The phone in Sheriff Adam’s hand vibrated over and over. The number was private. Normally, he would have answered it, but he didn’t have time to deal with what was probably a telemarketer.
He sent the call to voicemail.
Allison stood by the front window, hiding just out of sight, eyeing the road. “What if they come back?”
“Relax, will ya?” Adams had a bad feeling about the events of the morning so far, but he knew that expressing that to Allison might cause her to slip into a full-blown panic. “The ambulance will be here soon, and then I’ll go and check your story out.”
Allison hissed, “Someone is driving by!”
The sheriff looked up from his phone, squinting. “They do that from time to time, you know? It’s a road.”
A pickup truck drove by the office, heading out of town. Adams recognized it as belonging to William Jury, a professor who commuted all the way up to Morgantown to work at the college. He had a long trek every morning that he always bitched about when he ran into George at the pub or grocery store.
The man stuck out like a sore thumb around the town because of his advanced degree and the prim way about him. But he was liked well enough and always extolled the benefits of country living, despite his upper-class income and profession.
“He’s going to hit the spikes!” Allison wheeled around, coffee sloshing from her cup. “Those men haven’t come back yet, so the spikes are still sitting out there.”
The sheriff stared at her for a second. “Goddamn it.” He turned his attention back to his cell. “Let me call up Deputy Roberts, and then we’ll—”
He stopped midsentence.
The phone didn’t have any service.
A few seconds before, when the call was coming through, it had four bars.
“What the hell?” he asked.
“What is it?” Allison’s hands began to shake, and she spilled more coffee. She put the mug down on Mel’s desk. “What’s going on?”
“Cell service is out.” Adams scratched the back of his head. “Both of the phones are down.”
“Oh God.” Allison fell into the chair behind Mel’s desk, holding her head with both hands. “Do you believe me now? Do you think this could all be a coincidence? Those men tried to kill me, and now none of the phones work.”
“I highly doubt that two men in a van managed to block the signal to my cell phone.” Adams tried to add an air of confidence to his voice, but failed.
He didn’t know what was going on, but he intended to find out.
Allison said something else that he didn’t hear. His focus was on the phone again.
Adams tried to make a call to Roberts, just in case it would go through, even though it didn’t have any bars.
It didn’t work.
“Shut up for a second,” he grumbled. “Can’t hear myself think.”
Allison just got louder. “We have to go after that truck! If he hits those spikes and dies, that’s on you, George.”
Adams closed his eyes for a second. Though Allison’s babbling was approaching maddening levels, she had a point. Even if the phone worked, there was no way Roberts would be able to get down the road in time to stop the professor from running over the supposed spikes.
The sheriff would have to do that himself.
“Goddamn it to hell and back.” Adams stuffed the phone in his pocket and went to his desk.
He grabbed his overloaded key ring from the top drawer and sifted through it until he found the key to his cruiser. The fat ring was entirely too big for him to keep in his pocket. He kept a spare set to most of the doors at the elementary school, the library, and a few other local businesses.
The town would rather have him unlock the doors in case of a burglary or fire, instead of having to break them down.
Unfortunately, he was terrible with losing his things, so he didn’t dare keep the keys to his office or cruiser on a separate set. More than once, he’d called the locksmith in the neighboring town to get him into his own damned car.
“Stay here until the ambulance arrives. I’m going to head on up the road and see what I can find.”
“To hell with that.” Allison jumped out of the chair and practically ran to him. “What if those men come back?”
“You’re in the sheriff’s office. I doubt anyone is crazy enough to storm a police station.”
Allison let out a cynical, high-pitched laugh. “I’m pretty sure that everyone knows you don’t have a SWAT team stashed in the back, George. You aren’t leaving me alone here.”
“But—”
“We’re wasting time arguing,” Allison said. She spun on her heel and walked to the front door, turning back to him as she put her hand on the knob. “Let’s go.”
Adams let out a sigh and then grabbed a sticky pad from Mel’s desk. He scrawled a quick message to her saying that Allison Henley had been in an accident, that an ambulance was en route, and that the phones were down.
While he finished his note, it occurred to him that Melody should have been there by now.
Another coincidence in a morning full of them.
At what point did coincidence become conspiracy?
He grabbed his pistol and holster from the desk, clipping them to his belt.
As they climbed into his cruiser, him behind the wheel, Allison in the front beside him, he swallowed down the dread that wormed its way up his throat. Things weren’t right and he knew it, no matter how much he argued with Allison.
