Escape to Morning Read online

  Sadly, he needed her, and they both knew it. On hand to help Kelly and her K-9 Kirby pass their SAR K-9 certification, Dannette and Missy were the only K-9 unit within two states with the teaching hours and credits to certify the team. Said certification would qualify the sheriff ’s department for a healthy government grant for rural SAR, an end goal that Fadden never failed to keep in the forefront of Dannette’s purpose here in Moose Bend, Minnesota. Unfortunately, in his mind that goal didn’t warrant tapping his force for live-victim-search training or scooping from the currently dwindling county SAR fund for K-9 training scents and devices.

  The Fadden types in the world didn’t put stock in the successes of the canine SAR community and, in fact, stirred up false hopes with their unrealistic, all-or-nothing attitudes. One failure and the entire SAR K-9 reputation suffered; one success and they were heralded as heroes.

  It left little room for the long, dark, soggy afternoons that defined SAR K-9 work. If she and Kelly failed to locate Mrs. Hanson, Dannette knew Sheriff Fadden would push what buttons he could to shut down her K-9 training course and send her back to Iowa with a bill for expenses.

  Which meant that more people, like Mrs. Hanson and four-year-old Ashley Lundeen, would perish, alone and afraid.

  This is not about Ashley. Dannette’s thoughts recoiled against the familiar stampede of memories, and she shook herself back to the search at hand.

  “10-4,” Dannette said as she checked her topo map with her flashlight and noted Kelly’s sector and direction. She frowned, checked again. “Search One to Search Two, please confirm location.”

  Kelly’s voice came over the line, young and just breathless enough to indicate she was following Kirby at a fast clip. “Crossing Devil’s Creek, about one hundred yards from Lookout Cliff.”

  “10-4,” Dannette acknowledged, her heart thumping. If Kirby had also alerted, perhaps Mrs. Hanson still lived and had simply holed up in a location that emitted a putrid odor, a cave with guano or even the remains of a dead animal. Dannette folded up the map, her heart lightening.

  She plowed into the fractured, darkening shadows of the forest, watching Missy work the scent. The dog stopped, circled, her nose high, then turned and looked at Dannette. Dannette used her clicker to urge the dog forward. The handheld device gave instant encouragement without having to rely on verbal cues.

  The rain drizzled down into her jacket, and she shivered; she was hungry, cold, tired. But she refused to think of the hot shower waiting. Not until she found Mrs. Hanson.

  No one deserved to die alone. Without family.

  The thought roughened her throat as she steadied herself on a skinny poplar and climbed over a downed, softened birch.

  Without family. No, Dannette had a family—her dogs, Sherlock and Missy. Probably the only real family she’d ever had, except perhaps for Jim Micah and the other members of Team Hope. Yeah, they felt like family. At least as far as she’d let them inside her heart.

  It simply wasn’t wise to let people that close. Because getting close also meant allowing them a glimpse of the nightmares she still hadn’t shaken.

  This is not about Ashley. Dannette told herself that twice more as she watched Missy run back to her, the hair on her neck bristled. Her breathing turned rapid as she sat, a passive alert to the target scent.

  “Good dog,” Dannette said. “Refind.”

  The dog bounded off, far enough ahead to keep the scent but not so far that Dannette couldn’t see her in the growing darkness. Please, Lord, have her on the trail of something real and alive. She could still hear little Robby, June’s grandson, pleading in the back of her mind.

  Please find her, moaned another voice, one buried in her heart.

  She pushed through a netting of branches and flinched for only a second when one backhanded her. The smells of decay and loam stirred up from the ground, and foraging animals clung to the night air. Darkness drifted like fine particles through the forest, so gradual as to nearly not recognize its accumulation. A cool breeze carried the echo of barking, a faint tugging on Dannette’s ears as she pushed aside tree limbs and stomped through bramble. Hopefully Kirby and Kelly weren’t far behind.

  Missy waited at the base of a large rooted trio of birches. She looked at Dannette, her ears pricked forward. Dannette put a hand on her back. “Find.”

