Jack Frost: Hunting Lee Child’s Jack Reacher

Book 14: The Hunt for Jack Reacher Series

by Diane Capri

Genres: Hard-Boiled; Financial Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

The last time Jack Reacher passed through South Dakota, almost everyone close to him was savagely murdered.

Some say Reacher killed them. Maybe he did.

But one survived.

A ruthless gangster. Imprisoned at the Bolton Federal Correctional Facility.

A daring prison break.

Police and witnesses ruthlessly murdered as he barrels across frosty South Dakota.

Now, FBI Special Agent Kim Otto lands in the middle of the gangster's desperate escape to freedom. She joins law enforcement to recapture the brutal felon before he disappears forever.

Agent Otto is no longer working alone.

She wanted a new partner and now she's got one.

William Burke, an ex-SEAL formerly assigned to the Hostage Rescue Team, should have been the answer to all of her problems.

But Burke's got a cloud on his record.

How will his past impact their mission?

61 Hours was almost the death of Jack Reacher. Jack Frost might finish the job.

Lee Child Gives Diane Capri Two Thumbs Up!

"Full of thrills and tension, but smart and human, too. Kim Otto is a great, great character - I love her." Lee Child, #1 World Wide Bestselling Author of Jack Reacher Thrillers including Blue Moon and The Sentinel.

The Hunt for Jack Reacher series enthralls fans of John Grisham, Lee Child, David Baldacci, Michael Connelly, Karin Slaughter, Lisa Gardner, and more:

"Diane writes like the maestro of the jigsaw puzzle. Sit back in your favorite easy chair, pour a glass of crisp white wine, and enter her devilishly clever world." David Hagberg, New York Times Bestselling Author of Kirk McGarvey Thrillers

"Expertise shines on every page." Margaret Maron, Edgar, Anthony, Agatha and Macavity Award Winning MWA Past President and MWA Grand Master

Readers Love the Hunt for Jack Reacher Series and Diane Capri:

"I have been a Reacher fan for years and was excited when I heard of Diane Capri's take on 'Finding Reacher'. 'Don't Know Jack' is a good companion to Child's Reacher books and recaptures the flavor of the Reacher mystique. I am waiting anxiously for the next book in the series and the next and the next, and so on."

"All Child fans should give it a try!"

Award winning New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author DIANE CAPRI Does It Again in another Blockbuster Hunt for Jack Reacher Series Novel

Release date: March 9, 2021

Publisher: AugustBooks

Print pages: 270

Sample

 CHAPTER ONE

 

Friday, May 13
Carter’s Crossing, Mississippi
5:00 a.m. Central Daylight Time

Her phone pinged, awakening her from a sound sleep fueled by exhaustion. FBI Special Agent Kim Otto rolled over to read the text from her boss.

The first thing she noticed was the delayed transmission. Cyberspace didn’t work nearly as well as people assumed.

The text had been sent at 3:55 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, but she’d received it two hours and five minutes later.

The Boss had booked her on a flight out of Memphis, departing shortly after one o’clock, Central Daylight Time, to Rapid City, South Dakota. From there, she’d travel to Bolton. A place she’d never heard of before.

No objections entertained.

She’d rolled over for a few more hours of shuteye before she’d packed up, said goodbye, and left Carter’s Crossing for the drive to Memphis.

Nine hours after the Boss had sent the text. Seven hours and five minutes after she’d received it, Kim sidestepped the mass of passengers waiting for screening and approached the TSA checkpoint at Memphis International Airport.

The Boss had notified TSA’s Officer Garrett, who was expecting her. Garret would ask to see her badge, and he’d simply pass her through. Without examining her bags or confiscating her service weapon. Which was absolutely against the rules.

Ideally, none of the other passengers would notice that she’d skipped the screening devices and systems required for everyone else. The last thing she needed to deal with was an angry mob.

Years after 9/11, a surprisingly large number of casual flyers remained edgy about the security measures applied at all U.S. airports. Anything a passenger proposed to carry past the security checkpoint was subject to inspection. Even though there had not been another U.S. jetliner hijacked in years.

Everything is screened. Whether passengers liked it or not.

No exceptions.

Mrs. Otto’s daughter, Kim, a petite Asian-looking woman dressed in a black suit, with a travel bag, a laptop case, and a suspicious bulge caused by a holster resting under her arm, should have been subject to the same security measures as everyone else.

The list of contraband not allowed beyond the TSA checkpoint was long and, sometimes, overreaching. At least in the eyes of the public.

Tensions could run especially high among civilians asked to stand inside a scanner and raise their arms to be checked for explosives residue. Especially if other passengers weren’t required to submit to the indignity of it all.

Some passengers were nervous flyers. Others were belligerent citizens. Still others were mentally or physically impaired. All of them went through screening, regardless of individual concerns.

TSA officers never came to work expecting the day’s routine activities to flow smoothly. Agent Garrett was likely as skeptical as the rest of his fellows. Kim didn’t plan to give him any reason to apply that skepticism to her.

She scanned the area until she located Garrett at his duty station. He was a gray-haired guy carrying about twenty extra pounds around his waist. She’d have placed him at about fifty if forced to guess.

He was working the center checkpoint line, standing with his hands on his duty belt, ten feet beyond the conveyor that trundled carry-on items through the X-ray system.

The female agent operating the screening device noticed something that had been placed on the belt by a flamboyantly dressed man near the head of the line. Kim hadn’t seen the item, which was enclosed by the X-ray machine.