Most of his days on duty had him walking around and talking to the townsfolk.
Maybe he would write a ticket or two.
Watch some ESPN.
It didn’t take Detective Colombo to figure out something was amiss that morning.
They pulled onto the road, heading out of town.
Allison’s hands fidgeted in her lap.
The sheriff kept his speed low, eyes glued to the pavement.
If there was a spike strip out there, he didn’t need to hit the thing and disable his cruiser.
Three minutes later, they came upon the professor’s truck.
It idled along the side of the road, the driver’s side door ajar.
“Told you,” Allison said. She sat ramrod straight and pointed through the windshield. “And there’s my car right in front of it.”
Her old, rusted-out sedan sat on its roof in a drainage ditch beside the road. The windows were smashed out, all four tires flat.
“I’ll be damned.” Adams pulled in behind the truck and put the cruiser in park. He switched on his emergency lights and let the engine idle. He climbed out, grunting as his knees cracked. “Stay here.”
Professor Jury stood by the front of Allison’s car, inspecting one of her flat tires. He wore a white dress shirt, slacks, and brown loafers. Round glasses glinted as the rising sun punched through the tree canopy surrounding them.
He wore his dark brown hair in a ponytail that made Adams roll his eyes every time he saw the man.
William turned back at the sound of the sheriff’s door closing. “I can’t find anyone. There’s a little blood behind the wheel, but—”
Adams held a hand up. “Everything’s fine, Will. It’s Allison Henley’s car, and she’s fine. I’ve got her in the cruiser with me now.
“Oh, thank God.” William’s hunched shoulders fell. “It isn’t every morning that you stumble upon a wrecked car without anyone in it.” He turned back to the vehicle. “All the tires are flat.
“Yah.” Adams climbed down into the drainage ditch beside him and looked at the front, driver’s side tire. The rubber was shredded. “I’ll be damned.”
“What do you think could have done that?”
The sheriff looked over the top of the car, further down the road.
Straddled across the pavement, several yards away, sat a row of spikes.
“Ahh, damn.” Adams climbed out of the ditch, his pulse quickening.
Even with all the oddities of the morning, he hadn’t quite believed Allison about the men causing her accident. It just seemed so implausible, so ludicrous.
But there was the evidence she’d told him he would find.
“Sheriff!” Allison cried from behind him.
“What?” He turned around, startled at the frightened tone of her voice.
Allison stood beside the passenger door of his cruiser, pointing behind her. “Here they come!”
Adams’ mouth dropped open when he saw the white van driving down the center of the road, heading straight for them.
“What’s happening, George?” William asked. “I—”
The professor cut himself off when he saw the sheriff place his palm on the handle of his pistol.
“Get back in the car.” Adams hustled toward his cruiser. He pointed at the professor’s truck. “And you get in your truck.”
The van stopped in the middle of the road. The passenger door opened.
A man wearing overalls stepped out.
He pulled a rifle out of the van and took a knee beside the door.
“Holy shit!” The professor ran for his truck, his ponytail swooshing from side to side.
The man jammed the butt of his rifle against his shoulder.
For the first time in his decades-long career, Sheriff George Adams had to pull his gun. He stood in the middle of the road and aimed at the man with the rifle. “Drop it!”
He was a solid fifty yards away from the van.
Hitting anything from that distance with a pistol would take incredible luck.
And Adams’ hands were shaking too badly.
The rifle barked beside the van.
Fire belched from the barrel.
Blood burst from Professor Jury’s back. Scarlet blossomed across his white shirt.
He staggered forward, knees buckling.
His hand grabbed for the door handle of his truck, but came up a foot short.
The rifle cracked again, and the top of the professor’s head popped.
Adams shouted incoherently and shot at the man kneeling in the road. He ran for his cruiser, firing blindly, hoping to suppress the shooter enough for him to climb into the car.
His shots didn’t come close, but made the man with the rifle duck behind his door.
Allison dove back into the cruiser and slammed her door shut just as Adams’ reached the driver’s side. His old age and protruding belly didn’t allow him to lunge in with as much grace as the younger woman, but he managed to squeeze himself behind the wheel.
The rear window exploded behind them.
“Get us out of here!” Allison ducked down just as the windshield spiderwebbed in front of her.
Adams hunched over as he yanked the cruiser into gear and slammed the accelerator down. The car lurched forward, tires screaming on the pavement.