  Dannette fought to keep Missy in the beam of her flashlight. They’d have to quit soon, and that thought made her want to weep.

  Please, Lord, let us find Mrs. Hanson. Alive.

  Missy barked, an active alert that she’d uncovered something. Dannette marked a tree with a reflector, then trudged through the brush after the dog. Missy stood, outlined in a hover of pine.

  “Search Two to Search One.” Kelly’s voice broke over the radio.

  Dannette keyed her radio while she tried to get a fix on her canine. “Search One here.” The deepening darkness turned the forest into a black-and-white, B-version horror flick, complete with escaping birds and the rustle of ominous wind.

  Dannette aimed her flashlight on the ground in front of her.

  She froze.

  Missy stood over a form, a body for sure, dressed in dark pants and a blue Windbreaker, crumpled in the fetal position, its back to her.

  Mrs. Hanson?

  Her heart banging against her ribs, Dannette held her breath and approached. Missy danced around the form, animated, her breaths fast.

  Dannette’s chest clogged, and a tiny, panicked voice inside told her to turn and run. Dark memories lurked on the fringes of this moment to snare her and suck her down, to drown her.

  Dannette held back a gasp and reached for her dog.

  The form wore a black bag over its head. The smell of death didn’t permeate the air, but the fine hairs prickled on Dannette’s neck as she inched away. “Good dog,” she whispered.

  Static proceeded Kelly’s voice, punctuating the moment and frazzling Dannette’s tightly strung nerves. “I found her! Mrs. Hanson is alive!”

  Dannette’s knees gave out, a weakness borne from part relief, part horror. And maybe a little from the ringing in her ears.

  Whom exactly had she found?

  Chapter 2

  WILL PULLED INTO the Howlin’ Wolf, and his chest tightened.

  No Simon. At least his silver birch half-ton Chevy Silverado wasn’t in the lot. Maybe that was good news. Like he’d already been here and gone.

  Will shoved his truck into park, dug an old rag out of the glove box, and cleaned the blood from his nose, his mouth. It wasn’t uncommon for a bloke to stroll into the Wolf looking like he’d had a run-in with a truck, but the fewer questions the better.

  He blew out a breath, put on his game face, and hiked into the bar/burger joint. Please, Simon, be here.

  The old log-cabin-turned-eatery and Friday night hangout had barely crept into the twentieth century with electricity and indoor plumbing. To expect anything but a raucous jukebox and the smells of beer and grease embedded in the walls would court disappointment. The dingy, dimly lit restaurant proved, however, a perfect clandestine rendezvous spot and plan B checkpoint.

  Will beelined to his table near the back—the one with a good view of the door—and sat with his back to the wall, trying not to immediately dive under the table where Simon sometimes pasted the USB pendant with his latest communication. Willie Nelson crooned from the jukebox, competing with the sounds of sizzling burgers from beyond the double saloon-style doors. Just over Will’s head hung a mounted walleye, glassy eyes open in near panic.

  Will wondered if he wore the same opened-eyed, please, no! expression as he slid his hand under the table and discovered … nothing.

  A waitress sauntered over, her hair pulled eye-stretchingly tight into a wispy, mousy brown bun. Joanie was already pushing forty, and it made her look about ten years older than that. Not that he cared, but sometimes he wondered if there wasn’t a story behind the eyebrow piercing, the missing teeth, and the haunted look in her muddy brown eyes.


  Then again, everyone had a story, didn’t they?

  “Hey there, ace,” Joanie said. “The regular?”

  “Yeah.” He glanced around the room, kept his voice casual. “My friend been in?”

  She put two rolls of napkin-wrapped silverware on the table. “The one with the tattoo and beard?”

  Will nodded. He certainly didn’t mean Sally Appleton from border control. While she had a tattoo, she could hardly be confused with a six-foot-three former linebacker from upstate New York. Still, he supposed Joanie might confuse Sally as his friend, although he’d taken great pains to keep her at a healthy distance while he wheedled information from her.

