett said. “I’m good here. Go!”

Cutter broke out of the trees at a dead run. Frigid air seared his lungs. Flat light made it nearly impossible to make out much detail. Butch Pritchard wasn’t fat, but a heavy parka and clodhopper winter boots made it look as though he was waddling over the ice. By some miracle, he’d made it more than halfway across the frozen lake without being rugby tackled.

A sputtering cough jerked Cutter’s attention a hundred feet to his right. Only then did he discover the reason Pritchard had been able to outrun a gym rat like Teariki.

Two outstretched arms waved above the ice, almost invisible against the monotone gray of winter.

She’d fallen through!

Lola gestured frantically toward an escaping Butch Pritchard.

“I’m good!” she screamed. “Get the bastard!”

Cutter ignored her, moving quickly but carefully, testing the strength of the ice with each step. He wouldn’t do her any good if he fell through himself. The crust crunched beneath his feet but there was no telltale sound of cracking.

Paige Hart came over the radio again. She and Alvarez were stuck in traffic a half mile out. It didn’t matter. Pritchard was as good as gone.

Lola gave an exasperated growl. Her hair, usually in a high bun, had fallen into a thick black tangle. The Lamilite insulation in her parka didn’t absorb water, but trapped air to push the entire coat up around her neck and shoulders, framing her Polynesian face.

“I . . . said I’m fine!” she stammered, fighting the bulky parka as she alternately treaded water and pounded the jagged lip of ice in exasperation. “This is . . . a good three inches th . . . thick. It’ll hold me.”

Cutter gasped as she sank out of sight, only to break the surface again, spitting and cursing, now out of the bulky parka. Black water churned as she kicked and thrashed, bracing her elbows on the edge to pull herself up. Behind her, a shelf of ice roughly the size of a refrigerator door teetered precariously on the far edge. She’d apparently hit it at a dead run, her weight causing the slab to surf half out of the hole while dumping her in the water. Held in place by friction alone, the commotion in the water threatened to bring the slab of ice back down on top of her, plugging the hole with her under it.

Cutter clocked the gravity of the situation at once.

“Lola, stop!” he barked. “Grab my hands.”

“But . . . Pritchard’s getting away—”

A scant five feet behind her, the ice slab groaned as it began to slide from the shelf, canted like a giant blade directly at her neck.

Cutter dropped to the seat of his pants, legs stretched out straight in front of him. Elbows on the ice at his sides, his butt in the water, Cutter braced the small of his back against the edge of the hole and caught the oncoming ice against the soles of his boots. The shock of a sudden dunking took his breath away but sent a shot of much needed adrenaline. Certain his ribs would detach from his spine at any moment, he strained, leg-pressing the oncoming ice, slowing but not completely stopping the advance. Even the thick parka gave him little padding between his back and the toothy edge.

He groaned, pressing with everything he had. “Now would be a good time to get out.”

Lola launched herself prone in the water. Kicking powerful but half frozen legs, she wallowed her chest and elbows on the edge, and then managed to put one foot and then another against the oncoming slab. The advance pushed her forward, sliding her out and onto the ice.

At the same time, Cutter straightened his back and legs, letting the closing trap door shove him out of the water.

Soaking wet, the pair wrenched their freezing clothes away from the ice and turned to watch the four-by-six-foot slab shriek back into place, plugging the hole where Lola had been only seconds before.

Cutter arched his back, trying and failing to catch his breath from the strain he’d just put on his injured ribs.

“You have got to stop running off on your own like that.”

“No shit . . .”

He frowned, shaking his head. “I mean it, Lola. Don’t do that again or—”

“Or what?” Lola snapped. “How about you let me thank you for saving my life. Then you can chew my ass for poor tactics—which, by the way, I learned from y . . . you.”

Her parka lost beneath the ice until spring, Lola’s teeth began to chatter. The color had bled from her normally bronze face. Cutter shrugged off his, which was still reasonably dry and draped it over her shoulders.

“We’ll talk about this later,” Cutter said.

Lola stared transfixed at her former prison. “Holy . . . h . . . hell, Cutter. That thing gobbled up my coat. If you hadn’t . . . That could have been me.”

“Well, it wasn’t,” he said.

“What d . . . do you reckon that slab weighs?”

“Three or four hundred pounds, give or take.” Cold seeped through his wet clothing. “Looks like someone cut it.” He nodded at the series of eight-inch holes someone had made side by side with an ice-fishing auger, each drilled close enough together to form a rectangular “trap door” of free-floating ice in the middle of the lake. Half frozen slush left the cut lines nearly invisible. Pritchard’s tracks showed he’d led Lola to the trap where he’d jumped across, leaving Lola to step directly on top, dumping her into the frigid water. Fortunately, her weight and the angle of her step had caused the floating block to wedge up on the far surface for a time instead of instantly sliding shut on top of her.

