“Not yet. I just got that confirmation text from him ten minutes ago and I came straight to you.”
Kirkbride thought about that for a moment. Then he reached forward and plucked the handset from his landline. Before he hit the speed dial, he said, “I’ll handle Tibbs. You call your Fed.”
“Special Agent Craig Rhodine,” Cassie added.
“Yeah, him.”
“He’s got a special team on call. I don’t know how long it’ll take him to get them geared up and on the plane.”
“He’s got a plane?” Kirkbride scoffed.
“A Boeing 727,” Cassie said. “It’s reserved for the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group.”
His eyebrows rose. Kirkbride was always immediately suspicious of federal law enforcement intervention.
“The what?”
“The Critical Incident Response Group,” she said. “From what I understand it’s a group made up of a tactical assault squad, snipers, criminal profilers, attack dogs, and crisis managers. They show up in a 727 with blacked-out windows. Plus Rhodine himself, of course.”
“Sounds like overkill,” the sheriff said, more to himself than to Cassie.
“Don’t forget who we’re up against,” she said.
“I haven’t. How many years have you been after him?”
“Four,” she said. “Well, three and a half.”
“Will they get clearance at Sloukan?”
Sloukan Field Airport had once been located on the northeastern town limits of Grimstad before the growth of the community had overrun it. It was now in the middle of town surrounded by still-to-be-completed subdivisions.
“I don’t know,” she said, flustered. “I assume they’ll take care of that themselves. I’ll ask them.”
“Don’t forget we have commercial flights now,” Kirkbride said.
She had no response. She had no idea why he was focusing on the flights that had been introduced to Bakken County by Delta and United to service the traffic generated by the oil boom when the Lizard King—also known as Ronald Pergram and Dale Spradley—was finally on his way directly to them.
“Jon…”
“I know, I know,” he said, holding up his left hand. “I just worry about logistics. That’s a lot of firepower coming into my little town.”
As Cassie strode to the door Kirkbride called out to her to stop.
When she paused in the doorway, he said, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Cassie.”
“Please don’t say that.” It hurt that he said it.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I’m with you. I trust you. I’ve got your back all the way. But this is happening fast. You’ve told me the Lizard King is smart as hell and he’s gotten away more than once. He knows the law and he knows how to hire the best defense lawyers to keep him out of jail. I worry about not building a careful box around this guy. We can’t screw up. We can’t let him escape again.”
Cassie turned and narrowed her eyes. “He won’t get away this time.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because,” she said, “we’re going to kill him if we have to.”
Kirkbride was still. The phone was still in his hand, still poised halfway between the handset and his ear.
“Good thing I didn’t hear that,” he said.
CHAPTER
TWO
CASSIE LOOPED THROUGH AN EMPTY roundabout in her department Yukon and caromed out of it onto a wide suburban street called Abell Drive, after George T. Abell. She took a right on Erle Halliburton Way up to the driveway of her home, which was the only occupied house in the cul-de-sac. All of the streets in her new subdivision had been named after members of the Petroleum Hall of Fame based in Midland, Texas. One of the city council members had come up with that during the apex of the boom.
She’d purchased the split-level home before the bottom fell out of oil prices. Time had proved that she’d paid too much for it but she was stuck. There were five empty but finished houses on the cul-de-sac and scores of them within the subdivision. She’d wanted Ben to live in a real house with a real yard in a real neighborhood with other kids around, because he’d been the only boy his age in the county housing complex next to the Law Enforcement Center. Not that Ben seemed to mind, though. He liked interacting with the officers he saw in the elevator and hallways—all those uniforms and guns—and they seemed to like him.
Unfortunately, there were no other boys his age in the subdivision and only one other family, and they had a FOR SALE sign in their front yard.
She left the Yukon running and her door open and was about to charge up the steps to the door when she paused. Her heart was racing and she took a deep breath to try and calm herself.
Cassie turned on the porch and looked out at the Missouri Breaks in the valley below her. It was a cool and still fall morning and quite a contrast to the way she felt inside. Thick river cottonwoods fused with yellow and red clogged the banks far below and extended in a multicolor ribbon to the east as far as she could see. In the early mornings or at dusk she often saw white-tailed deer in the meadows beyond the trees, and there were always geese and ducks cruising above the treetops. One of the reasons she’d jumped at the chance to buy the house was because of the view. It reminded her a little of Montana, her home state, but with no mountains or elk. And in the fields beyond the river in every direction, oil wells winked at night, making Grimstad look much bigger from the air than it actually was.
*
“WHERE DID YOU GO?” her mother Isabel asked as Cassie entered the house. “I heard you talking to someone on your phone early this morning but when I got up and looked around you were already gone.”
The Grimstad Tribune was opened in front of her on the kitchen table. The kitchen smelled of fresh coffee.
“The office,” Cassie said, looking around for signs of Ben.
“He’s getting dressed,” Isabel said.
Cassie looked at her watch. They usually left for school by this time.
“You’ll make it,” Isabel said. “Just drive like you normally do.”
“Ben,” Cassie called in the direction of the stairs. “Let’s go.”
“Coming, mother,” Ben responded from his bedroom upstairs. There was exasperation in his tone, plus the word mother, which was an unwelcome new addition to his repertoire.
“Coffee?” Isabel asked, not getting up.
“No time.”