Into the Dark

By Donan Berg

Sheriff Jonas McHugh discovers thousands in cash in a remote northwest Iowa cabin. Suspicious enough, but more so when a campaign manager for an Iowa Caucus presidential candidate is found murdered outside a nearby cave. In the stillness of the dark, one threat percolates. Time is limited before a promised bomb explodes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Donan Berg
• Release date: Jul 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9781941244173

Donan Berg

Award-winning United States author Donan Berg tempts the reading world with First Place Gold Award romance, adventurous teen fantasy plus entertaining mystery, thrillers, police procedurals, and. from his first novel, A Body To Bones, entertaining mystery. "A winning plot ..." said Kirkus. "...Not only well written ... characters rich in depth and background.," wrote a reviewer.To quote another reviewer, Lucia's Fantasy World "is a captivating story ... and the author perfectly captures the innocence and imagination of the characters in the book." It joins Find the Girl, A Fantasy Story, for fascinating adventure filled with child-like imagination, friendship, magic, and sorcery. For 435 days, Find the Girl topped the AuthorsDen most popular book list, all genres. This chart-topping glory eclipsed both A Body To Bones and Alexa's Gold. The mystery and romance thriller, at separate times, both exceeded 100 days as Number One.A native of Ireland, Author Berg honed his writing skills as a United States journalist, corporate executive, and lawyer.The stimulating, page-turning bedrock, underpinning his twelve novels, explores the human drama of individual flaws and challenges before victory over a wide range of antagonists, outed to be societal monsters and/or deftly hidden. A dastardly scheme can be diabolical as in Aria's Bayou Child.His prior mystery, Into the Dark, brings intrigue front and center where unaccountable cash, threats, and societal ills bring twists and turns sprung with gusto. A thoroughly engaging Sheriff Jonas McHugh, first encountered in Baby Bones, Second Skeleton Mystery Series, adds a heightened imagination to grow stronger. Alexa's Gold, a five-star, new adult romance, combines a unique contemporary heroine and a thrilling mystery.Gold and five-star writing awards and reviewer accolades were on the horizon after he landed in the winner's circle four times at the Ninth Annual Dixie Kane Memorial Writing Contest. This bested his three awards in the prior year's eighth annual contest.The bedrock of his mystery writing is his three-part skeleton series mysteries: A Body To Bones, The Bones Dance Foxtrot, and Baby Bones. The series followed by Abbey Burning Love, Adolph's Gold, and One Paper Heart, his Gold Award romance.A reviewer of his short story, Amanda, notes that Author Berg offers a keen insight into couple relationships and a very clever ending.

Book preview

Chapter One

Crinkled and faded $100 Federal Reserve notes tumbled out of a shiny-silver Republican ballot box. Bewildered, Silver County Sheriff Jonas McHugh continued to pour bills, roughly fifty, into a second pile before he tilted the box upright.

Sister Luann, who’d kicked his houseguest butt out to repaint, wouldn’t believe what he’d found this first day after the Tuesday Iowa caucus unless he knelt for a selfie next to the cabin-table piles. No texted picture needed for retired Sergeant Ronald Oelschleager, due to arrive any minute from a recon of the frozen lake fifty yards west. The unexplained cash stood to jeopardize Jonas’s fishing vacation. His overtaxed memory failed to pinpoint a date when he’d intercepted or discovered a greater cache of unbundled cash.

When his curiosity exceeded caution, he started a third pile of C-notes, peppered with crisp twenties. He maneuvered the ballot box to keep the bills from falling off the backwoods cabin’s three-by-five-foot sanded-board table. The unclasped, slotted lid swung free and its unbeveled edge stung his ungloved right hand.

Damn. A full-lung-capacity blast launched Jonas’s curse past his chilled lips into the wintry twenty-degree cold of an unheated cabin. His boot stomps failed to dispel the forest’s high-altitude chill that prowled beneath the cabin’s planked floorboards and slithered upward through splits and cracks.

