Chapter 1
Allison Bennett was, by nature, a careful woman.
But she’d spent the better part of her adulthood being downright paranoid, and she had vowed to leave that character trait behind when she moved her family to Sunnyvale, North Carolina, for a fresh start.
Old habits had died hard, but after six months in her new home, she’d begun to relax. She stopped sleeping with a loaded gun in her bedside table. She occasionally allowed the gas gauge on her new minivan to dip into the red zone. And once or twice she even forgot to deadbolt the front door.
By the time she’d lived there for nine months, she no longer hyperventilated when her kids disappeared for hours on end, passing long summer days doing whatever it was small-town kids did from dawn until dusk. She depleted her stockpile of canned goods and propane tanks and stopped buying two cases of water every time she shopped for groceries.
She began to feel safe. So safe, in fact, that she allowed herself to believe the past she was running from would never catch up to her.
She decided it was time to put down roots in her new home. So, on her first Christmas as a single mother, she treated herself to a gift.
She called the most trusted supplier of vacuum-packed heirloom seeds in North America and splurged on the largest seed vault it carried: enough to both plant an abundant garden this year and store sufficient seeds to replant in the future just in case society did collapse.
New, non-paranoid Allison chided herself for thinking such a thing, but the extra-large vault was an excellent value for the price, so she went ahead and purchased it anyway.
The seeds arrived, several months later, right on schedule, in plenty of time for planting.
By the time the package landed on her front porch, she’d forgotten all about her plans for a garden. Her new life had turned upside down since Christmas. Just before the new year, the man she was hiding from had escaped from prison, and she’d been paralyzed with fear, waiting for him to show up and ruin the life she’d begun to build. Unable to sleep, she dug the gun out from the storage locker, oiled it, and loaded it. But the days stretched into weeks, which turned into months, and he never appeared.
Finally, she decided not to let the fact that he was out there, somewhere, stop her from living. She reminded herself that she was safe. Her kids were safe. He could never find them. She repeated the words the government had told her like a mantra, until, at last, she began to believe them. The gun went back into the storage trunk.
And so when the ground thawed, she spent long hours digging up her lawn, tilling and turning the soil, and amending it to create the perfect environment for her vegetables. She planted her seeds and nurtured them. Her youngest children helped each morning with weeding and watering. The older kids planned elaborate menus around the anticipated harvest. And they all shared her excitement when green shoots peeked out from the rich earth.
None of them knew she’d be dead before the first plant bore vegetables.
Chapter 2
Monday
Pittsburgh, PA
Sasha McCandless was, by training, a careful woman.
She’d spent the better part of her adulthood in a career where careless mistakes meant the difference between winning a case and losing it. And she’d spent that same amount of time practicing hand-to-hand combat and self-defense.
She’d begun studying Krav Maga because she was a very small person and she wanted to feel capable and strong. She never imagined the training would save her life multiple times, but then she never imagined she’d have so many encounters with murderers. Including the murderer who was currently out there, somewhere, waiting for his chance to strike at her and her new husband.
For the first several weeks after Jeffrey Bricker had hired armed bandits to storm her wedding, she’d been spooked. She kept looking over her shoulder, checking under her car, and generally walking around ready to spring into battle. But Jeffrey Bricker had been out there in the shadows for nearly six months now.
Even her Krav Maga instructor agreed it was unsustainable to live in a state of high alert for an extended period of time. Daniel analogized the situation to the time he’d spent living in Netanya, during a period of heavy conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. ‘We just accepted that every time we set foot in a public place there was a real risk of a bombing. We scanned the space for suspicious people or packages, made a note of the exits, and went on with our daily lives.’
And, after about a month, so had she and Connelly.
They weren’t reckless. It wasn’t as if they had forgotten that a megalomaniacal murderer with an actual army at his disposal had escaped from a federal penitentiary with the express goal of killing them. But they couldn’t go through life waiting for him to strike, either.
This thought ran through her head as she rapped on the door to her law partner’s office. In fact, she tried not to spend time wondering about Bricker’s whereabouts except for these weekly briefings. Each Monday, she and her partner, Will Volmer, had a conference call with Hank Richardson, the director of the shadowy nameless federal task force charged with hunting down and capturing Bricker. Connelly sometimes sat in on the calls, too.
She stepped into the office and saw that her husband had beaten her there.
Will and Connelly had their heads bent over the phone. They both looked up as she closed the door behind her. She raised her coffee mug in greeting.
“Sasha’s here,” Will announced into the speaker phone while Connelly slid off the edge of Will’s desk and came over to greet her with a chaste kiss.
