The Survivor - Cristin Harber Page 0,74
reach for the Black Hawk’s dangling lines.
“Airborne,” they announced.
“JPATS headlights rounding the bend,” Boreas warned.
“Copy that,” Parker said. “Get over and out.”
Hagan caught his breath, decompressing from the exertion, and it wasn’t until he turned in the tight quarters and saw William Taylor Morris comatose that he remembered how to be human again. The worst of humanity roared to mind. Hagan tasted revenge. This man had stolen Dylan’s life. In a way, he’d taken Amanda from him, too.
“Two minutes,” Parker announced.
The ambulance slowed and exited the highway. Road noise mixed with the slow-and-steady suck and whoosh of forced air into the man’s lungs. There wouldn’t be much time left, and Chance and Camden hadn’t said a word. Hagan’s heart slammed against his ribs, and a cold sweat broke out on his back the same way it had when he’d testified at the sentencing hearing, promising that life in prison wasn’t enough.
Hagan could hold Chance and Camden back if they tried to stop him. He could simply flip the ventilator’s switch, and it would be done.
“BamBam Rescue, hold your position,” Parker ordered. “JPATS falling back.”
The ambulance slowed, stopped, then crept forward again.
“Field coordinator waving you through,” Parker explained.
Hagan tried to picture the compound on the side of the mountain where Halle had taken the First Lady and Amanda and how Halle thought this would end. What would she do with her dying partner? He didn’t know how they could escape and survive.
Then it struck him. What Boss Man hadn’t explained. What his teammates already realized. Halle had no intention of going anywhere. ACES wasn’t only ensuring the safe delivery of the first family, but preventing an additional murder-suicide.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The ambulance rumbled as it climbed the moonlit mountainside. Rocks skittered under its tires. Chance and Camden perched against the back doors.
“On our mark,” Parker called.
Chance unlocked the back doors and held them ajar. Time ticked by as they crawled up a hill.
“Now,” Boss Man said as if he’d pulled a trigger. “Go one and two.”
Chance and Camden stepped from the climbing vehicle onto a curving makeshift road along a steep embankment. The ambulance maneuvered around an uneven bend, and Hagan’s teammates disappeared into the sharp angle of the woods as he caught then secured the doors.
He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to the cold metal. Every federal agency had tucked themselves onto a side of this mountain, ready to descend through the forest like wolves. They didn’t need a prisoner to exchange. They could save Amanda and her mom without handing over his brother’s killer.
Alone, Hagan turned and moved to the side of the stretcher. The ambulance stopped. The warning cry of its reverse sirens wailed. The ambulance veered as if lost footing. It quickly lurched forward, jostling Hagan. “What the hell?”
“Can’t get eyes on you,” Parker said. “What’s going on?”
They stopped on a steep incline. A back wheel spun without traction then lurched hard enough to knock Hagan to his knees. “Car trouble.”
Supplies rolled on the floor. The suck and whoosh stopped. He turned toward the stretcher. Morris’s body struggled as his machine didn’t make a damn sound.
Hagan felt everything that Morris stood for, everything that he took away—then Hagan saw a plug had been knocked loose as supplies fell. A switch hadn’t flipped. The grim reaper hadn’t called. A goddamn unconnected wire had left William Taylor Morris’s life in Hagan’s hands.
Suffocating gasps sputtered, and Morris strained. Hagan waited for satisfaction to soothe the anger in his heart as he watched the killer struggle against death.
It didn’t come, and instead of relishing in the retribution, he found a harder task than murder—a single, undeserved act of mercy. Hagan reconnected the plug.
The suck-whoosh returned. The strangled dying ceased. Hagan held his breath until his lungs burned and let it go when he was certain that had been the right thing to do.
The ambulance stopped. The parking brake applied. The heavy vehicle settled into place.
“Target is on the move,” Parker said.
Hagan listened for what would come next. With Halle outside the home, Chance and Camden would move in.
“Twenty yards and closing,” Parker reported.
“Sparkler and Scientist found,” Chance reported. “Happy and healthy.”
“If not pissed,” Camden added.
The corner of Hagan’s lips quirked. “I bet.”
“She’s ten feet and running, strapped as if she’s going to war.”
Hagan heard his heartbeat as he waited for Halle to arrive. The ambulance driver and his partner had been instructed to let her enter from the back and wait for federal ground command to approve the exchange. Halle didn’t