Stand Down

Sandra had automatically started to reply before Jack’s words registered. “Okay—what was that?” She’d heard what he’d said, of course, but for a moment her brain refused to process the words.

His voice took on that “don’t-screw-around-just-do-as-I-say” tone she knew all too well. “I said, ‘about dinner, I’ve changed my mind. Don’t put the roast in—we’re going out.’”

Sandra had always been quick on her feet, and now she leaped to the occasion. Still clutching the cordless phone to her ear, she walked across the Italian tile floor of their kitchen, past the thirty-six-inch gas cooktop, past the Brazilian wood cabinets and into the plush, cream-colored carpeted hallway. “Sounds good to me. Are we finally going to that steakhouse you’ve been dying to try?”

“It’s a surprise. Just have Kelly ready to go. I’ll be there soon. I love you, honey.”

Sandra’s heart hammered in her chest. She knew Jack loved her, but he rarely said it. That he’d chosen to say it at this moment told her just how serious things were. “I love you, too. We’ll see you soon.”

She backtracked to hang up the phone, then trotted to a cabinet above their glass door refrigerator-freezer and pulled the door open. Reaching in, she withdrew a compact Smith & Wesson Model 386 Night Guard chambered in .357 Magnum. Opening the cylinder, she checked the load, then flipped it closed again. She checked her pockets, but the slacks she wore wouldn’t allow her to carry the pistol comfortably. Opening the maple bread box, she slipped the pistol inside, then ran upstairs.

Electro-pop music blared behind her daughter’s closed bedroom room. Sandra didn’t bother to knock, but twisted the knob and shoved it open, the door snagging on piles of dirty clothes. The room was a teenage explosion of angst and emerging style, with pop star and movie posters covering the walls. Her daughter lay on the bed, a textbook open in front of her. A tiny MP3 sound system pumped out the tunes as Sandra strode into the room.

“Mo-om, what the he—?” Kelly looked up from her algebra textbook with annoyance and reached over to turn off the player, but Sandra caught her wrist before she could. The expression on her mother’s face cut her daughter off in midsentence.

Sandra put her lips close to Kelly’s ear. “We have to go—now.”

Kelly’s mouth hung open as she stared at her mother. “You serious?”

“Damn right I am.” When her daughter stared up at her, unmoving, Sandra clapped her hands. “Now! Move it!”

Rolling off the bed, Kelly ran for her walk-in closet, scattering clothes as she went. Sandra didn’t wait to check her progress, but headed for the master bedroom, muttering under her breath. “Goddamn it, Jack, you told us they would never find out.”

Sandra hadn’t always been the upstanding pillar of the community she was now. She had grown up in an even more hardscrabble town—really just a gas station, church, small grocery store and two bars—named Malin, in the middle of nowhere in western Kansas. As soon as her feet had hit the ground, she was determined to get out before she became another faceless farmer’s wife. She had dreams of escaping to the big city—Los Angeles, not Kansas City—but before she could do that, she met junior Jack Bitterman at Quincyville High School. A half-dozen dates, a six-pack and two joints later, she learned she was pregnant with Jack’s baby.

Kansas being Kansas, marriage was the only realistic option. But Jack had surprised her—he had no plans to sit around and get a crappy job in Quincyville. Instead, he’d studied hard and graduated law school at the state university. The years of college had been rough on both of them, but when it was done, he’d sprung another surprise on her—they weren’t going to the East or West Coast, but back to Quincyville to set up his practice.

When she’d complained about it, he’d asked her, “Listen, do you just want to be another lawyer’s wife in New York or L.A., trying to raise Kelly in a cookie-cutter crap neighborhood while I’m putting in ninety-hour workweeks as a faceless junior exec in a huge firm, or do you want to be someone in a town where being the wife of an attorney will mean something?”

While she pondered that, he leaned closer and whispered. “And don’t you want to stick it to all those folks back home who said you’d never amount to anything?”

That had been all it took. And the past several years had been amazing. Although some folks had whispered about Jack’s various dealings, it had turned out that he had a true gift for the law—and when and how it might be skirted when necessary. That talent had proved invaluable when the Cristobal Pharmaceutical Company had come calling.

By then Quincyville was dying, its younger generation fleeing the small town for greener pastures. Cristobal had wanted a small town in the Midwest to set up their base of operations, and Quincyville had been the logical choice. That was mostly thanks to Jack’s behind-the-scenes dealings, greasing the wheels of local and county administrations, as well as the state legislature to push through a staggering package of economic incentives and tax breaks that made any other place in the state a fool’s choice. And the men running Cristobal were no fools.

Lately there had been talk of Jack running for mayor—being responsible for the revitalized town, he would have been a shoo-in. And from there, who knew what could be next. State Senate? Governor? U.S. Senator?

But just a few minutes ago, Jack had spoken the code words that told Sandra it was all about to blow up in their faces. Running to her own walk-in closet, Sandra headed straight for the back, where a large, packed suitcase stood in a corner. Grabbing it, she hauled it through the bedroom and into the hallway, where her daughter stood, earbuds dangling around her neck, with her hand on a similar suitcase.

“Where’s Dad?”

Sandra took the lead to the stairs. “He’s on his way, but if he isn’t here in ten minutes, we’re taking the Escalade and will meet up with him later.”

“Are we leaving because of something he did?”

Sandra shot a quick look at her daughter, but Kelly’s expression revealed curiosity, not anger or disappointment. “I don’t know, honey.” She actually had a pretty good idea, though. The only thing that would scare him enough to leave town would be if the company had uncovered his skimming, although he’d sworn they would never notice. “There’s so much money flowing through there, they’ll never realize a few grand is missing here and there,” he’d said when he had first brought up the idea to her.

