A Lifetime Burning in a Moment Read online

  “I’m sorry,” Devlin said. “It was a bad joke. You’re right. I’m mistaken. It must’ve rolled under there. I’m sorry I chased you. I was wrong. Please forget it.”

  “Did you call me a bad joke, John?”

  Devlin saw his reflection in the driver’s dark glasses. Tiny. Small, shrinking away, as he always did.

  “No. Forgive me. I made a bad joke. I was wrong to accuse you of anything. Totally out of line. I apologize.”

  The driver’s face hardened as he and his passenger scanned Devlin, his family and their car for a long, cold moment. Then the driver studied his cigarette butt. Before he flicked it away, he half grinned and nodded.

  “No harm done, John.”

  The truck’s motor ticked as it rolled away then vanished down the road.

  Elise wanted them to wait. So they did. For a long moment, Devlin sat motionless behind the wheel. Then he cursed under his breath, turned the Ford’s ignition and started back to their cabin along the serpentine dirt road.

  No one spoke.

  The ping of gravel punctuated the silence, decompressing the tension as each of them withdrew into their thoughts. Devlin soon took comfort in the soft strains of music leaking from Annie’s headset she listened to a CD. Blake looked toward the lake while Elise glimpsed her passenger side mirror.

  “Oh God, they’re following us!”

  Devlin’s skin prickled when he saw the pick-up’s grill and damaged front fender half-concealed like a phantom in the dust behind them.

  “Hang on!”

  He accelerated and the Ford roared along the narrow route, bobbing on its sudden hills and valleys, sunlight flashing through the thick woods, branches slapping the car as stones boiled against its undercarriage.

  “Daddee!” Annie gripped her armrest.

  Blake was numb with fear.

  “Oh God, John,” his wife said.

  “We just need to buy some distance.” Devlin’s ears pounded with each curve he rounded. “There it is.” He braked, the car slid, creating thick, choking dust clouds as he turned into the underbrush of their entrance. The Ford bounced. He tucked it neatly into a leafy canopy and shut off the motor.

  No one moved.

  For several desperate moments they heard nothing but their breathing which halted when the pick-up approached -- crunching gravel then the ticking engine. Under her breath Elise prayed for the two strangers to please just go away. Seconds later the truck rolled through their fading dust curtain, leaving another in its wake.

  Devlin allowed a full minute to pass before he turned to Elise.

  “Well that was an adventure,” he smiled weakly. “All right back there?”

  “Just fine, Dad,” Annie groaned.

  Elise shook her head muttering something about brainless men.

  “I think that’s the end of it,” Devlin said. “I think it’s over.”

  That night they built a fire by the beach, huddled together, toasted marshmallows and watched the constellations wheel by as Devlin assured Blake and Annie that everything was fine. Later, after the children had gone to bed, Devlin and Elise lay awake and considered telling police about what had happened. But Devlin hesitated.

  “When you think about it, it was really nothing.”

  “John, what if those men come to our cabin?”

  “El, those idiots were drinking, probably passing through town and decided to have fun at our expense.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Sure I’m right. They’re probably passed out, or a hundred miles away by now.”

  That’s what Devlin wanted to believe as he stared into the darkness, listening to every sound in the night until finally he was taken by sleep. It was accompanied by a dream that Elise was shaking him and wouldn’t stop until he -“John, wake up. There’s something outside!”

  “Wha - what?”

  At that moment, there was wooden snap near their window. Oh Christ Devlin thought, swallowing hard. Then all went quiet.

  “I’m scared, John do something!”

  Quickly and quietly Devlin pulled on his jeans, found the new flashlight he bought special for the trip and crept to the deck for the axe he used for the fire. He padded around the cabin in the pitch black in time to hear a rustling in the bush near the bedroom window. His flashlight beam captured the furry fat rump and striped tail of a raccoon vanishing into the forest.

  When he told Elise they had to stifle their laughter.

  “This is just too silly,” she said before falling soundly to sleep.