The agent stopped the conveyor belt that had been running through the scanner and called Garrett over for a second opinion. They whispered, the woman pointing to the screen and glancing at Garrett for confirmation.

While she waited, Kim’s phone buzzed with a new text. Instead of connecting as planned in Rapid City, he’d been rerouted to meet her here in Memphis.

She looked around for her new partner, William Burke. She’d never met the guy. But she’d pulled up his photo on her phone before she came into the terminal. She’d recognize him instantly in any crowd.

Not that he was especially memorable.

Burke wouldn’t stand out in any particular way. He was six feet tall, fit, dark hair, dark eyes, boring haircut. In short, everything a solid FBI agent should look like if he wanted to blend into a group of regular Americans.

Kim was the lead agent on the Reacher assignment, and Burke was her new number two. She was younger than Burke by a couple of years, but she had more time in the field and a lot more experience on the Reacher case.

She didn’t see him standing around in the security screening area. Maybe he was already at the gate.

Kim rubbed her neck and rolled her shoulders. The drive from Carter’s Crossing had been uneventful. But she was tired. She’d been running on her standard triple As for way too long. Adrenaline, ambition, and anxiety could only carry her so far. Eventually, she also needed sleep and a good meal.

A strong whiff of freshly brewed java reached her nose. As soon as she was done here, she’d make a beeline for it. Maybe they’d have a sandwich or a bagel or something, too. Her stomach had been growling for an hour. Food and coffee would help.

“What the hell are you doing?” The flamboyant passenger who owned whatever was holding up the line at the screening machine had run out of patience.

Kim looked ahead. People in line behind the guy were restive, too. They wanted to move through security and get on to the next phase of what had become the nightmare of air travel.

Add in a couple of crying babies, and cranky toddlers, and things were about to get ugly. Kim could feel the vibe.

She moved closer, hoping to catch Agent Garrett’s eye, but he was focused on the unruly passenger now.

“Sir, please step aside. We’ll need to ask you a few questions,” he said, indicating a chair on the other side of the trace portal machine. He stretched his palm forward to indicate the entrance. “Walk through the puffer first, please.”

“Absolutely not,” the man said, much louder than necessary. “I want my bag. Give it back to me right this minute.”

Agent Garrett was an old hand at his job. He wasn’t about to let things get out of control. He gestured to a third agent standing on the other side of the checkpoint. She walked his way, as the passenger’s belligerence increased exponentially instead of throttling down.

“I said, give me my bag!” he shouted. He moved closer to the X-ray machine and lifted his arm, trying to reach inside. But his arms were too short to clear the Plexiglas shields mounted on either side.

Agent Garrett grabbed the man’s bicep firmly. “Sir, I need you to step over here, please. You’re holding up the line.”

The second agent was almost there. Whatever had seemed so essential in the passenger’s bag just a moment before was quickly abandoned. He jerked his arm up and away from the X-ray scanner and turned to run toward the exit.

He elbowed aside two women in line behind him. One of the women had a toddler belted into a stroller, which she held onto. Both the mom and the stroller fell over, and the toddler began to scream.

The second woman, perhaps the grandmother, shouted in outrage. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

The man kept going, picking up speed as he pushed passengers aside with both arms like a fullback on the field, rushing toward the game-winning touchdown.

He was approaching Kim’s position. Plowing through, head down, clearing his path as he moved.

Agent Garrett lumbered along behind him in hot pursuit. “Stop! Hey!”

When the passenger reached a point just a few feet in front of Kim, before he had a chance to correct his trajectory, she shoved her bags into the runner’s path.

He swung one arm in a wide roundhouse to knock her aside.

She stepped out of the sweep’s arc.

He whiffed.

The momentum of his swing kept him going.

His arm continued to travel around his body, twisting his legs while his feet were still planted on the carpet.

He lost his footing and stumbled while attempting to keep his balance.

When he staggered and fell forward, Kim stepped to one side, shoved her right leg out, and tripped him. Momentum and gravity did the rest.

He flailed both arms and stepped around his own feet in an attempt to stay upright. But he failed at that, too.

Kim moved out of his way. The last thing she wanted was to end up on the floor with the guy. As it was, she’d have a bruise on her leg where he’d come into contact with her.

As he went down, arms flailing, the sharp edge of his pinky ring scraped Kim’s neck, deep enough to draw blood.

Half a second later, he’d fallen hard in a crumpled heap of howling outrage, cussing and screaming the whole time.

A man walked up and put a booted foot on the passenger’s chest. He applied just enough pressure to keep him on the ground.

“You’re bleeding, Agent Otto,” he said with a grin. Which was when she looked at his face for the first time. William Burke. No doubt about it.

Kim reached into her pocket for a tissue and applied pressure to the stinging scrape on her neck.

A second later, the two TSA agents finally broke through the crowd. Kim confirmed Garrett’s name on the brass plate above his breast pocket.

“Thanks, Agent Garrett.” She showed her badge and nodded at Burke to do the same.

Garrett glanced briefly at both badges.

“Nice work, Burke,” Garrett said, bending down to cuff the passenger, who was still spewing curses.

“You were right on him. But glad to help,” Burke replied with a grin. He moved his booted foot off the passenger and set it firmly on the floor again.

Kim resisted the urge to glare at Burke’s smirking face. Hogging credit for her takedown? Conduct unbecoming.

It was a small thing. But small things showed the measure of a man. Details revealed character. This was not a good opening gambit from her new partner. Gaspar would never have done it, for damned sure.

