Page 9 of One Last Chance

He turned back, jogging out to meet the officers. She stood in the rain, her gaze on the woman cuffed to the pole.

The woman stared back, unblinking, her jaw tight, fear in her eyes.

No, not the mastermind. Maybe even a victim of the killer’s psychosis.

Flynn turned, flicked on the flashlight of her cell phone, and followed it down the pathway back to the riverbank.

The victim lay on the shore, her hands and feet bound with duct tape, her mouth also taped, just like the ten plus victims before her.

Flynn knelt next to her, shone her light on her face.

Held her breath.Please?—

She took in the dark hair, the green eyes, now open, affixed in horror. But it wasn’t Kennedy.

Of course it wasn’t Kennedy. But sometimes—no,everytime—she braced herself, just in case.

Flynn got up, stared out at the dark river, the lights of the Minneapolis city skyline rising downstream to glare upon the river.

Then she closed her eyes and let the rain do the weeping for her.

CHAPTER2

“Stop circling.”

Axel looked over at Sully, who sat in the front seat of Levi’s truck, his arm hitched over the console, looking back at him.

“You’re caught in a rescue loop.”

Axel nodded, his mouth pinching along the edges. Except, of course, it wasn’t the loop Sully thought—the one with the Roberts family. No, this one went way back, surfaced every time he ran that stupid river.

“Have you heard from Moose?” He leaned up to Levi, in the front seat. It had taken over two hours after he’d dispatched the Roberts family into the Air One chopper for the guys to gather their gear and portage their kayaks up the Bowie Camp road, where they waited for Levi to retrieve his truck with the racks. They strapped on the kayaks, then climbed into the four-door cab and headed toward the town of Copper Mountain.

“He called in just as I was picking up the truck, said they made it back to base. The sheriff met them at the airport. I guess they went to the clinic,” Levi said. He looked at Axel. “Maybe you should, too.”

“I’m fine.”

“You got pretty scraped up in the water.”

Axel gave him a look, and Levi lifted a hand in surrender.

“How far did you have to go to get a signal?” Axel asked. “And maybe I’ll let you turn up the heat.”

Levi grinned and turned it up. “Not even to the highway. I would have gone up to Sully’s place, but he still uses smoke signals.”

“It’s off-grid for a reason, bro,” Sully said. He’d dried off too, now wore a baseball cap over his long hair. Levi wore a bandanna over his brown hair, and beside him, Jude Remington had tied his own bandanna around his short dark hair like a redneck. He looked like one too, in his military pants and black pullover. Like he might be a prepper, maybe. Or an outlaw. Or just . . . a maverick, living on his own terms.

But maybe that was the Alaskan life as a whole. Sully lived in the woods for most of the year, a hunting and fishing guide with Bowie Mountain Gear, while Jude helped run his family’s gold-mining operation west of town.

Even Levi had vanished off grid for a while, although now he ran a pizza joint in Copper Mountain. Which, apparently, Jude remembered. “How about we swing by the Northstar and grab some overorders?”

Levi glanced over his shoulder. “Anything for the television star.”

Axel rolled his eyes.

Sully shook his head.

“I like it. How many episodes are there?” Jude asked. “I’ve only seen two.”

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