“Well, apparently they did notice, you ass,” Sandra muttered. By the time they’d had that conversation, she’d figured out the real product the company produced, and had decided her husband was right. Still, she’d insisted they have an escape route ready to go, and had drilled it into her husband and daughter until they had accepted the reality, and could execute it in their sleep.

Hauling the heavy suitcase downstairs, Sandra wheeled it through the kitchen and into the attached garage, where she threw it into the back of the gleaming black Escalade that Jack had given her for their sixteenth wedding anniversary. He’d paid for it in cash, which probably wasn’t a good idea, given how everyone in town knew everyone else’s business. Probably attracted too much damn attention from one of the big shots at the company or something, she thought.

After hoisting Kelly’s suitcase into the cargo area, she slammed the back door closed, then hit the button that would open the garage door. It crept up with agonizing slowness, and what it revealed outside made Sandra’s heart leap into her throat.

Standing in the bright glare of the security lights was a slim man dressed in a sheriff’s uniform, complete with a fur-collared jacket to ward off the prairie chill. He regarded her with a flat stare, his Hispanic features half-shadowed by his flat-brimmed hat. The nightstick on his right hip and holstered SIG-Sauer P-229 on his left hip contrasted with his relaxed stance.

Sandra stared at the man, trying to make her voice work. “Deputy Quintanar, what are you doing here?”

“Good evening, Mrs. Bitterman. I’m actually looking for your husband. I was just about to knock on your front door when I heard the garage door opening. I was wondering if we could go inside and talk.” His voice was perfectly polite, but even in the glare of the lights, Sandra sensed his eyes—their cold, flat, reptilian stare—pinning her to the wall. Almost as if he knew what she was doing, and had caught her in the act.

Sandra sensed rather than saw Kelly frozen in the doorway to the house. Slipping one hand behind her back, she waved her daughter back inside while plastering what she hoped was a guileless smile on her face. “Of course, please come in. I’m afraid Jack isn’t home yet. Would you like some coffee while you wait?”

The deputy smiled, looking anything but pleased. “That would be fine.” He strode quickly into the garage. Sandra was already stepping back into the kitchen, whispering, “Hide!” at her daughter, who took off through the kitchen.

Sandra made a beeline for the bread box. Just as she was about to open it, she heard the deputy’s voice from the doorway.

“I thought you were making coffee, Mrs. Bitterman.”

She looked over to see him standing there, seemingly relaxed—except for his left hand resting on the butt of his pistol. Sandra smiled again. “Of course, but I have to begin preparing dinner as well.”

“I wouldn’t be concerned about that right now.” Deputy Quintanar stepped into the kitchen and closed the door behind him. Despite his relatively small stature, his menacing presence dominated the room.

Sandra’s heart tripled its beat, but she gritted her teeth behind her lips and motioned to a chair while she crossed to the coffeemaker. “Won’t you sit down?”

“Thank you.” He moved to a chair and pulled it out, but didn’t sit. Sandra steeled herself and turned her back to him as she filled the coffeepot with water and poured it into the Braun machine.

“Regular or decaf?”

“Whatever you prefer is fine. Do you expect Mr. Bitterman to arrive soon?”

Sandra measured coffee beans into the grinder. “It’s hard to say. He’s been putting in a lot of late nights at the plant recently.”

“So he has.”

Cursing inwardly, Sandra hit the grind button. Would the deputy take that as a hint that Jack was up to something at the plant? Once the beans were reduced to a fine grind, she dumped them into the permanent brass filter, closed the brewing chamber and turned on the machine. The coffeemaker gurgled quietly as it worked. With nothing else to do, she walked to the refrigerator and opened it. “I hope you don’t mind if I begin preparations while we wait for Jack.”

Rustling about among the shelves, she heard the chair creak behind her. “I thought Jack was taking you and your daughter—Kelly, isn’t it?—out to dinner this evening.”

Son of a bitch—they were listening, she thought. Grabbing a ceramic dish of the previous night’s beef stew, Sandra straightened, and closed the refrigerator door. “Why would you say that, Deputy?”

“You know how it is in big companies. Nothing is ever really private.”

Damn. As soon as the words hit her ears, Sandra realized they knew everything. Her priorities shifted from escaping with Jack to making sure her daughter and she survived the next few minutes. Still holding the cold dish in her hands, she walked to the stove and twisted the knob to heat the oven, then opened the door and set the casserole dish inside, slipping the glass cover off as she rose. “I don’t know what you mean by that—”

Putting everything she had into it, she whirled and threw the glass cover at where she expected the deputy to be. The moment she turned, she saw her error—he’d already stepped to the right, closer to the front door. The heavy glass cover sailed past his chest and slammed into the wall, gouging a chunk of drywall out before falling to shatter on the tile floor.

The motion had still caught the deputy by surprise, and he flinched from the breaking glass. Sandra didn’t stop to see what he was doing, but lunged for the bread box, shoving the cover open and grabbing the revolver. Whirling again, she aimed the pistol at Deputy Quintanar at the same time he raised his own gun.

Even in the large kitchen with its high ceiling, the twin reports of the pistols sounded like claps of thunder going off right next to her. As she saw the deputy go down, Sandra also felt an impact on her upper chest, and immediately her right arm refused to work. She managed to get the gun into her left hand and edged around the kitchen table, conscious of the ringing in her ears and the trickle of warm blood dripping down her breast to pool in her bra. Spying a booted foot, she crept closer, pistol at the ready to finish off the deputy. His torso came into view, and finally his arms and head. Taking aim, Sandra was just about to squeeze the trigger when she caught a motion out of the corner of her eye.