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

Friday, May 13
Memphis, Tennessee
12:30 p.m. Central Daylight Time

A crowd had gathered, watching the show. A few passengers had pulled their cell phones out and recorded the whole sequence. The video would be posted online within the next ten minutes. The world would know who took the guy down. No need for her to make an issue of it now.

“We need to get going,” Kim said.

“Yeah,” Garrett nodded toward a gated area while still attempting to subdue the belligerent passenger. “Go through the swinging door there. We’ll take care of this guy.”

Burke grinned again. “Just curious. What’s his problem, anyway?”

Garrett shook his head. “Guess he thinks a concealed carry permit lets him take a loaded Glock on a plane. Dumbass.”

“It’s my gun. I can take it anywhere I damned well please.” The passenger was still on the floor, squirming in his effort to stand while wearing handcuffs. “I’ll have your badge for this. Then who’s the dumbass? Do you know who I am? Do you?”

“These folks in the crowd here seem to know.” Garrett shook his head. He pulled the guy up off the floor. “Come on, Mr. Celebrity. You can tell me all about it back in the office.”

When he walked the guy away, the remaining passengers in the security line applauded.

Kim collected her bag and pulled it toward the door. Burke followed her.

“Who was that guy?” Burke asked.

“No clue,” Kim replied. She went through the security door and followed her nose straight toward the coffee. She had fifteen minutes to make her flight.

Burke sauntered easily along behind her.

At the java stand, she grabbed a muffin and paid for two coffees. “We’d better hustle. They’re closing the door.”

“I’m on it.” Burke grabbed his cup and strode off, faster than Kim’s legs could carry her without running. Which she flatly refused to do.

Burke made it to the gate with two minutes to spare. He spent them chatting up the pretty gate agent while Kim approached.

“She’s with me,” Burke said. The gate agent nodded, and they rushed into the jetway half a moment before she closed the door behind them.

She’d known the guy fifteen minutes, and he’d already rescued her twice. Which was annoying. Just what had the Boss told him about her and the assignment, anyway?

A short line of passengers was waiting to board inside the jetway.

The flight attendant standing just inside the bulkhead doorway said, “We have a full flight today, folks. We need you to take your seats and stow your belongings as quickly as possible.”

Burke flashed her a megawatter smile before he turned to Kim and said, “My seat is 1A. Where are you?”

“3B. Have you reviewed the files?” She shuffled ahead, the line of passengers moving in fits and starts and making little progress.

“Yeah. We’re headed to Bolton Correctional Facility. A prison two hours’ drive east and north of Rapid City,” Burke replied. “Before we get there, we’re to interview a local jailhouse lawyer named Fern Olson.”

His accent was slightly southern U.S., Kim thought. But she’d just spent a few days in Mississippi, so maybe she was hearing things.

“Why are we going out there?” she asked.

This was the first time the Boss had sent her to a prison. It was a strange task. Reacher rarely let criminals live long enough to be tried and convicted.

“Interview one of the inmates. Guy worked as an informant for the Bolton PD seven years ago when Reacher came through, I guess.” Burke shrugged. “The file’s a little vague on what the guy is supposed to know or why it matters. Care to fill me in?”

The line had finally begun to move and Kim walked onto the plane. When she reached Burke’s seat, she said, “Let me get settled and read the files. Then we’ll talk. We’ve got five hours to get up to speed.”

“Sounds like a plan,” he replied as he hefted his bag into the overhead bin and slid into his seat.

Kim walked back two rows and slid into the aisle seat in row three. She stowed her bags, snugged her seatbelt tight, and waited for the plane to defy gravity.

Once the plane had reached cruising altitude at thirty thousand feet, the flight attendant brought coffee, and Kim opened her laptop to work.

She’d downloaded the encrypted files from her secure server from the Boss earlier and set them aside. She’d also downloaded encrypted files from Gaspar. She’d asked him to research her new partner. Now that she’d met Burke, she opened Gaspar’s file first.

Her initial impression from Burke’s behavior back at the airport confirmed he was no Gaspar. That impression was firmly cemented as she read through the file.

She covered the basics quickly.

William David Burke. Age thirty-six. Two years older than Kim. Birthday April 10. Aries the Ram. No surprise there. He’d already shown a few of the classic Aries personality signs when he jumped right into the situation she already had under control back at TSA.

Aries was a fire sign. He was likely to have an abundance of ambition, which was okay. She was ambitious herself.

A flash-fire temperament was not okay. He’d need to keep his anger on a leash. She wondered if he could actually do that. Time will tell.

No siblings. Parents deceased. Divorced. No kids.

Employment history was somewhat common for certain kinds of agents. After college, he’d joined the Navy SEALs and stayed for ten years before moving to the FBI. He’d been employed at FBI for four years. After the required two years as a field agent, he qualified for the Hostage Rescue Team.

The interesting part of his resume was the most recent entry.

The details were classified, so Gaspar’s hurriedly gathered report was sketchy. He was still digging for more details. What he knew so far was that Burke got mixed up in some sort of situation. Whatever it was, Burke ended up sideways and could have been fired.

But the Boss, for reasons of his own, didn’t want to let Burke go. So he parked Burke with Otto, out on the fringes of the FBI, where no one could see or complain about his behavior. Which was okay. Kim had been in this no-man’s land for a while now and she could use a guy with Burke’s skill set.

The whole Reacher assignment was temporary anyway. If Kim didn’t finish it soon enough, Burke would stay until things cooled off inside the HRT for him. Then he could go back to hostage rescue and other feats of daring-do, she supposed. That sort of stuff was a young man’s game, but Burke wasn’t too old for it. Yet.

