Page 95 of The Chain House

Warden Wren raised his voice. “Tell us what’s in the book!”

“Maybe if you tell the room you have a mistress.”

Warden Wren stood rigid, backed away, giving Batise a look that said how dare you, and it was clear to Sam the two of them had had some kind of arrangement and Batise had just broken it.

Governor Hawthorne shook his head. “I couldn’t give two fucks about your personal life, Warden.” And then to Batise, “Tell me, in the book, the governor’s wife is kidnapped by Oliver Crown. Does she live?”

“Is she in the next book?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t read them.”

“Well, maybe you should,” said Batise. “But no, she does not, because Oliver Crown, as I wrote him, will do anything to gain power. He will lie and cheat and murder anyone to get to the top.”

“So he’s going to kill her no matter what?”

“That would be my guess.”

Hawthorne began pacing the room, flexing and unflexing his hands, seething with every step.

Batise said, “But it seems you’ve put more faith in the man out there than the one sitting right in front of you.”

“And what can you offer me?”

“The location of Oliver Crown’s house.”

Agent Givens said, “Where is it?”

Batise grinned at Governor Hawthorne. “Grant my stay.”

“I can’t.”

“Then we’ll have to see if he keeps his word,” Batise said. “And perhaps we’ll never know if Emily Hawthorne still lives.”

“You’re going to burn in hell,” Governor Hawthorne said.

“Maybe,” said Batise. “But not yet. So trust him, Governor, or trust me. You’ve got ninety minutes. Tick-tock, tick-tock …”

Hawthorne stormed out of the room, and on his way out said to Sam, “Find out where Oliver Crown lives.” And to Agent Givens, “Find her laptop.”

CHAPTER48

TREVOR WAS SURPRISED when his phone rang.

He’d hoped it was Sam, but when he saw the number wasn’t in his contacts, he didn’t answer.

He and Lizzie were already on edge, having, they thought, distanced themselves enough from the mob at the Freedom Ranch to relax from that danger, but the threat of the unknown loomed larger now that they were without a car and every step taken down the dark country road took them that much closer to midnight.

And, he feared, farther away from Justice Minks.

They’d been walking the road, throwing up thumbs to each passing vehicle, but after ten minutes, they’d had no luck. He didn’t even know where they were heading even if a car should pull over for them.

His phone battery was down to 45 percent and he was trying to use it sparingly. They’d need it to track Lizzie’s phone. It had been her idea, adding him to her Life360. That part was easy. The hard part had been escaping the house back at the ranch while the dozen or more men—and a few women, they’d noticed—had gone inside to discover two of their own, one dead and the other badly injured, one at the foot of the stairs with a gunshot wound and a broken neck and the other in the dining room with a blown-up knee. But when he and Lizzie were sure all the arrivals had gone into the house, probably upstairs to gather the ammunition and weapons, they had sneaked through the woods toward his car. If it hadn’t been boxed in, they might have tried to take it. But even if there had been a gap to get out, they feared being heard pulling away, and the last thing they wanted was to be pursued by a dozen vehicles who probably knew the roads much better than they did. So they’d moved as quietly as they could toward the cluster of vehicles parked around the house, a mixture of trucks and SUVs and Jeeps and sedans, and Lizzie had placed her phone, on silent, on the backseat floorboard of an extended truck. By the time she’d quietly closed the door, the dead body must have been discovered inside the house, because someone had started screaming, “Nooooooo,” just as someone else repeatedly wailed Ray’s name.

Trevor and Lizzie were deep into the shadows of the woods by the time four of the men stormed out of the house with what looked like AR-15s. Two broke off in opposite directions. The other two spotted Trevor’s unfamiliar car and searched it, inside and out, before unloading countless bullets into the vehicle, walking away only after it had been reduced to a heap of hissing steam. They must have gone back inside to regroup and load what Trevor had seen in that upstairs bedroom earlier, because as he tracked Lizzie’s phone, they were only now pulling away from the old ranch. At least, the truck with Lizzie’s phone inside it was leaving.

And while they’d been hoping for headlights in either direction, hoping that next vehicle would be the one to stop and give them a ride, what Trevor sensed behind them was an army. He looked over his shoulder to see he was right, and then quickly led Lizzie toward the roadside trees to hide until they passed, which they did seconds later, in speeding blurs and loud engines and pissed-off drivers. Once their taillights faded into the dark tunnel of night ahead, Trevor and Lizzie stepped back out onto the road, at which point his phone rang again.

Same number as before, but this time he answered it. “Hello?”