Behind his back, the cabin door latch clink preceded the louder hinge creak. Jonas dropped the ballot box and his black calfskin driving gloves to lift his parka’s hem from his right hip. Only when he’d completed his pivot did the civilian-clad Jonas remember he’d locked his service revolver in the glove box of Sgt. Oelschleager’s Suburban.

What critter scared you? Sarge asked. His body filled the doorway, his left thumb hitched to a front pocket of a non-regulation orange flotation vest worn over a dark-blue parka. The vest, a fishing relic devoid of law enforcement initials, bespoke of the trip’s intended purpose and Sarge’s retired status.

You. Jonas’s tensed shoulders slumped.

Holy moly. Maybe you’re scared now that I know about your stash? Sarge’s left hand pulled the door closer to its doorjamb. Trouble is all that cash won’t catch fish. Nor does it help the half-inch lake ice is spider-webbed with cracks. ‘Fraid the trout are safe. The lake’s January cap isn’t thick enough to support a toddler’s weight.

Jonas peered into a table shadow before he squatted to retrieve the ballot box and his gloves. A straight-line draft through two punched-out knotholes rimpled and frosted his forehead’s perspiration beads. His torso muscles and toes, warmed by a dark-red parka and insulated hiking boots, warded off half the penetrating cold. Upon standing, he laid the box on the table and his left-hand fingers rubbed his cheeks to stir capillary blood. Don’t know where this came from. He winked his left eye. Sure it isn’t yours.

Framed by the fur oval of a hooded blue parka, Sarge’s eyes narrowed and he jutted his lower lip left into a twisted grin.

Jonas didn’t equate Sarge’s facial contortions with forthcoming wisdom. Come in or get out. It’s cold enough. Jonas fought off his teeth’s urge to chatter. Don’t let more in.

Don’t be a pantywaist. It’s been a warm winter. Sarge spit out his words. Can’t dare tiptoe on the lake’s bubbled ice nor fly-cast bait to open water not there.

While Sarge stepped inside and re-latched the door in non-record-setting time, Jonas inverted the tin box six inches above the tabletop. With the box’s narrow side gripped tight in his now-gloved left hand, he thrice banged his right gloved palm against its bottom. One folded white sheet of bond paper in a stream of green arrested Jonas’s scanning eyeballs. His left forearm muscles tensed as he watched it flutter and come to rest amid the twenties, fifties, and hundreds.

Sheriff McHugh stifled his crude comparison of how the latest cash carpeting the table resembled the overabundant and thick juniper underbrush his boots crunched from Sarge’s Suburban to the cabin’s front porch. Faint sun rays, filtered by the dirt splats on the windowpanes of the one west window, pooled into a ragtag striped-yellow design at his feet. The top bills of two stacks rippled as Sarge strode closer. Jonas gazed left to spy a dozen airborne bills. Three landed in an unlit hearth atop seasoned and cobwebbed two-foot long stacked logs.

We gonna count that? Sarge asked. His words accompanied by a frosty mist. Must be thousands. His head unhooded, wide eyes pushed his trimmed brows upward to a brown crew cut. Ever thought of how it might be to be rich?

Jonas doubted his infrequent two-dollar lottery ticket purchases would enhance his odds for an early retirement. Only when Powerball hits $200 million.

An out-of-season gunshot rattled the grimy windowpanes.

You hear that? Sarge asked.

Jonas nodded. Even though the frozen ground wouldn’t muddy his new hiking boots, to check it out would be a waste of official energy. Riding with Sarge put him six hours outside his Silver County jurisdiction. I’m not gung-ho enough to jog twenty minutes to your Suburban for your police radio.

At least, shouldn’t we check the cabin’s perimeter?

Jonas shrugged. Even without Iowa fields and forests knee-deep in snow for the first time in his thirty year recollection, he still wasn’t enthused enough to abandon the loose bills for a five-minute hike to Lake Andrew.

