CHAPTER 3

“Hound from Hell,” Kelly grumbled as she struggled to pull her leg out from under Bull, the hundred-pound Mastiff sleeping sprawled across her lower half. “Get off of me.”

The annoying chirping of a cricket clinging to the window screen had woken Kelly like a beeping alarm clock. Her skin prickled from the cool breeze blowing in through the open window, bringing with it a fresh smell of greenery.

A low growl vibrated deep inside Bull as Kelly braced a foot against his back to pull her other leg free.

Kelly sat on the side of the king-size bed, resting her elbows on her knees, and held her head in her hands. She curled her toes into a Native American throw rug and peeked through her fingers at the clock on the nightstand: four-thirty.

“It’s too early.”

She tugged her underwear out of her ass crack and shuffled across the hardwood floor to the dresser. She pulled on a baggy pair of running shorts then grabbed her fleece jacket and ASICS running shoes, and lumbered downstairs in her sports bra.

At the bottom of the stairs Bull’s bigger brother, Mars, slept on his back with his legs sprawled in all four directions, displaying his junk for the entire world.

“Nothing changes around here.” Kelly stepped over him and tied her hair in a ponytail.

The cool mountain air shot a shiver up her spine as she stood on the front porch. Native bluestone and Lake Tahoe river rock framed the porch with white cedar railings stained to match the cabin’s large Norway red pine logs. Under the morning twilight, dew glistened on the blades of grass.

Still yawning, Kelly pulled on her fleece and zipped it up to the collar. After stretching her shoulder and shaking out her arms and legs, she trotted down the cabin steps and out the drive for a four-mile run.

Her legs were already heavy, her shoulder and neck stiff, and she wasn’t even a hundred meters into her run, still yawning. By the quarter mile, she was gliding along at an eight-minute pace.

The crisp smell of mountain air and wild flowers filled her nostrils with every breath. A husky man in an approaching Dodge pickup raised his hand off the steering wheel to wave as he passed.

Just like home, she thought, holding out her open palm and flashing the driver a smile.

Kelly was still a stranger to the community as she saw it, but everyone had been quick to welcome her. For the sake of the girls she had convinced herself. Kelly was sure Maggie had played a part in all the neighborly love she was receiving.

Everyone in Boulder knew Maggie, or of her—the gentle giant who had taken care of the Garner family’s kids for several years, and who had helped a stranger transition from full-fledged warrior to loving adoptive mom.

Detective Steve Mitchell’s daughter, Nancy Peters, a FOX News investigative reporter, had even hyped Kelly’s image to celebrity status with a series of breaking-news stories, from the rescue of the Garner girls, and her own rescue during the Dragon Boat Festival’s terrorist attack, to the capture of fugitive Jerry Reynolds.

Jerry Reynolds.

Kelly huffed and picked up her pace.

The idea of trying to prove Reynolds innocent was a joke. A jury found him guilty, she told herself. He ran. No one runs unless they’re guilty.

He may not have looked the part, whatever that part looks like, but what little Kelly knew about child molesters, Reynolds fit the profile. The majority of molesters were older men who were well acquainted with the child. The child was more often than not a girl.

A mile and a half out, the road made a sharp bend to the right and began to climb. Kelly followed the blacktop toward the streaks of pink and orange that lit the horizon in a fiery glow. Barbed-wire fencing lined her path amidst ankle-high grass and a herd of grazing spectators. The smell of manure overtook her as she pumped her arms and raced up the hill.

The road leveled off. Kelly began panting and shortened her stride. She ventured onto a dirt road that circled around the north side of the ranch. A rabbit darted onto her path and froze, ears twitching, watching her out of the corner of its eyes. When Kelly neared it casually hopped into a thicket on the other side of the road.

What if Kasak is right? What if the girl lied about Reynolds? What possible motive could Angela Battles have had for framing her stepfather? He was filthy rich and spoiled her. She had anything she wanted.

CHAPTER 5

“Believe me, Ms. Reed. There’s little a rich man does that surprises me anymore. They all think we’re here to serve them, handmaidens for the gods. And not one of them knows the first damn thing about loving a woman or how to make her cum.”

CHAPTER 5

Kelly raced the Camaro south across the state, heading for Fremont County, the prison capital of America. Nowhere else will you find more jails, state prisons, and private prisons in one location. She turned onto Highway 50 and followed the spider’s web of razor wire and chainlink fences to Evans Boulevard, then navigated through the labyrinth of service roads leading to each of the State prisons nestled closely together. The sign on the shoulder guided Kelly to the Colorado State Penitentiary’s parking lot.

One large sign threatened random vehicle searches and listed all items prohibited on prison grounds, including firearms. After securing her Glock in a custom-built hideaway under the dash, she headed for the front doors.

The officer at the reception desk took Kelly’s credentials, and then gestured for her to step through a metal detector. Once she was in the main visiting room, another officer escorted her to one of the lawyer booths. While Kelly waited for officers to escort Reynolds up from administrative segregation, she purchased a couple of sodas from the vending machines.

Kelly paced around the eight-by-eight foot booth and stretched her back. She gazed out the windows at the main floor and all the families visiting loved ones. She smirked at a few of the visitors who seemed to always standout, all heavyset white women. The pen-pal wives club she liked to call them—lonely women who trolled pen-pal websites for offenders. Maybe it was the way they dressed that made them standout. Maybe it was the over-filled table of vending machine sandwiches and chips carefully arranged to impress as if it were a twelve-course meal.

