Connors Compound, Wyoming
Derrick Conners was a self-made man.
All the magazines and blogs and TV interviews said so. And for good reason—he was telling it to them. That Netflix special alone had been one of the best bits of publicity he’d ever had. Even if it did make him out to be a smuggler and a crime boss, and brought him to the attention of the FBI.
He should never have let them interview him at the ranch. Letting a few million people see some of the art on his walls had opened up this whole can of worms. And things had been going off the rails ever since.
He couldn’t rightly blame the Netflix folks. They’d been cool enough, treating him like royalty, asking him questions about stuff that really mattered—about his past and his history, about what he’d built, and how he built it. He didn’t regret the interview one bit, even if it did paint him in a bad light. It was his legacy. He’d earned it. By sweat and by blood, he’d earned it.
As a self-made man, Conners didn’t owe anything to anybody. That was the whole point. Everything he got, he got by his own efforts. And over time, those efforts got easier. Instead of boosting cars, he got to a point where he was paying other people to boost for him. He had people doing the chop, people doing the inventory, and people doing the selling. He even had other people counting the money, and they knew he was watching them like a hawk. It was amazing how the books came square every time, when the accountants knew the cost for stealing. It only took one shifty bean counter fed to a bunch of wild cats to make the others stay in line.
Not that anyone could ever know for sure that Connors had anything to do with that poor man’s tragic accident.
He learned to insulate himself from it all and still have his thumb on all of it. He knew how to use influence from afar, when it was needed, and how to get up close and personal when it was required. Always in ways that he couldn’t be implicated. Always with a hedge of protection, from the lawyers and the security guys and the tech guys he paid in mountains of cash. Nobody liked to turn on the guy who paid for their lambos and high-dollar escorts.
In all the years since Connors had started as a scruffy little car thief, he’d learned how to clean up and keep himself clean. He’d learned how to build on what he knew, and how to put down threats. He learned who to trust—which was nobody. And who to put at his heel—which was everyone. He may have started petty, but he graduated to being his own boss, and then the boss of a whole lot of other folks.
And from there, he expanded.
The ranch was one of the first things he’d bought. He didn’t have any idea what he’d do with it, at the time, but he knew potential when he saw it. And for a while, all he did with it was run the business there. With so many acres stretching so far, touching so many different roads and highways, it was a good, central place to keep the machine working, keep things in motion, and keep off the radar. He had hidden warehouses there for a while. Garages, run by diesel generators, that kept the operation going day and night. It was like a Ford assembly line in reverse. He was the Henry Ford of chop shops.
Eventually, though a lot of cash handouts and incriminating photos, he had the local PD in his pocket. And for years he never worried about raids on the place. But when he started seeing small aircraft fly over, with no airports in the area, it got him to worrying. That was when he moved the whole business off of a property that could be tied back to him. And he did it in a smart way.
He bought more properties, in more places. He set up corporations that couldn’t lead back to him. He made some of his better boys into lieutenants, running things on his behalf. And sure, sometimes they dipped a little too deep for their own pockets, but take a hand off here or an eye out there, and word got around pretty quick that you have to keep yourself in check. Everything in moderation. Don’t get greedy.
He didn’t just diversify his locations, of course. As he started buying real estate, certain new opportunities arose, and he suddenly found all new ways to bring in the cash. And then to make sure that cash was nice and clean before it was ever associated with him.
The motels, hotels, and eventually the casinos were a gold mine. And cheap to run, in the grand scheme of things. Keep the sheets clean and the buffets open, and money just poured in. And these were the honest, respectable face of his empire. They made good cover for the more lucrative stuff. They made a good filter for the filthy lucre.
Because the lucrative stuff was doing very well.
Drugs, obviously. Idiots just threw money at you when you controlled the drugs. And from there, guns. Guns by the truckload. There was always a market for them, and it tended to sidle right along with the drug business. Easy money begets easy money.
Conners knew there were rumors he trafficked in humans. And sure, there was some of that. He had prostitutes waiting to help out any high rollers who needed to blow off steam after a night of giving him their money at the craps table. Those girls usually started out poor and hungry, so he considered putting them to work a humanitarian service.
