Paradise Valley (Highway Quartet #4)

Kyle.

Pergram slowly shook his head like he’d been betrayed.

But instead of raising his hands or dropping down, he turned toward Cassie. The muzzle of his shotgun swung up.

BANG.

The shotgun dropped out of his hands and Pergram staggered to his left. His coat was blown open into shards and his entrails tumbled out like a nest of uncoiled snakes.

He fell to his knees and toppled over, but not before turning his head one more time toward Kyle in the window.

*

KYLE HAD NEVER SEEN THAT expression on Ron’s face before. It was half surprise and half bitter resignation that he’d been betrayed yet again. When the man slumped to the ground out of view his after-image remained as well as his what-have-you-done-to-me eyes.

“What you did to Raheem,” Kyle answered. “And Tiffany.”

He looked up to see several men emerge from the forest with their long guns aimed at Ron’s body. With them was a woman he recognized instantly.

*

CASSIE DUCKWALKED TOWARD PERGRAM with her arms outstretched, gripping and pointing the gun in her hands. She couldn’t see if Pergram had another weapon but she sensed movement from him. She had no idea what had happened to him.

Had he tried, once again, to blow himself up? Did he just detonate some kind of suicide belt?

When Pergram grunted and attempted to rise she stopped ten feet away. He reached for a grip on the log wall to try and pull himself up.

That’s when he looked over and saw her for the first time. His eyes met hers and widened with recognition and then revulsion.

She said, “It’s me,” and she fired. The muzzle flash lit him up orange and she glimpsed his face. He was enraged. He’d thought he’d killed her in Grimstad and here she was.

She didn’t stop pulling the trigger until the slide locked back on her Glock because the magazine was empty. She’d fired all ten rounds.

Pergram’s body lay still. She could smell blood, viscera, and gunpowder. Her ears rang from the multiple concussions of her weapon.

She felt a firm hand on her shoulder. Pederson.

“He moved. I thought he was going for his gun.”

“I saw it,” Pederson said. “It was a righteous shooting.”

She didn’t believe he’d seen anything but it was good enough.

“Damn, Cassie,” Bull said with undisguised amazement from the dark. “Damn.”





CHAPTER

TWENTY-NINE

LOTTIE WAS THE LAST PASSENGER from the plane to appear at the top of the escalator in the Bozeman Yellowstone airport. She looked tiny, frail, and confused. She hesitated to take the first step to descend.

Ben was right behind her with Isabel and when he saw Cassie at the foot of the stairs he waved frantically. Isabel looked annoyed about something, as she so often did.

Cassie’s heart filled at the sight of her son and when he descended she hugged him until he was struggling to get free.

*

“IT JUST DIDN’T make any sense,” Lottie said from the backseat of Cassie’s Escape. “We flew the wrong way at first to Minneapolis, then we had to get on another plane and fly back across North Dakota to get to Montana. It just doesn’t seem like a very efficient way to run an airline to me.”

Cassie smiled into the rearview mirror. “First time on a plane?”

“Yes.”

“Me too,” Ben said. “But I thought it was great. The mountains looked so cool when we came in to land.”

Isabel said, “I’m missing the closing on our homeless shelter.”

“Really?” Cassie said, impressed.

“Where do you think your determination to get things done comes from?” Isabel asked, her eyes fierce.

*

AS CASSIE DROVE east on I-90 toward town Ben said, “You got him.” He was beaming.

“We got him,” Cassie echoed. She still had trouble wrapping her mind around it. Ronald Pergram was a monster but he’d died like a dog. If she could kill him again, she thought, she would.

And as if to remind her that the Lizard King had spent so many years free and on the highway, a black eighteen-wheel tractor-trailer with a Peterbilt cab roared past them in the left lane.

“I heard the sheriff got his job back,” Isabel said to Cassie.

“He did. The commissioners offered it back to him to finish out his term.”

She didn’t say that Kirkbride had called with congratulations on rescuing Kyle and Amanda and taking the Lizard King down once and for all. He’d said, “You did it, Cassie. You got him. You’ve been exonerated!”

Then he asked her to come back and resume her career as chief investigator in the department and, he hoped, take over when he retired officially.

She told him thank you but she’d have to think about it.

*

“AND KYLE’S OKAY?” Lottie asked.

“He’s being evaluated in the hospital.” After a beat, she said, “Physically, he seems okay.”

“I can’t wait to see him and hear all about it,” Ben said.

“He might not want to talk about it right away,” Cassie said. “Kyle has seen things. Ben, he might not be the Kyle you remember.”

“He’ll be Kyle,” Ben said as if he knew something she didn’t.

Which maybe he did, Cassie thought.

“I still don’t know why you didn’t just bring him back,” Isabel said to Cassie.

“I told you,” Cassie said. “Kyle needs to be evaluated and give a sworn statement. I’m scheduled to give more statements to Montana law enforcement myself to wrap things up. So I thought it would be better for you to come here until we’re done and so Lottie could see Kyle with her own eyes.”

“Still…” Isabel grumbled.

*

SHERIFF PEDERSON WAS WAITING for them in the lobby of the hospital with Rachel Mitchell and Bull. Cassie introduced them to Lottie, Isabel, and Ben.

“So you’re Ben,” Pederson said to him. “How do you like Montana so far?”

“I like it,” Ben said. Then he looked carefully from Pederson to Rachel to Cassie. He’d picked up something in the interaction between Cassie and Pederson that obviously intrigued him.

“I think we might be here a while,” she said.

Ben grinned. He liked the idea.

Isabel looked around and said, “Maybe they could use me around here,” meaning either Bozeman or all of Montana itself, Cassie wasn’t sure.

“Follow me,” Cassie said. “Let’s go see Kyle.”

As she led them through the lobby she looked over to see Amanda Lee Hackl and her husband Harold eating lunch alone at a table in the cafeteria. Amanda wore a robe and fuzzy slippers and she seemed to be staring at something over the top of Harold’s head. Harold was busy attacking a plate of fried fish.

She looked lost. He looked hungry.

*

WHEN KYLE HEARD the elevator chime at the end of the hall he looked up from what he was doing. Voices—Grandma Lottie, Sheriff Pederson—filled the silence. Footsteps—a lot of them—echoed on the tile.

He was excited to see Grandma Lottie again and he was sorry for what he’d put her through. Cassie was always great to see.

He glanced quickly at the list he’d been working on. He could write it from memory.

Sleeping bag

Food

Fishing poles and tackle

Rain coat

Binoculars

Pistol or rifle

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