  Not that Sally didn’t try to turn their informant-recipient relationship into something PG-13. Last week’s working lunch still left a gritty taste in his mouth. Well, he’d considered it working. She’d somehow decided that their biweekly get-together merited her wearing a hot pink, spandex T-shirt and low-rise jeans that showed off a—ouch—belly-button ring. He could barely look in her general direction the entire meal. Whereas she had given him a thorough scrutiny, one that had obvious meanings attached. He’d ignored it, just like he had such suggestions for the past three-plus years. He knew where temptation led and ended up. And the residual hollow and used feelings.

  Will wondered if he didn’t really know what it meant to have a friend of the female persuasion.

  Then again, any friendship would require someone getting inside the layers to the real Will Masterson. There was a reason he worked so well under an alias. He’d been operating under one guise or another for most of his life—sheriff’s son, troublemaker, Green Beret, and now Homeland hero. He supposed out of them all, the last was the one that gave his life the most resonance. Still, his current profession left little time, ability, or inclination to let the real Will out of hiding. Perhaps women like Sally were all he could hope for.

  Oh, he hoped not.

  “Your friend hasn’t been in,” Joanie answered.

  Will glanced at the door, then checked his watch.

  Maybe Simon was simply late. He’d arrived late a couple of times—once, sporting a black eye, which didn’t seed any feelings of calm in Will now. Simon had the rough part of this assignment, and Will knew it.

  The uneasy feeling in his gut tightened into a writhe.

  Two truckers eased in, followed by the night’s chill. One hitched up his jeans as he cased the joint. The other chewed on a ratty toothpick. Their gazes ran over Will before they took stools along the bar.

  Will dismissed them and pulled out his cell phone. No signal. Not that he expected any up here in the hills, but a miracle might have been nice.

  No, the miracle would be if Simon showed up.

  Joanie reappeared with his shake, set it on a napkin, and handed him a straw. “You’re the only guy I know who walks into a place that sells fifteen different microbrews and orders an Oreo shake.”

  Will shrugged and gave Joanie a cryptic smile. “Thanks.” He checked his watch again, frustration piling against him. He dipped his straw in the ice cream and stirred as Joanie walked away.

  Outside, trucks flew by on their way to Canada and beyond. They splashed grimy spring puddles into the blackened lot. It might be mid-May, but northern Minnesota had just begun to creep out of winter hibernation. Chill still laced the nighttime air, and occasionally Will awoke to frost glazing his windows. It reminded him of South Dakota in October.

  Trying to act nonchalant, he took a sip of his shake, letting the sweet chill fill the crannies of his stomach. Simon, where are you? Of all the meetings they’d had over the past year, this one weighted their future. Simon knew the stakes and the ticking clock. They had less than a week to round up the package and save the world from another Hayata attack.

  If they didn’t, more folded flags would be sent home in place of soldiers like Lew, thanks to the handiwork of a phantom terrorist organization that had the frustrating ability to slip through the CIA’s fingers like Jell-O.

  Perhaps if Hayata hadn’t left their fingerprints—in the form of planning, equipment, and execution of the major terrorist attacks—from Irian Jaya to the Philippines to Spain and the Middle East over the past three years, Will wouldn’t be so jumpy about Simon’s absence.

  Or his panic might have to do with his own up-close-and-painful encounter with Hayata’s actions.

  He considered driving up to the farm and nosing around. He could say he was writing an article about … about—he scanned through his compiled information—predator activity?

  That was an understatement. He chuckled ruefully and finished off his shake.

  Joanie returned to the table. “I guess your pal isn’t coming.”

  Will handed over a wad of ones. “Dunno.” He shrugged on his jacket, aiming for casual, feeling bloated and sick.

  “Thanks,” Joanie said and tucked the cash into her apron. “See you next week?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Will mumbled. Actually, no. If everything went as planned, he hoped to be long gone by next week. Long gone and mission accomplished.

  In fact, by next week, he hoped he’d no longer have to dodge the ghost of Lew Strong.

