Prologue
Southern Idaho, 2012
“You really think they’re in there?” Jess Parker asked as they knelt in the heavy line of trees that ran the perimeter of the LaRouche farm, scanning the house in front of them with binoculars.
U.S. Marshal Remy Boudreaux’s attention was focused on the biggest window along one side of the large ranch-style home. Lights barely illuminated the interior, but he could see enough to know there hadn’t been any movement since he and Jess had started watching the place fifteen minutes ago.
He pulled the binoculars away from his face and grinned at his partner. “I haven’t seen them, darlin’, but my instincts are screaming at me that all three of those scumbags are in there.”
Remy normally would never call a fellow marshal darlin’, but considering that he was in love with this particular one, he figured it was okay.
Jess grinned back at him because she flat-out adored his N’Awlins accent, though he could just barely make out her expression in the darkness. Even so, that little smile dazzled him. It was one of the things that had attracted Remy to the tall redhead in the first place, convincing him to throw caution to the wind, blow off every rule in the U.S. Marshal handbook, and get into a romantic relationship with her.
“You know I always trust that instinct of yours,” Jess said. “How are we going to handle this?”
Remy turned back and scanned the farmhouse where the LaRouche family—Tammy, Jack, and their three kids—lived. From the outside, nothing seemed amiss. Just another summer night in the rolling wheat fields of southern Idaho. But it felt like the hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end. Something was definitely going on in there, and he was damn sure it had to do with the three murderous prison escapees they were looking for.
“Let’s move closer, so we can get a better look,” he said softly.
Before he could move, Jess reached out and grabbed his shoulder. When he turned to look at her, she leaned in and kissed him. It wasn’t a long kiss, but there was definitely heat. They’d only been sleeping together for a couple of months, but the passion between them burned with a fire hotter than Remy had ever experienced.
“Be careful,” she whispered after she pulled away. “Those three assholes are dangerous. There’s no way in hell they’ll willingly go back to prison.”
Then Jess was moving, pulling out her Glock and skulking toward the side of the farmhouse. Remy drew his own sidearm and followed, watching as her lithe, athletic body moved through the night ahead of him.
He hadn’t needed Jess’s reminder that the men they were after were dangerous. He’d read the transcripts from their trials, seen the prison records, talked to the other inmates at Leavenworth who’d had dealings with them. These three men were beyond evil.
No one knew how Conrad Neal, Joshua Cobb, and Walter Ramirez had even managed to break out of the Leavenworth federal penitentiary in Kansas. As far as anyone could tell, the men had been in their cells before lights-out, but when the sun came up, all three were gone. Remy’s job wasn’t figuring out how they’d managed to escape, it was tracking down the men and putting them back in prison.
Neal was likely the leader of the trio of escaped convicts. His record indicated he had a high IQ and a charismatic personality. Unfortunately for him—and the rest of society—he was also possessive as hell and had an out-of-control temper. He’d beaten three men to death in a bar in Oklahoma simply for smiling at his girlfriend. One of those men had been an off-duty FBI agent, hence Neal’s 118-year term in federal prison.
Cobb had been convicted of multiple charges of murder as well, along with rape and arson. The son of a bitch thought he wouldn’t get caught if no one could recognize the woman he’d attacked, so he’d murdered her, then burned down her house, assuming all the evidence would disappear. But the fire he’d started in Oregon had spread across the border into Washington, resulting in the destruction of dozens of homes and the deaths of three more people, including a firefighter. That had earned him a life sentence in Leavenworth.
Ramirez might have been the scariest. A doctor for the Veterans Administration in Arizona, Ramirez had invited male patients over to his house for private treatment sessions and then experimented on them. He was serving a life sentence as well.
When Remy and Jess reached the side of the house, he cautiously peeked in the window overlooking the kitchen sink. At first, he didn’t see anything, but then he caught sight of Ramirez sitting in the shadow-shrouded living room, smoking a cigarette and watching TV. There was a teenage boy sitting beside him, tied and gagged, staring at the television.
Shit.
Remy was right. Again.
Everyone else on the task force had thought Remy and Jess were wasting their time running all the way out to Idaho on a crazy hunch. But ever since he could remember, Remy had listened to his gut. So while the rest of the marshals focused on the various friends, pen pals, and visitors the three convicts had been in contact with over the past year, Remy and Jess had been busy tracking down the one person suspiciously absent from Neal’s life since his incarceration—his former girlfriend, Tammy Andrews, or rather Tammy LaRouche, now that she was married.
Tammy hadn’t testified in Neal’s defense. In fact, she’d never shown at his trial. She hadn’t visited him in prison, called him, or even written him any letters. The poor woman had been so traumatized by the whole ordeal in the bar that she’d simply walked away from Neal and never looked back.
Some people might consider that a betrayal. According to an inmate Remy had spoken to at Leavenworth, Neal was one of those people.
“If someone does him wrong, Neal will remember it for the rest of his life and do whatever it takes to get revenge on that person,” the inmate had said. “He’s one vindictive son of a bitch.”
Beside Remy, Jess was on her cell phone with the local PD, requesting backup. He hoped this town had a SWAT team, because they were going to need it. When she hung up, they slowly moved around the outside of the house, hoping to pin down exactly where Neal and Cobb were hiding.
They were a few feet from the back door when a woman’s scream cut through the humid night air. A split second later, there was a crashing sound, followed by coarse laughter and another terrified scream.
Remy’s gut clenched. Going in on their own was insanity, but he and Jess had no choice. Their backup was at least twenty minutes out. They couldn’t wait.
He glanced at Jess, hating the idea of her going in there. If she was simply his partner, he wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but she was more than that to him. There was no way in hell she’d ever let him go in alone though.
“Watch yourself in there, okay?” he whispered.
