“Where are we going?” Cab asked with a puzzled look.
“There’s a rest stop up here.”
“Do you need to rest?”
Maggie looked for the headlights. They were still behind her, right where they’d been since they’d left the city. As they climbed toward the Thompson Hill Information Center, the headlights climbed, too. It was a black SUV, but the windshield was tinted, and she couldn’t see inside.
“Actually, I think we’re being followed,” Maggie said.
*
Stride was at a stoplight on Superior Street downtown when his phone rang. The number was unfamiliar, and the area code wasn’t local. He’d been getting media calls all day. He was tempted to ignore it, but he answered it anyway.
“This is Stride,” he said.
“Lieutenant, this is JoLynn Fields with the National Gazette.” The woman seemed to anticipate his reaction, and she rushed on before he could say anything. “I realize I’m not exactly flavor of the month for you right now.”
“If you’re looking for another interview, Ms. Fields, you’re at the back of the line.”
“Well, maybe I can change your mind.”
“I don’t think so,” Stride replied.
“I’m not coming to you empty-handed, Lieutenant. I’m talking about a quid pro quo. Hear me out.”
Stride hesitated, letting the dead air stretch out on the call. He headed past the Fond-du-Luth Casino on his right. The turn toward Canal Park and the Point was two blocks away.
“Go on,” he said.
“I find spies wherever I go,” JoLynn told him. “It’s part of how I get the information I need. One of my spies works at the Duluth Airport. He was getting off work this morning and noticed something unusual. A limo did a pickup at a private jet on the tarmac.”
“We’ve had a lot of private jets coming into town today,” Stride said.
“Yes, but my spy sent me photos. The woman getting off the plane was Mo Casperson.”
The light at Lake Avenue turned green, but Stride stopped dead and waved the traffic around him. “You’re telling me that Mo is in Duluth?”
“That’s right. I’ve spent most of the day trying to confirm it and find out where she is.”
“And what did you find?”
“She got a limo to the Sheraton downtown, where she rented a suite and then arranged for a black Lexus LX. She’s been holed up at the hotel most of the day, but she just left.”
“Headed where?” Stride asked.
“South on 35. That’s all I know. So how about that interview?”
“I’ll get back to you.”
Stride hung up as his phone buzzed. It was an incoming text from Maggie. Thompson Hill. 911.
He jammed down the accelerator on his Expedition, turned left, and shot onto the I-35 southbound ramp at high speed.
*
Maggie drove to the far end of the Thompson Hill parking lot and spun the Avalanche around so that her headlights faced the entry road. The rest stop was at the top of the hill. The dark Duluth sky stretched overhead, and the view overlooked the city and the lake below them. She saw two other cars parked near the tourist information building, but there were no people nearby.
The Lexus SUV followed them slowly into the parking lot. It parked oddly far away on the other side of the lot. The two vehicles seemed to stare at each other through the gleam of their headlights. Maggie and Cab waited inside the Avalanche to see what would happen next.
The door of the Lexus opened, and a woman got out.
“Mo Casperson,” Cab said.
Mo wore a sleek black leather overcoat that hugged her tall, slim body down to her ankles. Her hands were buried in the coat pockets. Her eyes were hidden behind sunglasses even in the gloom of dusk. Her golden hair was long and loose, flying in the hilltop wind. She walked in high heels in front of the Lexus and stood and stared at them from between the headlights.
Maggie tapped out a quick message to Stride.
Then she and Cab got out of the Avalanche. Maggie already had her pistol in her hand, and she leveled it at Mo at the end of her arms. The sight of the gun didn’t seem to bother Mo at all. She watched them take slow, careful steps in her direction, but they were separated by most of the parking lot. Maggie and Cab slowly converged from both sides of the Avalanche.
“Hello, Cab,” Mo called.
They both stopped where they were. Maggie didn’t lower her gun.
“I’m surprised to see you here, Mo,” Cab replied. “I figured you’d be hiding out on an island somewhere.”
“I never hide.”
“No? Well, maybe you don’t appreciate the situation you and Dean are in.”
“I appreciate it very well. Believe me. You must be proud of yourself. You and Tarla finally got what you wanted. You took down a great man.”
Cab shook his head. “He’s a serial rapist. You’re the murderer who’s enabled him all these years. Truly, I don’t how you do it. I don’t know how you sit on your patio in Captiva and justify it to yourself.”
“Dean made the world a better place,” Mo shot back. “Everything worth doing has a price.”
Maggie still had her gun trained on Mo, who hadn’t moved at all from her position in front of the Lexus. “Mrs. Casperson, take your hands out of your pockets very slowly. I want to see your hands right now.”
Mo made no effort to comply. She didn’t even look at Maggie, as if there were no more than the two of them in the parking lot. Her gaze was trained on Cab. He was the one she wanted.
“Did you think there would be no consequences, Cab?” Mo called. “Did you think I would go down without a fight?”
“Hands,” Maggie repeated, but Mo ignored her.
“You’re the one facing consequences,” Cab said. “It’s called jail.”
Maggie started walking again, step by step, across the parking lot. She felt the breeze blowing off the hill onto her face, and an American flag snapped and clanged on its pole near the information building. The standoff between them crackled with danger. She tried to guess the plan. The game. She didn’t know what it was, but she knew something was about to happen.
“Oh, Cab,” Mo retorted with a nasty smile. “So naive. You forget that I’m much, much richer than you and Tarla.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning I have the resources to do this.”
Maggie’s Avalanche exploded.
A cloud of hot flame billowed out of the truck, and shattered glass sprayed around them like bullets. The concussion wave lifted Maggie off the ground and threw her across the parking lot, where her body slammed into the pavement and rolled. Her gun bounced away. She was facedown. Her ears heard nothing, only silence. She pushed herself onto her elbows and watched red rain drip to the ground from her hair. It was blood. She got to her knees, but the world spun like a roulette wheel. The heat of the fire burned her cheek, and the black asphalt sparkled with diamonds.
She shouted Cab’s name, but she couldn’t hear her own voice.
Maggie crawled on the ground. The glass cut her hands. She shook her head to clear her brain. Cab was thirty feet away, lying on his back, with his arms and legs spread into an X. She shouted his name again, and she heard herself like an echo on the other side of a wide canyon. He didn’t answer. He didn’t move.
Untouched by the blast, Mo Casperson marched calmly across the parking lot. Her heels crunched on broken glass. She passed within a few feet of Maggie, and Maggie lurched upward to grab her but fell back as the world spun. Mo kicked Maggie’s gun away and headed straight for Cab. Her gloved hands emerged from her pockets. In one hand, she held a phone; in the other, she clutched a small revolver with a pink grip. She stood over Cab on the ground and dialed the phone.
Maggie was too far away to do a thing. She heard Mo speaking, and it sounded no louder than a whisper in her head.
“Tarla?” Mo said into the phone. “My dear, it’s Mo calling. Listen carefully. I wanted to congratulate you on destroying me and Dean. Job well done. I hope you’ll decide it was worth it, because the next sound you hear will be me putting a bullet into your son’s brain.”