But then there was the more gut-turning stuff. A young girl or boy here and there, mostly to make some of his more loyal clients happy. Mostly for the government types—a little grease to keep them from pointing the Feds at him. He had photos of them all. Truly disgusting stuff. But hey, everyone has their kink. And it wasn’t like he was the one diddling little boys. If some freak on the Senate couldn’t get to it with a real, adult woman, he was going to find his way somewhere. Conners didn’t mind profiting off the evil SOBs. He kept the photos to keep them honest. And to keep them on his team.
All of that, disgusting as it was, brought a pretty respectable pile of money into play. And influence. It helped keep the Feds from looking at him too closely, most of the time. And good money was good money, even if getting it did turn your stomach.
But of all things, it was the big cats that really opened up doors for Conners.
Not necessarily the cats themselves—it was more about what the cats represented.
They were legal. Legit. And they were a big draw. They gave him a new and legitimate purpose for the ranch, for a start, and a means of getting his face out there on something respectable. They were good camouflage. And yeah, there was a lot of money.
When he’d moved all of his operations off of the ranch, it left him with a huge chunk of real estate that wasn’t serving any particular purpose. It wasn’t like he couldn’t afford it, but the waste bugged him. At that stage in his life, everything he owned paid out in some way. Everything except the ranch.
But when one of his buddies asked if he could keep a couple of tigers there, that got Conners’ attention.
“You think anybody would pay to see them cats?” he asked.
His buddy—the guy everybody called Old Shay—had smirked, spit on the ground, nodded sagely, and told Conners a tale of money flowing like water.
There were men, right there in Oklahoma, bringing in millions per year just by keeping cats and other exotics around, keeping them fed, keeping them healthy. People came in by the car load to see them, to touch them, to take selfies with them. Then they bought stuff—souvenirs, keepsakes, T-shirts and ball caps, all marked up as much as five-thousand percent.
Crazy money.
Maybe not the level of money Conners saw from some of his real estate deals, or running drugs or guns or whatever else he could. But it was a big draw, with low overhead. And it was legal. It was like stealing from the willing.
Best of all, it put the ranch to use in a profitable way.
By the end of the year, Conners had acquired hundreds of exotic animals, most of which were big cats. He had pens built, put up high fences like a maze winding through the ranch, and hired staff to keep everything fed and cared for and healthy. He built a little museum—more of a tourist center, with pictures and video screens and displays of stuffed, dead critters. And, of course, a gift shop. The only way out was through the gift shop. And that place was a wonderland for little kids, and a devastating blow to the wallets of their parents.
Conners bought billboard space on every road that touched his property, and for hundreds of miles in all directions, throughout Oklahoma and into the surrounding states. He guided people to all those entrances along all those roads, and funneled them to a ticket booth and a road that wound through the whole property. You could go on a safari without leaving your car. You could even download an app that gave you a guided tour, for just $9.99. Proceeds going to the care and feeding and preservation of these amazing animals, of course.
The place was a hit. Disney World of Oklahoma, some folks said. Mostly Conners said it, and other people ran with it. People in Oklahoma really wanted something on that level—something they didn’t have to drive for four days and pay thousands of dollars to see.
With the success of the place, he eventually expanded, buying out everyone around him. Though he sometimes had to have an elbow or a knee bent the wrong way, to convince his neighbors to sell. But eventually he owned one of the largest blocks of land in the state, and he dedicated every square inch of it to those cats and the other animals that people would pay ridiculous money just to see.
Of all the things Conners had running, that ranch soon became his favorite. It became his haven. His home base. All those years he’d worked so hard to get out of Oklahoma, to become a citizen of the world, and now he found himself thinking about that ranch when he was in one of his fancy casino suites, or in his apartments in New York or LA or Paris or wherever. He owned millions of dollars in beautiful houses and apartments, but home was on a ranch in Oklahoma.
He had his house built right in the middle of the property, surrounded by trees and high fences and acres of exotic animals. People who came to see and touch those critters would see his house, too. A symbol of the man himself—out of reach, but standing there in all its glory. Just like Conners.
It was perfect. A comfortable and safe place. A symbol of his wealth and power.
And if he hadn’t let the damned Netflix people film him in that house, he’d still be there, right now.
The paintings had sunk him.
