Larger Than Life Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Epilogue

  To Kate Duffy,

  'Nuff said

  Acknowledgments

  This book, though based in fact, is purely fiction. I've twisted and bent and distorted and warped the inspiration into the end product. Such is the stuff of make-believe.

  As always, I can't do a damn thing without Jan Freed holding my hand and vetting every word.

  I'd like to thank Jill Shalvis for the emergency early read, Jolie Kramer, too. Jolie, in fact, deserves further recognition. She taught me to pace and to plot. In that regard, Cherry Adair helped as well, though she may not even know it.

  To my critters, Emma Gads, Larissa Ione, Lydia Joyce. Thanks bunches!

  And special smoochies to my family for putting up with a woman who lives in the closet, rarely cooks, never cleans, seldom listens, but loves you all very very much!

  Myra Fleener: A man your age comes to a place like this, either he's running away from something or he has nowhere else to go.

  Coach Norman Dale: What I'm doing here has nothing to do with you.

  —Hoosiers (1986)

  Prologue

  "Run, Liberty! Run, run, run!"

  She couldn't run because she couldn't see where she was going. Didn't he get that? She couldn't breathe. She couldn't think. He was out of his mind.

  "Jase, I can't!" She sobbed, choked, stopped, and wailed, "I can't!"

  She spit hair from out of her mouth, spit dirt, swore she spit bugs. It was gross and disgusting, and he was never going to get away with what he'd done anyway, so why did she have to run?

  Jase came back to where she stood clawing her hair from her face. He grabbed her wrist and jerked her forward, practically breaking her arm. "You better move your ass or I'm going to leave you here, got it?"

  She nodded, whimpered, stumbled along behind him. She was wearing her best pair of sandals and she'd spent all afternoon doing her toenails for tonight's date. And now it was all ruined.

  Ruined.

  Ruined because Jase was stupid and greedy. Stealing money from the printing and office supply store where he worked—what was wrong with him? They paid him more than minimum wage, good enough money to take her out for a salad and Diet Coke anytime she wanted to go.

  All he had to do was make the store's deliveries and daily deposits, running some of the money into Carlsbad or El Paso because of the banks being bigger or something like that. Why did he have to be stupid enough to take what wasn't his? Why did she have to—

  "Jase!" She tripped, wrenched her wrist from his hand, and went down to the ground in the dark. Dirt clods and rocks the size of Lego pieces dug into her hands and her knees.

  She pushed up to a kneeling position, picked the grit from her palms. Tears blurred her eyes and made it impossible to see anything. It was too dark to see anything anyway. The moon was out, but they were in the middle of freakin' nowhere on his father's ranch.

  She just knew they were lost, and wished at least they were lost on an island with a beach like those people on that show she used to watch before her parents got religion and banned TV from the house. She hated Texas and was never going to forgive either of them for moving her away from California and .all of her friends.

  Jase skidded to his knees beside her, throwing more dust into the air for her to gag on. She tried not to cough, tried not to cry. She even held back yelling at him for being so dumb since it hadn't done any good so far. But then he pulled her head to his chest and cuddled her close, and she forgot why she was mad.

  This was all she wanted, being with a boy who liked her, away from her parents and the stupid way they tried to run her life, even though she knew she was really lucky. A bunch of girls her age at school had been promised by their parents to men old enough to be their fathers.

  Men already married to two or three other women. It made her sick to her stomach to even think about it! Like, who would want to sleep with a guy and get sloppy seconds?

  "Liberty, listen." Jase set her away from him, lifted her chin. "I know you're tired and scared, but we're almost there. We've got to be. I just didn't know it would take so long on foot. I'm usually on my ATV."

  Yeah. Not to mention he was usually stoned since he used the hunting blind to smoke pot. "They're going to find us anyway."

  "Maybe." He sat back, rubbed his hands up and down his thighs, the denim all scratchy and loud in the really quiet wide open spaces. "But maybe we can hide out until this shit blows over."