She closed the file and the laptop to think about what she’d learned.

Reading between the lines, she suspected that the Boss had sent Burke in to do what Kim had failed to accomplish so far: Find Reacher. Which pissed her off royally.

Not that she could do anything about it. The Boss made all the decisions. He held all the cards.

The question was whether or not she could trust Burke. With his background, he should be more than capable. The hunt for Reacher was dangerous business. Burke’s skill set would be helpful and maybe even crucial.

Maybe, like Gaspar, Burke could be relied upon to think like Reacher. Kim had understood from the first minute of this assignment that if she was to succeed, brains, not brawn, was her best weapon. To deploy it, she had to understand Reacher’s moves before he made them.

Gaspar had been helpful with that issue. Maybe Burke would be, too.

But unlike Gaspar, Burke was Cooper’s boy. No doubt about that at all.

So the real question was: why was he here?

The answer was not contained in these files.

She closed the file and stashed it. Time to get up to speed on her assignment in Bolton, South Dakota. She ordered fresh coffee, opened the files from the Boss, and went to work.

 

 CHAPTER THREE

 

Friday, May 13
Bolton Correctional Facility
4:55 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time

“Sorry, but no. And I gotta go. I’m here, and I’m running late. I’ll call you when I’m done,” Fern Olson said into the blue tooth speaker as she pulled her red BMW into the mostly empty visitors’ lot and parked in the area reserved for lawyers.

The vibe was different, somehow. She’d felt it for the past week, right after she’d delivered the messages from last Friday’s regular visit to Bolton Prison. Something was off. She didn’t know what. Regardless, she didn’t want her son wandering the streets today, even in the small town, five miles south.

Her regular client conferences at the prison were a chore. Necessary, yes. Lucrative, sure. But like many things any lawyer does every day, most prisoner conferences were pure drudgery. Usually.

“How long are you gonna be?” the kid whined. Like every teenager on the planet, he wanted his mother’s world to revolve around him.

“My goal is always to get in, get it done, and get out,” she replied, glancing around the compound. Everything looked the same as always. Solid. Impenetrable. Secure. “I’ll call you when I’m on my way home.”

The day was sunny and clear, but colder than she liked. Spring had blown into Bolton a few weeks ago, stayed for about forty-eight hours, and fled south again. The change of seasons was, as always, unpredictable.

No one living in Bolton expected different, except her son. He wanted to go swimming in the lake with his friends.

“But, Mommmm,” Noah whined, drawing out the single syllable until it seemed to last forever. “All the guys are going. It’s not too cold. People swim in the Arctic Ocean, for cripe sake.”

“Heaven help me,” Olson muttered under her breath, shaking her head. “We’ll talk about this when I’m done here. I’ve gotta go. Love you.”

He hung up.

“Was I ever that obnoxious?” she said looking up to the roof of her car.

She grinned and spoke to one of the women she’d admired most as a child. Long gone, now, Janet Salter had been an inspiring role model to young girls growing up in Bolton.

She said, “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Salter. I’m not half the woman you were. I’ve done the best I could with him.”

For a brief moment, she considered changing her mind about the swimming.

Elevation in Rapid City was three thousand feet and in Sioux Falls, it was fourteen hundred feet. Bolton lay between them and farther north. The land was flat here. All the interesting elevations were closer to Mount Rushmore. Weather fronts came and went. Mostly warmer in summer and colder in winter.

But sometimes Mother Nature could act more than a bit drunk. Like this year.

Now it was mid-May and the trees were still bare, but daffodils and tulips had pushed up through the thawed ground. Roads were clear, and the last of the snow piles had finally melted. Flurries last night had left a light dusting of new snow in the grassy areas, but it had melted before noon.

Still, it was way too cold to go swimming.

Any halfway intelligent fifteen-year-old should know that, shouldn’t he?

She shook her head, still mumbling to herself. “The weather will get better, Fern. Mid-July, he’ll be complaining about the heat.”

Olson had worn jeans and boots to work because she visited the prison every Friday afternoon. She’d gathered her hair into a bun at the base of her neck to tame the long, unruly curls she preferred to leave free.

The chill in the air had prompted her to don a brown leather blazer over her crisp white shirt. She tossed her sunglasses onto the passenger seat, slid her phone inside the console and locked it, and grabbed her briefcase.

Cell phones were on the long list of prohibited items, including things like cigarettes, drugs, and weapons, not allowed inside the federal prison.

If she had the phone on her, she’d be required to leave it in a locker. Her entire world was stored on that phone. No way would she leave it where one of those idiots could grab it.

The prison guards insisted that they wouldn’t open lockers or try to breach the security on phones.

“And if you believe that, you’re not a jailhouse lawyer, for damned sure,” she muttered to herself.

Unlike everyone else in Bolton, Olson locked her car and dropped the key fob into her pocket. The BMW was new. She didn’t want some kid taking it for a joy ride.

She trudged across the parking lot, avoiding the puddles as she made her way toward the visitor’s entrance. It was late. She’d already had a long day. She didn’t plan to waste any time she had left before the prison locked down for the night. The last thing she wanted to do was be forced to come back tomorrow.

She could find her way with her eyes closed. She’d made the same trek every Friday for a long time, regardless of the weather. Just like her predecessor.

Olson had been a junior partner when she got this gig. The senior partner who’d handled the legal needs of prisoners before her had been murdered seven years ago.

In all law firms, shit work flows downhill. Which was how she got the prison detail. She shrugged. When her kid went off to college, maybe she’d make a change. Until then, there was nothing she could do but suck it up and do the job.