Art wasn’t really his thing. But owning stuff he could turn into quick cash always was. And rumor had it that if the Feds came knocking, having some famous, stolen art could be a bargaining chip, in a pinch. That turned out to be a load of bull, but Conners had played the better safe than sorry card.
And that turned out to be all sorry, no safe.
Of course, the paintings were also currency. A lot of them had come his way from those high rollers at the casinos, who found themselves rolling high but living low for a bit. So a Rembrandt here, a Vermeer there—they came in as collateral and stayed as inventory. And if Conners ever wanted to have some untraceable liquid currency for this project or that, he could sell one, no questions asked, usually within a day of putting the word out. They were usually good for a few million, untraceable and under the table.
There’s something to be said for five million bucks in your pocket from someone desperate enough to own something, but cautious enough to keep quiet about it.
Things had gone on like that for a long while, and Conners had made the mistake of getting relaxed about some of the precautions he should have taken. Like, Don’t have famous stolen art on your walls when someone films you for an international documentary series.
When the Netflix thing ran, someone watching noticed that Conners had a Degas. Nothing fancy. It was just some women washing their hair in a river or something. Conners hadn’t even liked it all that much. But he’d paid a woman six figures to decorate his place, and when she’d found the painting in a stack in Conners’ basement, she’d had it framed and put up over the fireplace. Conners didn’t bother having it taken down—it looked nice enough up there. And he hadn’t snapped to the fact that he was putting a few million dollars in stolen art on full display.
He wouldn’t know a Degas from a Dilbert comic, but he did know the paintings were all worth millions on the black market. This particular one, it turned out, rang in at $7.6 million. And it was famous. It had been among some paintings stolen from the Gardner Museum. A heist so famous it had its own Netflix special.
After the series ran, the FBI got flooded with calls. And Conners started getting pinged by his buddies in Washington—the ones who turned to him for a fresh supply of young flesh, when the urge hit. The ones who owed him big favors, and were into him for more than they could ever pay. The ones he had photos of, waiting to go out to the media any second, if things went bad.
They let him know they were on it. They would take care of it. They would get the FBI off his back. At most, he’d have to turn over the Degas—a “magnanimous gesture” on his part. “I’m so sorry, everybody, I had no idea the painting was stolen when my decorator bought it!” She might go down for it, but he’d come out looking like a poor billionaire who had been tricked into buying stolen property.
Insulated and safe, that was the rule. Give up the painting, and he’d look like a hero. His people in Washington would make sure the FBI were steered in a different direction.
But then he got the knock anyway.
And these were FBI—but for some reason they were out of the reach of his boys and girls in DC. They were part of some new, fancy department. Historic Crimes Division. They had a charter that gave them a bit more autonomy, when it came to certain crimes. And they had the authority to look a little deeper into Conners and his business than he or anyone else would like. Or prevent.
And they were not interested in stolen art as “bargaining chips.”
Two of those agents in particular had caused all this trouble—Agent Roland Denzel, and Agent Eric Symon. Two smart and smug pricks who both had reputations for being willing to tank their own careers in the name of bringing down the bad guys. Incorruptible. Not the kind of agents that Conners or his DC friends wanted to see anywhere near the ranch.
When they raided his ranch, that was just the first blow. They started digging deeper, finding more, making connections that Conners had thought couldn’t be made. But, it turned out, his “buddies” in DC that he had files on—they had some files on him, too. Tit for tat. And as they dug in, Denzel and Symon started uncovering a treasure trove of incriminating evidence that Conners couldn’t reach fast enough to cover up. And within a week Conners saw almost everything he’d built, every bit of insulation he’d constructed, the whole damn empire, burn to the ground. Everything.
Almost everything.
He’d gotten wind of the raid on the ranch, and the raids happening at his casinos and other businesses. They’d done their homework, found practically everything. Definitely everything that had any sort of legitimate face, and from there they found quite a bit of the illegitimate stuff, too.
They had him sewn up pretty good. They raided his whole life, warrants in hand, all of them demanding some highly specific access, and yet broad enough that nothing could quite slip through the nets. There were no loopholes that Conners’ attorneys could exploit. Everything got caught in the filter.
Conners was toast. Burnt. They wouldn’t even bother with butter.
