the hell did you send her back to the center? Who gave you the authority?’
Denny bristled. If Grace Brookstein really had escaped, she was damned if she was going to take the blame. This was the warden’s problem. ‘I have the authority, sir. Work details on A-Wing are my responsibility. The delegation had left, and Grace had unfinished work. Who gave the Sisters authority to have A-Wing inmates supervise pickups?’
The two guards from the North Gate checkpoint were also in the warden’s office. Warden McIntosh quizzed them. ‘You’re certain Grace Brookstein wasn’t on that truck? You checked every crate?’
From the look on McIntosh’s face, the guards figured honesty was probably not the best policy. ‘Every crate. The truck was clean.’
Warden McIntosh’s head was throbbing. Then where the hell is she? He turned back to Hannah Denzel. ‘I want Cora Budds and Karen Willis in here right now. In the meantime, alert all police units. I want that truck found, stopped, and searched.’ He looked at the two guards ominously. ‘If you guys have fucked up, I’ll have both your heads on a plate.’
‘Yes, sir.’ But everyone in the room knew that the first head to roll would be the warden’s.
Grace opened her eyes slowly. Beneath her was a blanket of deep undergrowth. Springy and prickly like an old straw mattress, it must have broken her fall. Her head was filled with a loud whirring.
No. It’s not in my head. It’s overhead. Choppers.
They’re looking for me.
She had no idea how long she’d been unconscious. Minutes? Hours? What she did know was that she was freezing cold, so cold that it was hard to move. She also knew that she was in grave danger. In the short time she’d been inside the truck, they could not have gotten more than a few miles away from Bedford Hills. She had to put some distance between herself and the prison.
Gingerly, Grace got to her feet. By some miracle, nothing seemed to be broken. Gradually her eyes acclimatized to the darkness and she could make out the shadows around her. She was standing in woodland just a few feet from a quiet country road. Not quiet. Silent. A single twig cracking beneath her feet sounded as loud as a thunderclap.
I have to get out of here.
Her left side was bruised and stiff, but she found she could walk without too much trouble. To her right, the tree line jutted up into a steep escarpment. From the top of the hill, Grace heard the dim rumble of traffic.
The police will be patrolling the main road. If I go up there, I triple my chances of being caught.
If I don’t go up there, I won’t get a ride out of here.
She started to climb.
At the top of the hill someone had planted a row of poplar trees, presumably as a sound barrier. Grace squatted low behind them, trying to get her breath. The climb had exhausted her. The road was busy, almost as if it were rush hour. Grace wondered again how late it was, but there was no time to dwell on that now. Brushing the icy leaves off of her skirt, she stepped out onto the side of the road and stuck out her thumb, the way she’d seen people do on TV.
I wonder how long it’ll take for someone to stop. If I don’t get inside soon, I could die of hypothermia.
A squad car screamed out of the darkness, blue lights flashing, sirens blaring. Instinctively Grace leaped back for the cover of the trees, twisting her ankle on the icy hard ground. It was agony but she didn’t dare cry out, holding her breath in the darkness, waiting for the police car to slow or pull over. It didn’t. After a few seconds the dying wail of the sirens faded to nothing. Grace crawled back out to the roadside.
Standing there, thumb out, stamping her feet against the subzero temperatures, Grace started to sway. She’d barely eaten all day, and the fall from the truck had left her weak and dizzy. Lights from the cars’ headlamps began to merge into one solid orange glow. In Grace’s frozen, confused state, it looked warm and welcoming. Half conscious, she staggered toward it. The deafening blare of a truck horn brought her back to her senses.
‘Are you outta your mind, lady?’
A man had stopped. Pulled over onto the hard shoulder, he was talking to Grace out of the driver’s-side window. Middle-aged, with a thick black mustache and dark eyes that sat flat on his face, he looked like he might be part Asian, but it was tough to be sure in the darkness. He was driving a light blue van with TOMMY’S YARD SERVICES written on the side in bold black lettering.
‘Don’t you have a coat?’
Grace shook her head. Pretty soon her whole body was shaking, racked with cold and exhaustion. The man reached over and opened the passenger door.
‘Get in.’
Detective Mitch Connors returned to his desk in a pensive mood.
Is this a good thing, or a bad thing?
Tall, blond, athletic and altogether too big for his glass-walled office, Mitch Connors looked more like a football pro than a cop. Sinking into his uncomfortable chair (Helen had bought him the damn thing two years ago, for his back pain. It had won a bunch of design awards, apparently, and cost a small fortune, so he couldn’t throw it away, but Mitch had always hated it), he stretched out his legs and tried to think.
Do I really want this case?
On the one hand, his boss had just handed him what would, in a few short hours, become the biggest, most high-profile investigation in the country. Late last night, Grace Brookstein had pulled off a dramatic escape from maximum-security prison. It would be Mitch Connors’s job to find her, apprehend her and haul her thieving, designer-clad ass back to jail.
His boss said, ‘You’re the best, Mitch. I wouldn’t put you on this if you weren’t.’ And Mitch had felt a warm glow. But now he felt something else. Something bad. For the life of him, Mitch couldn’t remember what it was.
He blamed the chair. It was so torturous, no wonder he couldn’t concentrate. Ergonomic, my ass. I figure Helen bought it on purpose to torment me. To pay me back for all the shit I put her through. Then he thought, That’s bullshit, Connors, and you know it.
Helen wasn’t like that. She was an angel. Saint Helen of Pittsburgh, patron saint of tolerance.
And you drove her away.
Mitch Connors had grown up in Pittsburgh. He was born in the well-to-do suburb of Monroeville, where his mom was a local beauty queen. She married Mitch’s dad, an inventor, when she was nineteen. Mitch arrived a year later and the couple’s happiness was complete.
For