“That asshat tried to kill me,” she whispered.

Cutter nudged her toward the vehicles, holding her tight around the shoulders.

“We’ll get him,” he said. “Sean has Butterbean in custody.”

“Who?” Lola sputtered. She reached up to wring out her sopping wet hair.

“The guy who was with Pritchard,” he said. “He’ll know where we should look.”

“His name’s Butterbean?”

“It is for now,” Cutter said.

Lola finally started to walk without him pushing her.

“That was almost the end of me.”

“It was,” Cutter said. No reason to sugarcoat it.

Lola stumbled. Cutter caught her.

“I’m calling an ambulance,” he said.

“Holy hell, boss, I just tripped.” She brushed a damp lock of hair out of her eyes. “Ice baths are supposed to be invigorating.”

“That wasn’t just the dunking,” Cutter said. “Your wet clothes are essentially like wearing a refrigerator.”

Lola shrugged off his arm. “Seriously, Cutter, I am fine. Please tell me this Butterbean has felony warrants.”

“Seems the type,” Cutter said. “Warrants or not, we have him on resisting. He smacked Sean in the face and fought me when I identified myself.”

“Good,” Lola said.

Cutter hit the auto start on his Ford as soon as it came into view through the trees.

“We’ll take my car,” he said.

“Mine’s parked right beside it.”

“We’ll have Paige bring yours back to the courthouse.”

“You think I’m not able to drive? Shit, Cutter, I was in the water for all of five minutes. Joe Rogan takes ice baths longer than that.”

“I’m not arguing with you,” Cutter said. “We’re taking my car.”

Lola stopped in her tracks. “Look,” she said. “I get that you want to yell at me some more, but can we at least check the house? Decker could be inside.”

“Alvarez will have APD to back her up and do a knock and talk.”

“We can’t screw around with this guy,” she said. “I feel like we’re only going to have one chance at him.”

“That is no reason to go off half-cocked by yourself like you did.”

A pained expression crossed her face, like she might throw up.

“Arliss, I coulda died . . .”

“And whose fault is that?”

Cutter knew exactly whose fault it was, which explained why he was so angry. It was his.

LOLA WAS QUIET ALL THE WAY TO THE FEDERAL BUILDING, SURELY some kind of record for her.

They’d swapped wet coats for dry wool blankets from the back of Cutter’s G-car. The heat blew full force and their wet clothes had gone from freezing to clammy. Lola pulled her blanket over her head like a hooded robe. Cutter draped his over his shoulders.

He used his proximity card on the Seventh Avenue side. It was closer to USMS office space and kept him from having to deal with the contract security guys at the Eighth Avenue entrance.

Lola finally broke her silence while they waited for the rolling metal door to rumble open.

“You said we’ll talk about this later,” she said. “What does that mean?”

“Forget I said anything.”

“Cutter! Talk about what?”

“Your accident,” he said. “An after-action review.”

“It wasn’t an accident,” she said. “That asshole tried to kill me, but he failed. Would it be an accident if he’d shot at me and missed?”

“It’s not the same thing,” he said.

“I reckon it is.”

“Not for you to decide.”

Lola’s voice shot up an octave, and for a moment, he thought she might come across the console. “Cutter, I . . .” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I guess it would be inappropriate to refer you to the whole pot-and-kettle thing.”

Cutter parked directly across from the USMS sally port entrance and threw open his door. “It would indeed. Seriously, we’re both still processing. We’ll discuss it later.”

Lola bailed out without another word, her angry footfalls echoing off concrete pillars. Melting ice and even some scant snow from vehicles belonging to people who came in from the Hillside ran along the concrete floor in tiny rivulets to strategically placed drains. Like most underground garages it was humid and dusty and smelled of vulcanized tires and antifreeze.

Cutter pushed the button to activate the electronic Hirsch ScramblePad, but the door buzzed open with a loud click before he had time to enter his four-digit code. Cutter waved his thanks at the pan-tilt-zoom camera mounted above the door. The court security officers in the control room had seen them approach.

Another click of static and Bill Ferguson, a retired Air Force Security police officer turned CSO, spoke over the speaker.

“Might want to hustle. Sean’s having some trouble in the cellblock with that big guy he and Paige just now brought in. We’re sending the elevator down for you.”

Cutter pulled open the heavy steel door.

“Thank you, Bill.” He turned to Lola.

She held up her hand. “Please don’t,” she said. “I’m right-as. I promise.”

The door from the parking garage took them into a small ten-by-ten “mantrap” with a door to their left leading out to a vehicle sally port. The elevator opened dea. . .