But he did get an early word, at least. And before the Feds could get their hands on him, he got out of there. He lit out by private plane, straight to his Montana ranch, right into the heart of middle of nowhere.
This place had always been his safe space. His secret space. His hidden home away from home. It was almost as if he’d always known that someday he’d need it. And so he’d kept it off all the books, kept all eyes away from it, kept it registered under names and companies that were unique and distant from everything else he touched.
It was the smartest thing he’d ever done. None of it could possibly be traced back to him. There were threads and paths that circled back on themselves, that led nowhere, or led everywhere. At one point he had a string of shell corporations and phony businesses that owned each other, in a huge circle of legal paperwork and nonsense, with stacks of corporations going six deep and spanning the entire globe.
All that amounted to one fact: This was the safest place on Earth.
Just because he was safe, though, didn’t mean he was ready to let the rest of his life fall away in ruin. That hurt, even for him.
He still had reserves of cash. He had anonymous accounts all over the world. He had assets he could liquidate, including more of that stolen art, stashed in warehouses and storage units all over the planet. And sure, he took a bath on some of those pieces. Black market buyers could smell desperation, and his name had been all over the news. But all told, he still pulled in hundreds of millions in on-hand cash. He was going to be alright. He would survive.
But Agents Denzel and Symon wouldn’t.
Over the years, Conners had employed quite a few people who were in the business of putting the hurt on someone. So it was easy enough to reach out to a couple of guns for hire. They didn’t need to be the best, they just needed to competent enough to put a bullet in the head of a nuisance. It didn’t even matter if they were stupid enough to get caught. Conners paid big money to the very best security firms to make sure he was completely isolated from all of it. No one could track him. Not ever.
Conners used his anonymous channels to front the hit men part of their fees and promised big bonuses when these two agents were in the ground. The money came from accounts that were owned by some of this shell corporations Conners controlled—the companies that were owned by other companies, in a big, giant circle, until eventually the company owned itself. Money moved in and out of these through secure channels as well. Layers upon layers, and Conners wasn’t even under the pile.
He’d rarely ever had to put these things to work in quite this way. Usually, if he needed someone taken care of, there was always someone willing to do the wet work, somewhere in his organization. And that person tended to just disappear quietly, turning up as a suicide or an unfortunate mugging.
But with two FBI agents, things had to be handled with a little more strategy and caution. Feds tended to go hard after whoever took down one of their own. The more layers, the better.
And as far as the Feds were concerned, Conners didn’t even exist anymore. He was so off the grid, he might as well be on a different planet.
He might have to hide out here at the Montana place—maybe for the rest of his life. But he’d do it knowing that worms would turn these two Feds into fertilizer. While Conners drank wine and watched the Super Bowl on a hundred-inch TV, and had girls brought in for a fun weekend, while he caught a tan by the pool or took down a buck from his hunting cabin up river, Agents Denzel and Symon would rot. And that made these new limits on Conners’ life feel almost worth it.
Despite the layers, though, Conners wanted to know when the thing was done. That would be tricky. Any contact from the hitters would open up a path that could lead back to Conners. But he had this handled, too. His two guys were instructed to leave ads on Craigslist. Specific ads, with specific wording. Conners could use a VPN to check on those, set up to relay a San Francisco IP address. He didn’t even have to look at the ads themselves, he just needed to type in a couple of keywords and they’d show up in a list of hundreds of other results. He’d know them by the headlines, and if anyone was looking he’d just seem like one of millions of people searching for used living room furniture in one of the biggest cities in the world.
He’d been checking every few hours, and eventually he got the message from the first guy.
Orange velvet sofa for sale.
“Orange velvet” was the code for Agent Symon. And it meant that the agent had some fresh, new holes in his body.
Conners did a quick run through area headlines and saw that one of the stories was about a drive-by shooting that had put an FBI agent in critical condition. They didn’t name the agent, and police were saying they were following up on leads. Conners didn’t bother clicking on the story—the headline told him everything he needed to know.
Symons wasn’t dead yet, but it wasn’t looking good.
That made Conners smile.
Denzel would be next. His code name was “purple plush chair.” Conners would check Craigslist in the morning, to see if that one was done.
And from there, he figured he could start picking off everyone at “Historic Crimes,” one by one, as revenue for all this inconvenience they were putting him through. Payback should cut deep.
