Before Sunrise Read online

  If he could feel, he was alive.

  He blinked at daylight and the small fires licking everywhere in the soft rain. He coughed, nearly gagging on the stench of burning plastic, metal, and rubber.

  Rain trickled into his eye, down his face, and into his mouth. When he tasted it, he knew it was blood. His head throbbed. It had to be a nasty cut. His neck hurt but his adrenaline was pumping.

  He’d deal with the pain. He was all right.

  The plane was in pieces at the edge of a forest. While Yacine remained cuffed and shackled, the crash had freed him from his seat, which had broken from the floor. He undid his seatbelt and after some contortions, got to his feet and stumbled, crab-like, through the wreckage, chains chinking as he counted the dead.

  The nearest body was missing its head.

  It was the man who’d sat behind him; RCMP Corporal Terry Cox, according to the ID that Yacine fished from his pocket. No handcuff keys. The man who’d sat beside Yacine, Deputy U.S. Marshal Moss Johnston, had no pulse or handcuff keys, but he did have a lot of cash.

  U.S. cash.

  Both pilots were impaled in the trees.

  That’s four dead, two to go.

  What about Dark Eyes?

  Yacine scanned the wreckage, glimpsing a hand under the twisted metal of a wing. Dark Eyes had a bloodied face. Yacine felt for a pulse, not sure he had one before he heard moaning coming from nearby.

  Yacine left Dark Eyes.

  The gum-snapper, his taunter, was near the tail. A long strip of metal fuselage was embedded in his legs, slicing deep into both above the knee in a near-amputation.

  A brilliant pool of blood was forming under him him.

  “Help me,” he pleaded. “Please.”

  Chains jingled as Yacine probed his pockets, finding the ID of Marshal Arlo Phife. Yacine grinned when he found handcuff keys in Phife’s pants and freed himself. Then he opened the luggage of his escorts and changed from his prison greens into jeans, a button-down shirt, and a leather jacket. Everything seemed a little tight, but it would have to do. He returned to Phife and took his boots, lacing them onto his feet. Snug, but they’d do for this terrain.

  “Help me, please,” Phife pleaded.

  “Hang on there, partner.”

  “Thanks, man, than --”

  Yacine took Phife’s head in his hands, gritted his teeth, and twisted hard, watching Phife’s eyes balloon as vertebrae snapped.

  All of them were dead now.

  Yacine found binoculars in the cockpit. He climbed to the highest point and scanned an eternity of forests and mountains until he spotted a road and a town, miles off.

  Smiling, he started in that direction.

  Chapter 29

  Ice Lake, Washington

  At that moment, some ten to twelve miles south of the crash site, Ren Carter had returned to her home.

  Even before she’d gotten out of her Jeep she could hear Tipper’s yowls from inside the house.

  Something’s not right.

  She knew his happy-you’re-back yips, his whines, his feed-me yaps, his throaty growls when there was a raccoon, or skunk about, but this barking was pure fear.

  Something’s wrong.

  As soon as Ren opened the door Tipper was all over her, front paws on her shoulders, and full of fright. She gave him a hug.

  “What’s got you spooked, you big baby?”

  Ren set her bag down on the side table and began taking inventory of her home. Tipper accompanied her, whimpering and tail wagging. No windows were open, or broken. No signs of anything out of place.

  “What is it? What’s going on?”

  Ren jumped and Tipper barked when her phone rang.

  Catching her breath, she answered it.

  “It’s Eileen,” her voice broke, “I’m at the hospital with Lee.”

  “The hospital? Why? He looked so well on Sunday.”

  “He was good, but he woke up in the night in pain, so we brought him here to Harborview. Then he got worse and worse. It’s bad. Doctor Pollard said to call you now because … because,” her voice sounded so small as if she were a million miles away. “I’m sorry, Ren, he doesn’t have much time left. They’ve moved him up on the national list but they don’t think he’s going to make it.”

