The Standoff Read online

“Sh.”

  Chapter 30

  A DONIS RUBBED her forehead, brushed over the bandage on her brow, and closed her eyes tight like her brain would explode from frustration. She thought of that thing people always said about someone who rides horseback for the first time. Something about not the first day or the day after, but the third day was when you felt it.

  The gash on her head didn’t hurt; none of her cuts hurt, not compared to what hurt her on the inside. The thought of all the dead agents, the injured, the Athenian children, and Dorsch cut her deep. And they would haunt her for days, weeks, months—hell, probably for the rest of her life. But she couldn’t think about that right now. She couldn’t worry about the dead. She had to focus. She was running out of time. Soon the ATF would replace her; the FBI would get involved, and her chance to make it all right on her own terms would vanish.

  Even if she was off-script here, eventually the FBI would catch up to her. If they found out what she was doing, they’d put her in cuffs. Her window was closing.

  Her, Shep, and the others were posted up at one of the roadblocks intersecting the borders of Spartan County and Interstate Seventy-Seven, with North Carolina within seeing distance.

  Both Adonis and Shep stood outside of his cruiser, parked on the shoulder ahead of long stretches of backed-up cars, crossing over into North Carolina. Swan, James, and Ramirez stood around outside the helicopter that was parked off in an abandoned parking lot for a derelict shopping mall. The stores were all gone. Most of the windows were boarded up and covered in graffiti.

  Adonis had told everyone to stop for ten minutes. It wasn’t to take a break, but rather for her to regroup and think of the next step before she had no steps left.

  Ramirez spoke on his phone. Swan and James paced back and forth with their weapons ready. They were more eager than her to get the job done.

  Shep sat on the hood of his cruiser, smoking a cigarette, which might’ve been against department regulation for the South Carolina Highway Patrol. They probably had a subsection of a paragraph about dealing with the public that prohibited smoking in public areas like the side of the road. Adonis didn’t know and didn’t care.

  North Carolina State Troopers and Highway Patrol cars lined up on the other state as a precaution. South Carolina police handled the stops and checked IDs and inquired of vehicle occupants’ identities and destinations. They took special care of vans and SUVs and any vehicles with multiple male passengers.

  The light bar on Shep’s cruiser flashed, bathing Adonis’s dark skin in blue light. She looked around, frozen in her own thoughts. The way she saw it, the only thing she could do until her phone rang again was to get back out there.

  They came to the end of their hastened search when they hit the roadblock. They reached the end of the dragnet’s radius and still no sign of Abel, not even a clue. She was sure that Abel had come the way they came. The path they took was the only one that made sense. It was the straightest line to the North Carolina border.

  Adonis joined Shep at the hood of the cruiser and sat down next to him.

  Shep said, “Think we’re done?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What time are they supposed to be shutting you down?”

  Adonis flicked her wrist like she was going to check the time on her watch again, but she didn’t look. She knew it was gone. She reached into her jacket and took out her out and stared at the clock.

  It was after ten in the morning.

  “Now. I think.”

  “Why haven’t they called you yet?”

  “Who knows,” she said, but they had been calling. She just ignored the calls. She felt bad for lying to Shep about it.

  Shep wasn’t stupid. He took a drag from his cigarette and offered it to Adonis, like passing a peace pipe around a Native campfire.

  She nodded and took it and took a long drag from it.

  He asked, “They gonna fire you?”

  “Oh yeah. Probably.”

  “Even if we catch this bastard?”

  “I don’t know. Probably. If I catch him, maybe they’ll give me a glowing recommendation to be a crossing guard or something.”

  “Hey, I was a crossing guard once.”

  “You were?”

  “Yeah. Way back in the day. I did it for a week.”

  “Why? Was it court-ordered or something? What did you sleep with the boss’s wife?”

  Shep chuckled and shook his head.

  “It was a volunteer thing. I did it at my son’s school.”