His arm lingered around her waist. Six months of marriage hadn’t dulled the thrill that ran down her spine at the contact.
“Morning, Hank,” she craned her neck toward the speaker.
“Sasha,” his familiar voice boomed through the phone.
She inched one of Will’s guest chairs closer to the desk and took a seat. Connelly followed suit.
“What do you have for us, Hank?” Connelly asked.
“Nothing new, I’m afraid. I’ve increased the team, adding people from across six agencies. We’re still out there chasing down leads, but, so far, he’s a ghost.”
“What about the prepper group in New Mexico?” she asked.
Two weeks earlier, a low-level marijuana dealer had been picked up in a Drug Enforcement Agency sweep. He’d been eager to get a deal and had started rattling off the names of his suppliers and his buyers. He mentioned that he had some regular customers who were foot soldiers in a local militia group. Further questioning by the DEA agents led to the revelation that the group was rumored to be harboring a fugitive who’d escaped from prison.
At the previous week’s briefing, Hank had said the DEA and Homeland Security were planning a joint raid on the compound. It was the most promising lead they’d had in months.
“After much consultation, the agencies agreed that the DEA did not have cause to raid the group. They then reached out to Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms. While the ATF has been interested in seizing the groups cache of weapons for some time, after due consideration, they determined that the risk of a Ruby Ridge or Waco scenario was too high. So, the desk jockeys in charge are all punting. While everyone was bickering over who was going to do what, if anything, I went ahead and authorized a mission by a … freelancer … who could only confirm that, if Bricker had been there, he’s gone now.”
Hank’s tone left no question as to his views about the bureaucratic maneuvering that may have allowed Bricker to slip through the government’s fingers. It also made clear that she shouldn’t ask for further details about the ‘freelance mission.’
Given that she was married to one of Hank’s freelancers, she knew all too well that the mission was likely technically illegal.
“Next time,” she said.
Connelly rubbed her arm reassuringly through her thin, cotton cardigan. “That’s the attitude.”
“Well, I’ll sign off now,” Hank said.
“Anything else? What about the prison dentist who helped Bricker escape?” Will asked.
Originally classified as a hostage, the dentist, who had ties to Bricker’s militia, was now officially considered an accomplice. He was either dead—likely at Bricker’s hands—or on the run.
“There’s no news on Dr. Rumson.”
She caught Connelly’s eye and flashed him an encouraging smile as Hank said his goodbyes.
Will depressed the conference button to end the call and searched her face.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
They’d done everything in their power to secure the office—new alarm system, new locks, and new Connelly-enforced rule that Sasha wasn’t to work late into the night alone. She knew Will was almost as worried as she and Connelly were, but there was no way to guarantee Bricker wouldn’t storm the office.
Or her condo. Or her parents’ place. Or her hairdresser’s salon.
Of course, it was unsettling, not knowing where Bricker was or what he was planning. Every week, the news was the same: Bricker was still out there somewhere, hiding, watching and waiting for a chance to strike. But eventually he’d make a mistake.
Chapter 3
Sunnyvale, North Carolina
Officer Vince Fornier scratched his left ear and watched Lilah Stokes’ face.
He was trying to reserve judgment about the pointless nature of this particular call, but everyone in town knew Lilah was an unrepentant gossip with an overactive imagination—and nosy, to boot.
Everybody also knew that it had nearly driven her mad when the Bennett woman and her six kids showed up in town a year and half ago and moved in right next door to her. Allison Bennett was as close-lipped as Lilah was gabby. She kept to herself and never bothered to address any of the rumors swirling around town about her.
Was she divorced? Widowed? A single mother? Did she work? Was she on welfare? Or was she independently wealthy? Nobody knew.
Nobody knew anything about Allison or her kids. They hadn’t joined a church, a social club, a sports team, or a volunteer organization since landing in Sunnyvale. She didn’t even send her children to school. According to the registrar, she’d filed papers saying she was homeschooling them instead.
Most people would have realized the Bennetts were reserved and left it at that. But not Lilah. Allison’s reticence had only served to fuel Lilah’s curiosity—some might even call it an obsession.
In fact just a month earlier, the Bennett woman had called in to report a suspected prowler after her trash cans had been knocked over in the middle of the night. Vince had answered that call, too.
After canvassing her property, he’d assured Allison that there was no one hiding in her yard. Despite being sorely tempted, he didn’t mention that he’d seen Lilah racing into her garage, clutching her robe around her, when he’d pulled up.
Now, he just listened as the old busybody explained why she was worried about her next-door neighbor.