  Dumb. He was dumb, dumb, dumb. And she was dumb to hang out with him.

  "It's not going to blow over, Jase. Your boss is going to send Holden Wagner after you, you know that. Holden freakin' Wagner! God! He takes care of all the legal stuff with the businesses in town, and he'll take care of you, too!" She pulled away, curled into a ball on the ground, totally ruining her outfit.

  Holden Wagner was a big-shot lawyer in Earnestine Township where she and Jase lived, and one of the most powerful men she'd ever met. Everyone knew him from the church and from around town, Earnestine being such a dinky dot on the map and Holden being the only lawyer and into everybody's business.

  A lot of girls at school thought he was hot. Liberty supposed he was. He was only like thirty-five or something, and wore clothes that she'd never seen anywhere but in People Magazine or on the People's Choice Awards.

  But still! He could turn a molehill of evidence into a big fat mountain and put Jase away forever! Then what would she do? Who would she have to date? How would she ever get away from this dump? She didn't have anyone else on her side!

  Jase tried to clear his throat. "Yeah, well, Holden's not really the one I'm worried about."

  Liberty heard the break in his voice and grew still. "What do you mean, he's not the one you're worried about? Who else is there?"

  "Holden may be all powerful, but even he can't get away with murder. I'm not so sure that's the case with the guys I'm dealing with here. The amount of money I took? It can't be legal, which means they won't be going to the sheriff. They'll be taking care of it themselves."

  She sat up slowly, her ears ringing with the word murder. Murder! Her heart thudded in her throat until she thought she would never again be able to breathe.

  "Jase? What's going on?" Her hands were shaking so badly, she drew up her legs to her chest and tucked her fingers in the pits of her knees. Her voice cracked and she barely managed to whisper, "Tell me what's going on."

  Jase sighed, hung his head. Light from the moon made his bleached blond hair look white, the spikes look like tufts of dead grass. The hoop in his ear sparkled. Sweat ran down his cheeks from his temples. "It wasn't only a couple grand like I said." .

  "What are you talking about?" Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!

  "It was a couple hundred grand. There's no way it was all the store's money."

  She started rocking back and forth where she sat. "You stole two hundred thousand dollars?"

  He shoved both hands through his hair, clamped them down on top of his head. "The deposit slip said one thing, but there was an extra two hundred G's in the bag."

  "So you just kept it? Not even knowing whose it was?" She sounded hysterical. Shoot, she was hysterical! "What is wr
ong with you? What were you thinking?"

  "I was thinking about us, Lib," he yelled back, really screaming now. His voice echoed in the night. "I was thinking about you. I want us to get out of here. Me off the ranch and away from my dad. You so far away from your parents that they could never force you to marry some old geezer."

  He was rocking now, too, and almost crying. "This town is fucked up, Lib. Pastor Straight's hold over everyone is insane. It's like a commune or a cult, and the way the church treats the women is as bad as the Taliban. I'm not going to stay here. I want you to come with me. We only have to hide out a few days, wait for whoever the money belongs to to lose our trail, then we can hitch to Mexico."

  Everything he was saying suddenly made so much sense. She'd been so wrong. He wasn't stupid. Not if he could get her out of here. He was smart, and she decided then that she loved him and wanted to be with him forever. "Don't you think they'll look for you in the hunting blind?"

  "No, see, that's the beauty of this." He scooted closer, excited now. "My dad tore down the blind two seasons back. He hasn't leased out that plot since and has no idea I put it back up and come out here all the time."

  She didn't respond right away, and he went on. "We'll only stay tonight if it makes you feel better. We'll hide out long enough to come up with another plan. That's all we've gotta do, Lib. That's all."

  His desperation tugged at her heartstrings like he was playing music just for her. "Okay, okay. But I broke the thong on my shoe and have to go barefoot. I don't know if I can keep up with you."