She reached the building, pulled the heavy entrance door open, and walked through. A slight citrus scent disinfected the air.

There was no line inside. Friday wasn’t a regular visitor’s day. But the interior was no less depressing. Linoleum on the floor and green paint on the walls and fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling cast a greenish tint everywhere.

The prison was thirteen years old and built to last a hundred. But the money was spent on design elements that had more to do with basic human needs, security, and function than a homey appeal.

When the heavy door snugged solidly closed behind her, it seemed to suck the life out of the room right along with the possibility of breathing free air.

Ahead of her was the big lobby, an empty X-ray belt, a walk-through metal detector, and three prison guards standing around doing nothing, discussing the weather and the baseball season.

She nodded and they nodded back. She wasn’t friends with them. Didn’t even know who they were. Personnel seemed to rotate through the visitor’s entry duty on a randomized schedule she hadn’t bothered to figure out.

But they were all on the same side, really. Prison was a binary world. Either you were locked up, or you weren’t. She wasn’t. They weren’t.

Olson removed her visitor badge from her jacket pocket and placed her folded jacket into a plastic bin. She clipped the badge onto her shirt. Then she pulled down another bin and placed her briefcase in it. She opened the briefcase, stashed her car key fob inside, and closed it again.

She stacked the two bins together and carried them across the room to a window. A uniformed woman took the bins from her and gave her a claim ticket to collect them after they’d been hand-inspected.

“Running late today.” the officer said. “How long are you planning to be?”

“Couple of hours, probably,” Olson replied.

The officer nodded. “Warden has extended hours in the exercise yard since daylight saving time kicked in. Gives the inmates more fresh air. We won’t be locking down until eight o’clock tonight. All interviews end by seven-thirty.”

“Okay,” Olson replied. “I’ve got three clients scheduled. One hour each. I’ll do my best to hurry them up.”

“Unless you’d like to stay overnight, we’ll be escorting you from the building before seven-thirty.” The woman frowned. “Whether you’re done or not.”

“Understood.”

This was a federal government facility. She had no idea how many employees were on the site at any given time. The staff was mostly veterans from all branches of the military. Regardless of their backgrounds, they were all trained in law enforcement.

Bottom line was that Bolton personnel operated pursuant to thick stacks of rules and regulations and manuals and plans and backups and contingency plans, too. They’d no doubt trained to deploy such practices in a regimented way, precisely as and when needed.

Olson returned to the metal detector and stood waiting for the go light overhead. One of the guards pushed a button and the light turned green. She walked through slowly. She’d learned long ago to leave her jewelry and her underwire bra and anything else metallic at home.

Nothing beeped.

On the other side, one guards watched and another wanded her. The third, a female officer, patted her down.

Olson showed her photo ID and another card identifying her as a member of the South Dakota Bar Association. After she’d passed all of the screening tests, she exchanged her claim check for the return of her briefcase and her jacket. Then she collected her briefcase and jacket and followed the guard who escorted her to the meeting rooms.

Olson didn’t need the escort. She could have found her way in the dark. The building was clean and tidy but depressing just the same.

All prisons ran on protocol and this one had as many rules as any other.

No unescorted visitors. Period.

Which was a precaution against something. Olson wasn’t sure exactly what the warden was worried about. She had never heard of mobs trying to get inside the place. As far as she knew, they’d never had a single inmate escape, either.

Olson’s escort walked her deeper into the complex. Through heavy doors, around tight corners, and past thick green glass windows with watchful faces behind, until they reached her destination.

Four interview rooms, each divided exactly in half by a wall-to-wall counter with impenetrable safety glass above it, like a bank teller’s cage in an old movie. Each side of the room had a separate entrance door. The prisoners entered from the other side.

Olson had never been on that side of the wall. She had no firsthand experience over there. Nor did she want any.

Her escort opened her door and then locked her inside and took a few steps away to offer the appearance of privacy.

In theory, lawyers and clients were allowed confidential communications inside these rooms. Savvy lawyers like Olson never relied on those promises.

Smarter to assume nothing was private inside any prison. Every inch of the place, even the parking lots, was under constant surveillance. Maybe the cameras should be off at certain times. But mistakes were made. Olson had read about them in the law books.

She glanced at the clock. She had plenty of time before lockdown. Three clients. The first and last were okay, but the second guy was flat out terrifying.

Olson put her briefcase on the desk, pulled out a yellow legal pad and a cheap plastic pen, which was all for show.

The first and last clients never told her anything important enough to write down.

The second client carried a list of demands in his head. Not for himself. For other inmates.

He passed the demands to her.

Like her predecessor, she memorized the list and passed it along to someone else.

They were both being used.

He knew it.

She knew it.

Neither one cared.

Ryan Denny’s skin was pale and translucent white. He was bulked up and overweight and shackled at the wrists and ankles. He would never leave Bolton Prison alive. His eyes were dull, but he must have been some kind of savant. He memorized orders from other inmates and passed them along to her.

Olson shook her head. Denny was too frightening to focus on. He’d long ago invaded her sleep, causing nightmares after every visit. She forced his image from her mind and glanced at the clock again.

Her first client was eight minutes late, which was unusual. Not that she cared. She’d allotted him exactly forty-five minutes. No more, no less. And she was billing every second, whether Liam Walsh showed up or not.

 

 CHAPTER FOUR

 

Friday, May 13
Rapid City, South Dakota
5:35 p.m.

Captain Wayne Romone sat alone in the big old bird. Nervous about the operation and satisfied that he’d made it this far, all at the same time.