  The next morning was glorious.

  Devlin spent much of it reading Crime and Punishment in the hammock. Elise and Annie collected wildflowers in front of the cabin while Blake fished off the dock. For lunch, they cooked hotdogs over an open fire near the beach. That afternoon when Devlin went to the car for his copy of Ulysses, he noticed the Ford was leaning at an odd angle. Then he discovered why. The right rear tire was flat.

  The same tire that those jerks had targetted.

  And there was another problem but before Devlin could figure a way to deal with it, Elise was standing behind him, hands thrust to her face.

  “It was them,” she said. “Those two assholes did it in the night.” Elise never swore. She turned to look at Blake and Annie on the dock. “I want to go home.”

  Devlin tried to calm her by pointing to a rusted nail.

  “It wasn’t them. Look, this is why the tire’s flat,” he told her. “We simply ran over a nail. The bad news is we don’t have a spare. No jack, nothing. We pulled it all out to pack more stuff in the trunk. It was dumb.”

  “My God, John what are we going to do?”

  Devlin had an idea and told her. They all climbed into their boat. The outboard rumbled as they cut across the water under a darkening sky. Taking stock of the forested hills and the vast lake, Devlin felt imprisoned and vulnerable but kept his thoughts to himself.

  They had no other option.

  It was a long time before they reached the Crossroads and the gas station where Devlin asked the attendant to send someone out to fix his tire.

  “That’s going to take a couple of days. Jed’s got the truck and he went to the city. His wife’s having a baby. Besides he’s going to have to pick you up a new tire, too. We don’t have much stock here. I’d say, day after tomorrow is the soonest.”

  Devlin saw worry creep into Elise’s face.

  “Is there anyone else, or a spare, anything?”

  The attendant shook his head. Devlin squeezed her hand.

  “We’ll be fine.”

  They returned to their cabin and continued their vacation without a single incident. Not even a chipmunk to startle them in the night. Relief came two days later when Jed, a twenty-something under-the-hood type, with a nice smile, arrived to fix their tire. It was perfect timing. While he worked, the Devlin’s packed. When he finished, Jed showed off pictures of his baby daughter.

  “She’s brand new,” he beamed as Elise cooed. “We named her Ivy. She’s the good news that we need in the county, especially after what happened a few days back at the north end of the lake.”

  Elise and Devlin looked at each other then stared at Jed.

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “That’s right, you wouldn’t know - being out here all isolated and stranded with your tire situation.” Jed went to the cab of his truck, came back and handed Devlin a newspaper, The County Beacon. The main story on the front page was headlined:

  “Triple Murder: Retired Doctor, Wife, Grandson, Slain At Cabin”

  Devlin and Elise read how police suspected the killers had followed the doctor and his family to their remote lake property in what one source called a gruesome multiple homicide. “In all my years I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  Devlin’s heart leapt when he read the next paragraphs. Investigators were seeking the public’s help locating a vehicle seen in the area at the time. “A dark, older model pickup truck with a damaged
front fender, and a light colored cap over the bed. Two male occupants were seen inside.”

  When they finished packing, John Devlin and his family drove for three hours to the RCMP subdivision.

  Sergeant Lew Segretti of the Major Crimes Section, was one of the Mounties investigating the killings. He took careful notes. Another member brought coffee, juice and doughnuts for the kids.

  “Your encounter with the men in the pickup, your description of the tattoo, could be a critical lead. We’ll keep you posted,” Segretti told Devlin.

  They returned to the city and the routine of their quiet lives, trying and failing to put the incident behind them. Devlin scrutinized the newspapers and TV reports, but the story faded. Weeks passed, a month, then three until one weekend afternoon when Devlin got a call at home during the first quarter of the football game.

  “Is this Mr. John Devlin?”

  “Yes it is.”

  “Lew Segretti, RCMP Major Crimes. You provided us information on the Cushing family murders at the lake?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “Mr. Devlin, there’s been a break in the case, and it stems from your report. It led us to two suspects, Aaron Sikes and Daniel Johnson. Both dead now.”