Sarge hugged the cabin wall as he sidled to the fieldstone-faced fireplace, its black cat andirons toppled horizontal to crisscross on the mortared brick hearth. Stretched cobwebs, the lattice for a quarter-inch fuzzy dust layer, obscured the finer andiron detail but not the three stacked unlit hardwood logs as one rested in the hollow of the two beneath it. Two wooden thread spools appeared to be the only mantel knickknacks not stored or stolen.

Help me layer these bills back into the ballot box. Jonas stated his request matter-of-factly. No use messing with it too much. That is, if it’s evidence.

It irked him that the money saddled him with filling out an incident report on a trip born of Luann’s threat to throw him, a live-in tenant, out of her Kanosh house. He was certain he could’ve slept on the living room sofa while painters brightened the second-floor bedrooms. Luann’s Christmas present of new hiking boots, a special tread design for hilly terrain, didn’t mollify him. He hugged her anyway for he could wear them on the rolling hills of his Silver County jurisdiction.

Jonas continued to flatten and stack bills without separating denominations. He discounted the importance of similar bill number sequences as secondary to his immediate quest to refill the ballot box.

Sarge shuffled around the table. Didn’t expect we’d find this cabin without GPS.

Now you tell me. Jonas pressed his lips together. He shouldn’t be sarcastic even if he uttered a little white lie. Had faith in you. You know this state better than most know the back of their own hand.

Keep telling others that. Sarge opened the two doors in the cabin’s cabinet that, besides the table and three pressed-back chairs, comprised the one room’s furniture. You know, a person’s reputation is a perception not always reality unless heard three times. That’s my goal. Triple repetition equals respected reputation. Sarge’s deep-guttural laugh overwhelmed the cabinet door slam. No beer. How inhospitable.

Jonas shook his head and kept his gaze on Sarge. His buddy halted his pacing at the edge of an eight-foot oval braided cotton-rag rug. It summoned within Jonas the fleeting memory that Jonas, as an infant thirty-four-odd years ago, crawled on a similar rug in his mother’s farmhouse sewing room without the circular yellowish-brown stains and black fireplace ember burn holes now before him. Utilitarian, maybe; warming and homey, never.

Jonas ignored nostalgia to set the ballot box down. Finger-by-finger, he tugged off his right-hand glove, stuffed it in his parka pocket and reached for the folded white paper.

Whoa, Sarge shouted.

What? Jonas glanced up and bridled his annoyance. I’ll be careful. And, true to his word, he touched only edges as he separated the twice-folded sheet.

Scrawled at the top of the page, on the fill-in-the-blank line after the printed word county, were the words Balder and West School. Two half-page columns were headed by the words Candidate and Votes Received.

He pinched the top two corners and held it upright, printed-side facing Sarge. Didn’t Balder have one of the eight missing Republican primary precincts?

From the opposite table side, Sarge leaned forward and squinted. Think so. But don’t trust me. Don’t waste time with national politics. Found it better suits me to spend my time with state leaders. Sarge unzipped his orange vest and parka to lift a cell phone from his plaid shirt’s breast pocket.

Sarge’s claimed detachment from federal politics tweaked Jonas’s skeptic bone. Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucus blended national into state politics. He scanned the candidate column and the numbers written alongside the listed names: Roper, 435; Sandman, 239; Gingham, 123; Derry, 91; Packman, 48.

Jonas tried to equate the numbers with the official Iowa Caucus results publicized at the prior week’s GOP humble-pie news conference. New official vote totals didn’t include the eight missing precincts. The decision erased Roper’s caucus night lead to award Sandman an eighteen-vote victory, a presumptive win justified by the Iowa GOP policy decision that the missing votes were irretrievable. If the votes on the sheet in Jonas’s hands hadn’t been tabulated, Roper bested Sandman.

Hey Sarge, think these votes were counted?

Sarge raised a right hand index finger. Jonas nodded in response. The January north wind gust rattled and unlatched the cabin door. A freezer-blast of cold frosted Jonas’s cheeks. He buried his lower face in the crook of his right arm as he fended off and waded toward the door through swirling currency. Eight choppy strides accomplished his goal.