“Are you listening to me, Vincent? I was weeding my begonias when something caught my eye. I looked through the Bennetts’ living room window and saw a woman’s foot and leg sticking out from behind the sofa. I rapped on the glass but the woman didn’t move. So, I walked around to the front and rang the bell. No one answered the door.”
Vince let his eyes drift to the flower bed in question and then return to her face. Surely she knew he could tell just by looking at the layout that she couldn’t have seen into the Bennett house from her flower bed.
She’d been spying on her neighbor. Again.
She glared back at him.
Finally he said, “I’m sure she’s just resting or something. But I’ll check it out. Why don’t you go on in and get ready for your card club meeting.”
“You never were the brightest of the bunch, Vincent. Who on earth lays down to rest on the living room floor? She probably passed out drunk. Or she overdosed on drugs. Or maybe she fell and hit her head—”
He ignored the insult and raised a calming hand to stem the tide of horrible fantasies she was spewing.
“Now, Mrs. Stokes, I said I’m going over there to check it out. You’ve satisfied your civic duty. Go back inside.”
She shot him a look that could’ve curdled milk then slammed the door shut in his face.
He tipped his hat at the closed door and chuckled to himself as he started down the steps to the sidewalk.
He leaned on Allison’s doorbell just in case she had fallen asleep, but she didn’t answer. He tromped through her freshly mulched bushes and pressed his face up against the glass in the large window. Just as Lilah had described, he saw a shapely pale leg and a bare foot protruding from behind the floral-patterned couch.
Then he spotted the glossy red slick of blood seeping into the carpet beside the woman’s leg. A lot of blood.
His heart leapt into his throat, and he fumbled for his radio until he remembered the Chief was out of town, taking his annual week’s vacation up at the lake. He was going to have to handle this on his own.
He tried to force the window up, but it was locked tight and, judging by the layers of paint over the frame, probably painted shut, too. He vaulted, one-handed, over the fence enclosing the backyard, and tried the kitchen door. The screen door swung open right away and the interior door was unlocked.
He forced himself to slow his breathing as he drew his gun and searched his memory for the proper technique to sweep a house for intruders. It wasn’t a maneuver he’d had much occasion to use since graduating from the police academy.
He burst into the kitchen and aimed his gun in a smooth arc around the room. Empty.
“Ms. Bennett? It’s Officer Fornier. Are you okay, ma’am?” he called into the living room. He was pleased and surprised to hear that his voice didn’t crack.
She didn’t respond. He headed toward the living room.
He hurried over to the body behind the couch and scanned the large room to confirm no one else was there.
As he neared the body, he pulled out his radio to call for the town’s ambulance. One look at what was left of Allison Bennett’s face was all he needed to know that an ambulance would be futile. He radioed the station and told dispatch to call in the coroner instead.
Then he crouched on shaky legs beside the corpse. Her long, straight hair fanned out behind her. Someone had beaten her so ferociously that what was left of her face had caved in on itself. Her cheekbones flattened and smashed. Dark blood caked her hairline. To confirm what he already knew, he placed two fingers on the inside of her limp wrist. She had no pulse.
Bile rose in his throat and he stood quickly, gulping for air. The cloying scent of blood heated by the afternoon sun filled his nose. Sweat beaded his brow as he struggled to regain his composure.
He had to get out of there.
Secure the scene.
He raced out of the room and began to move methodically from one room to the next, searching every closet, corner, and behind every curtain. He checked the basement and even lowered the pull-down access to check the attic crawl space.
Once he’d satisfied himself that he was alone in the home except for a dead woman, he reluctantly forced himself to go back toward the living room. His heavy footsteps echoed through the still house as he walked slowly down the hallway.
He hovered just outside the doorway into the room. Procedure required him to wait for the coroner, but he sure as heck didn’t want to have to look at Allison while he waited. He already knew her ruined face was going to haunt his dreams.
The sound of childish laughter in the backyard caught his ear. He hurried to the kitchen door and peered through the glass.
The Bennett children were tromping through the yard. The tallest two were in the front, carrying a cooler between them. Behind them, the middle two wrestled with three fishing rods apiece. And the little two brought up the rear, shouting and hooting.
He raced outside and skidded to a stop just outside the door.
The two oldest kids froze mid-step at the sight of a police officer running out of their home. They let the cooler fall to the ground with a thud.
The other four children eyed him with varying degrees of curiosity and fear.
He cleared his throat and tried to think of something reassuring to say.
Lilah, bless the old bat, saved him.
She opened her door and called over the fence, “I just made a batch of brownies. I don’t suppose anyone over there wants to help me eat them?”
The little ones squealed and headed for the gate.
“Wait,” the girl with the fishing rods yelled after them. “We have to check with Mom first!”
Vince found his voice.
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