  “Dead?”

  “They tried shooting it out with the ERT Team in a trailer in the foothills near Pincher Creek.”

  Devlin’s pulse quickened.

  “Mr. Devlin, we couldn’t tell you at the time, but your thorough description was the linchpin. It helped us identify them. Sikes and Johnson were a murder team. We’ve connected them to the three homicides here and four in Ontario. We’ve been working with police across Canada, tracking these men until they led us to K-Division.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Alberta.”

  “Alberta. And you’re certain both are dead?” Devlin sat up.

  “One hundred per cent. Johnson died at the scene. Sikes died in a Lethbridge hospital a few hours later.”

  “In hospital?”

  “Yes, but before Sikes died, sir, he spoke to one of our members, who took a declaration, a taped final statement. I think you’d better sit down. I have a transcript and he mentions your encounter.”

  Devlin cast about the room. His wife was in the doorway holding a dish towel. Devlin swallowed.

  “I’ll just summarize it, but Sikes told the Corporal that he and Johnson had selected you and your family.”

  “Selected? Selected for what?”

  Segretti hesitated. “To kill you.” The hairs on the back of Devlin’s hair stood up as the Mountie continued. “But you’d spotted the bottle, confronted them and somehow threw them off their game. That’s why they pursued the older couple, Doctor Cushing, which is horrible and our sympathies go to the Cushing family. But the point is, your action saved not only the lives of your family, but of seven more people.”

  “I don’t understand?”

  “Mr. Devlin, these men were psychopaths. They were not very sophisticated, not clever the way the movies make out. But they were extremely dangerous. They had targetted another family in Alberta, a single mother who lived with her six kids on a rural property in an isolated area near the Rockies around Pincher Creek and Cardston. They were about to move on her and her children when we locked on to them, because of what you did. You stopped them. We just wanted you to know that, sir.”

  Segretti ended the call but Devlin sat dumbfounded with the phone in his hand for the longest time.

  “John, was that the RCMP?”

  “Yes, they got the guys. They’re dead. It’s over.”

  “Did they tell you everything?”

  Devlin nodded and his mind reeled, racing at the speed of memory back through the stand off at the Crossroads, back through his humiliation at the auto parts store, back to his youth and the beatings he took from other boys at the railyard.

  The boys who’d said he would never stop them.

  Buy THREE TO THE HEART, the Anthology

  If you liked this short story, I invite you to drop me a line.

  Rick Mofina, Rmofina @ gmail.com

  Please visit by my official FaceBook page and let us know if you like it.

  You can also follow me on Twitter @RickMofina

  or at my Website http://www.rickmofina.com

  Of course, please consider these other short stories by Rick Mofina that are also available online to add to your e-Library:

  From the anthology

  Dangerous Women & Desperate Men

  Blood Red Rings

  Lightning Rider

  As Long As We Both Shall Live

  Three Bullets to Queensland

  Buy DANGEROUS WOMEN & DESPERATE MEN

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

  Rick Mofina is a former journalist and an award-winning author of several acclaimed thrillers. His reporting has put him face-to-face with murderers on death row in Montana and Texas. He has covered a horrific serial-killing case in California and an armored car-heist in Las Vegas, flown over Los Angeles with the LAPD Air Support Division and gone on patrol with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police near the Arctic. He has reported from the Caribbean, Africa and Kuwait’s border with Iraq.

  Rick’s true-crime articles have appeared in the New York Times, Marie Claire, Reader’s Digest and Penthouse while his thrillers have been published in 21 countries and praised by James Patterson, Dean Koontz, Michael Connelly, Sandra Brown, Jeffery Deaver, Lee Child, Tess Gerritsen, Heather Graham, Peter Robinson, Allison Brennan, David Morrell, Linwood Barclay and Kay Hooper.

