Conners Hunting Cabin, Montana
Kayne huffed and sobbed. She had the bottle ready, gripped in her fist so tight that her fingers ached. She raised it. She intended to do it. The weight of the thing would do most of the work. It would be easy.
She lowered it.
She wasn’t a killer.
She’d told herself that a million times. Despite the body count that continued to rise for her. Despite the blood she’d scrubbed from hands and clothes over the years. Despite the faces she still saw when she closed her eyes, the dreams that still shook her awake at night, the constant twisting sense of dread in her guts.
I’m not a killer.
She’d always managed to convince herself, in the daylight hours at least, that the deaths she was responsible for were self defense, and unavoidable.
This one would be different.
She’d wanted to kill Derrick Conners. He deserved it. The world would definitely be better without him in it. And she’d waited here, in this cabin, knowing this was where he would run. She’d routed him here, engineering everything that pushed him here, funneled him here, knowing this was the only place he could go.
She’d waited and had planned to do it in the most brutal way she could think of. No guns. No knives. She wanted to feel his skull cave in.
What did that make her?
She shivered and stared down at the man at her feet. She could do it.
But she’d never be able to convince herself, ever again, that she was not a killer.
This was vengeance. Plain and simple.
She would have to live with it. And she wasn’t sure, yet, what that was going to mean. It was an uncertainty, a cascade of unknown and unforeseeable variables. She had never been comfortable with that level of ambiguity in her choices. She thrived on order in the midst of chaos, on planning and thinking, no being twenty steps ahead of problems that just might happen. So this…
She shook, shivering from the thought of what might be more than from the chill of the cabin. She gripped the bottle, weighed it as she tapped it against the side of her thigh. All it would take is to raise it high, one more time, and bring it down on Derrick Conners’ head one more time.
She sobbed, and she hadn’t expected it. She felt stinging tears in her eyes. She wiped them away with her sleeve.
She turned to the bar, and used a paper towel to wipe down the bottle, spilling a bit of the bourbon on it to help break down any oils from fingerprints, and to remove the blood. When it was nice and clean, she replaced it on the shelf where she’d found it.
She closed the laptop and tucked it inside her backpack, slinging the pack onto her shoulders.
She’d come here prepared. More out of habit than planning.
In the pack she had zip ties, which she cinched tight around Conners’ wrists and ankles. He groaned a bit, when she moved him, but didn’t come awake.
In the pack, she had a syringe filled with ketamine—a pain killer that served as a general anesthetic. It would keep Conners out for a while. Long enough to make sure she got away. Maybe long enough that he’d be asleep when the FBI got there. They were on their way to his ranch. They wouldn’t be that far off.
She had alerted them to Conners’ location the second she closed the laptop. The cabin had its own WiFi, and she’d set things up in advance, given QuIEK a set of instructions to follow as she cleaned up the crime scene. She had plenty of time. She could be out of here long before the helicopters and boats and SUVs arrived.
She pulled Conners up and into the plush chair. He would have a concussion, for sure. But he should live, despite every impulse Kayne had to make it otherwise.
After making sure he really was ok—minus the head injury—she exited the cabin, leaving it unlocked behind her, and made her way further up the path to where she’d parked a Jeep. It was loaded with provisions—food, fuel, blankets, and other things she might need if she had to hide out in the wilderness for a bit. She didn’t think it would be necessary. Just a contingency.
I’m all about contingencies, she thought, bitterly.
She started the drive back up the long mud-and-stone road, cutting through the darkness with the headlights of the Jeep, retracing her steps to the anemic little paved road she’d come in on. This trip would take all night, she knew, but she’d cross off of Conners’ property and onto a proper road near dawn. There was little to no chance that she’d cross paths with the FBI or other law enforcement, on this route. She’d mapped this out in detail.
Once she was on an actual road, she’d stop for gas and food in a little dive of a town nearby, and then she’d be on her way again. Heading West.
Heading back to San Francisco.
She had unfinished business there. She had a friend in need there. Seeing him, one more time, had always been part of the plan, whether there was blood on her hands or not.
And she wasn’t sure if this was going to be her last choice of free will—if she’d ultimately find herself finally captured and buried in a cell somewhere. But she had decided that would be fine, if it happened. She’d accept it. Maybe it was time.
But before she went down, she was going to see Eric Symon.
She was going to say goodbye.