His left-hand glove insulated his shivering fingers from being fused to the door’s iron handhold. He braced his left forearm against the door. A sound like a crisp saltine broken in half cracked outside. He peered through his breath’s expanding vapor and saw no visitor.

Jonas attributed the beyond-the-tree-line crack as a squirrel or a wind devil snapping a weak branch. Jonas exerted renewed pressure to raise and drop the latch’s metal bar tongue into its notch before a third wind gust wicked the redness from his exposed skin and he joined the Smurf family in appearance.

Central committee friend tells me Balder and Cooper Counties had a missing precinct, Sarge said. She couldn’t pinpoint exact precincts. With charges and counter-charges flying, the Republican state chair and the party’s official spokesperson are being tight-lipped.

Jonas squatted to add twenties to the hundred-dollar bills he retrieved. Didn’t one official go missing?

If you mean Sandman’s campaign manager, consensus is he’s hiding from the press.

Jonas circled the twenty-by-thirty-two-foot room as he and Sarge gathered bills from the floor. They squared the money into small piles before a gloved Jonas laid each stack inside the ballot box. His tranquilized mind rippled with no answer to his $64.00 questions: Who paid the money? Who paid off whom?

Would you agree this is a caucus ballot box?

Sarge let the fireplace rug he’d lifted drop to the floor. Seen Democrats use one similar.

Yet, the vote-total sheet confused Jonas. While it indicated the box may have contained ballots, the names listed were Republicans, not Democrats. Moreover, the first nationwide caucus last week didn’t elect national convention delegates. How much did it matter? A headline? The proverbial light bulb glowed. Campaign contributions. The winner guaranteed to rake in hordes of cash. A caucus victory rallied a campaign cha-ching.

Know what’s strange? Sarge pocketed his cell phone and rubbed his hands on opposite elbows. His horizontal forearms, indicative of a powerful man, rested on his protruding teddy-bear abdomen until he arched his back to stiffen his six-foot-two frame.

What? Jonas asked.

Sarge’s taut jaw skin a sign he was ready to speak. With no bed, I’d say no one’s slept or even stayed here for ages.

Jonas nodded. The faded drywall stains, the dirt-caked windowsill, the one west window either painted or nailed shut and the undisturbed fireplace dust all an unspoken testament to verify Sarge’s observation. Jonas recalled neither scattered wood chips, a chopping block nor an outside woodpile. All inside logs neat and cozy within the hearth.

There’s one oddity. Sarge plopped onto a chair, his legs sprawled. From his front pants pocket he extracted matches to light the Coleman propane lantern he’d carried in with him.

Over its hiss, Jonas asked, You mean the lack of dust and dirt on the floor?

Exactly.

Sleeping bag? Without an answer from Sarge, Jonas added to his question, Or blankets? Even if there was a right answer, Sarge’s lack of a response gave Jonas no reason to pick a quarrel. The place sure didn’t have maid service. Who owns this place?

Wendell O’Dell did ‘til he died a couple years back. Would assume Catherine, that’s his wife, you know, inherited. Jonas didn’t, but he nodded anyway, confident Sarge didn’t need encouragement to continue. Since she walked with a cane last time I saw her, she probably never hiked here.

Don’t know her. Jonas, convinced he had stacked the last of the bills, closed the box’s lid.

Sarge twisted to gaze at the now dark curtain-less west window. Sure you do. Runs the B & B in Elba. Ain’t that still your neck of the woods?

Yeah, but I gotta think. Elba? Isn’t but a grain elevator and half dozen buildings. B & B, you say? Jonas rubbed his jaw. There’s one old Victorian house. Don’t recall a sign.

Maybe Catherine got remarried.

She an older . . . dull-haired redhead, sorta stocky, standoffish?

Sarge chuckled. On the money.

Introduced to her as Cath Weeks. Jonas paused to pull out a chair. She a Republican?