  No! This isn’t happening! This can’t be real!

  Ren’s living room began spinning with her photographs of Chet, Lee, Eileen, and the kids racing around her. The floor turned to liquid. Dizzy, Ren’s hand flew to her mouth and she collapsed into her sofa chair, eyes blurring.

  “Ren? Did you hear what I said?”

  She took a moment to swallow air, get control, steady herself, and find her voice.

  “I’m on my way. Eileen? Can you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You tell Lee I’m coming now!”

  Chapter 30

  Jade Falls, Washington

  RCMP Corporal Will Fortin floated to consciousness in the rain-misted gloom, recalling the earth rushing up to hammer the plane.

  Now, as he lay in the wreckage strapped in his seat, his right leg was numb, pinned under a piece of fuselage. His face was laced with blood and rain. He shifted his position, blinking repeatedly to see below his hip. His legs didn’t look bad. His brain flashed with images of someone helping.

  Where’d they go?

  “Everybody OK?” Fortin called, unbuckling his seatbelt. It took great effort and a lot of maneuvering to extract himself from the debris. “Everybody OK?” his voice echoed. No one answered and no one aided him as he struggled to stand. He nearly collapsed so he sat down on a rock, massaging his leg until circulation returned.

  Good.

  He was sore, his left arm felt like something was grinding when he moved it. But he could move.

  Brushing blood and dirt from his eyes, he took careful stock of the aftermath. Moment by moment, body by body, as he checked on the others, the toll emerged: Cox, Leclair, Banner, Phife, and Johnston.

  They were all dead.

  Fortin pulsated with shock.

  Steadying himself against a tree – where’s my prisoner? – Fortin seized on the metallic glint of cuffs, chains, leg irons, and tracks in damp earth, leading into the forest, until it became clear there was a second survivor.

  Yacine had escaped.

  Reaching deep inside, clawing for whatever he had left, Fortin did what he was trained to do.

  He pursued his prisoner.

  Chapter 31

  Jade Falls, Washington

  For Yacine, the pine-scented mountain air was almost as sweet as freedom. Moving fast over the rugged high country, he embraced the whip crack of needled branches against his pale skin.

  Anything was better than his cage in Saskatchewan.

  But he had to stop.

  Again.

  Disciplined bodybuilding did not make him a long-distance runner.

  He doubled over, gulping air and thinking. His sources on the outside had tipped him to what the patriots in the U.S. justice system had planned for him in Seattle, with their special witness, who was going to make some kind of deathbed ID.

  Yacine laughed at his luck.

  In just a few days, there would be nothing connecting him to any of his contract work in Seattle, or D.C., or London, or Madrid, or Athens, or anywhere else.

  They thought they had this old boy nailed.

  They thought wrong.

  Yacine was strong and the strong survived.

  He caught his breath at a clearing that offered a sweeping view. He scanned it, calculating that all he needed was to get to that road, get into a vehicle, and he was gone.

  He saw patches of highway beyond the next ridge and grinned.

  He was almost there.

  Chapter 32

  Ice Lake, Washington

  After Eileen’s call from the hospital, several long moments passed as Ren processed what was happening.

  I can’t lose Lee. I just can’t.

  She couldn’t waste tim
e.

  Come on, get moving! Get moving!

  She began packing as fast as she could, debating, as she loaded clothes and toiletries into her suitcase, on whether to bring Tipper with her. Fighting her tears she reasoned that, given the circumstances, it might be good to have him at Lee’s house for the kids.

  It could be therapeutic, and I need him with me because I don’t want to make this drive alone.

  After gathering some food and items for Tipper, Ren set her suitcase and Tipper’s things in the back of her Jeep. Tipper took his spot in the passenger seat, happily panting. He liked going for drives. Ren stroked his head, closed the door, then got behind the wheel.

  She drove a short distance to the driveway next door, the one with the mailbox fastened to the post with a U.S. flag fluttering in the breeze.