  She nodded but didn’t quite understand why he volunteered to work as a crossing guard.

  Shep took out his cell phone and clicked through apps and pulled up a photo. He raised it to show Adonis. She took the phone from him and stared at a photo of a young boy.

  “He looks happy.”

  Shep took the phone back, stared one last time, and pocketed it.

  “He is. He’s full of life. You got kids?”

  “No kids. I’m not very good with them, to be honest.”

  “Oh. That’s probably not true. You just don’t have any of your own. Once you have kids, your instincts will take over, and you’ll discover a whole side of yourself you didn’t know existed.”

  She nodded along because she had nothing to say to that. They smoked the rest of the cigarette when Ramirez came striding over from the empty parking lot and the helicopter. He wasn’t running, but he was moving fast like it was urgent.

  Adonis hopped up off the hood of the car and handed the cigarette back to Shep.

  She stepped forward about six paces from the car.

  Ramirez stopped dead in front of her. He panted a couple of breaths, and then he spoke.

  “Adonis. I called the Spartan County Sheriff’s Office like you told me.”

  “And?”

  “They got a report of some squatters at one of the farms.”

  “Squatters?”

  “Someone saw lights on at a farm that’s been abandoned for years.”

  “They check it out?”

  Ramirez shook his head.

  “I doubt it. They’re spread pretty thin. They said they would get to it when they got to it.”

  Adonis’s face lit up with a glimmer of hope for the first time since her nightmare had begun.

  “You got the address?”

  “I do.”

  Shep stood up off the hood and joined them.

  He asked, “Out there, the address is pretty meaningless. How we going to find it?”

  Ramirez said, “I know exactly where it is. They said it’s across from a Christmas tree farm. I saw it when we were in the air. It’s not far. You can follow us from the ground.”

  Adonis said, “Let’s get rolling!”

  Adonis and Shep jumped into Shep’s cruiser. He fired it up, and they both buckled their seatbelts. Ramirez ran back to the helicopter and started it up. Swan and James loaded back into the rear. The helicopter was in the air, rotating until it faced the correct direction. It flew off, and Shep and Adonis followed, hitting the gas, maxing out their speed when they could. Shep hit the switch for the light bars. They left the sirens quiet and sped down winding dirt roads, taking curves as fast as they could.

  Chapter 31

  T HE LAW ENFORCEMENT vehicle stopped at the end of the drive to the Pine Farms as if the officer behind the wheel wasn’t sure he had the right address. But in the end, he turned the wheel, and the vehicle’s tires climbed over a bump of snow and dirt and onto the track.

  The vehicle wasn’t a South Carolina Highway Patrol car. It wasn’t Shep behind the wheel, either. The vehicle was a truck, and the driver was an older man with white stubble on his face and bags under his eyes. He had gone to work the day before clean-shaven and ready for another slow, uneventful South Carolina day at the beginning of winter, before the ATF decided to colossally bungle a simple late night raid on some crazy cult’s compound up in Carbine. Now, he’s been up all night trying to run his department.

  T
he driver was Sheriff Henry Rourke. He drove a Chevy Silverado marked with both a Chevy emblem on the grille in front of the engine and Spartan County Sheriff decals on both outer door panels.

  Sheriff Henry Rourke liked to tell people that he was close to retirement age. He was a little past it, which was a drum that his opponents constantly banged on. Rourke was well-known. In Spartan County, clout counted for more than technicalities of a man’s age. Besides the clout, he had no intention of retiring. He would ride his clout-wave until it killed him.

  Normally, Rourke wore a ball cap on his head, but not while driving or when indoors. He was from a generation that still sported Southern manners, which dictated that a man always took his hat off indoors, even inside a truck.

  He wore the same uniform design he always wore, which was brown on brown, with a heavy blue winter coat that had a warm wool lining. He unbuckled his seatbelt at the neck of the drive to let his belly have a little breathing room—not too much was required, but enough for his wife to make comments about him quitting doughnuts. At least, that’s what she used to comment on when she was alive. But she had been gone for about three years now.