“Not that way!” Allison grabbed his arm. “The spikes are up there.”
“Damn.” The sheriff shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. His heart thundered wildly, ears thrumming. The adrenaline spike of the sudden firefight had his head reeling, and he’d forgotten all about the reason they’d driven down there.
The cruiser drove past the oozing body of Professor Jury. It was only visible for an agonizing moment before they sped by.
Adams slammed the brake and yanked on the wheel, hoping to pull a 180 in the middle of the road.
The tires screeched, but only slid a few inches.
They jerked to a stop, still facing forward.
“What the hell was that?” Allison chanced a peek over the top of her seat just as a bullet whizzed between them.
“I thought we would spin around.”
“Well, we didn’t!”
“No shit.” Adams put the car into reverse and mashed the gas pedal again. “Keep your head down.”
“What are you doing?” Allison slid down the seat, her panicked eyes staring at him. “We have to turn around.”
“No time.” The sheriff hunched as low as he could and grabbed the rearview mirror, angling it enough for him to see through the empty space where the back windshield had been.
The mirror hanging off his door exploded in a shower of glass and metal.
Adams saw the shooter in the rearview. The man had resumed kneeling in the road. He worked the bolt action on his rifle and took aim again.
A hole punched into the dash between George and Allison.
She let out a small scream and slid further down. The lower half of her body was scrunched under the glove compartment.
The steering wheel wobbled in Adams’ grip as he kept the accelerator floored. The engine whined as they pushed thirty miles an hour.
He kept it as straight as possible, knowing that one little slip would send them careening off the road. Driving backwards was hard enough for him, let alone doing it at such a high speed.
The shooter yanked the bolt back and forward again.
But the next shot never came.
The man in the overalls scowled down at his weapon. He dropped the rifle and stood, reaching behind him. Pulling a pistol from an unseen pocket or holster, he took aim again.
“Christ, these guys have a lot of firepower.” Adams felt a flutter in his chest and a twinge of pain in his arm.
Not now, he thought. I can’t have a damned heart attack now.
A flurry of bullets punched into the trunk of the cruiser.
The fabric in the chair above Allison’s head puffed out and tore.
The rearview mirror shattered, cutting Adams’ visibility behind them.
But he didn’t dare take his foot off the gas.
He sat up and looked back over his shoulder.
The shooter popped the magazine out of his pistol and jammed a fresh one in. He moved with a practiced grace. His face never betrayed any emotion save a cool determination.
He might have been discussing the weather, rather than killing a professor and shooting at the sheriff.
The cruiser pulled even with the van as the man raised his gun again.
Adams locked his gaze on the shooter’s for a split second that seemed to stretch for an eternity. He saw a driver sitting behind the wheel, watching the events play out
And then they were past the van and the man intent on murdering them.
The shooter unloaded on the front of the car, punching holes in the hood and grill.
Steam burst from the radiator.
Adams kept going, gritting his teeth. Allison shouted something at him that he couldn’t make out. The drum solo going on in his ears blotted out everything else.
The drainage ditch ended another thirty yards behind them, the shoulder expanding out almost ten feet.
When they got within a dozen yards, Adams took his foot off the gas and slammed the brake down. The car jerked, but the tires didn’t lock. He spun the wheel and guided them toward the shoulder.
Bullets smashed the window out beside him as they turned, the cruiser now perpendicular with the road. Glass fell into his lap and stabbed at his cheek and neck.
They hadn’t come to a stop before Adams yanked the transmission into drive. The cruiser bucked, a heavy thunk slamming under the hood. Warmth seeped into the car by the floor from the overheating engine.
As he got them turned around, the dying car picking up speed again, Adams looked back at the van. The shooter had stopped firing, his pistol held down by his hip. The driver had climbed out and was walking around the back.
They weren’t even paying attention to the fleeing cruiser.
The driver opened the rear door of the van, and Adams caught a glimpse of something that made his stomach flip.
They had a rocket launcher. The man reached for something else though, apparently intent on letting the sheriff get away.
“George!” Allison shouted. She scooted back into her seat. Her eyes looked sunken, her cheeks an ashy gray.
“What?”
“They got you.”
“What?”
Allison leaned closer. “You’re bleeding!”
Adams looked over at her, his forehead scrunching in confusion. Then he peered down at his left leg and saw that his pants were red and wet.
The pain came a few seconds later.