  Rick is a two-time winner of The Arthur Ellis Award and the International Thriller Writers, Private Eye Writers of America and The Crime Writers of Canada have listed his crime fiction as being among the very best in the genre. For more information visit:

  http://www.rickmofina.com

  http://www.facebook.com/rickmofina

  http://twitter.com/#!/RickMofina

  Also by Rick Mofina

  THREE TO THE HEART (Anthology)

  DANGEROUS WOMEN & DESPERATE MEN (Anthology)

  THEY DISAPPEARED

  THE BURNING EDGE

  IN DESPERATION

  THE PANIC ZONE

  VENGEANCE ROAD

  SIX SECONDS

  A PERFECT GRAVE

  EVERY FEAR

  THE DYING HOUR

  BE MINE

  NO WAY BACK

  BLOOD OF OTHERS

  COLD FEAR

  IF ANGELS FALL

  Praise for Rick Mofina’s books

  In Desperation

  "A blisteringly paced story that cuts to the bone. It left me ripping through pages deep into the night." -- James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author

  "Hell hath no fury like a mother wronged. In Desperation is a "A superbly written thriller that plumbs the depths of every parent's nightmare. Timely, tense, and terrifying, this book is sure to be a big hit!" -- Brad Thor, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  The Panic Zone

  "The Panic Zone is a headlong rush toward Armageddon. It's brisk pace and tight focus remind me of early Michael Crichton." -- Dean Koontz #1 New York Times bestselling author

  Vengeance Road

  "Vengeance Road is a thriller with no speed limit! It's a great read!" -- Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  "A gripping no-holds barred mystery ... lightning paced ... with enough twists to keep you turning pages well into the wee hours." -- Allison Brennan, New York Times bestselling author

  Six Seconds

  "Six Seconds should be Rick Mofina's breakout thriller. It moves like a tornado." -- James Patterson, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  "Six Seconds is a great read. Echoing Ludlum and Forsythe, author Mofina has penned a big, solid international thriller that grabs your gut -- and your heart -- in the opening scenes and never lets go." -- Jeffery Deaver, New York Times bestselling author

  "Everything we need from a great thriller." -- Lee Child, New York Times bestselling aut
hor

  "A perfect thriller in every way. Very powerful and very very clever." -- Nick Stone, international acclaimed bestselling author

  "Filled with chills and thrills ... don't miss it." Heather Graham, New York Times bestselling author

  "An essential read for thriller fans." -- Library Journal, Starred Review

  "Suspense-packed rush." -- Publisher's Weekly, Starred Review

  A Perfect Grave

  "A lightning-paced thriller with lean, tense writing . . . Mofina really knows how to make the story fly!" -- Tess Gerritsen, New York Times Bestselling author of The Mephisto Club

  "Swiftly paced . . . a story of slow-simmering revenge." -- Adam Woog, The Seattle Times

  "Mofina writes family tragedy as powerfully as Ross McDonald with a modern twist." -- Jennifer Jordan, Crimespree Magazine, Milwaukee

  "Mofina has woven an intriguing tale about how the past always catches up to you, sooner or later . . . does a wonderful job of creating suspense." -- Sandra Ruttan, Spinetingler Magazine

  Every Fear

  "Pushes crackling suspense to the breaking point and beyond... a must read!" -- Kay Hooper, New York Times Bestselling Author

  "Mofina does a terrific job with suspense and pacing. The characters are well-drawn and the Seattle-Tacoma setting works well. Don't read this one if your kids aren't safe at home in bed." -- Margaret Cannon, Globe and Mail

  "Mofina shows his strength at creating gripping plots enhanced by realistic characters and social awareness in Every Fear." -- Oline H. Cogdill, Mystery columnist South Florida Sun-Sentinel

  The Dying Hour

  "Don't start this book late at night because you'll find yourself staying up to finish it." -- The Mystery Reader

  "The Dying Hour starts scary and ends scary. You'll be craving Mofina's next novel." -- Sandra Brown, New York Times Bestselling author