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  Widow stepped forward, passed the shotgun.

  “Keep coming!”

  Widow kept walking.

  “Come on!” McCobb said.

  Widow continued.

  “Come up to the hood of the car!”

  Widow walked slowly to the hood of McCobb’s Buick.

  “Put your hands on the hood!”

  Widow bent forward and put his hands on the hood.

  “Keep them there!”

  Widow stayed quiet.

  “Move them, and I shoot your girlfriend! Got it?”

  Widow nodded.

  McCobb stepped out from behind the door and walked over to Rower. She saw him coming and rolled on her back and grabbed her Glock. Blood pooled in her ear canal.

  “No! No! Sweetie!” McCobb said, and he stepped on her Glock, pinning it to the ground.

  “Roll back over!” he said, and he nudged her with his boot.

  She rolled over onto her stomach.

  He knelt down and put a knee in her butt. With one hand he frisked her.

  “You got any other weapons, honey?”

  She couldn’t hear him. One ear was busted, and the other rang—hard.

  He found her phone and pulled it out and tossed it into the woods.

  He found her handcuffs and then he found the ones she had taken off Widow.

  He stood up and backed away from her and tossed a pair of cuffs to Widow.

  They landed behind Widow’s boot.

  “Pick those up!”

  Widow backed off the hood, slowly, and turned, slowly, and bent down, picked up the cuffs.

  “Cuff her!”

  Widow walked over, slowly to Rower.

  She said, “You’re going to prison for this! It’s a life sentence for assault on a federal agent! Automatic!”

  Her voice was loud because she couldn’t hear herself.

  “Cuff her!”

  Widow bent down behind her and started to turn her over onto her back.

  “From behind!”

  Widow stopped and took her hands one at a time and cuffed her.

  “Tight!”

  He tightened the cuffs to their maximum.

  McCobb stepped closer and looked down, double-checking Widow’s effort.

  “Okay. Good. Now back up!”

  Widow stood back.

  McCobb tossed Widow the second set of cuffs, the same ones he had already worn.

  “Put those on.”

  Widow started to put his hands behind him.

  “No. You can do yourself in the front. So, I can see them and not just hear the clicks.”

  Widow did as he was instructed. He didn’t wait for the command to tighten them. He tightened them all the way.

  “Now what?” he asked.

  “Stay back,” McCobb said. He aimed the Ruger at Widow and stepped forward, stopped at Rower and reached down. He grabbed her cuffs and hauled her up.

  He pulled her close to him and stayed behind her like she was a human shield like she would shield him from Widow, who was unarmed.

  McCobb was close to her, very close, close enough to whisper a secret into her ear.

  He looked at her ear from over her right shoulder and said, “Whoa! That looks bad!”

  He let out a hearty chuckle like a cartoon villain.

  Widow stayed quiet.

  “Okay. Now, you two killed Rousey?”

  “I killed him,” Widow said.

  “And who are you?”

  McCobb aimed the gun from around Rower’s arm at Widow.

  “Me? I’m nobody.”

  “Well, Mr. Nobody. Know who I am?”

  “McCobb. Rousey’s drug dealer.”

  McCobb stared at him in disbelief.

  “Now, how do you know that? You hear my name from all the way over there when she said it?”

  “Rousey programmed you in his phone as McCobb. Drug Dealer.”

  “Ah. You saw his phone?”

  Widow nodded.

  “Where is it?” McCobb asked.

  “On his dead body.”

  “Better get that. Don’t want to leave Shostrom any evidence.”

  McCobb hauled Rower by the cuffs and towed her backward with him as he waddled over to Rousey’s corpse. He kept the revolver aimed at Widow.

  McCobb stopped over Rousey and turned and looked down at the mess that used to be a living, breathing deputy.

  “Damn! You killed him well!”

  Widow said nothing.

  McCobb let go of Rower and bent down to pick up the phone. He grabbed it and came back up on his feet. He stuffed it into his pocket and shoved Rower forward.

