burning. She was desperate for air. She heard voices. Jonas was here. Tyler looked toward the barn door, momentarily loosening his grip and giving her the distraction she needed. She found the metal bar and wrapped her fingers around it. With a grunt, she managed to shove him away and stumble to her feet. He lunged for her again, but this time she was ready. Madison swung the iron handle as hard as she could and heard the sickening crack of his skull. Tyler slumped to the ground.
Her own chest heaved from exhaustion as she stumbled backward.
Thirty-Three
Madison?” Jonas called out to her.
“I’m here.” She stumbled away from the downed man, toward the light streaming from the open door.
Jonas ran over, quickly checking the man’s pulse. “He’s dead.”
She nodded, allowing some of the emotions of her escape to wash over her. She’d served dozens of arrest warrants for her job and had been shot at more than once. She’d been in raids where a fleeing suspect was killed and twice where a fellow marshal had been fatally wounded next to her. She’d been trained in tactical formations, as well as taking every precaution possible to ensure both the officers involved and the fugitives got out alive in every single case. But this time . . . a few more seconds and she wouldn’t have made it out alive.
Jonas’s gaze surveyed her body. “Did he hurt you?”
“He tried. He would have killed me if you hadn’t shown up.”
“You’re bleeding. Your forehead.”
She touched her head and winced. “I must have hit it when I fell.”
He brought her outside into the light, shouting for O’Conner to find something to clean her up. She could tell he was trying to hide his worry as he helped her sit down.
“You’ve got a few scratches, including the one on your forehead,” Jonas said. “And your neck—there are bruises on your neck.”
She raised her hand to rub the tender flesh. “He tried to strangle me.”
But she was alive.
“Does anything else hurt?”
“I don’t think so.”
Jonas pulled her up and into his arms. She could feel her legs shaking as she leaned against him. “Why would he do this? Why couldn’t he have just disappeared without having her killed?” Jonas said as he released her.
She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “Barrick got nervous and started asking the driver lots of questions. He figured out I wasn’t Bianca somehow.”
“Did you get anything out of him?” Jonas asked.
“He said something.” She searched her memory. “Something about flying off to a tropical paradise.”
“So Barrick’s definitely leaving the country.”
“I think he decided to run with or without Bianca, and now that she’s in custody, he doesn’t have a choice.”
“So he’s leaving without the money. Maybe he never planned to take her at all.”
“Maybe.” She took a step back and leaned against the barn wall, taking a few deep breaths. She willed her legs to quit shaking. “Everything Barrick has done has been to distract us. All of this was simply misdirection. A game of illusion. The cabin in Wyoming. The bomb scare. I don’t think he ever left IAH, Jonas. Never went to Hobby. He’s still there. I’m sure of it.”
“We can keep searching, though we’ve checked his name against every flight leaving out of Hobby and IAH, and he’s not on them.”
“We need to get back there.” She forced her mind to work. “Maybe there was a second passport?”
“Why would you think that?” O’Conner asked.
Madison shrugged, then winced at the sharp pains. “He could have paid for a second one in case the first was compromised.”
As soon as they made arrangements for someone to handle Tyler’s body, they were back in the car and Jonas had Patterson on the phone. “Talk to Yuri again. We’re on our way back to IAH. We think there’s a good chance that Barrick’s still there and that he’s got a second passport. We need another name.”
They were less than five minutes out from the airport when Patterson called back.
Jonas put the call on speaker. “What have you got?”
“Yuri’s not talking. Either there really is no other passport, or he’s lying, but we’re not getting anything out of him.”
Madison reached up and touched her bruised neck, her mind scrambling for a solution. “Even with every law enforcement officer at the airport looking for him, we’re talking about what . . . five terminals, a hundred-plus gates, restaurants, shops, and clubs. And without being able to flag his name, the odds of him slipping onto his plane