“No way Jane would leave this gate open. Keys on the ground. Son of a bitch.”
“Do you have body armor, Sheriff?”
He tipped back his hat. “Yeah, yeah. Son of a bitch,” he said again. “She’d never leave the gate open.”
“Let’s suit up. Call for backup. My partner and I will take the lead from here. He’s our quarry.”
He aimed a hard look at Morrison. “If he hurt Jane, he’s mine now, too.”
After they’d put on vests, they drove through the gate.
“He’s not here anymore, Tee. He got a whiff of us, that’s what this means.”
Face grim, she kept driving.
“There’s the red truck, and groceries all over the ground. Front door open, that outbuilding door open.”
“Somebody had a temper tantrum,” Morrison muttered.
“Looks like it, but let’s not get shot being wrong.”
She drove between the outbuilding and the cabin, and using the car as a shield, they got out.
“Gavin Rozwell! This is the FBI. Come out with your hands up.”
No sound but chickens clucking, pigs rooting.
She picked up a rock, tossed it to draw fire. And nothing stirred. She tossed another so it banged against the house.
“Okay, Quentin, let’s clear it.”
They came out of cover, stayed low as they ran to the door. He swept first, went in high as she swept and went low.
The place smelled of sweat and dust and looked like the scene of a bar fight.
They cleared it, and the shed.
“She has a Ford Ranger pickup, a … 2015 or ’16, I think—and I’ll confirm that,” Neederman told them. “Blue, a medium blue, and I’ll get the plates. Would he have taken her with him?”
“That’s very doubtful.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m going to look around for her,” he told Beck. “And the goat.”
“He had to see us, this morning. He had to see us, or why run like this after buying all the food?” Beck had to stop herself from kicking the melting packages. “He came out of the market and saw us. Or he’d loaded up already. Likely that. He got in the truck, drove here, did this, got what he wanted, and went.”
“Running again, Tee.” Because they both needed it, he put a hand on her shoulder. “He’s running again, running scared and mad with it. Let’s get the alerts out on her truck.”
“She’s back here!” Neederman called out. “And the goat. Jesus, what’s left of them’s back here. He just dumped her on the ground,” he said when they joined him. “Just tossed her on the ground for the scavengers.”
Chapter Thirty
Morgan opened the door for Jake on a sultry midmorning that begged for storms.
“Come in. Should I make coffee? Are we going to need it?”
He shut the door behind him. “Why don’t we go for something cold. Your ladies around?”
“No, they’re at work.”
Whatever he’d come to tell her, it was bad. She felt the bad crawling under her skin.
“I don’t think the sun tea’s finished yet, but we’ve got Cokes.”
“That’ll be great. Morgan, are you okay hearing about Rozwell from me? You can contact the FBI if you want it straight from the source.”
“I appreciate you taking the time to tell me yourself.” Steady, she thought, look how steady her hands were as she filled glasses with ice. The panic days were over.
“He killed someone else, didn’t he? I can just feel it knotted in my stomach.”
“Yes. Why don’t we sit down here and I’ll tell you everything they gave me. I’ll tell you what happened yesterday in Nevada.”
“Nevada. So they were right about him going south. I like knowing they were right. It’s something.”
As he told her, Morgan sat back, stunned. “I can’t see it, I honestly can’t see him living in some prepper’s cabin in the middle of nowhere. I can see him killing her, and I’m sorry for it, but the rest?”
“You broke him. That’s my take on it. You broke his streak, and that broke him. I’ll give credit to the FBI, and Beck’s solid instincts, but she and her partner would be the first to admit hitting that town the same morning Rozwell came in for supplies was just blind luck.”
“And they think he was there a couple of weeks?”
“Close to three. They’ve tracked his victim to her last trip into town. It’s not unusual for no one to see her for a month, even more. They have her coming in to sell eggs, milk, some leather goods. She bought supplies, gassed up her truck nearly three weeks ago. And they’ve tracked Rozwell back to a motel about thirty miles away, up until the day she went into Two Springs.”