When he got the word from air traffic control, he pushed the throttle on the A320 to the max. With fifty tons of metal on board and a full load of fuel, every ounce of thrust he could get from the plane counted.

Once airborne, he kept the wings level for a couple of minutes, building airspeed before banking to the east.

The flight plan said Rapid City, South Dakota, to Minneapolis, Minnesota. Ninety-eight minutes in the air, nonstop. Piece of cake.

Except he wasn’t flying nonstop today.

Romone wasn’t worried. He’d had a good run. The love of his life had married him a couple of decades ago and they’d built a strong family. Four kids. Good kids. Three boys already at college and his daughter was going off in the fall.

He was proud of them all. His wife, especially. Her work as a teacher had given her many happy years.

When he’d daydreamed about his future, he’d planned savings for the kids’ college, and to care for elderly parents, and funding pensions.

But he’d never seriously considered how his own death might happen.

If he’d thought about the matter at all, he’d simply have assumed death would come to him in its own way and its own time and nothing he might want would trump the Grand Plan on that score.

Romone simply lived his life as if every day might be his last. In his line of work, it was a better strategy than most.

Romone had started his career with ten years in the military, flying transports into hot spots the world over. When the defense spending cuts came, he’d transitioned into the civilian world as a pilot for a big airline.

He’d flown lots of international trips. Lots of jet lag. Lots of days away from home.

When his fourth child had arrived, he’d transitioned to a smaller airline, flying domestic freight. What the job lacked in salary, it made up for in other ways. Most days he could sleep in his own bed and be a part of his family’s lives.

Which made everything he’d sacrificed to make it happen more than worth it. No regrets. Even as his world began to change.

Over time, the big air freight operators had gobbled up more and more of the market. There were still opportunities for small businesses like his, but the competition was fierce, and the money wasn’t there.

He’d accepted pay cuts to stay employed.

Which was okay.

His life was better spent with his family than chasing more money, anyway.

He’d have a lifetime to accumulate wealth. His kids were young only once. So he hadn’t questioned his career choices. No reason to.

Until that day at the doctor’s office when his whole world changed. Terminal cancer. “No way out,” the doc said. But Romone couldn’t wrap his head around it. It was damned unfair.

He’d always exercised and ate more salads than steaks. His mind was a sharp as ever. Passed his annual physicals with flying colors. Hell, he didn’t even need reading glasses. He was a good pilot, too. Knew all the routes, the approaches, even the air traffic controllers by name.

Sure, he’d been tired sometimes, but he was getting older, after all. He liked to fly later in the day. Less air traffic to worry about. Most of the time he flew on autopilot anyway, so it didn’t matter if he took a nap now and then.

He had a good copilot. Reliable. Younger. Easy going. Only too happy to babysit the electronics that were getting them from here to there and back again.

Which explained why Romone had to push hard to convince the young dude to call in sick this afternoon. But he couldn’t take any chances with the copilot’s career.

In a small outfit like theirs, everyone was essential and had to pull his own weight. Persuading the younger man to take the day off hadn’t been easy, but Romone had finally managed.

With no first officer available, Romone should have been grounded. His A320 was converted for freight haulage, which fell under the same rules as a commercial aircraft full of passengers.

But hauling freight isn’t a forgiving business. Given a chance, bigger operators would steal the clients in a hot New York second. Missing a big delivery like the one Romone was scheduled to fly next would give the competition the break they’d been salivating for.

So after his copilot called in sick, Romone convinced his boss that he could fly solo, just this once. The boss knew the score. He knew the flight would be a challenge. But the freight had to go, and the boss had no one else to fly the A320 today.

The boss argued with Romone, but in the end, agreed, as Romone had known he would.

A few false notations in the logbook and he was good to go.

Both Romone and his boss knew the messed up notes would be construed as minor mistakes. Mere oversights. At most, he’d get a slap on the wrist and be told not to do it again.

If the authorities found out.

Which they wouldn’t.

Nothing out of the ordinary about the cargo. Specialized engines for heavy earthmovers. It was the sort of freight that usually went by rail. But the manufacturer had a rush order and using air transport would get it there sooner.

If today’s flight went well, there were more contracts promised for the future.

Which was all well and good.

But the only thing Romone really cared about was that the cargo didn’t require a supervisor onboard. When the big aircraft started rolling, he’d be the only one on the plane.

Risking his own life for a big payoff to his family was one thing. Risking the lives of others was not at all okay.

Several times during the planning stages, he’d thought the operation might go off the rails. But it hadn’t. He’d managed to push through all the problems until, finally, he sat patiently waiting his turn for takeoff on runway one.

Daylight saving time had kicked in a few weeks ago. But he’d still be flying in daylight for the first leg. Sunset was three hours away. A nighttime return flight from Minneapolis would be fine, too. Easier than flying into the setting sun. Visibility clear all the way.

Twenty minutes into the flight, he pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket and read through it again. It was an informal checklist he’d created after significant research containing the steps and procedures he’d need to hide the planned detour of seventy tons of plane and cargo.

“Talk about flying a herd of elephants,” he muttered under his breath without cracking so much as a grin at the ridiculously apt mental image.

Romone had wrestled the situation around in his head for hours at night while the family was asleep, making his checklist. Transporting a herd of elephants was difficult under any circumstances. Maneuvering the A320 in total secrecy was damned impossible.

Finally, he’d accepted that he couldn’t hide his actions entirely. There were simply too many rules and regulations and eyes watching all the time.

