Page 60 of South of Nowhere (Colter Shaw #5)

60.

Colter Shaw and Dorion walked up to the command post and sat across from Fiona Lavelle and Mayor Tolifson.

Lavelle was on the phone with her sister-in-law, who was driving over from Nevada to pick her up and collect the rest of her possessions from her hideaway cave. She was relaxed and there was a light in her eyes, and Shaw couldn’t help but think of one word: survival . It comes in all forms. There was surviving by avoiding avalanches and standing tall and aggressive to scare off mountain lions, and there was surviving by tipping a sports car into a flooded gulley and making a hidey-hole in an old mine shaft to escape abuse.

The woman disconnected. And looked his way. “You know, Mr. Shaw…”

He tilted his head with a smile.

“ Colter …I’ve never heard of this reward-business thing. But I have an idea. You should open a subsidiary: helping people hide . You might make more money doing that.”

Dorion gave a smile too.

In fact, it was not a bad idea.

Looking over the levee, the woman added, “It looks a lot thinner than when I drove over it this morning.”

Dorion replied, “It is. The water’s eating away at both sides. Like planing a board.”

“Has it crested yet?” Lavelle asked.

“No. There’s continued high temperatures predicted up north,” Dorion said with a grimace. “More snowmelt. If somebody doesn’t believe in climate change, have them come to Hinowah and start stacking sandbags.”

The woman was looking through her notebook. Shaw noted that unlike his naturally small and precise handwriting, hers was loopy and bold and, well, sloppy. But, it got the job done. She’d filled scores of notebooks, first page to last.

“What’s your book about?”

“Fantasy . My hero’s a woman spell-caster in this mythical world. She’s been kidnapped by an evil king. Thamann Hotaks…‘The man who takes.’ Get it? Based on guess who?” She shook her head. “It’s a simple story. And it’s like hundreds of other novels in the genre. But why write something different? There’s a reason they sell. People want stories where good wins out over evil. That never gets old.”

And Colter Shaw—a fan of Tolkien—could hardly disagree.

He noted the corporals were pacing back and forth at the opposite end of the levee. The second SUV pulled up and Tamara Olsen got out. They were looking at the river and having a discussion. He guessed the helicopter with the bomb curtains was nearby.

Debi Starr pulled up in her cruiser. She parked and joined them. “Eduardo? Have you talked to him?”

Dorion said, “He’s doing all right. His wife’s flying in. They’re going to get him up walking today.”

Tolifson asked, “That soon after getting shot? Maybe they want to make sure they have hospital beds if…” A nod toward the levee.

Shaw might have told him that a full jacketed round—not hollow point—piercing only muscle tissue was not a very big deal, if it missed the important highways of blood vessels.

He glanced around, and realized his mother was not present. “Did Mary Dove step away?”

“Last I heard she finally got a call back from Mrs. Petaluma. She’d talked her into packing a bag and leaving. I was on a call to Sacramento and when I hung up I noticed she was gone.”

Shaw glanced toward Mrs. Petaluma’s house down in the valley. “Look.”

“No!” Dorion whispered.

Their mother’s gray pickup truck was speeding through downtown toward Mrs. Petaluma’s home.

Shaw grabbed his phone and hit speed dial.

He saw Mary Dove’s head turn sideways momentarily but she ignored the call as she skidded to a stop, climbed out and strode to the woman’s doorway. Even in a hurry, she maintained her upright posture and elegance.

Brother and sister regarded each other, both understanding that there was nothing to be done. Mary Dove was aware of the risk. She too had learned the art of survival from her husband and analyzed dangers in the same way Ashton had. She had probably calculated the odds were low that the levee would collapse in the twenty minutes it would take her to collect the woman and get her to safety.

The flaw, however, was that calculations were only as good as the objective facts you fed into the computer. And no one, not even an experienced engineer like Dorion, had those facts and figures at hand.

The levee’s fate was closer to the spells and magic of Fiona Lavelle’s hero.

Dorion offered, “Well, she’s not going to stop and have tea. They’ll get away as fast as they can.”

“Come on,” Shaw whispered to her. “Come on.”

Fiona Lavelle distracted Shaw from those thoughts with a scoff. “Glad he’s not there.”

Shaw glanced her way to see the young woman looking at Olsen and the corporals, standing beside one of the SUVs across the valley.

“Who’s that?” Shaw asked.

“This gross dude. When I made it off the levee yesterday morning and stopped? The driver in one of those SUVs didn’t even ask if I was okay. He looked me over and was sort of licking his lips. Reminded me of John.”

Shaw nodded sympathetically. But only for an instant. The understanding hit Shaw like a blow. He cut his gaze to Lavelle. “That SUV was there while the levee was coming down?”

“Yeah. Another one too, a black one just like it. They were parked on the shoulder. That’s why I wasn’t worried about calling nine-one-one. I knew they would report it, so I could escape down the trail.”

Colter asked Tolifson and Starr abruptly, “The army engineers? Did you call them ?”

The two regarded each other. “No,” Tolifson said. “Marissa Fell? In the office? She said they’d called and said they were on their way.”

Starr understood. “Damn. They’re fake! We let a fox into the henhouse.”

Tolifson blinked. “What’s all this?”

Starr said, “They were here before the bomb. Which means they’re the ones who set it. Who the heck are they?”

Colter asked, “Describe the guy you just mentioned.”

“I just saw his head and shoulders. Big, round face, red hair and beard.”

Colter leaned into the computer, typing fast, to load the screen grabs of Bear. He swung the screen toward her.

She squinted. “Yeah, that’s him.”

“Stolen SUVs and fake government plates. Which they could have made in ten minutes.”

You could buy surplus uniforms for a song online. Corps of Engineer patches too.

Olsen—or whoever she really might be—was working with Bear.

Colter said, “There’s no bomb curtain coming. In fact, they’re getting ready to blow the rest of the levee. And it’s going to happen any minute.”

“You’re sure?” Tolifson asked.

Dorion answered, “She told us the curtains would be here in forty minutes or so. We’ll start to ask questions when they don’t show up, so they have to blow it before that happens.”

Debi Starr blurted, “We need backup!” She grabbed her mobile.

Colter was studying the trio across the valley, trying to see sidearms. The phony corporals wore Colt 1911 .45s. Powerful and accurate, and because they were so heavy, they offered little recoil, which meant that you could fire fast with good aim.

He could assume that Olsen had a concealed weapon of some kind.

“Now!” The voice was Debi Starr’s, speaking into the phone. “I want Prescott Moore on the line now. We’ve got lives at risk in Hinowah…Well, let me tell you, miss, I am sick and tired of hearing excuses about Fort Pleasant. Get his butt on the phone this minute.”

“Debi!” Tolifson whispered.

She ignored him. “Well, I wouldn’t need that tone if you’d unclog your ears and listen to me. Moore. Now.” She sighed. “Then connect me to Sheriff Barrett.” A brief pause. “Sheriff. It’s Debi Starr, Hinowah Public Safety. We’ve got three people in our sights, armed, and they planted the bombs here in Hinowah. They killed one person and shot up another. We need a full county and highway patrol response immediately …SWAT and bomb squad. I mean now . And no more ‘poor Fort Pleasant’ crapola.”

“Geeze, Debi,” Tolifson muttered.

Colter called, “Tell him we have an active shooter. That always gets attention.”

“Active shooter?” Tolifson asked. “But there isn’t one.”

Colter Shaw said, “There will be. In about sixty seconds.”