  The name on the box read B. Gafferty.

  Ren could hear the full-throttle brattle of a chainsaw as she rolled along the dirt driveway. She came to a ranch-style house where Buck Gafferty, a retired firefighter, was cutting firewood. Once he spotted her, he killed the chainsaw. In the soothing quiet, he removed his earphones, his goggles then approached Ren’s door.

  “Buck, I have to get to Seattle. It’s Lee.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  Biting back her tears, she managed to say: “He’s taken a bad turn, he’s in the hospital. It doesn’t look good.”

  Buck understood, he pulled off his glove and patted her shoulder.

  “We’ll watch your place, Ren. You drive safely, Bella and I will say a prayer for Lee.”

  Ren nodded her thanks and pulled away, grappling with her emotions. She went through a mental checklist as she rolled along Little Timber Road to the highway and Seattle where her son was dying.

  No, he’s not! Don’t say that! He’s going to be okay! I’m not going to lose him! I can’t lose him!

  On the highway, Ren saw that her fuel gauge was nearly touching the “E.” She wheeled into Grizzly’s Gas Station.

  At the pumps, two men were gassing up their pickup. A stove and fridge were strapped in the bed of the truck, and the younger of the two men was adjusting straps while the other pumped gas. As Ren filled her tank, she looked up at a helicopter thumping by.

  “What’s that about?” she asked one of the men.

  “Haven’t you heard?” the man at the pump said. “All kinds of chatter on the radios. A plane crashed up near Ghost Ridge.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Going to be hard to get help up there on foot to do a proper search for survivors, that’s for sure.”

  For an instant, Ren wished she had a helicopter to fly her to Seattle right now.

  Chapter 33

  Jade Falls, Washington

  Fortin drew on all he’d learned from the survival and tracking courses he’d taken in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

  As his blood warmed, he pushed himself harder, gaining speed.

  He came to a clearing and studied the panoramic view, fixing on slivers of a highway in the distance. A few hundred yards off, he noticed a tiny burst of black near the sway of bush.

  A bear?

  Fortin locked on to the spot and saw another streak of black then a tiny flash of pale white.

  A face.

  That’s him!

  Fortin was close.

  So close.

  Chapter 34

  Near Jade Falls, Washington

  For Ren, Seattle was some three hours away.

  But Lee was in her heart.

  As she drove, she was catapulted back through the tender moments of her life; to the delivery room where she’d first held Lee, minutes after he was born. Then she remembered him taking his first steps, speaking his first word: “Mum.” Going off to school, then the way he had meticulously fussed with the part in his hair before Chet drove him to Lucy Moreno’s house on Prom Night.

  Ren remembered her pride and her fear when Lee had enlisted in the Marines, her relief that he’d come home safe, only to face what they had to face.

  She remembered the day Lee married Eileen, how joy filled his eyes. She also remembered the agony in them the day they buried Chet.

  Ren brushed away her tears, reached for Tipper and pulled him to her, feeling his warmth, his unconditional love. As her Jeep threaded through the mountains, she bargained with God.

  “Please don’t take him. Eileen and the kids need him. I need him.”

  Hadn’t her family endured enough?

  Look at everything Lee’s been through, duty in Iraq, then coming home to his dad’s death, then being in the bank where six people died during that horrific robbery. Lee had seen the whole thing. After all these years, the police still hadn’t caught the killers.

  Then, just last month, the FBI said they’d needed to show Lee some sort of important new evidence.

  Lord, wasn’t he under enough strain?

  Ren continued reasoning with God.

  “If you have to take my son, please keep him alive long enough for me to get to his side, to tell him how much I love him. To say goodbye.”

  Ren was a strong woman, but her fears were crushing and she broke down as she approached a two-mile stretch that curved around dense bush.

  Chapter 35

  Near Jade Falls, Washington

  Stepping from the forest, Yacine exhaled and walked to the edge of the highway.

  Bending over, breathing hard through a broad smile, he shook his head.

