Okay, Sarah, give me the most likely working theory,” Max said.
Max and Sarah headed toward Newark Airport to catch a flight back up to Briggs Penitentiary. It had turned out that the attorney Rachel Anderson called was the notorious Hester Crimstein, who promptly got her bail and released.
“Stop chewing your nails, Max.”
“Let me be, Sarah, okay?”
“It’s gross.”
“It helps me think.”
Sarah sighed.
“So what’s our working theory?”
“Burroughs escapes with the help of Philip and Adam Mackenzie,” Sarah began.
“We are sure the Mackenzies are in it?”
“I think we are.”
“I think we are too,” Max said. “Continue.”
“Burroughs gets out of the warden’s car in the underground parking garage at the outlet center. He calls Rachel Anderson, who is waiting for his call at the Nesbitt Station Diner. Rachel drives over to the outlet center. With me so far, Max?”
“Yep. Keep going.”
“She meets up with Burroughs. Burroughs gets in her car.”
“And then?”
“They head up north. We have that last phone ping.”
“Which is odd.”
“How so?”
“Why turn the phone off then?” Max asked. “Why not earlier?”
“If she turns it off at the outlet center, we would know that’s where she went.”
Max frowned. “Yeah, I guess, maybe.”
“But?”
Max shook it off. “Go on.”
“They keep driving to that general store—”
“The Katahdin General Store,” Max added, “in Millinocket.”
“Right, where he buys the survival gear. Based on the traffic patterns and timeline I put together, I’d say she had time to drive him farther north for another half hour or so. Either way, Rachel drops Burroughs off in some heavily wooded area. We have copters and dogs covering it, but the area is black-hole vast.”
“And then?”
Sarah shrugged. “And then that’s it.”
“So what’s Burroughs’s plan now?”
“I’m not sure, Max. Maybe he plans to hide in the national parks. Wait us out. Maybe he plans to sneak across the border into Canada.”
Max worked the fingernail hard.
“You don’t buy it,” Sarah said.
“I don’t buy it.”
“Tell me why.”
“Too many holes. Burroughs is a city kid. Does he have any survivalist experience?”
“Maybe. Or maybe he thinks, how hard could it be? Maybe he thinks he has no choice.”
“It’s not adding up, Sarah.”
“What’s not adding up, Max?”
“Let’s start at the top: Was this escape planned out in advance?”
“Had to be.”
“If so, wow, it’s a pretty wacky plan.”
“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “I think it was pretty ingenious.”
“How so?”
“It’s so simple. Burroughs just grabs the gun and walks out with Mackenzie. No tunnels to dig. No trucks to hijack or garbage cans to hide in. None of that. If that guard…what was his name again?”
“Weston. Ted Weston.”
“Right. If Weston doesn’t look out the window at just the right time—if he doesn’t spot the warden and Burroughs getting into the car—they’re home free. No one would have reported Burroughs missing for hours.”
Max thought about it. “So let’s follow that trail, shall we, Sarah?”
“We shall, Max.”
“When it all went wrong—when Weston sounded the alarm—your theory is that they were then forced to improvise.”
“Exactly,” Sarah said.
Max considered that. “That would explain Burroughs’s call to Rachel when she was at the diner. If Rachel was in on it from the get-go, he wouldn’t have had to make that call. She’d have already been in place to pick him up.”
“Interesting,” Sarah said. “Are we now theorizing that Rachel Anderson wasn’t part of the original breakout plan?”
“I don’t know.”
“But it isn’t a coincidence. Her visiting Burroughs on the day he breaks out.”
“Not a coincidence,” Max agreed. He started working on a fresh hangnail. “But, Sarah?”
“What, Max?”
“We are still missing something. Something pretty big.”