Helen seated herself next to her husband, keeping a few careful inches away from his simmering resentment.
The next song started. Carmen pulled Benedict to the dance floor and taught him flamenco. When he felt he’d made a fool of himself for long enough, Benedict started back toward the table.
The Brassards were gone.
The next morning, a helicopter arrived and lifted Nauplius Brassard and his wife off the ship.
*
Thirteen months later, Nauplius Brassard died of a brain aneurysm.
His children, all in their forties, moved swiftly to eject his young wife, Helen, from the Brassard Paris home.
They discovered her designer wardrobe, her jewels and all the furnishings intact.
The fortune Brassard had set aside in a bank account under her name had vanished—and so had she.
*
Less than forty-eight hours later, one of Nauplius Brassard’s legal team was found murdered, slashed to death in her office.
The French police feared a copycat killer, one imitating the serial killer who two years before had died in a Canadian prison.
To their relief, no further murders followed.
CHAPTER TWO
Washington’s Olympic Peninsula In the mountains
Officer Rupert Moen steered the speeding patrol car around sharp corners, up steep rises and through washouts caused by spring rains. Sweat stained his shirt, ruddy blotches lit his cheeks and the middle of his forehead. He was young, with the sheriff’s department for only a couple of years, shy and never the brightest bulb in the chandelier. But damn, put that kid behind the wheel and he could drive.
Sheriff Kateri Kwinault’s only jobs were to lean into the curves and keep him calm. In the soothing voice she had perfected during her time as regional Coast Guard commander, she said, “Four wheels on the ground. Don’t skid on the gravel. Your job is keep that car in sight. We’ve got a helicopter on its way and every law enforcement officer on the peninsula moving into position.”
Like a Celtic warrior, Moen was all wild red hair and savage grins. “This road is a real bitch, isn’t it?”
“It’s … interesting.” Kateri purposefully kept her gaze away from the almost vertical plunge on her side of the car, away from the equally vertical rise on the other side.
“Goddamn interesting.” With flashing lights and a blast of the electronic air horn, Moen harried the black Dodge SRT Hellcat that raced ahead of them. “This time we’d better catch those bastards.”
“Yes.” The Terrances, father and son, were bastards and worse: drug dealers, meth cookers, jail escapees, drive-by shooters … and murderers.
Kateri corrected herself. Attempted murderers. No one was dead … yet.
She checked the dash cam; she wanted video of every last moment of this capture. “I hope the roadblocks stopped all unofficial vehicles. We don’t want to meet someone in a head-on.”
“Not much traffic up here this spring. Too much runoff. Good thing, considering.”
Considering the steep and narrow gravel road, considering the speed, considering no civilian wanted to encounter John Senior and John Junior. Well, except for those few locals who monitored their police frequency radio scanners and were delighted when they could actively observe or participate in law enforcement activities—especially pursuits. So far, there hadn’t been a problem; in this case, the public had been of assistance.
This was wild country. All the things that made the Olympic Peninsula a hiker’s and boater’s paradise—steep mountains, dense forests, wild beaches and hidden inlets—made it ideal for two fugitives intent on evading arrest. Except, oh gee, if the Terrances had been hidden in a cave or deep in the woods, they would have had no Wi-Fi, no radio reception, no way to contact the outside world.
The public and law enforcement had been put on alert and for three intensive days, the hunt had pulled in county, city and state police to patrol the roads as well as the Coast Guard to cruise the Pacific coast. The hunt had been publicized by local news media with the warning, “If seen do not attempt to apprehend; contact your local law enforcement agency.” Finally alert citizen Pauline Nitz had spotted the black Dodge SRT Hellcat speeding along one of the isolated roads and the chase was on.
Now, spitting gravel and raising dust, Kateri and Moen led a line of Virtue Falls Police Department cars in hot pursuit.
Moen’s white knuckles gripped the wheel. “Hold on.” He steered them over a series of washboards that rattled everything in the car and made Kateri moan and press her hand to her side. He glanced at her. “Sorry, Sheriff.”
“Not your fault,” she said. Four days ago, while Kateri sat in the window of the Oceanview Café, celebrating her surprise election to the office of sheriff, the Terrances had sprayed bullets through the windows. One of their bullets had skipped off her ribs like a flat stone off the rippled surface of a river, leaving her broken and bloody and sore as hell, but not seriously wounded.
Instead, they’d put two bullets into Virtue Falls’s beloved waitress, busybody, and local wise woman, Rainbow Breezewing. Now Rainbow rested in the hospital hooked up to ventilators and drips, unmoving, unconscious. The doctors told Kateri that Rainbow didn’t have a chance. They said Rainbow’s coma was a blessing, for she was dying. Dying …
“The Terrances are slowing down.” Moen moved closer to the Hellcat’s bumper.
“Maybe they’re out of gas.” That would be too wonderful—and too lucky since as far as Kateri could tell, the Terrances had stashed fuel and food all up and down the coast. “I don’t believe it. Back off.”
Moen sighed noisily, but did as he was told.
She leaned forward, trying to figure out what they were up to. “Be care—”
John Terrance, Junior or Senior, goosed the black Dodge SRT and threw it into a skid that sent the car sideways, passenger side toward the pursuers.
“Don’t T-bone him!” Kateri shouted.
Moen downshifted, eased off the gas and in the excessively patient tone of the very young toward the very old (Kateri was thirty-four), he said, “I know what I’m doing, Sheriff.”
The SRT’s passenger door flew open. Something tumbled out.
Someone tumbled out.
Moen screamed, “Shit son of a bitch!”
Kateri yelled, “Don’t hit him. Don’t run over him!”
Moen slammed on his brakes, locked up all four wheels, making the patrol car a high-speed toboggan propelled by inertia and momentum.
No way to avoid the collision.
The patrol car’s left front tire caught the body. The car went airborne.
“The tree!” Moen shouted.
They rammed it, a giant Douglas fir, square on.
The airbags exploded.
Kateri was smashed against the back of her seat. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t see. She was drowning.
She fought the hot white plastic out of her face. The airbag was already deflating … she tore off her sunglasses. White dust covered them, covered the interior of the car. The siren blared. She needed to catch her breath—
Moen looked in the rearview mirror and yelled, “They can’t stop. They’re going to nail us!”
“Who?”