  He got to his feet, brushed dirt from the butt and knees of his jeans. "C'mon. I'll piggyback you."

  He was so totally cute sometimes. She shook her head. She could do this. She could. "No, I'll be fine." She pulled off the scarf she'd wrapped around her waist like a belt. "I'll just tie the shoe to my foot—"

  "Shh. Listen." He backed a couple of steps away. "Do you hear that?"

  She did. A diesel engine grinding hard as the truck it belonged to fought the uneven terrain. She knew the sound well. Eighty percent of Earnestine's population of just under four thousand drove the same.

  She finished tying her shoe to her foot, though she didn't know why she bothered. They'd issue her some pair of tacky granny lace-ups in jail, because back in California she'd watched enough cop shows to know she'd be charged as an accessory. Unless she was killed, too, she thought with a big, fat, ugly-sounding sob.

  "Stay here," Jase ordered. "Don't move. I'm going to draw them away."

  "No, Jase!" Panic rose in her throat and tasted like the bad, cheesy ranch dressing she'd had on her salad at the Dairy Barn.

  "I'll lose them and circle back to get you. Just stay put."

  He would never find this place again. She'd be lost out here forever. "Wait! I'll come with you!"

  But he was already running away. "I love you, Liberty. I love you!"

  "Jase, no!" She couldn't even see him anymore. He'd vanished into the darkness. She was alone with dirt and rocks and creepy crawly things. This was all so sucky and so so stupid.

  The truck was getting closer. She could hear the gears shifting, hear men shouting. Shaking like mad, she wrapped her arms around her knees and tucked her chin to her chest, praying Jase was as fast dodging tumbleweeds as he was dodging tackles on the football field.

  A second later she heard a loud thudding pop. What looked like a bottle rocket arched up and burst in the sky. A flare, she realized, just as she heard the voices yelling.

  "There he is!"

  "Get the sonofabitch!"

  "Go, go, go!"

  The driver gunned the truck, drowning out any further words she might've heard. She felt the dampness on her cheeks only when her tears soaked into the knees of her jeans.

  The second shot she heard was not from a flare gun. Neither were the three that followed. When she heard Jase scream, her entire body jolted. When she heard laughter and howling, she began to shake uncontrollably.

  It wasn't until she heard footsteps behind her that she managed to go blessedly numb.

  She lifted her chin, lifted her gaze, watched the figure of a man come toward her like a ghost out of the dark. Once he was near enough for her to see him better, her being numb came in handy. She couldn't react. Not to his camo fatigues. Not to his assault rifle. Not to the knife hanging from his belt halfway down his thigh.

  When he reached her, he held out a hand. She gave him her fingers, eerily white against his black skin, and he pulled her to her feet. Then he pointed toward the sky.

  "Do you know of the North Star, Miss Mitchell?"

  Oh, God, he knew her name. He knew her name! It sounded strange when he said it; his accent reminded her of the rapper Sean Paul that Jase was constantly listening to. It was like Jamaican or something . . .

  "Miss Mitchell? The North Star?"

  She nodded, her teeth chattering as she found the point in the sky. "My folks used to take me and my brother camping when we lived in California. Before they got all into Jesus and we moved here." At least here she'd met Jase. They were like two peas in a pod, both hating Earnestine.

  Or at least they had been . .. "What happened to Jase? Where is he? He didn't mean anything bad by taking that money. We just both want to get out of this town—"

  "You must do what I say now, Miss Mitchell, and not worry about your Mr. Bremmer. Do you understand?" He took her by the shoulders, turned her to face him. "There is nothing you can do for him now."

  She nodded, tears welling in her eyes, wondering if her hair would look as good as his did in dreadlocks, wondering if she would ever see Jase again, wondering where she was going to go because she couldn't go home.

  Wondering how anyone could be so nice when he took the bandana from his head and used it to wipe the tears from her cheeks.