Never directly asked her. Wendell, her husband, was knee-deep in Democratic causes. Two or three times crossed paths with him in Des Moines. Sarge fiddled with his lantern’s flame. While the recent caucus could explain why the money’s here, doubt Catherine left it.

Another explanation stares us in the face. A B & B is a cash business. These bills are well worn. Serial numbers random. Drugs and money laundering high on my distinct-possibility list.

Been a lot of that in Silver County?

Don’t remind me.

Two loud knocks rattled the cabin’s door. Their echo enhanced the cabin s claustrophobic effect. Jonas glanced at the stuffed ballot box and then at Sarge’s quizzical mien, partly hidden by his upraised hands. They both stayed quiet. Heavy footwear squeaked porch planks outside their field of vision.

Sarge hadn’t spoken about inviting anyone other than Jonas.

A radiated voice boomed. Come out. Hands up.

Bullhorn static distorted: Do it now, whoever you are.

Chapter Two

Jonas scanned the cabin’s interior. The wooden table, a chair and a cabinet all frail physical defenses against unknown odds. Without paranoia, this exigency stressed fight, not flight.

What would he as an FBI agent do? He cocked his head toward Sarge. Back me up. Brain-fueled adrenalin contoured his instinctive whisper.

Sarge’s sidestep squeaked the boards beneath the braided rug. Jonas gulped. In apology, Sarge displayed both hands, shoulder-high, palms out; his gaze to soles figuratively glued to the rug. Jonas exhaled in silent relief. As to his own boots, Jonas neither lifted them nor shifted weight to have a plank groan announce to an outside marauder their inside-the-cabin presence.

Sarge’s left hand pointed to the ballot box. His hushed tone equaled Jonas’s. What about all this cash?

Let it be. Won’t buy our safety.

Jonas defied caution to tiptoe toward the cabin door’s left jamb. His last off-balanced lunge calculated to square his chest against the wall, not between the doorjambs. Filtered bright white light highlighted the door’s rectangular frame. His mind whirled. What does he tell suspects? Follow directions and no one will get hurt.

He stretched his right hand to clasp cold metal.

With the door’s latch flush against his palm, he shouted, I’m unarmed. Don’t shoot. The words bounced off the doorjamb into his right ear. I’ll pull the door open . . . do it slow.

His right hand fingertips eased the latch out of its notch. Hinges creaked. Through the crack between the door and its jamb his retinas distinguished two separate hotspots. The harsh outside brilliance temporarily blinded him.

Jonas dropped his right arm and twisted his body perpendicular to the doorjamb. The cabin’s interior gloom slow to soothe or normalize his constricted pupils.

In a muted request, Sarge asked, What’s out there?

Jonas swiveled his head as far right as his chilled neck muscles allowed and whispered, Don’t know. Since Sarge could grasp the obvious, Jonas didn’t explain portable flood lights. Jonas’s right hand edged the door in another six inches. With the door as a shield, he rotated his squinted eyes left.

The husky outdoor scent of hardwood maple and oak smoke pummeled his nostrils. The smoke pall swirled with wisps unwilling to disclose their origins. No flame streaks nor bursts of fire added yellow, red or orange to the gray shades.

The light’s intensity trapped him in a shroud of perceived isolation. A bullhorn squawk sparked his flinch and unleashed a fear from deep within his bone marrow.

An unseen voice boomed, Quit stalling.

From the sharp tone, the words used, and the rush to have him act, Jonas deduced the speaker wasn’t law enforcement. He tamped his fear. If he could determine how many ringed the cabin and whether they believed him to be alone, it might improve his survival odds.

His brain cells produced no concrete answer except a logical suspicion that whoever had left the money now returned to claim it. However, his uncertainty grew. His ability to pray for a safe and righteous outcome shriveled within his breast. While he could offer the money that alone didn’t guarantee his free passage. If the bullhorn speaker didn’t know about the money, its mention meant Jonas volunteered a greater reason to kill him.

Since his eyes failed to perceive his adversary, he tried to amplify his hearing to discern a telltale clue for what he should do next.