  “You two are coming with me.”

  Rower stumbled forward.

  She came up on her feet and shot Widow the look that he was waiting for.

  She turned and stared at McCobb.

  Her voice loud, she shouted at him.

  “You think you’re some big bad man?”

  McCobb watched her, amused.

  Rower puckered her lips and said, “You’re a backwoods hillbilly!”

  He gave no reaction.

  “You’re a nothing!”

  No reaction.

  He just watched her, still amused, but a little confused.

  Widow inched back and to the left until he stood over her Glock.

  “You some kind of big drug dealer out here? Selling to hillbillies?” Rower taunted. It was all pretentious and a little fake, but it distracted him.

  He said, “FBI, you get brain damage from that warning shot?”

  She walked closer to him and pointed down at his groin with her chin. She wasn’t sure if he was getting it.

  So, she said, “Bet it’s tiny?”

  His amusement turned to frustration.

  “You trying to intimidate me?”

  “I’m sure you’re always intimidated, like a mouse.”

  McCobb said nothing.

  “Is that it? You got a mouse down there?”

  She stared at his groin.

  “Bet it’s teeny-tiny.”

  McCobb punched her across the face with the Ruger in hand.

  “I’ll kill ya! You think you’re funny?”

  Rower went flying off her feet like it was on purpose and she fell back on top of her hands in the snow. She stared at McCobb and smiled.

  “What?”

  “MCCOBB!” Widow called out.

  McCobb looked back at him.

  Widow stood in the firing position, the Glock in his hands, aimed at McCobb. The handcuffs dangled from one of his wrists.

  McCobb’s eyes widened.

  “How?” he asked, but it was too late.

  Widow squeezed the trigger, firing two rounds.

  McCobb’s chest blew open from the front. Blood sprayed out into a red mist like his exhale had turned red.

  He fell back, dropped the Ruger. His hands clutched at his wounds, desperately.

  He said, “How?”

  Moments earlier, when Rower was on the ground getting handcuffed, she wasn’t fighting back. She wasn’t trying to stop Widow from cuffing her. She rolled around on the ground to hide the fact that she had reached into her pocket and pulled out the handcuff key. She slipped it into Widow’s palm.

  McCobb finally figured it out when Widow walked over to him and stood over him as he bled to death because he saw the key locked into the dangling handcuff.

  Rower hopped to her feet and walked over. She was supposed to try and save his life, but she didn’t.

  She asked, “Who’s your boss?”

  “Help?” he begged.

  “Who?” she said.

  He gasped once and said nothing, and then he was dead.

  Chapter 34

  “I SHOULDN’T HAVE done that,” Rower said. She stood over the body of McCobb.

  Rower had short brown hair, lower than her ears, but higher than her shoulders. It rustled in the wind and Widow watched.

  He walked behind her and stopped.

 
“Done what?”

  “Killed him. It’s murder. Technically.”

  “Not for you.”

  “I let you do it.”

  “He was going to kill us.”

  “You don’t know that for sure. He might’ve led us to his boss. Or whoever is higher up the food chain. I doubt that his boss was the men I’m after.”

  “Turn around.”

  She turned around, stared up at him.

  “Let me take those off you,” he said. He reached out and gently grabbed her by the forearm, spun her around like a dance move and used the handcuff key to unlock her.

  After the clicks, she turned back around.

  “Funny,” she said.

  She took back the cuffs and the keys and returned them to her jacket pockets. Next, Rower held her hand out and took back the Glock, holstered it.

  “There’s nothing for you to feel bad about. The guy was going to murder us. It was him or us. Simple.”

  “You don’t know that. Besides, I should’ve helped him.”

  “How?”

  “There’s a medical kit in the back of the truck. Has to be. Mandatory.”

  Widow looked down at two gaping holes in McCobb’s chest; then he looked up at the lifeless look in his eyes.

  “You can still try.”

  “He’s dead now.”