It was late in the evening. Conners was keyed up. He wasn’t used to being so confined—though his confinement did consist of a 32,000 square foot home on 600,000 acres of Montana ranch land. He had staff who would bring him literally anything or anyone he ever needed or wanted. If you were going to be confined, this was the way to do it. He could live out the rest of his life in comfort and luxury.
But he was used to being in the thick of it all. He was used to hitting the Vegas strip, going to parties in LA mansions, having $10,000 steak dinners with powerful people in DC. He was used to hopping on a plane and being anywhere he wanted, any time he wanted. Compared to that level of freedom and liberty and autonomy, even this massive space felt claustrophobic to him.
He didn’t have any hobbies to help him unwind. Not yet. He figured he’d take up some things. Maybe he’d try painting—that Degas didn’t look so hard. And he could afford to fly in teachers and tutors for that kind of thing. He’d have to have them taken care of afterward, of course. You can’t leave someone like that lying around, knowing what you look like.
But the hobbies would come later. Right now, he was bored. And anxious. He had nothing to keep his attention, to keep his mind off of his current state.
He’d taken his third shower of the day, and was padding in bare feet from his master suite to the fourth kitchen—the one closest to his bedroom apartments. This one was stocked with what he thought of as “midnight snacks.” Junk food, mostly. He wanted a whiskey and some Cheetos.
As he entered the kitchen, the lights came on automatically. He moved to the large walk-in pantry, a space bigger than the house he grew up in. He picked up a snack bag of chips and then went to the minibar to pour a bourbon.
The lights went out, and suddenly he was thrown into pitch blackness.
“What the…”
He felt his way out of the pantry and emerged into a realm of chaos.
There was the sound of cars honking from outside, and through the kitchen window Conners saw lights flashing in irregular patterns. He leaned over the counter and peered out of the window, and saw that the security floodlights surrounding the house were flicking on and then off, one after another.
Suddenly an alarm screeched all around him—a pulsating, piercing scream. The fire alarm. It yelped into the darkness like an insane coyote, and Conners pressed his palms against his ears, trying to drown it out enough to think.
He let out a flood of curses as he moved out of the kitchen and back to his master suite, fumbling in the nightstand drawer for his phone.
He was used to there being no signal—there were no cellular towers within range of the place, and the terrain blocked out the invisible waves from distant transmitters. But right now he didn’t even have WiFi. He couldn’t make any outgoing calls. Couldn’t even send a text.
He cursed again and went to the wall phone. The compound had its own operator trunk system, and it was hard wired. Outgoing calls funneled through that to get to the outside world. It was separate from the internet systems.
He heard the dial tone and punched in the extension for his head of security.
“What the hell is happening?” he yelled into the phone, after his security chief answered.
He could barely hear the reply over the cacophony of noise coming from both ends of the line.
“Fire alarms are going off in every sector of the main house and in all the outbuildings,” the man said. “But that’s not all. Basically everything is going nuts. We’ve got breach alerts on every single door and window on the property. All the vehicle alarms are going off. Data is down, and the phone system is acting weird.”
Conners shook his head. “What is it? What’s causing it?”
“No idea, sir,” the man replied. “We’re looking into it now. But the alarm systems started calling out for emergency services, and we can’t seem to stop the calls.”
Connors felt his guts chill like an ice bucket full of beer.
“You’re telling me we’re calling out for cops and firemen to come here?” he asked.
“Yes sir. That’s the default protocol for the system. We changed all that when you got here, but it’s reset itself.”
“Get the damned thing turned off right now!” Conners shouted.
“We can’t sir, I’m sorry. It’s too late anyway. The calls have already gone out, and we have no way to reach them to say it’s a false alarm!”
Conners slammed the receiver down, then picked it back up and slammed it down several more times. He left it hanging, a ruin of wire and shattered plastic, as he rushed to the walk-in closet. He cursed the air blue as he went.
He shed the robe and pulled on jeans and a shirt as he shoved clothes and other items into a duffel. He opened the safe hidden behind one of the shelving units and took out all the cash and prepaid credit cards, the burner phones, and his pistol. There was a box of 9mm rounds, and he dumped this into the bag as well.