He heard neither a footfall nor the click of a magazine clip locked into place, only the hissing of Sarge’s lantern on the table behind him. The cell phone in his right front pocket chirped and vibrated. He dug his right hand into the pocket. To cover for the delay he required, his left hand wiggled the door, and he shouted, Said I’d open it slow.

He slanted his eyes behind his right hip toward his cupped right hand. He doubted anyone outside could see the phone’s lighted screen.

Bonnie! What’s her problem? His thumb pressed the speaker button, and he whispered, Code 33. He left the line open and trusted Bonnie would grasp an emergency existed, listen, and not say a word. Although improbable she could arrive with help, Jonas hoped she’d convince the state police to triangulate his position and dispatch local aid.

Come out now. Hands up. Every one of you.

Jonas wiggled the door. He weighed, without decision, whether only he need go. If found, Sarge’s Suburban wouldn’t suggest more than one person drove into the dark. Jonas raised his right hand’s index finger toward Sarge, pressed the finger against his own lips and waited while the sergeant offered Jonas the brilliant orange vest. Sarge circled the table. In a retreat, Sarge used the cabinet to shield his body’s right half. Jonas pocketed his active cell phone, donned the vest, and shoved the door with his left forearm. He shuddered when it banged the cabin’s outer wall.

Bathed in light, Jonas angled his body to the doorjamb to maximize the protection it offered. He extended both arms to show his weapon-free hands. The floodlight beams that crisscrossed the cabin porch struck him from north and south.

A murky silhouette repeated: Come out now. Hands up. Every one of you.

Jonas twisted his right shoulder forward, trusting it wasn’t to be his last move. He dared not glance rearward to give the slightest hint of Sarge’s cabin presence.

To steady himself, he planted his boots on the porch planks a shoulder-width apart, toes pointed straight at the voice’s apparent location.

His eyes hurt, his eyelids blinked.

Jonas, desperate to raise an arm to block the glare, didn’t dare an un-requested move to invite a bullet.

An octave-higher voice, as menacing as before, cut through the night’s heavy stillness. Turn your pockets out.

Had a pocket outline telegraphed the presence of his cell phone? His glance said no. Can’t and keep my hands up. Jonas cringed when the sarcastic tone of his words echoed in his ears. He didn’t wish to challenge his captors and destroy whatever advantage his tactical delay achieved. Had Bonnie been given enough time to mobilize a state police trace? His doubts intensified she hadn’t been.

Right hand first. A glint of metal flashed in the void between the flood lamps. Slow. No quick moves.

Or I’ll shoot. Jonas’s mind finished the expected command’s threat that never came. Should he dive and roll? Which direction? He kept his feet squared and flexed his knees ever so slightly. If worse came to worse, he’d vault left with a push off his stronger right leg. He reached deep into his right front pants pocket. With his right hand acting as if all thumbs, Jonas fumbled with his cell phone to press a fingernail on the Android phone’s END button.

His hand and the cell phone cleared his pocket’s top. The illuminating lights warmed his upraised hand as the phone extended higher than his thumb and forefinger. A handgun’s report preceded an incoming shoulder-height

z z-z-z bullet sound. Glass shattered. A projectile thudded into a cabin log near the roof. Jonas’s right hand trembled.

Jonas didn’t need to see or calculate where his pulverized cell phone landed. If shattered, it wouldn’t benefit him, assist Bonnie or be of use to the state police. Whoever his assailant was, one shot at the sliver of light from a cell phone screen proved the shooter wouldn’t lose a marksmanship contest. Without further instruction, Jonas, in a slow, effortless sequence, lowered his right hand, raised his left, and puffed out the inside fabric of both front pockets.

Two steps forward off the porch. Lay face down.

Itty-bitty pebbles that stung his trouser-clad knees hastened his forward flop. Gravel and pine needles flattened his nose without a dimple divot to either cheek.

