“Shannon! Shannon! God damn it, you hang on, do you hear me?”
He head lay against the deputy’s lap.
The sheriff dropped down a first aid kit next to them. Mac checked her pulse while Lich opened up the box and grabbed the blood pressure monitor.
“I’ve got her pulse at 120,” Mac said.
“Blood pressure is low,” Lich reported. “Eighty-one over forty-five.”
“The black bag!” Mac said. “Get me the Glucose Meter.”
Dick handed it to Mac and he tested Shannon.
“What’s it say?” Lich asked.
“The glucose is high, way high. She needs insulin.”
Lich reached inside the black bag and handed Mac a needle and small bottle of insulin. Mac pulled the cover off the needle and stuck it into the top of the bottle, drawing out ten units of regular insulin, just as Lyman had instructed. He rolled Shannon onto her side and plunged the needle into her lower abdomen, injecting the drug into her system.
“Will that snap her out of it?” the sheriff asked.
“I don’t know,” Mac answered. “The girl’s father told us that if she was in this condition when we found her, this is what she would need. After a minute he stood up, leaving the deputy to monitor Hisle’s pulse. He walked over to Carrie, who sat on the bumper of the Explorer with a bottle of water in her hands. Her face was blank, nearly lifeless.
“I told Shannon you’d find us,” Carrie said weakly as Mac sat down next to her. “I told her you’d find us,” she repeated as she started to cry again. Mac put his arm around her shoulder and held her.
“Wait a second,” the deputy said, his hand on Shannon’s wrist and his eyes on his watch, “I think we’re getting a little better here.”
Hisle’s eyes fluttered and her breathing regulated. Mac kneeled down and put his right hand to her face. “That’s it Shannon, come back to us.”
“W… w… water,” she said weakly. A deputy quickly handed down a bottle, and Mac put it to her lips, letting her take some small sips.
Mac looked up. Lich smiled broadly as the sound of a chopper rose in the distance. The sheriff moved away and shot up a flare. Within a minute, the helicopter was touching down, the whoosh of the blades matting down the tall grass. The ER doc, in his hospital blues, was out of the chopper and on Shannon in an instant, checking her eyes and pulse. McRyan gave him the status report.
“You gave her insulin?” the Doc asked.
“Her glucose was high,” Mac answered. “So she needed insulin. We gave her ten units.”
“Good,” the doctor answered as he checked Shannon’s glucose again. “The ten units looks like it was a good start.” He reached into his own box of supplies and pulled out another bottle of insulin and administered another ten units. He then set up an IV. The paramedics put her on a stretcher and transported her over to the chopper. The doctor stood up and came to Carrie, “How are you doing, young lady?”
“I think better,” Mac answered when the young woman said nothing. “She seems okay, physically at least.” They all knew that her injuries would be psychological.
The doctor looked Carrie in the eye and said, “How about you come with us, okay?”
Carrie looked at Mac, who smiled and nodded. “You go. I’ll see you at the hospital later.”
Gail Carlson sat on the county road, a quarter mile away from the farmhouse. It had been nearly a half hour since the police went up to the house. She’d driven down the road a little further, inching closer, but neither the Suburbans nor McRyan’s Explorer were around the farmhouse now. She heard it first, and then saw a North Memorial helicopter, flying low and fast from the south and passing right over the farmhouse. It passed out of her sight, but almost immediately the sound of its rotors changed to one she knew from experience meant that it was landing. Carlson figured it meant one thing. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Heather Foxx.
“I think McRyan might have found the girls.”
“Where?”
Carlson related her current position in Marine on St. Croix. “So where are you at right now?”
“Following two other cops. We just pulled up to the Taste of Minnesota. The cops are all over a bus that Flanagan and Hisle jumped onto.”
“So do you want to go with the story? That they found the girls?”
Foxx heard the question, but was looking at Pat Riley and Bobby Rockford racing back to the pickup and blowing out of the parking lot, siren blaring. Something was amiss. “Not yet Gail. Something’s not right here.”
Lich smiled around a fresh cigar in his mouth as he handed one to Mac. “God damn it Mac, we found them. Man did you pull a rabbit out of the hat with this one!”
Mac smiled, reaching out to take the cigar, but he paused when he saw the time on his watch. “We’re not quite done yet, my friend,” he said. “Six twenty-one: they should be at the Taste of Minnesota any minute.”
Mac’s cell phone chirped. It was Riley. “Do you have the chief? What? Wait. Slow down. Say that again. How in the hell can that happen?”
“What? What’s wrong?” Lich asked, his smile gone.
Mac looked at him with a stunned expression. “The chief and Lyman weren’t on the bus.”
34
Smith followed well back of the minivan driven by Flanagan and Hisle on Shepard Road. The street ducked under the Robert Street Bridge and became Warner Road, with the Mississippi River running parallel on the immediate right. Smith, as well as Flanagan and Hisle, were free and clear of the FBI and police.
As Hisle and Flanagan had waited with the crowd at the bus stop, there was virtually no way for anyone following them to see them as the bus pulled up. Smith and Monica had scouted the location for a month, watching from various positions and angles, anticipating what the police would do. They had discussed contingencies with Burton and ways that he could control the situation from his end.
The Fourth of July holiday was the key. The arena, convention center, and the skyway that connected the arena to the parking garage would have provided surveillance stations on a normal day. But the skyway and the convention center were closed for the holiday. The only unobstructed view of the bus stop was at the Holiday Inn, where Monica had in fact been watching a white pickup truck parked in the left hand turn lane on West Seventh. The pickup had to be the cops, sitting pat in the turn lane with the hazard lights on through several green lights. Of course, the passenger using binoculars was a dead giveaway as well. Had the truck turned left at just the right time, maybe, just maybe, the police would have seen Flanagan and Hisle slip back ten feet and down into the RiverCentre ramp while everyone else climbed onto the bus.
Once Flanagan and Hisle were inside the parking ramp, they went down one level to a waiting blue minivan. One minute later, while the police were tailing the bus, the police chief and the lawyer were exiting onto Eagle Street, far below Kellogg Avenue and the bus stop.
When they exited the ramp, Smith, and only smith, was waiting on the side of southbound Eagle. He watched Hisle and Flanagan approach in his rearview mirror. A dashboard camera in the minivan provided David, who was waiting on the boat, with a live video feed of Hisle and Flanagan as they drove the van. David in turn provided updates to Smith as he followed. The police scanner sat in his passenger seat. It had been quiet, with no sign that the police had yet realized they’d lost them. That wouldn’t last long.
Smith picked up the handheld radio and spoke to the van. “You’re doing well, Chief,” Smith said. “Stay on Warner until we get to 10.”
“Who are you?” Flanagan asked a few minutes later, as the van approached the intersection with County 10. “Tell me who the hell you are!”