He rushed from the suite, down the hall to one of the side exits, and was out into the chaos of the night. It was chilly, but he barely noticed. His blood was pumping, and he was practically steaming.
He hadn’t called ahead, so he’d have to wait for the pilot to get his act together and get the plane ready. But he figured they could be up in the air in under twenty minutes, maybe faster if Conners pointed the 9mm at him for motivation.
When he arrived at the hangar, though, he knew he needed a plan B.
The hanger was having the same weird issues as the rest of the place. And Conners saw the pilot and one of the mechanics working on the door of the hangar, trying to force it open.
“What’s happening?” Conners shouted as he walked forward.
“No idea!” the pilot replied. “The automatic door rolled down when all the noise started. It’s working against us. Every time we try to lift it, the motor kicks in to push it back down. We’re going to get a ladder to get to it, pull the manual release.”
“I need this plane up in the air in ten minutes,” Conners growled.
The pilot shook his head. “Not gonna happen, Boss. I’m sorry. She needs to be fueled, and the pumps are shut down. Override isn’t working.”
“Why wasn’t this thing fueled up already?” Conners shouted, outraged.
The pilot looked confused, and said, “Sir… you told us to drain it. Got the email this afternoon. Drain it, clear all the lines. Deep maintenance, you said.”
“I didn’t send any damned email, you idiot!” Conners shouted.
The pilot looked absolutely terrified. “I… but I got…”
Conners cursed him, with some impolite references to what the man could do to his own mother, and then left him there, rushing out into the darkness. There was no time for this. He had to get as far away from here as possible.
The garages were not far, and Conners rushed toward them. He stopped as they came into view.
The doors were all down, and people were working on them, just as they had been at the hangar. From within the garages, a disco of lights flashed. He could hear horns and alarms piercing the night. He grabbed one of his people. “I need a car!”
“They’re all going nuts!” the man said. “Computers are all shut down. They’re bricked.”
“What about the pickup?” Conners said. “The F100? That doesn’t have any chips. It’s a classic pickup.”
The man looked alarmed. “Sir… you… you told us to pull the engine this afternoon.”
Conners felt his blood pressure rise, and before he’d even thought about it he backhanded the man. “Somebody is screwing with me,” he said, his voice acid.
He didn’t wait to hear anything the man said, but instead marched away from the chaos of the garage.
If he couldn’t leave by car, and couldn’t leave by plane, that left only one option.
The river was a couple of miles from the main house, and thankfully the ATVs weren’t having the same issues as everything else. He toyed briefly with the idea of taking one of them overland, getting the hell off the compound and out into the wilderness. He’d take his chances.
But he didn’t have any provisions, not even a coat to keep warm. And worse, he had no idea where he could go. His face had been plastered all over the news, and the towns around here were small. It wouldn’t take much for someone to recognize him and turn him in. The reward was pretty substantial. He was a living target for anyone who had dreams of getting out of their dust bowl existence, and in this area that was a lot of people.
But there was another way. Another place. A safe haven within his now not-so-safe haven.
The cabin.
If he got on the river he could go upstream, and eventually he’d come to the little hunting cabin he kept further out on the property. He’d have to hike a bit to get there, once he’d left the boat tied off, but it wasn’t far. And the cabin was already stocked with food and other provisions. It even had its own phone line. He could lie low until things died down back on the compound, until the police and firemen were told that it was all just a false alarm. And then he could go back. He’d have to deal with some people, make sure everyone was aware of how pissed he was about all the screwups. He’d have to find whoever did this—and it had to be someone on his own team, didn’t it? Someone screwing around? Someone trying to play games? He’d find them, and deal with them. But for now, he could tough it out in the cabin.
One night. Two tops.
The more he thought about it, the more he liked it.
He drove the ATV like a man possessed, zipping along the paved path that led toward the river. He slammed on the brakes as he arrived and hopped out, sprinting for the dock. The boat was moored but ready. He pulled the tarp off of it, checked the fuel, and fired it up. In minutes he was racing along the river, lights aimed ahead, GPS guiding him.
With all the bends in the river, it took most of two hours to get to the little pier that served as a landing for the cabin. The place was buried deep in the wilderness for a reason—as far from other humans as he could get. A good thing for hunting. A great thing for lying low.
