Nilsson took the handset back. “I’m looking at a map. You have one?”
Shepherd chuckled. “I live here, miss. Forty-six years.”
She scanned the map. From Frank Villaine’s there were two towns they might go to, northwest to Millton, or due east to Stanton.
She mentioned these options to the deputy.
“Let me ponder.”
Nilsson studied the map. The first alternative, the route to Millton, would take them through a cluster of lakes. The bodies of water had colorful names: Crimson Rock, Snowshoe, Timberwolf, Halfmoon.
This put her in mind of her conversation with Colter about fishing.
Then the corporal was back on the line. He said, “Okay, what I’d do, I was them, I’d stick the cars in a garage and park the Winnebago in a big RV campsite. Needle in a haystack. And there’s only one place they could do both of those: Stanton. I can have a cruiser there in fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll rely on your expertise, Corporal. Appreciate the help.”
69
“Dawndue...”
Thinking of the first time the singsong mantra had wormed itself into his mind.
The melodious birdcall came from when Moll was sighting down the barrel of a Colt. The man, on his knees, looking back at Moll, crying, “Don’t do it, please! Don’t do it! Don’t do it. Don’t do—”
Dawndue...
That’d been a happy job, a good one, a fast one. A pull of the trigger and he had gotten $10K in his pocket and an infectious expression to carry about for the rest of his days.
This job was not like that one. Not at all.
This “Dawndue” was the obscenity version.
Moll rose on his thick haunches from where he’d been looking down at the grass, near the rear of the smoldering Winnebago. The men had found two computers in the non-soundproofed cabin and stepped outside to add them to the fire pit. Then Moll had squinted and walked to where he now stood.
The bent grass.
The scuffed dirt.
He scanned the woods and, seeing nothing, turned to the cabin. “Problem.”
“What?”
“They got away.”
Desmond scoffed. “Not likely that.” He rose and jumped off the deck, walked to the back of the smoldering ruins of the camper, regarding the tamped down grass, the marks in the dirt. “We heard screaming.”
“Because somebody screamed.”
“You let me have at mom, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
“Just do not,” Moll snapped. He squinted through the smoke at what seemed to be a trapdoor in the bottom of the camper. Grimaced.
Desmond poked at the ash with a stick. “He’s not going to be happy.”
“No, he is not.” Moll stared at the dense woods. “You were them, where would you go?”
Desmond considered this. “Only one place. Millton. Ten miles, little less.”
“It’s Everett County. No friendlies in the sheriff’s office.” Moll looked around, squinting through the smoke. “What did we leave behind that could be a problem?”
Desmond nodded toward the forest, where he’d hidden the Transit. “Tread marks from the Ford.”
Moll scoffed. “Here? I do not think cops here even know what fingerprints are. Tread marks are in a different dimension to them.” He gazed at the daunting woods once again. Where are you, Motorcycle Man? He felt a wave of anger, which seemed to make his skin itch even more. He didn’t bother to fish out the spray. He was tired of both the sensation and trying to ease it.
“I’ll take care of the Merc.”
Desmond poured the remaining gas under Frank Villaine’s SUV and touched it off. He tossed the can in after. A tiny flame became a major flame. Then a torrent of flame that swept away all trace of the two men. “What about the Kia?”
“We didn’t touch it. And we wore gloves in the cabin. Anyway, no time now.”
They walked through a stand of trees to the path where Desmond had parked the white Ford van. They climbed in, Moll behind the wheel. In ten minutes they were cruising slowly along Route 84, the road that led to Millton.
“They won’t be hitching,” Desmond said.
“No. But they will stay close to the highway. Use it to guide them. Not like they have their GPS anymore.”
Moll hit the hazards and he drove slowly northwest, half on the shoulder when he could. Both men were scanning, Moll left, Desmond right, for any clue that gave away their prey. They knew what to look for. They’d done this before.
70
This is called a loaded march,” Ashton Shaw is saying to his three children. “Or a forced march. As in you’d rather be doing something else.” He chuckles and continues to stride along a mountainside path on the outskirts of the Compound.
Colter, Dorion and Russell are behind him, in that order.
On their backs are packs weighing thirty pounds or so. He had tried to give Dorion a lighter one, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
Their passage is fast, and the children are keeping up, though breathing hard. Their father is not. Ashton Shaw, an academic by training and in practice, had to be the most fit professor on earth.
Over his shoulder he calls, “Roman soldiers learned loaded marches before they ever touched a weapon. To become a legionnaire they had to hike twenty miles in five hours, with a forty-five-pound pack, and carrying a sudis. Who knows what a sudis is?”
Colter reads more than his siblings and he particularly likes history. “A sharpened stake they used to build nighttime defenses with.”
“Good,” Ashton says. Russell seems irritated his younger brother could answer.
“Hey, I know!” Dorion calls enthusiastically. “Let’s make some sudis and we can carry them like the Romans!”
Both Colter and Russell tell her to be quiet.
Shaw, Parker and her daughter were on their own forced march, in the woods north of the cabin on Timberwolf Lake. They were burdened by no packs but they were plenty challenged: the uphill terrain was dense with thick briars and brush, roots, rocks and trees — standing and fallen. The survivalist, the swimmer and the volleyball player were, however, making good progress.
The scorched skeleton of the Winnebago was now several miles behind them. Hannah was on point, a spot she’d seized. There was no reason for her not to be in the lead. Both Shaw and her mother had a good eye on the girl and any potential threats ahead.
They continued their hike in silence. Over them were branches and boughs of oak and pine, yew, beech, box elder and hemlock. Beneath, ground cover of eastern hay-scented fern, aster and ragwort. Moss everywhere. These were old forests. Damp and rainy Middle America rarely saw the purge of cleansing forest fires, and trees grew and grew until the stronger choked the weak.
Coming to a particularly formidable wall of greenery, Colter pointed to the left and they continued onward. Ashton Shaw had taught his children how to navigate by the sun and stars, ever challenging, as the earth had the inconvenient habit of spinning.
Never assume the sun and stars are your only source of nav. Use whatever works...
The words were probably a paraphrase of his father’s, but the point was clear, and today Shaw was not using celestial navigation but dependable Route 84, from which the occasional hiss of cars and of a tractor-trailer’s engine brake guided them north, to the safety of Millton.