His nostrils’ up close and personal contact to the landscape convinced him of one thing and suggested a second. For sure, either a prior visitor had brought a pet, or a raccoon had marked this cabin’s environs as its territory. A sharper scent decoder likely to decipher the traces of subsurface animal or human slaughter percolating via the spore capsules in the visible rock moss or intertwined within the tree roots as evidentiary historical testimony of human trespassers still lost to history or alive as hosts for present day spirits.

Skin capillaries tightened against chilled pebbles. Fresh winter chill chest shivers fought against the inadequate warmth of his uniform shirt. Why hadn’t he thought to zip his woolen coat? He clenched his teeth to await the cold’s invasion to crystalize, if not freeze, his body’s sweat.

A pine needle crunch to his left signaled one person’s off-path approach. He suppressed a runaway curiosity to concentrate on branding each detail into memory. His tensed neck muscles locked his head into its facedown position.

Hands behind your back.

Jonas complied. The chill of steel against his wrists followed by two successive clicks guaranteed one conclusion: Handcuffs. Tight handcuffs. The feel brought flashbacks of his training days at the law enforcement academy.

Anybody else?

Jonas dared not twitch a muscle.

Heels, not his, clomped across the wood porch. Their echo subsided and again grew loud. A soft voice, not unexpected, said, Where’d you get all that money?

Not mine, Jonas mumbled. Found it. What happened to Sarge? The cabin had but one door, blocked the entire time by Jonas, one inoperable window and no furniture large enough to hide a person behind or under. Well, the table maybe. But under the table hardly a place to hide unnoticed, nor was the fireplace chimney an escape hatch. The single-hung rectangular window provided no practical escape route, at least, not a silent one.

Likely story.

A tug at his collar jerked Jonas’s body. He rolled onto his left side. His impetus to get up strong; the advisability to do so overruled by the lack of an ability to do so, not the pistol’s barrel end pointed at his forehead. His jaw dropped when he caught sight of two upturned blond curls framing high cheekbones. The multi-colored knitted cap band visible to him beneath a raised parka hood no doubt squeezed similar curls to a feminine scalp.

His held breath relaxed when he stared at the vest’s white FBI capital letters. A fleeting thought that the tattered, loose-at-the-waist, vest had been stolen cautiously dismissed. He focused on his assailant’s piercing cat-like eyes, which dominated her hollowed cheeks blushed a ruddy red by Jack Frost. In what circumstances had he seen those mischievous green eyes before?

Kayla? It’s Jonas. He struggled to rise, failed.

Don’t move. The grip of her two gloved hands steadied the black 9mm pistol aimed at Jonas’s temple.

Sorry. A jabbing ache arose within his calf-to-shoulder muscles. Was this payback time?

If he could somehow signal Sarge.

But Sarge should’ve been flushed out four minutes ago, or a scuffle heard, or the air punctuated by a shot.

That none happened defied common sense.

A child couldn’t have successfully gone unnoticed in the sparsely furnished one-room cabin Jonas left Sarge in, his buddy double the size of a healthy teen.

Jonas stretched his vision sideways and elevated its focus from the 9mm to Kayla’s eyes. Their forceful radiated energy blocked all penetration. Need to show you my ID.

Don’t need to see no stupid ID. Her eyes didn’t rotate toward the light or their standards. Who was she waiting for? Sarge? Your presence here guilt enough.

Her last words as senseless as Sarge’s Houdini imitation. Wasn’t this the Kayla from his past? Kayla, the klutzy academy recruit in his law enforcement class. She’d been a pioneer of sorts and, according to the post-graduation scuttlebutt, blackballed by all ninety-nine county sheriff departments. If not an eBay purchase, she wore the FBI vest he craved and fantasized about.

Eight years ago he’d heard she’d landed a hybrid patrol/dispatcher position in Southwest Iowa. Nine months later she disappeared from his law enforcement radar after word leaked out she’d shot an alleged suspect in the groin, spraying blood all over her naked body.

