One of the hardest lessons you learn in law enforcement is this: sometimes the bad guys get lucky.
“Motherfucker! Son of a bitch!”
The voice had come from behind the cabin where Beta had disappeared.
Alpha drew back into the cover. “What’s happening?” he called.
“They’re under the fucking cabin! The bitch slashed me with a knife when I squatted down for a look.”
I could almost hear the well-oiled wheels turning inside Alpha’s head.
“Drag one of them out!”
“Which one?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Alpha wasn’t going to show himself. Now that he had the advantage, he was willing to wait as long as needed.
There was a thump that sounded like steel hitting bone.
Aimee began to scream. “No! Stop! Let her go!”
Beta emerged around the side of the cabin, clutching little Emma to his chest with one arm while he leveled the carbine at her mother with the other one. Aimee gripped a butcher’s knife with both hands. From Beta’s hopping limp, it was clear she had slashed him badly across the shin and the forearm he was using to hold his sobbing prisoner.
He was an anonymous man dressed in black tactical clothes and a balaclava. But I thought I recognized his posture of all things: the stiff military straightness with which he carried himself.
One click and I could have put a bullet through Beta’s head—assuming the Bushmaster had been sighted in accurately, assuming he didn’t flinch, assuming Emma didn’t raise an arm in front of his face, assuming all kinds of things I couldn’t assume.
And even if I managed to kill him, what then?
Alpha had demonstrated he was willing to execute an innocent mother and daughter for the sake of silencing Tyler Pegg. With a trigger pull of his own, he could shoot Aimee Cronk dead, and he would still have five Cronklets to use as bait to draw their father in for the kill.
“Turn on your radio, Bowditch,” he called. “I’m tired of yelling.”
I did at the lowest possible volume, afraid that even that setting might give my location away.
Emma continued to cry, and now her brothers were trying to rush to the rescue, too, so that poor Aimee was forced to drop her knife to corral them, lest Beta start shooting.
The littlest boy, Brady, picked up the knife and waved it in the air like a cutlass.
He was Billy Cronk’s son, all right.
The whisper in my ear was like the hissing of a snake: “Mike, you’ve got to realize that we’ve got the upper hand here.”
“Who is this?”
“You don’t know?” He started to chuckle. “And all this time I’ve been assuming you were smart.”
“Rancic?”
A single laugh came in response.
“I take it that’s a no.”
“Throw out your weapons. If you have Crossman’s radio, then you must also have his rifle and revolver. Plus your own sidearm of course.”
I remained motionless.
“You know I have no problem killing one of those brats.”
“Please, Mike!” Aimee had managed to keep her boys from rushing to their sister’s rescue. They huddled within the comfort of her arms, except bold little Brady, who refused to relinquish his blade.
“Do you really need a demonstration of my resolve?”
His resolve. The last occasion I’d heard the strange turn of phrase eluded me. Then the memory arrived with a forceful immediacy. Me sitting at a table in the hospital cafeteria. Him across from me, toying with a salt shaker.
How had I been so blind?
Alpha was Angelo Donato, deputy warden at the Maine State Prison.
42
The man in the black balaclava had to be Donato’s right-hand man, Sergeant Hoyt. He displayed the same ramrod posture I’d noticed when we met at the hospital. I should have been able to identify Beta from the stick up his ass alone.
“I have a question for you, Angelo.”
Hearing his name, realizing I had belatedly deduced his identity, gave him pause.
“What?”
“When did you start using your own product?”
Every minute I could keep Donato off-balance was a minute when I didn’t need to start voluntarily disarming.
He dispensed with the radio: “Just throw out your goddamn guns!”
Hoyt followed his commanding officer’s lead by shouting, “Do it, Bowditch!”
Somehow I needed to take both men out before they could harm any of the Cronks. My mind kept attacking the problem, looking for an opening. But every option resulted in one of Billy’s family being shot.
“I could see how unhealthy you looked when I saw you at the hospital,” I said, playing for time. “When you and I first met—how many years ago was that?—you were as strong as a bull. When did you get hooked on the heroin you were smuggling into the prison?”
“Do you want us to kill them all?” Donato answered. “Keep talking and we will.”
“Mike, please!” Aimee said.
“Is that why your wife left you—because of your drug use? I noticed your wedding ring was missing. She took the kids, right? I remember you have kids.”
“Hoyt,” said Donato. “Shoot the boy.”
Aimee rose from her crouch. “No!”
The prison guard dropped the girl to the ground, and then, to everyone’s surprise, Brady Cronk lunged with the knife at Hoyt’s wounded shin. The man found it impossible to get the barrel of his carbine in the right position to take a shot without firing into his own leg. He stumbled away from the boy berserker.
I never formed a plan. It all happened too quickly for me to apply my rational mind to the unfolding events. I think I intended to shoot Hoyt, who stood fully exposed in the scope.
But before I could squeeze the trigger, the strangest thing happened. In that eerie-green circle of my scope, I saw Hoyt arch his back sharply, almost as if he’d received an electrical shock. His masked face lifted toward the hazy sky and he lost his grip on his rifle, which swung and danced on its bungee sling.
Then his head dropped in amazement and confusion.
An arrow was sticking through his chest. The broadhead had pierced his back and ribs and was protruding through