  “He would’ve been dead before too. Nothing in the back of the truck or in a medical kit was gonna save him. Not unless there’s a time machine in there that can take us back to before he fired that Ruger next to your head.”

  Instinctively, Rower reached her hand up, touched her bloody ear.

  Widow asked, “How is that ear?”

  “Feels like hell, but I’ll live. My eardrum’s busted. Definitely.”

  “You can hear me though.”

  “My left ear had a ringing in it. That’s all. It works.”

  “That’s what we should get the medical kit for. We can gauze that ear.”

  Rower nodded and said, “We should call Shostrom, tell him.”

  “We should call nine-one-one for you. Get a paramedic out here. Could mean the difference between you hearing again or not.”

  “It’s a busted eardrum.”

  “You don’t know what it is.”

  She said nothing to that.

  Widow said, “He was going to murder us, Alaska.”

  She stared at him.

  He said, “Look. Come here.”

  She walked over to him. He turned and led her back over to Rousey’s body, and he bent down and scooped up the dead man’s phone.

  He clicked the lock screen. The last text message notification came up.

  Almost there. They dead?

  He showed it to her.

  “That’s from him?” she said and pointed at the dead guy and then she read the name, “McCobb. Drug Dealer.”

  “He was coming to kill us if we weren’t already dead. See, nothing for you to get bent out of shape about.”

  “I’ll have to lie on my report.”

  “Why?”

  “I lured him in. I baited him. You shot him because of what I did.”

  Widow lowered the phone.

  “Get over it,” he said and shrugged.

  “You ever lie on a report?”

  “It’s not lying. Just tell the truth. You don’t have to give every detail.”

  “Lying by omission.”

  “McCobb might be wearing underwear with hearts on them. You’re not gonna put that in the report, are you?”

  She cracked a smile. It was fast and short, but Widow saw it.

  “No,” she said.

  “So? Is that lying by omission?”

  She didn’t respond to that. Instead, she shrugged and asked, “You sure you were in the NCIS and not DAG?”

  “It’s JAG, not DAG.”

  “That the one with the lawyers?”

  “That’s the one with the lawyers.”

  Rower reached out her hand.

  “Give me the phone. It’s evidence.”

  Widow handed it to her.

  He said, “You gonna bag it?”

  “No. I’m gonna use it. Unless you can find my phone,” she said and turned and pointed into the brush.

  Widow nodded.

  McCobb had tossed her phone in that direction.

  “You know Shostrom’s number by heart?”

  “No,” she said and stopped as she tried to go through Rousey’s phone, but didn’t know the passcode.

  She said, “I’m sure it’s in here, but I can’t unlock it.”

  “That thing got fingerprint access? We can use his finger to unlock it.”

  “I don’t think so. This model is old.”

  “We can ask him for the passcode,” Widow said.

  “Not funny.”

  Widow shrugged.

  “I can still dial nine-one-one though. Don’t need a code for that. It’s a standard feature,” she said because she wasn’t sure if Widow knew.

  “Okay. You call them. I’ll get the medical kit. Shostrom might show up before them anyway. I think we’d better find Kylie.”

  “And check with Lainey to see if she’s okay or awake yet.”

  Widow left her standing over Rousey’s dead body, and he went to search the back of the Explorer for a medical kit and gauze to bandage her head.

  Chapter 35

  T HE PRIVATE JET that Gade was flying in wasn’t owned by BioWaste, the company he worked for. Instead, it was owned by the Saudi royal family, technically by his boss’s father.

  Gade looked at his phone out of habit, but there was no signal at forty-one thousand feet, not for him.

  He pocketed the phone and stood up and walked to the cockpit.

  His boss did employ a steward for the plane, but not for Gade and his men. There was no steward on this flight, just Gade, the two Smiths, and the pilots.

  Gade stopped in front of the door to the cockpit and pulled it open.

  He stepped in and stopped in the doorway.

  He looked at the pilots. One of them turned back to him.