  I’m home free.

  Gasping, Yacine kept his eyes on the lonely road and waited for a vehicle, ready to hitch a ride.

  He’d be long gone before anybody got to the wreck and figured things out. He’d get to L.A. where he had support: cash, passports, and contacts. He’d fly to Frankfurt, then Lisbon, then Algiers and back to work.

  He had to be the luckiest sonofa-

  Crack!

  Stars exploded, and Yacine thought a rock had fallen on him just as he recognized Dark Eyes, whose swing of a club-sized tree branch had landed on Yacine’s jaw, breaking both on impact.

  Yacine staggered.

  Fortin took the murderer to the ground, manhandling him to his stomach, driving his knee into the back of his lower neck, drilling his face into the pavement, reaching for plastic handcuffs in his jacket, turning to the flash of an approaching grill.

  Chapter 36

  Jade Falls, Washington

  Ren’s tears blurred her vision when her Jeep, traveling at seventy-one miles an hour, came upon Fortin and Yacine.

  On the road, feet in front of her!

  It ended when it started, before Ren could react. Before her brain issued the command to take her foot from the gas and stomp on the brake, before her mouth opened and her hands spasmed on the wheel, Ren felt the heart-sickening thud.

  Something – a man? – streaked over her windshield as something else grazed under her!

  Ren shrieked, her stomach clenched, ice shot up her spine, her skin tingled.

  She stopped the Jeep.

  But it was too late.

  Rooted in shock, Ren’s memory of what followed came in rapid, staccato bursts. Two men, twenty-thirty yards apart bleeding on the road, other cars and trucks stopping, concerned faces, cellphone calls, blankets, the wail of sirens, ambulances, sheriff’s deputies, Washington State Patrol.

  Over and over someone saying, “I’m so sorry! I didn’t see them! I’m so sorry!”

  Chapter 37

  Jade Falls and Ice Lake, Washington

  Fortin was lying on his back, alive, but frozen in moments scored by sirens and emergency radios.

  A distraught older woman was sobbing near a police car.

  “I’m so sorry! Why were they on the road? I didn’t see them! I’m so sorry!

  “Just take it easy, ma’am.”

  “Oh God, but I have to get to my son in Seattle! I have to go! You don’t understand! Please, I’m so sorry! But I have to go!”

  “Ma’am I need you to sit over here and take a breath.
Can you do that for me? Ma’am, please?”

  Fortin felt nothing, saw faces, paramedics tending to him, getting a board under him, lifting him to a gurney, soothing him.

  “Sir, your friend is going to be fine. Sir, can you hear me? Your friend is going to be fine, he …”

  Friend?

  “ … went under the car, just some scrapes. But we want to get you to a hospital straight away.”

  Fortin searched the hovering faces; saw the Stetson of a trooper or deputy and grabbed her wrist hard. She had a kind face, smooth skin.

  Warm.

  His eyes bore into hers for a connection. He squeezed harder and she met him in the moment.

  Fortin heard words – it could’ve been him – but someone said – “I’m Corporal Fortin. RCMP.” And recited his regimental number. Paramedics tried to quiet him but the trooper was making notes, her thumb holding Fortin’s badge and ID to her pad as she wrote.

  The words continued.

  “We were on a plane taking a prisoner to Seattle. We crashed up there. Others were killed. Prisoner escaped, that’s him, Yacine. Dangerous. Put him in custody. Alert FBI Seattle.”

  Fortin repeated his regimental number.

  Again, the paramedics tried to quiet him.

  Fortin saw that the trooper’s eyes were green, intelligent. Absorbing his words, she reached for her radio.

  Fortin lost consciousness during the ambulance trip to the county hospital. When he woke, a woman in a white coat was with him. Now she had his wallet, was studying it and flipping pages on a clipboard.

  “Will, you’re in Ice Lake Memorial Hospital. I’m Doctor Niki Burton. Nod if you understand.”