Conners pulled up to the dock, tied off the boat, and hoisted the duffle over his shoulder. He had a flashlight from the boat, and that would help. It would be a slog, but he was in the clear.
He had no way of knowing what was happening back at the compound. He’d left his phone, but it wouldn’t have worked here anyway. No cellular, but also no WiFi. Though there would be another hard-wired phone at the cabin. And internet, unless it was down. Either way, he could call and check in once he got to the cabin. And when he did, he wanted answers. Somebody screwed up, and he was going to have it out of their hide.
His anger over that fueled him, keeping him warm on the chilled Montana night. Thank God it wasn’t winter, he’d have frozen to death. But the cabin had a gas fireplace and full propane tanks. It had a change of clothes, and warm coats. It had whiskey.
He kept his mind on all of that and trudged along the dark trail.
More hours went by. He wasn’t even sure how many. He stumbled along in the dark, trying to push himself, hurrying as much as possible. The flashlight was pitiful against the ink blackness of the Montana wilderness, and he found himself gripping it in one hand and the pistol in the other. He wouldn’t have much hope in a serious encounter out here, with just a 9mm. He could pop a rattlesnake, though in this chill they weren’t likely to be out on the open trail. He was more worried about mountain lions, in this stretch of wilderness. Grey wolves and grizzlies weren’t out of the question, either. None of those would be much bothered by flinging lead the size of a lima bean at them.
Never mind. Keep walking. Stay warm. Make noise. Shine the light.
His nerves were shot, his lungs and limbs burned from exertion, but he was getting closer.
He nearly wept when he saw the trail marker and turned. The cabin was at the end of the path.
Hope. Salvation. Warmth. Whiskey.
Finally, after what had felt like a month of stumbling in the darkness, he stepped onto the front porch, reached up above the window frame, and retrieved the key. A moment later he was inside, stomping his feet and rubbing his frozen arms, coughing and sneezing as dust rose from the floor.
He dropped the duffle near the door and huffed in the darkness for a moment. Then he reached and turned on the light for the main room.
The cabin had a solar array and battery power for days. No need for a generator or for fuel, though there was that, too. Just in case.
Battery power was plenty enough, given how little time he spent here. The place was mostly meant to be shelter for Conners and a few of his boys, for a handful of days each year. Most of those days were spent out in the woods, rifles in hand, taking down whatever game he and his boys could find. Which reminded him, there were some hunting rifles locked in a gun safe in the corner. He’d fish one out after he thawed. Should be more than enough ammo in there, too. He relaxed his grip on the 9mm, as if just remembering he had it, then set it down on an end table near his big, plush chair.
That chair was calling him—squared as it was to the fireplace. He’d get the fire going in a minute and relax. He thought might even have some Cheetos stashed here.
There was a fully stocked bar, at least, and his first duty would be to pour a whiskey, to be followed quickly by another. And probably another.
He moved toward the bar and froze.
On the bar was a laptop. It was open, and the screen was dark.
When had he ever brought a laptop here?
He didn’t recognize it.
He took a step back and picked up the 9mm, then slowly glanced around. “Anybody in here?” he asked, his voice low and gruff, menacing.
He wouldn’t tolerate squatters. Especially now. Whoever they were, they’d be food for the wolves before morning.
The laptop’s screen blinked on, and the glow of it got Conners’ attention.
A video started playing. Security footage. And Conners recognized the FBI agent—Symons. He was standing on a sidewalk, outside of an office building. A black SUV suddenly raced forward and slowed. A hand, holding a gun, appeared. Shots were fired. Agent Symon went down.
Conners felt his heart pounding. He turned slowly, the gun pointed and ready. “Whoever you are, you made a big mistake, messing with me. You think what I did to this guy was bad? I’m going to make sure you…”
He was cut short when something smashed into his skull.
He stumbled, the gun still in hand. His vision had gone blurry, but he tried to steady himself. He looked up to see a woman—someone he’d never seen before.
“Who…” he tried to raise his gun, to shoot.
She ended that, raising a full bourbon bottle high into the air and bringing it down hard on his forehead.
Conners fell then, the 9mm clattering off to the side. His vision went from blurred to black. Pain created threads of light—the only thing to pierce that darkness.
And then the last blow came.