  Rourke drove up the track. So far, all was quiet. He saw no sign of disturbance at the farm, but he wasn’t far enough along yet. Since Pine Farms had been abandoned near ten years ago, no one kept it up. Therefore, the trees over the drive were overgrown and the grass was so high that even under cover of snow, long blades stuck out like frozen hands sticking out of the ice of a frozen lake.

  But, what was strange, was that there were fresh tracks in the snow, driving up the long drive to the farm.

  Rourke wound along the drive, following the tracks in the snow, cut through the cavernous trees, and arrived at the mouth of the driveway, which opened to a large flat area with the Pines’ long-abandoned farmhouse and their old barn. Right in front of the barn was a white Toyota Tundra. The engine was off. At first, he saw no one around, but then he saw Walter White standing off to one side of the truck, awkwardly, cumbersomely. Rourke thought this because White wasn’t on the driver’s side or leaning against the hood as a normal person would be. His placement on the track was of a man waiting for someone to drive up, but his posture—his demeanor—was like someone who had gotten caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing, in a place he wasn’t supposed to be.

  Rourke had known the Whites for years, as he did many of his constituents. He knew Walter since he was a boy. Knowing a man for years doesn’t make them immune to doing bad things. And White looked like he was up to no good.

  Rourke pulled the truck up to the rear of the Tundra and slipped the gear into neutral and kicked the emergency brake all the way down. He leaned forward to the right and reached over to the dashboard. He grabbed his lucky ball cap and slipped it on over his silver hair and returned to an upright position. He left the engine running and got out of the truck.

  His gun was holstered on his right hip. Rourke was old, but not slow, not when it came to his weapon. He unbuttoned the safety catch on the holster in case he needed to quick-draw.

  Rourke made a mental note that it was now loose in the holster like he might forget it. Since getting a little older and a little more forgetful, he started making a habit of ticking off things from a mental checklist. Now, it was second nature to him to tick off his mental checklist. He especially did this in potentially dangerous situations. Although, this did not appear to be dangerous, it still made the cut—better safe than sorry. You didn’t make it as sheriff, lasting as long as Rourke had, unless you were vigilant. It didn’t matter that Walter White was there or not. If his own mother had been there, Rourke still would’ve done it.

  His ball cap was also on his mental checklist. The hat was a Yankee’s ball cap that he had owned since the nineteen-eighties. It served no law enforcement function, like the bulletproof vest he wore under his uniform shirt or the holstered Glock 22 on his hip or his badge. In fact, the Yankee ball cap was frowned upon by the people in the county because the Atlanta Braves were the region’s baseball team of choice. But Rourke wasn’t one to conform for the sake of conforming. He was from North Carolina, which had more Yankee fans than Braves fans.

  His Yankee cap was his good luck charm. It seemed that every time he didn’t wear it, bad luck followed him. He saw it as just as much a part of his uniform as his Glock 22. If forced to choose between them, he might take the hat over the gun.

  Rourke closed the driver’s side door and put the ball cap on and slipped his hands into his coat pockets.

  He walked halfway around the nose of his Silverado toward Walter and met him in front of the Chevy emblem on the grille.

  “Mr. White, what you doing here?”

  White was quiet. He looked like he was at a loss for words. His mouth opened to speak, but all that fell out was a bunch of vowels, at first.

  Rourke asked, “Walt, you all right?”

  “Oh yeah. So sorry. I guess this looks odd. Me being here.”

  “Depends on what you’re talking about. What’re we talking about here?”

  “I came over here to run off the squatters. I called you earlier to let you know that I saw lights.”

  Rourke nodded along.

  “That’s why I’m here now. I’m checking it out.”

  “Where’re your deputies?”

  “They’re around.”