CHAPTER 21

Kelly squatted in the parterre behind Jerry Reynolds’ Georgian colonial revival home and studied the land. The front lawn, a mere hundred fifty feet from the street to the house, was dwarfed in comparison to the back which stretched the length of two football fields.

She pressed her blue-diamond ring to her lips as she studied each blade of grass, listening to Paul’s voice in her head: “It’s not that difficult. The trick is to get low and let your eyes scan over the grass until you spot the blades that are bent over, pressed down unnaturally, and you’ve found your trail.”

But this wasn’t a search for an enemy combatant in a remote jungle or a deer hunt on a wooded farm. She was pursuing a suburbanite housewife over a manicured lawn.

CHAPTER 25

The parish members were all standing, singing the entrance hymn. The lead altar boy held the crucifixion high in the air as he proceeded down the center aisle toward the altar. Another altar boy and a deacon followed behind with the priest bringing up the rear.

Kelly slid into the back pew and scanned the faithful.

The priest faced the parish from behind the altar. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

“Amen,” Kelly said in unison with the faithful.

“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and communion of the Holy Spirit be with you.”

“And also with you.”

As the priest continued with the reading of the Penitential Rites, Kelly continued searching the crowd.

The parish members finally sat for the first reading, and there he was, eight rows up, across the aisle, alone, dressed in a blue three-piece suit. An older woman worshiped a few feet to his right with a family of three positioned on his back right and no one directly behind him.

The deacon made his way to the lectern. “A reading from the Book of Deuteronomy. Moses spoke to the people, saying: ‘Fear the Lord, your God, and keep throughout the days of your lives…’”

Kelly slinked across the aisle and sidled undetected into the pew directly behind the man in the three-piece suit. He was within arm’s length, oblivious to her looming behind him. All Kelly had to do was raise her gun to the back of his head and pull the trigger, or grab his jaw and head and snap his neck.

CHAPTER 30

The fanfare of flashing lights and radio chatter woke the neighborhood that had grown numb to frequent late-night action. Grumpy old women in bathrobes and house slippers stood on their front porches to see who was being arrested this time, while other less-enthused neighbors witnessed from behind their picture windows.

A delivery van drove by throwing the day’s Kansas City Star. A thump sounded as a rolled-up copy of the paper landed behind Kelly and Detective Francesco.

The two women drank their coffee as the sun inched its way over the Loma Vista shopping district. A uniform officer waved off an approaching trash truck getting ready to collect Marcus Dunham’s trash.

Francesco blew on her coffee. “You went at him alone?”

Kelly gulped her hot cup of java, not concerned with burning her tongue. “Yeah. Maybe it was foolish, I know, but that’s how I roll.”

Francesco held her cup to her mouth, “Me too,” then blew and sipped.

CHAPTER 30

The house came into view as Kelly rounded the bend. Francesco failed to mention how vast the property was. Nevertheless, it was a stunning sight with so many trees and red squirrels running wild. Kelly let off the gas and coasted along the shoulder.

A three-foot high rock wall dressed in twirling vines of ivy and overgrown kudzu bordered the front of the estate, guarded by sentries of sycamore trees in near-perfect formation. Towering stone columns supporting a wrought-iron gate stood post on either side of a crushed-pebble drive that ventured daringly into the Dearings’ ghostly past.

Kelly parked in the patchy grass along the shoulder of the road. There was no name on the black, gambrel-shaped mailbox, and no mail inside.

She leaned on one of the stone columns and peered through the chain-locked gate, studying the house in the distance. Wild, leaf-barren bushes suffered at the base of a covered porch that ran the length of the house. Several dormer windows jutted out of the cross-gabled roof.

Kelly stepped over the rock wall and surprised two tiny lizards that scurried into the crevices to escape. Walking up the drive, the trees seemed to turn with every step she made, watching her through large knotholes high in their trunks.

[…]

Fifty yards off the side of the house, a weeping willow socked in weeds loomed like a cloaked wraith over a small, desolated pond with cattails. The pungent aroma of sundering vegetation and the putrid smell of a dead animal wafted in the breeze.

A loud buzzing drew Kelly to the bank where the rotting remains of a possum lay hosting a swarm of flies and maggots. A black snake slithered across the surface of the pond and made its way into the trees.

Chapter 36

The caravan sped under the I-435 cloverleaf.

“Ten minutes out,” Hogan announced.

Francesco rubbed her hands up and down her pantlegs. Ten minutes might as well be an hour. It was too long.

At least the stars had come out to play under the watchful eye of the moon.

Francesco lowered her window and inhaled the night air, then closed her eyes.

Years ago as a patrol officer, she had hurried to climb out of a musty, fly-infested basement to inhale the clean morning air. She once inhaled night-blooming flowers before jumping down onto a rocky riverbank littered with a woman’s decomposed severed leg. Another time she had inhaled one-hundred-three-degree stale air before stepping off boiling asphalt and into a dusty storage unit full of makeshift caskets. She even inhaled food grilling on a Weber somewhere in a poverty-stricken neighborhood before splitting from the fading light and into the shadows of an empty lot where a third prostitute lay dead on her belly.

But she never appreciated breathing more than the time she stumbled out of her own house and inhaled life with a rope dangling around her neck like a dog leash.

The leathery-looking scar around her throat felt rough under her fingertips. Massaging it had become a nervous tic, but it calmed her. Rubbing it empowered her, gave her confidence in the face of doubt.

[…]

She rubbed her scar and mumbled, “Ten minutes.”

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