If she teetered on the cliff of exploding rage for past academy hazing humiliation, Jonas didn’t wish to relight the fuse. Sure, he’d chuckled when hearing the story of her so-called birthday-suit shooting, but that had been off-duty, in private, not broadcast as a new Ten-code. If Internet pictures existed, he hadn’t seen them, nor even executed a digital search.

Can you help me up? He thought it a simple request. How could he be a threat if still handcuffed? His identification remained unreachable, stuffed inside his coat.

Who’d you say you were? She sidestepped to her left, her back to the open cabin door.

Jonas hesitated to give Sarge an opportunity to jump her. He locked eyes with Kayla to do the best he could to distract her. She seemed to retreat into herself. Why? She commanded the strongest position. Anticipation that Sarge would be his savior died in Jonas’s gut. His mind grasped a thin reed. Perhaps Sarge waited for Kayla’s accomplices to expose themselves. The lights blinded Jonas when he tried a left scan. He raised his gaze to his captor. Jonas, Jonas McHugh. Sheriff of Silver County.

Kayla stomped her right foot. That’s enough. What was Twinkie’s first name?

Jonas swallowed. Twinkie? Chilled tingles erupted across his chin. He lifted it from the ground as cold prickles diffused through and deeper into his constricted cheek skin. Don’t understand. And that was the truth.

She leaned toward him. Kayla’s slow mumble of unintelligible words dripped from her lips like melting icicles. Warm breath exhales added neither clarity nor absorbed his fear. Ten yards away, soundless westward jutting tree branches drooped. The distant coyote moan useless unless a substitute for Irish women keening at a wake. With Kayla’s latest pivot, he could see neither her eyes nor her lips, and, regardless, his ability to lip read hadn’t been an acquired skill.

Damn Academy. If you’re who you say you are, you joined the rest who snickered behind Twinkie’s back.

His brain cells collided at random. Recruits arrived with—or earned—nicknames. A Polish descendent with the surname of Pschegynicksaw dubbed Scrabble. That had to be it. His mind envisioned the iconic little yellow cake with the cream filling. Maybe she referred to Jessie, a lanky male who ran like the cartoon character Fred Flintstone bowled. Couldn’t be. Jessie would have pummeled to a pulp anyone who called him that.

Second choice—female, small, flat-chested, Oriental. He agonized if he should guess and risk not seeing the bullet before it lodged into his skull. What was the female’s name? Kim and Lee were good choices, but they were surnames, not first names. Had the name been Americanized? Wait. It could be her twin brother, Samuel. Had he heard Twins or Twinkie?

Come on. Out with it or I’m going inside. You can freeze your lying butt.

Jonas spoke to stop the groan of porch planks beneath her foot shuffle. Don’t remember first names. Only that the class had twin Lees. Parents had been Vietnamese refugees.

Close enough to get you inside. Without unlocking his handcuffs, she yanked at their connecting chain and, with a second pull, Jonas successfully stood. Kayla, from a three-pace distance, waved her pistol barrel twice toward the cabin door.

Jonas fought off the gruesome image of how a pistol-whipped Sarge might look when he got inside. Jonas’s rapid inside-the-door scan met both good and bad news. The good news: Sarge wasn’t injured. The bad news: Sarge wasn’t visible. The empty chair Sarge had plopped onto welcomed Jonas’s butt. In the table’s center, the open ballot box, its lid pinned underneath, greenbacks spilt. Flickering thin lantern beams glanced off the shiny box. Three- or four-dozen bills lay on the floor in the table’s shadow. Jonas’s right sole pinned a half dozen to a floor plank. He gazed at Kayla, who didn’t fully turn away as she latched the door. Maybe you can light a fire?

’Fraid not, Kayla barked. And, quit scheming. No blocked old chimney will spew smoke to create an opportunity for you to run or overpower me.

Savvy. She must've earned a merit badge somewhere along the line. He spoke to drown out the metallic clinks his tugs at the old-school handcuffs generated. Wasn’t thinking that. Your friends outside should be one sufficient deterrent.

She spit out her words, Nice try.

What? That his in-place handcuffs clinked