  Will banged out of the restaurant, stood in the fresh air, letting the wind lick his hair. Now cut short, it still felt odd not to have to tie it back, like he had during his stint as a longhair in special ops. The afternoon rain had emptied the clouds and the sky twinkled, a million reminders that almighty God watched. Will swallowed the lump clogging his throat and trudged to his pickup.

  He sat in the cab, sorting his options. Now what? Panic nearly drowned the sound of reason. Maybe he had been roughed up by a gang of north woods patriots so this wasn’t about Hayata and a terror agenda.

  Yeah, right. And he was just a hometown reporter, keeping tabs on the local police beat. He tested a tender spot on his side and knew that he’d find a boot-shaped bruise there tomorrow.

  Thankfully, he’d gotten in a couple good licks himself before they’d beaned him with the butt of a rifle and he’d seen stars.

  Obviously, those licks hadn’t been enough to keep them from intercepting Simon, however. If he’d ever been here.

  Shoving the truck into drive, Will skidded out of the lot toward Moose Bend, some thirty miles east. The rain slicked the roads, turning the pavement shiny. His heartbeat thundered in his chest, fury filling his throat. Please, please don’t let his instincts be correct. Not today. Not with months of surveillance and sacrifice behind them. Not with the prize nearly in their hands.

  Will headed straight for his cabin, located on the outskirts of town. The moonlight pooled on the hood of his truck as he pulled into the rutted drive. Sitting in the darkness, he stared at the waves pounding the Lake Superior shore and tried to escape the clutch of despair.

  When he exited the truck, the breeze slicked his hair back from his face and curled under his leather jacket. He walked to the edge of the grass line and took out his cell phone. It beeped on, catching a meager reception. Figures that the terrorists would be hiding out in one of the few pockets of the world that didn’t have cell towers. The closest decent reception was across the lake in Michigan.

  The display indicated a text message. Will’s pulse quickened as he recognized the sender’s address. Simon’s. So maybe he wasn’t dead. Maybe he was back at the farm, getting his hands on the package right now. The one that General Nazar had promised to send with details of his defection.

  Simon might be smuggling it out at this very moment.

  Will read the message in the dim light. Amina. What did that mean? He scowled, scrolled down. Nothing.

  Will tapped the cell phone against his forehead, frustrated.

  From the truck, he heard the static of the police scanner, then the click and buzzing that proceeded a transmission. “Base to county. We have a 10-48 at Lookout Mountain base. Male, approximately thirty-five years of age. 10-35, ASAP.”

  10-48. Dead body. Will felt nearly light-headed as
he stalked to the truck, turned up the volume, and listened to dispatch confirm the call-out of the medical examiner.

  Closing his eyes, he leaned against the truck, tasting bile.

  In the pit of his stomach he knew. The dead body was Simon Rouss, aka Hafiz Tarkan.

  How he hated it when the bad guys won.

  Dannette sat on the back bumper of the truck and ran her hands through Missy’s damp fur. She’d removed Missy’s trailing harness and the shabrack—the orange SAR rescue vest that identified her as one of the good guys. “Tired?”

  Missy laid her head in Dannette’s lap, blinking.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  No—correction. She felt light-years beyond tired. Try exhausted. Dead on her feet. Annihilated. She’d given up any realistic dreams of dropping onto her warm motel bed in the near future. With the activity buzzing around the incident command base, she’d be lucky if she could climb in next to Missy in her kennel in the back of her pickup and catch a five-minute snooze.

  She rose, deciding it might be better to walk off the exhaustion than surrender to it. Missy heeled beside her on her lead. Six Suburbans and three pickups were parked in the field beyond the High Pines Rest Center. The ground had been chewed to mud, and headlights pushed the night back to the folds of the poplar and pine forest. Still, darkness crept into the pockets between the vehicles.

  Kelly and Kirby held court in one area, the paramedic-intraining triumphant at her canine’s success. As well she should be, Dannette thought. They’d all spent more time out in the bush the last few weeks than humans should. Dannette had dragged dummies and human scent through miles of woods, testing Kirby and Kelly to read each other and plot a search, to think like a victim. Finding Mrs. Hanson felt like the prize after a muscle-burning marathon.