Chapter 8 - The Sound Across the Street
The sharp, concussive crack of the gunshot hung in the humid afternoon air, silencing the neighborhood birds and freezing Clara in her tracks. Toby let out a high-pitched cry, burying his face against her neck as the reality of the violence struck home. Clara’s knees felt like water. She stared down the lane toward where her home stood, a thin plume of grey smoke now visible rising above the tree line near the back patio.
"Mark," she whispered, the name catching in her throat like broken glass.
Ray moved with sudden, urgent efficiency. He reached out and grabbed Clara firmly by the elbow, pulling her past the threshold of the old red barn and kicking the heavy timber door shut behind them with a resounding thud. He slid a heavy wooden beam across the brackets, locking them inside the dim, cavernous space.
"Keep it down," Ray hissed, leading her toward the rear corner of the barn where a workbench was cluttered with old tools, engine parts, and a battery-operated police scanner sitting atop a wooden crate.
The interior of the barn smelled of dry hay, motor oil, and decades of dust. Shafts of sunlight pierced through the rotting wooden slats of the walls, striping the dusty floor with golden lines. Clara set Toby down on an old quilt spread over a stack of feed sacks, trying to keep her hands from shaking as she stroked his reddish-brown hair.
"They shot him," Clara said, her voice hollow, devoid of inflection as shock began to take full possession of her nervous system. "They killed him, and I ran away."
"Don't write him off just yet," Ray said sharply, spinning the dial on the police scanner. Static hissed through the small speaker before a harsh voice crackled over the encrypted frequency.
—target is mobile. Repeat, target exited through the rear perimeter toward the drainage ditch. He does not have the drive.
Clara’s head snapped up. "He's alive?"
"He's running," Ray corrected, his eyes fixed on the scanner speaker as he adjusted the frequency knob. "Which means he gave them the slip, or he managed to ditch the drive somewhere they didn't expect."
The scanner crackled again, a different voice cutting through the static with an urgent command. Perimeter units B and C, sweep the old orchard behind the creek. He’s heading north toward the rail yard. Bring him in alive if you can, but recover that hardware at any cost.
Ray clicked the scanner off, plunging the corner of the barn back into a tense, heavy silence. He turned to face Clara, his expression grim. "The rail yard is half a mile through the timber. If Mark is heading that way, he’s trying to catch the midnight freight out of the county. It's his only play."
"We have to go after him," Clara said, standing up from the feed sacks with a fierce, sudden determination that surprised even herself. The fear that had paralyzed her moments before had been forged into something cold and unyielding.
"And walk right into an active federal dragnet?" Ray shook his head. "They're watching every exit, Mrs. Miller. But..." He paused, walking over to a tarp draped over a bulky shape in the shadows of the barn. He pulled the canvas back with a flourish, revealing an old, beat-up dirt bike coated in a layer of dust. "There’s a service road behind the creek that isn't on their tactical map. I used to run moonshine—er, farm equipment—down that trail back in the seventies."
May you like
Clara looked at the dirt bike, then down at Toby, her mind calculating the impossible odds. But as she heard a faint police siren wailing in the distance, she knew they had run out of choices.
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