At the moment, he felt more like an elephant wedged in a shoebox. No wiggle room at all.

He’d get as close to perfect as possible. He’d handle the inquisition afterward. That was the best he could do.

The payoff would be worth it. His family would be set for life. He’d never need to worry about them again. He could rest in peace when the time came, knowing he’d done the right thing.

 

 CHAPTER FIVE

 

Friday, May 13
Bolton Correctional Facility
6:15 p.m.

Duff Keegan’s outdoor exercise period was the last on the schedule today. With late spring’s warmer and longer days, the inmates were allowed more time outside, which was perfect. Sunset was later. Nights were shorter. Which wasn’t perfect, but he could work with those challenges. He’d handled much bigger issues already.

He’d showered and shaved and dressed in a clean white T-shirt and jeans before he donned a larger than normal orange jumpsuit over his street clothes. He sat on the edge of his cot to tie the new and aptly named running shoes. He smiled before he stood and stretched a bit, lifting on the balls of his feet, trying them out.

He looked around the cell for the last time.

A few books rested on a small shelf near his bed. His cellmate had gone outside already, too excited to stay cooped up, he’d said. Denny wasn’t much of a reader. He liked to memorize things and recite them back in perfect order, like replaying a recording.

Keegan wasn’t sure the scary-looking idiot could read at all. But he’d been useful with the lawyer, and maybe he’d develop the reading habit over the next thirty years. He’d have plenty of time.

Nothing else noteworthy caught Keegan’s eye. He’d accumulated little since they’d sent him to serve his time at Bolton Correctional and he cared nothing for sentiment anyway. He’d have everything he could possibly want when he reached his destination on Monday.

When the automatic door lock opened, he rested his hands in his empty pockets and walked straight out of his cell and into the corridor, without a backward glance or an ounce of remorse.

His mind was on the future.

There was nothing worth caring about here.

Two cells down the row, Liam Walsh stood waiting. Keegan nodded, and Walsh joined him. They walked casually side by side toward the yard, as they’d walked everywhere, every day since Keegan was first locked up at Bolton.

Any crime boss always had a protective presence around him. Keegan’s reputation as the most vicious gangster in Boston was usually protection enough, inside or outside any prison.

The few times Keegan’s cloak of extreme menace wasn’t enough, Walsh handled things in a more violent way. That’s what protective muscle was for.

Keegan didn’t keep Walsh around because of his brains and good looks. It was brawn Keegan paid handsomely for, and Walsh had never failed to deliver. Nor would he.

Not more than once, anyway.

Keegan had been squirreled away in this stinkin’ place because the feds were stupid. No other way to look at it.

The feds thought he’d be out of his element here. He was a big man in Boston. He was nobody in Nowheresville, South Dakota. That’s how the feds had figured it. That Keegan would be controllable, away from his organization.

Keegan shook his head. How stupid could they be?

Just before his armed escort had uncuffed him during his check-in at the warden’s office, the scrawny bespectacled FBI agent had said maybe, after a couple of winters in South Dakota, Keegan would take the witness protection offer they’d dangled.

He shook his head again. For smart guys, these feds weren’t at all wise in the ways of Keegan’s world. Not even a little bit.

“You see your lawyer today?” Keegan asked. The lawyer was part of the plan. She just didn’t know it. Which was as it should be.

Walsh nodded. “She was late. I was later. She had Denny and Burns after me. She’s still here.”

Both men grinned and kept walking.

Up ahead of him in the corridor, the line of men wearing orange jumpsuits waited to exit the cell block to the exercise yard. Keegan applied patience in these sorts of things. His turn would come. He had plenty of time.

All prisons had rules, and at Bolton, forty-six men at once were allowed in each exercise yard for a one-hour period. The groups of forty rotated through the one-hour schedule like civilian teams renting a sports facility on the outside. The cell blocks rotated the schedule.

On Fridays, Keegan’s cell block took the last hour of the day. Since daylight saving time had kicked in, the last hour of the day had moved to after dinner instead of before. Which worked better for him. Keegan had terrible indigestion if he went to bed right after dinner.

No prisoners were allowed out in the yard the other three days of the week. That was when visitors were on the premises.

Seven days a week, week in and week out. This had been his life. Which was about to change.

The forty-six men in orange jumpsuits shuffled along until they reached the door and then walked through the exit, one at a time.

Keenan and Walsh were in the middle of the group, protected from the front and the flank. Just in case.

Ahead, Keenan saw daylight before he reached the exit. The weather was sunny and clear and not a cloud in the sky, just as the weatherman had predicted. The temperature was still a bit cool, which was perfect for running.

He pushed himself up on his toes to stretch his calves as he shuffled toward the front of the line. At the exit, he walked deliberately across the threshold, for the last time, savoring the moment.

As he did, he vowed to himself that he would never take another breath inside Bolton or any other prison. Never.

It was a promise he meant to keep.

Keegan walked toward the picnic table in the far corner of the fenced yard. Walsh walked alongside him. They sat on the table, feet planted on the benches, facing west.

He’d quit smoking back in Boston after he was sentenced. Cigarettes were an addiction no inmate should entertain. Otherwise, he’d find himself at the mercy of dealers inside. Keegan had more self-control.

He reached into his pocket for a stick of chewing gum, unwrapped it, and folded it into his mouth.

He looked into the empty sky, toward Rapid City.

“What do you see up there, Walsh?” he asked.

“Nothin’, Boss,” Walsh replied.

“That’s right. Nothing but cloudless blue space,” Keegan said, flexing his feet in the running shoes.