  Walter looked right, toward a cluster of trees and to where he saw Brooks vanish. It was a glance. He didn’t turn his head, not completely, but the gesture was noticed. Then, he looked back at Rourke.

  White said, “I feel like such a fool.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “I didn’t see anything here. I searched the whole property.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “My dad. He got all upset. He kept complaining about it taking you too long to come out here. You know how surly he is.”

  Rourke nodded, but he didn’t know that. He also did not know it to be true. He couldn’t remember the last time he had talked to Abe White and not had the man behave pleasantly.

  White said, “You know what happened was I was driving in late last night. Probably tired. I should’ve stopped off the road somewhere and got a motel room. Anyway, I heard the whole thing on the radio. You know the explosions and standoff in Carbine? Think it made me paranoid—a little. When I was passing here, I thought I saw something, but it was just a reflection. There’s no one here.”

  “A reflection?”

  “Yeah. From off the glass. One of the windows reflected my high beams is all. It was nothing. Sorry to waste your time with this.”

  “What’re you doing here now?”

  “I told you. I thought I’d come over and scare off the squatters, but there’s no one here.”

  White held his arms up like he was presenting the farmhouse to the sheriff.

  He said, “See. No one’s here.”

  “You just got here? Just now?”

  White nodded.

  Rourke looked past him at the farmhouse and the windows. His eyes scanned over it. He saw no one. He saw no evidence of anything other than what White was claiming.

  “You came over here to chase off squatters?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Unarmed?”

  White glanced back at the tree cluster.

  He said, “Yeah. Dumb me. I forgot to bring a rifle.”

  Rourke nodded along, but in his mental checklist of things to be suspicious of, he checked a box right there.

  “You already checked the place out, huh?”

  “Yeah. Oh. See that glass over there?”

  “The windows?”

  “Yeah. The windows. My headlights reflected off them this morning. That’s what I saw. No reason for you to even be here. Sorry I wasted your time.”

  Rourke looked at him.

  “Yeah. You said all that already.”

  White was quiet.

  Rourke asked, “You been drinking,
Walt?”

  “Oh, no, sir. Not me.”

  “So, nobody’s here? You already checked the whole place?”

  White repeated, “Sorry to waste your time.”

  Rourke looked past White at the farmhouse windows, at the front door, and then at the barn.

  “Nobody in the barn?”

  “Nope. There’s no one here.”

  “Okay. No reason to waste time here then.”

  “No. I guess not. Sorry again.”

  “Okay. We’d better get going then.”

  Rourke said it and Walter nodded along like he was in agreement, but he was faced with a big problem. Rourke acted as though it was time to leave, but Walter couldn’t leave. He didn’t have his keys.

  Rourke motioned to the Tundra.

  “You coming?”

  “You want me to ride with you?”

  “No. Take your truck and go home.”

  Again, White looked fast to his right at the trees and brush where Brooks was supposed to be hiding. Nothing happened.

  White said, “So, here’s the thing.”

  Rourke listened.

  White opened his mouth like he was going to speak. But nothing came out. He couldn’t think of a way out of this. He couldn’t leave with Rourke. No way would they let him. And he couldn’t get in his truck and start it up. Brooks had the keys.

  Before he could say a word, before he could come up with a ruse to get Rourke out of there, Brooks shot his weapon.

  There was no gunshot sound, no boom. There was only a single, quiet purr that echoed across the trees like someone hitting a two-by-four against the tree’s trunk.

  There was only one muted gunshot. The bullet hit Rourke right in the center mass. He was flung against the grille of his truck. His Glock 22 came out in his right hand, but it faced upward.

  White responded without thinking, a reaction. He grabbed the Glock with both hands and squeezed it. He didn’t want Rourke to shoot it. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that if that gunshot went off, there was a good chance that his family would hear it. They might react. Abe might come to investigate. He didn’t want Brooks and the others going to his house, either. He thought that if he could step in and show that he was cooperating, then maybe they would let his family stay out of it. He was wrong.