  "You follow the North Star for an hour and you will come to the county highway. You walk and you do not speak of tonight to anyone. You do not ask questions. You act as if none of what you heard or saw happened. If you do, you may very possibly die. And I may very possibly be the one to kill you. Do you understand?"

  She didn't understand anything. "Nothing," she wanted to scream. Instead she asked, "Where am I supposed to go?"

  "You are only supposed to walk. That is all that you can do." He placed his hand in the middle of her back and pushed. "Now go. Go before it is too late."

  She'd only gone twenty steps when her shoe came off. She was not going to be able to walk like this for an hour and turned back to tell him so, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  God, if her parents hadn't gotten all righteous and moved here for the family's spiritual good, she would have dozens of places to go and people to help her. If she actually made it to the highway, maybe she could hitch to El Paso and find a library where she could get on the Internet.

  She had to find that website. The one she'd overheard Sherry Petersen whisper about to Teresa Monaghan the day after Sherry's sister went missing and her wedding to Mr. Gaston was canceled.

  Sherry swore her sister was with the woman who ran the rescue shelter for girls escaping the arranged marriages in Earnestine. What was it? What was it?

  All Liberty could remember was something about a barn.

  One

  One week later

  The structure shimmered like a mirage on the horizon.

  Waves of heat danced above the hard-packed earth and around the hulking concrete bunker, nondescript, deceptive. A squat bulge like a pregnant belly atop the life teeming below, where the Spectra IT command center monitored the crime syndicate's Western U.S. activity.

  And where the syndicate's filthy lucre was sent to begin the process of laundering. Deposits here, wire transfers there. This bank, that bank. Tricky sleights of hand.

  Mick Savin dropped his binoculars and squinted against New Mexico's fireball of a sun glaring angrily over the Chihuahuan Desert. He was barely over the Texas border, but the bloody bitch in heat seemed to beat down with twice the number of red-
hot hammers she had fifteen miles ago.

  He'd left his Range Rover parked just inside the gate off U.S. Highway 62 and had hoofed it the two hours it had taken to get here—here being deep inside the seventy thousand acres of working cattle ranch that served as Spectra's cover.

  His own cover, provided by the Smithson Group, the covert spy organization paying him a hell of a hefty salary, was that of a hunter scoping out prime locations for mule deer season. He had his paperwork in order and every reason to be exactly where he was . . . almost.

  His leased plot, the one designated in the documents above the Rover's driver's-side visor, was approximately sixteen clicks north. The fact that he'd run across the bunker's location at all was pure dumb luck.

  Up until a month ago, he'd been chasing leads gathered in Coahuila, Mexico, by Smithson Group operatives Eli McKenzie and Harry van Zandt. The pair had managed to nail down a nice hard body of evidence before the explosion—the one that had wiped the holding center for Spectra's kidnapping and prostitution ring off the map along with a good chunk of Smithson intel.

  All these weeks later, and Mick was still blowing the stench of that fireball out of his nose. The trail he'd most recently been following, the one that had brought him to New Mexico to begin with, was part of the continuing effort to tie up the loose ends of the mission that had kept Eli and Rabbit in Mexico for months.

  Three days ago, Mick had been in Carlsbad looking for the missing girl that Stella Banks, Eli's woman, had originally headed south of the border to find, when he'd picked up thirty seconds of a scrambled communication.

  In a panic, he'd relayed it to Manhattan and to Tripp Shaughnessey at the communications desk in the SG-5 ops center. Tripp had only been able to narrow the broadcast to an area boxed in roughly by Fort Bliss, Alamogordo, Denver City, and Odessa.

  SG-5 had hustled to get Mick in, get him outfitted, and done so quick-like-a-bunny once they'd narrowed down the location of the Spectra IT command center. Mick had taken it from there .. . and ended up here.

  He eased from his stomach onto his side and let out two sharp bursts of a whistle. FM, the herd dog mix he'd picked up at the El Paso pound, trotted over on monstrous feet, shoulders rolling, tongue lolling inches from the ground.