“You’ll serve a very long time,” Sarah said.
“This is not an idle threat on our part,” Max said.
“Not a threat,” Sarah repeated, giving Rachel the dagger eyes again. “I can’t wait to put you behind bars.”
“Unless, Sarah.”
“Unless what, Max?”
“Unless she cooperates. Here and now.”
Sarah frowned. “I don’t think we need her, Max.”
“You’re probably right, but maybe Ms. Anderson didn’t know what she was getting involved in. Maybe she didn’t understand what she was doing.”
“Oh, she understood.”
“But still—we agreed, Sarah. If Rachel tells us what she knows now, we give her full immunity.”
“That was before, Max. Now I want her to serve time for jerking us around like this.”
“You have a point, Sarah.”
Rachel stayed silent.
“This is your last chance,” Max said. “Your ‘get out of jail free’ card expires in three minutes.”
“Then we arrest her, Max?”
“Then we arrest her, Sarah.”
Sarah folded her hands and put them on the table. “So what do you say, Rachel?”
“I changed my mind,” Rachel said. “I want my lawyer.”
Chapter
17
Okay, Sarah, give me the most likely working theory,” Max said.
Max and Sarah headed toward Newark Airport to catch a flight back up to Briggs Penitentiary. It had turned out that the attorney Rachel Anderson called was the notorious Hester Crimstein, who promptly got her bail and released.
“Stop chewing your nails, Max.”
“Let me be, Sarah, okay?”
“It’s gross.”
“It helps me think.”
Sarah sighed.
“So what’s our working theory?”
“Burroughs escapes with the help of Philip and Adam Mackenzie,” Sarah began.
“We are sure the Mackenzies are in it?”
“I think we are.”
“I think we are too,” Max said. “Continue.”
“Burroughs gets out of the warden’s car in the underground parking garage at the outlet center. He calls Rachel Anderson, who is waiting for his call at the Nesbitt Station Diner. Rachel drives over to the outlet center. With me so far, Max?”
“Yep. Keep going.”
“She meets up with Burroughs. Burroughs gets in her car.”
“And then?”
“They head up north. We have that last phone ping.”
“Which is odd.”
“How so?”
“Why turn the phone off then?” Max asked. “Why not earlier?”
“If she turns it off at the outlet center, we would know that’s where she went.”
Max frowned. “Yeah, I guess, maybe.”
“But?”
Max shook it off. “Go on.”
“They keep driving to that general store—”
“The Katahdin General Store,” Max added, “in Millinocket.”
“Right, where he buys the survival gear. Based on the traffic patterns and timeline I put together, I’d say she had time to drive him farther north for another half hour or so. Either way, Rachel drops Burroughs off in some heavily wooded area. We have copters and dogs covering it, but the area is black-hole vast.”
“And then?”
Sarah shrugged. “And then that’s it.”
“So what’s Burroughs’s plan now?”
“I’m not sure, Max. Maybe he plans to hide in the national parks. Wait us out. Maybe he plans to sneak across the border into Canada.”
Max worked the fingernail hard.
“You don’t buy it,” Sarah said.
“I don’t buy it.”
“Tell me why.”
“Too many holes. Burroughs is a city kid. Does he have any survivalist experience?”
“Maybe. Or maybe he thinks, how hard could it be? Maybe he thinks he has no choice.”
“It’s not adding up, Sarah.”
“What’s not adding up, Max?”
“Let’s start at the top: Was this escape planned out in advance?”
“Had to be.”
“If so, wow, it’s a pretty wacky plan.”
“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “I think it was pretty ingenious.”
“How so?”
“It’s so simple. Burroughs just grabs the gun and walks out with Mackenzie. No tunnels to dig. No trucks to hijack or garbage cans to hide in. None of that. If that guard…what was his name again?”
“Weston. Ted Weston.”
“Right. If Weston doesn’t look out the window at just the right time—if he doesn’t spot the warden and Burroughs getting into the car—they’re home free. No one would have reported Burroughs missing for hours.”
Max thought about it. “So let’s follow that trail, shall we, Sarah?”
“We shall, Max.”
“When it all went wrong—when Weston sounded the alarm—your theory is that they were then forced to improvise.”
“Exactly,” Sarah said.
Max considered that. “That would explain Burroughs’s call to Rachel when she was at the diner. If Rachel was in on it from the get-go, he wouldn’t have had to make that call. She’d have already been in place to pick him up.”
“Interesting,” Sarah said. “Are we now theorizing that Rachel Anderson wasn’t part of the original breakout plan?”
“I don’t know.”
“But it isn’t a coincidence. Her visiting Burroughs on the day he breaks out.”
“Not a coincidence,” Max agreed. He started working on a fresh hangnail. “But, Sarah?”
“What, Max?”
“We are still missing something. Something pretty big.”
Chapter
18
I stand on Twelfth Street in New York City and eat the most wonderful slice of pepperoni pizza ever created, from a place called Zazzy’s.
I am free.
I don’t think I believe it yet. Do you know that feeling when a dream gets weird—good weird, in this case—and suddenly, right in the middle of your nocturnal voyage, you realize that you may indeed be asleep, dreaming, and you fear you’re going to wake up and so you try desperately to stay asleep, clinging tightly to the images in your head, even as they fade away? That is what I’ve been experiencing for the past few hours. I am terrified that soon my eyes will open, and I will be back in Briggs instead of standing on this urine-scented （a smell I welcome because you supposedly don’t have scents in your dream） city street.
I stand across the street from where Harriet Winchester aka Hilde Winslow now resides.
I escaped today. It boggles my mind. Less than twenty-four hours ago, a prison guard at Briggs tried to murder me. Then, when it seemed that I, the victim, would be blamed for the attack, Philip and Adam broke me out. The crazy events of the day—all in this same day that is still ongoing—come hurtling toward me. I try to volley them away and focus on the task at hand.
Hilde Winslow had lied on the stand and helped convict me. The answer to why is my first step in rescuing my son.
Rescuing my son.