He wasn’t worried. His ride would be here soon.

 

 CHAPTER SIX

 

Friday, May 13
South Dakota
6:30 p.m.

Captain Romone was getting close. He ran through everything one more time.

The A320 aircraft carried a slew of instruments that were monitoring and recording every flight parameter on a constant basis. His employer was required to review the parameters and file reports of any and all deviations.

FAA regulations governed aircraft movements and tracked position and speed through data broadcast from the aircraft as it traveled, too.

Hiding his actions would be neither easy nor foolproof. He couldn’t do an actual practice run. He had one chance to make this work.

Which was why Romone had prepared his list late at night using a flight simulator.

Before anything else, he had to buy a little time. The flight schedule was way too tight.

Under normal conditions, descending from cruising altitude, landing, and climbing back up would take twenty minutes. But every moment of his flight time was scheduled and monitored at all times.

Which meant he needed to find a way to create twenty extra minutes of maneuvering room.

First, Romone keyed the microphone to call the company dispatcher to report nonexistent headwinds.

Headwinds made a difference. Flying into a hundred-knot breeze took a hundred knots from his speed across the ground. Ninety-eight minutes of flight time would be stretched to 110.

If such headwinds existed.

Which they didn’t.

The dispatcher noted the pilot’s reported headwinds and Romone ended the transmission without further discussion.

He’d bought himself twelve minutes with the false report.

Twelve minutes.

He needed twenty.

There was no way to get permission for the next step. Neither his dispatcher nor FAA controllers would allow it. Too dangerous, they would have said.

If he’d asked.

Which he didn’t.

Romone wasn’t concerned. He could do this. He’d flown in every condition imaginable. Today’s flight conditions were as close to perfect as Mother Nature could produce.

Regulators, on the other hand, were another thing entirely. Over the years, he’d learned it was easier to get forgiveness than permission from the regulators. He’d worry about them when, and if, they investigated the flight later. Chances are, if he pulled this off, they wouldn’t have any reason to investigate at all.

No one would ever know. He’d take the secret to his grave.

Romone took a deep breath and dialed the autopilot height down from FL300 to FL200, which reduced the cruising altitude from thirty- to twenty-thousand feet.

Landing from the lower altitude was not in the flight plan, but it would trim the remaining minutes he needed.

The aircraft systems reduced the engine power and went into a gentle dive.

The descent still took too long. Eight full minutes.

Because the aircraft’s flight control system prioritized passenger comfort over a more rapid descent.

Which was stupid. The old bird hadn’t carried a passenger in twenty years.

Romone’s next steps would be where his personal risk really kicked in. His internal controls snapped to full attention.

Aircraft are designed to handle failures. Which meant, given the chance, the systems would thwart Romone’s unauthorized activities.

The flight control system had multiple physically separate computers calculating how the aircraft should respond to the pilot’s joystick and throttle changes. Romone knew that any onboard computers that generated such risky moves would be rejected by the safety systems, so he turned them off.

The system was designed to prevent an errant computer from crashing the aircraft.

But it also limited the plane’s performance, minimizing fuel consumption and maximizing the life of the plane’s components.

Romone couldn’t allow the safety systems to get in the way. His mission needed to succeed on his own terms.

“I’m in control here, baby. You computers can take a little nap,” Romone said aloud, partly to reinforce his own choices.

He taped his phone to his leg and started a timer to display big digits he could see at a glance counting down on the screen.

Romone reviewed his private checklist and traced his fingers over the switches he would activate and buttons he would press, further committing the whole process to memory.

The faster he worked, the more plausible his cover story would be later when he claimed the A320 had experienced a power failure. Intermittent electrical problems were a fact of life on complex aircraft, and he’d use that reality to cover his ass.

He’d flown over Bolton prison twice a week as it was being built a few years ago. He knew precisely where the compound was located. Smack dab in the middle of nowhere USA. Surrounded by open land. The closest town was Bolton, five miles south, and it was a tiny burg, itself.

He peered into the distance, looking for the prison.

At the limits of his vision, a smudge on an empty landscape marked his target. The smudge resolved into a long black line of runway beside a series of mottled earthy colors.

He’d studied the layout carefully during his satellite research and while creating his checklist.

Large open concrete areas with smaller buildings dotted the perimeter around the prison. Guard towers.

The runway and three much larger buildings were coming into view.

The buildings were separated by strong steel fences topped with serious amounts of razor wire because Bolton was a maximum security facility.

The runway was likewise fenced off. Physically, of course. And also by government regulation. A permanent FAA NOTAM, a notice to airmen, restricted the prison runway to emergencies and authorized flights only.

Such access was rarely requested and even more rarely granted.

The feds, the state, and the county were not kidding about keeping the extremely dangerous prisoners inside their respective compounds at Bolton Correctional and keeping the rest of the world out.

The runway itself was a good size for smaller birds, but for Romone’s fully loaded A320, it would be tight.

He’d completed similar jaunts in the military and knew the drill.

Slow in.

Touchdown at the very start of the runway, and straight onto full reverse thrust to slow the big bird down.

He’d use any remaining speed at the end of the runway to turn on the tiny parking apron.

The timer on his phone reached zero, alerting him with a loud buzz. He inhaled deeply and began to work his checklist, mumbling as he covered each point.

Romone’s fingers darted over the controls above his head like a concert pianist moving surely over the keys, in precisely the correct order, with exactly the right touch, following years of practice.

Powering down computers and responders. Disabling the radio and flight recorder. And finally, shutting down all but one of the flight control computers.