Aimee bundled them up and gave them a flashlight. When the kids opened the door, a warm gust of humid air caused the lanterns to flicker. The rain had begun to lighten. It might even have stopped. The sound on the roof was no longer a martial drumbeat but more erratic, as of drops falling from the bare branches to plink like coins off the new shingles.
Aimee returned to her story.
The rest of the afternoon passed without incident, she said. All was calm and quiet—or as calm and quiet as the Cronk household ever got—until the phone rang after she’d put the kids to bed. By then she’d found my topo map and made a game of figuring out where I had gone up-country.
She’d hoped it was the lawyer calling with news, then realized it was almost midnight: too late for such a thing.
Instead she heard her husband’s voice on the other end of the line. From the rushing car sounds behind him, she knew at once he wasn’t calling from the prison farm.
“You need to get out of there!”
“What? Why? Where are you? What’s going on?”
“You need to go someplace no one would ever think to look.”
Her stomach had begun to agitate. “Billy, have you … escaped?”
“I’m pardoned, ain’t I? It’s only paperwork keeping me locked up. And it’ll be too late if I wait any longer.”
She placed no trust in her husband’s legal acumen. But what worried her most was the real fear in his voice. “Who are you afraid of?”
“It’s a group of renegade COs. They were going to try to kill me tonight before I was released, which is why I had to leave early. When they realize I’m gone, they’re gonna come for you. They know I won’t talk if they have you as hostages. Please, baby, you need to run and run fast. Tell me where you’re going and I’ll find a way to catch up.”
The cabin on Tantrattle Pond was the first place to leap to her mind. For one thing, she knew I would be there and able to protect them. Second, she didn’t figure many people outside of a few wardens knew where I was since it was obvious I was up to my usual mischief.
“And so we shot up here like shit through a goose,” she said by way of conclusion.
My mug was empty. “What about Billy?”
“He said he’d find a way to get here.”
“Warren is close to a hundred miles from Intervale. And I’m sure his pardon doesn’t exonerate him in advance for stealing a car. Oh, shit. What did you do with the topo map I left—?”
Her rebuking smile reminded me she was smarter than I was when it came to the practicalities of life.
So far, I had resisted sharing details of my abbreviated conversation with Detective Klesko. She would agree with me that there was no way on God’s earth that her husband would have murdered another man’s family to protect himself. But I owed it to her to share the investigators’ suspicions and the direness of Billy’s situation. I couldn’t make my mouth form the words.
“So who are these men who are after us?” she asked. “Do you know any of their names?”
“Are you sure this is a conversation we should have in front of the kids?”
“At this stage, they’ve gotten the idea that we’re kind of in a pickle.”
“What I have to tell you is bad, Aimee. Whoever these guys are, they already killed a fellow guard by the name of Tyler Pegg. They made it look like accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. I can’t be sure, but I suspect one of them is the CO who allowed Darius Chapman to get loose at the hospital. Letting him ‘escape’ was a pretense to shoot him before he could trade what he knew for a lighter punishment.”
“Is his name Rancid?”
“Rancic.”
“That’s not what the inmates call him. I thought he and Pegg were friends.”
“So did Pegg, I suspect, until Tyler saw what happened at the hospital and began to have doubts about things he’d seen and heard.”
“But this Rancid guy ain’t the mastermind.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think he is.”
“So who’s the big shot running the show?”
I resisted sharing my suspicion about Dawn Richie. It felt premature and raised questions for which I had no answers. “We’re going to need to ask Billy, if he ever makes it here.”
“When he makes it here. My husband’s got his faults and failings, but he’s the most motivated individual I’ve ever met when the spirit moves him.”
Just then, I heard a distant blaring noise. I recognized it at once. Someone was leaning on the horn of my Scout, which I had left unlocked in my haste to reach the cabin.
“Who is that?” Ethan Cronk asked.
“He sounds mad,” said Aiden.
I picked up my Maglite from the table and put on my drying jacket, steaming by the fire. I tucked the hem behind the grip of my sidearm so I could get at it quickly. “There’s only one way to find out.”
40
As I ventured out into the dripping darkness, I was surprised by the duck-like quacks of wood frogs along the shores of the pond. The day’s abrupt warmth must have awakened them from their winterlong sleep beneath the mud. Now a few males had begun their annual, awkward songfest. Soon, the bandit-masked frogs would be joined by thousands of lovesick spring peepers, and the nights would become earsplitting.
The fog continued to drift among the trees, obscuring whatever starlight or moonlight might have been above the valley. I chose not to turn on my Maglite. Until I knew who was here and what was going on, I didn’t want to give away my position.
The snow was melting fast. The first patches of bare ground showed as impressions around the trunks of the biggest beeches and pines.
I made a path parallel to the drive, close enough that I could see it. I had decent