  “Can I do something for you?” he asked.

  The truth was that both pilots were terrified of the owner of the company, like most of the men who worked for BioWaste. They were equally afraid of Gade. The owner might be the one to order rendition and torture and death to anyone who betrayed him, but Gade was the one who did the torturing and killing part.

  “How much longer?” Gade asked.

  The pilot turned and looked at the other one, who answered.

  “We’ll be down on the ground in forty-five minutes.”

  Which was not accurate, but close enough.

  Gade nodded and turned around and left. He shut the door behind him.

  He walked back to the Smiths and sat across the row from them. They both sat up and turned to face him.

  He said, “I wanna be back tonight. No horsing around. We get to the ground, load up, and kill everyone.”

  One of the Smiths said, “I thought that was Plan B?”

  “It is, but it’s a close Plan B. First, we rendezvous with our guy and then find out what’s happening.”

  “Are we going to make bribes?”

  “No. We already paid the girl. She breached her agreement with us the moment this all got out of hand.”

  The other Smith said, “I’m sure it’s her two friends.”

  “Friends?”

  “Yeah, I been thinking about it. She brought two chaperones with her. They seemed sketchy.”

  Gade said, “Why did you go through with it? Didn’t you vet them?”

  The second one said, “We did.”

  The first one said, “One was her sister. The other was the sister’s boyfriend. It was all legit.”

  “He’s a cop,” said the second one.

  “A cop?”

  First one said, “A local guy. Holden confirmed it by phone. He vouched for the guy. They buy drugs from Holden. They weren’t sketchy, just a little nervo
us.”

  The second one nodded along and said, “Nervous, is more accurate. Borderline sketchy.”

  Gade said, “Holden doesn’t sell them drugs.”

  “He says he does.”

  “Not him. One of his guys sells them drugs. Holden’s a two-bit drug dealer, but he’s got a large territory. He’s not going to sell drugs to some broke cop in the boonies.”

  The Smiths said nothing to that.

  Gade said, “So, now we got a third party involved or technically a fifth party.”

  The Smiths didn’t argue with that.

  Gade said, “I’m thinking it’s best to cut our losses.”

  “Want us to kill Holden too?”

  “Let’s wait till he leads us to the rest.”

  They both nodded.

  Gade returned to his seat, looked at his watch, and calculated that with drive time and all, he could be headed home by midnight.

  Chapter 36

  I T WAS FULL DARK by the time Shostrom showed up; the paramedics got there first.

  The headlight beams from a Deadwood city ambulance lit up the path in front of it, revealing the two dead deputies, the dead drug dealer, the Lawrence County sheriff’s Ford Explorer, and the blown tire.

  The ambulance driver left the sirens off, but the light bar on the roof rotated blue and red flashing lights. They danced across the trees and the snow and into the sky.

  The sheriff showed up with his sirens and lights flashing to match.

  When he arrived, the paramedics were already looking into Rower’s right ear and rebandaging her from the first attempt Widow had made.

  Shostrom was upset and visibly livid. He wanted to recuff Widow, but Rower argued against it. The whole thing made Widow feel like an object and not a person, but he had dealt with plenty of small-town sheriffs before. He knew to keep his mouth shut since Rower was on his side and Shostrom was not.

  The whole time they were arguing, Rower sat on the back floor of an ambulance with the rear doors open. The paramedic was packing and gauzing one ear, while Shostrom was arguing with her in the other.

  Widow had wandered to McCobb’s Buick.

  The keys were still in it. He could slip in and drive away before they noticed. He thought about it. The opportunity was tempting.

  He would have to put it in reverse, keep the lights off, and swing around, drive past the sheriff’s car, and then hit the gas when he cleared the cluster of vehicles.

  He could be on the I-NINETY before they knew it, but he wouldn’t get away. The sheriff could radio in backup, set up roadblocks in both directions. Eventually, they’d stop him, unless he took to the back roads.