Arlington, Texas, En Route, 2019
"Shit!" Luke bashed his fist into the dash.
With his nerves already on tenterhooks, Noah jerked slightly causing the van to swerve into the oncoming lane before he corrected the vehicles steering.
During all the times they'd sat together, lay together, walked together, repeating detail after detail of their getaway plan, the possibility never was discussed.
Even when they took an odd day off work to practice dry getaway runs, never had Luke or Noah considered the possibility of Leo not being where he usually should be.
"How could we fucking miss this?" Luke gritted through his teeth.
Noah remained silent, all his focus on trying to keep his foot on the gas when really every instinct told him to stop. The years spent running repeated like a broken record on continuous replay in his head.
"We let our guard down!" Luke continued, oblivious to Noah's internal doubts. "We've been too complaisant recently!"
Noah listened to Luke's ranting and self-recrimination for another 10 minutes before he simply had to stop.
He pulled over into the shoulder of the road, turned off the engine; and sat staring literally and figuratively at the long road ahead.
"Noah?" Luke gasped in desperation. "What are you doing? Why are you stopping?"
Noah shook his pounding head without taking his eyes from the road or his hands from the steering wheel. "I can't do this again."
Luke slumped, all the depression he'd held at bay claiming him briefly. Really, it was a relief to let it and he huffed back a sob.
Crying won't help! Don't you fucking cry!
Finding strength from somewhere, he rubbed Noah's stiff elbow. "Come on, Bubby. Don't flake out on me now, okay? I kinda need you."
Noah looked right at him but oddly through him in a way that made Luke feel distinctly empty.
"Maybe we should just turn ourselves in," Noah muttered, almost like he was voicing a thought out loud.
"And what happens to Leo then, ha?"
A flash of pain crossed Noah's features; the blue disappearing behind lids as Noah squeezed his eyes shut.
"His mother's dead," Luke continued. "Not that she was much of an option anyway! He'll end up in care!"
Noah already understood all that Luke said. He knew Luke was desperate to get them moving again.
"And this?" Noah asked, flinging both arms in the air, desperate for Luke to provide some kind of solution that would mean a happy life for their son. "This is a better life? Running? Dragging him from place to place? That's the life my father made me live and I hated it Luke!"
"You are nothing like your father and you know it! We've done the best we can for him in a bad situation. And he's happy."
"Is he? Really Luke? He's getting into fights at school about three times a week!"
"Noah, there is no turning ourselves in this time," Luke placated. "This thing… it's gone on for too long. There'll be no prison… they'll find a way to kill us. You know that, right?"
Noah sighed deeply; his fists bone white, where they gripped the steering wheel.
"What other option do we have?" Luke asked him.
Noah was silent for a minute. "There is one thing we could try…"
Luke knew where Noah was headed before the brunette even uttered the first word of that sentence. He was already shaking his head. "We can't! We've been over this, Noah! We can't go back! Not ever! Not even for this!"
Noah gazed out of the car window at the expanse of Arlington's business district. But Luke knew all Noah was seeing now was the vast forests and hills of the Snyder Family Farm back in Oakdale, Illinois.
"He'd have the best life on the farm. They'd take him! I know they would!"
Luke shifted around to face Noah dead on. "Look at me."
Noah shook his head.
"Look at me, Bubby." Luke waited until he had Noah's full however reluctant attention. "You think I don't want that for him, too? If I thought it would work, I'd do it tomorrow. Despite the risk to us…"
Luke's left thumb came up to stroke Noah's chin; while his right interlaced between Noah's fingers.
"But how would my folks explain where he came from? Who he is? And then he's taken by the authorities anyway. We'd be putting the family and Leoin a very difficult situation."
Tears glinted down Noah's cheek but he nodded.
"Besides," Luke sighed, "now that they know about him, they can use Leo to get to us."
"I know." Noah waited another minute to gather himself before sniffing and straightening up in the seat. He turned the key and revved the engine. "Let's go get him then."
Luke smiled and ruffled the back of Noah's neck. He wished there was something he could say; anything to ease the strain that was causing veins to rise along Noah's temple.
…
Arlington, Texas, HQ Three, 2019
The most crime Arlington's finest ever got to witness first hand was the occasional bout of shoplifting or petty drug use. On the whole, Arlington was one of the safest places to live in all of Texas.
Hell, some people still left their car's unlocked.
Really, the police acted as glorified babysitters; reprimanding the city's bored youth or sobering up the occasional drunk and disorderly citizen.
Thus, the DEA's surprise raid that morning on Leyton's Motors caused a flurry of excitement and speculation rarely witnessed within Archie's precinct.
With the raid being such a rare event nothing could have prepared Archie's men for the shock of discovering the reason for Agent Williams' profanity vomit.
Archie sighed.
Seems cases are just like buses. You wait ages for one. Then two come at once!
Of course, Archie knew of the Oakdale case. Everybody in law enforcement would have heard about it at one point or another. It was the great Stanley Marsh's one-and-only open file; solved yet unresolved due to the escape and disappearance of the two men convicted of the mass murder.
Silence fell in the briefing room as soon as Williams entered; his face still ashen from being reamed out by Marsh over the phone.
The room was filled to bursting with a few FBI agents and some of Archie's own officers handpicked to work on the case.
Williams came to stand next to Archie behind a large map-strewn table. Beyond them was a wall length white board soon to be covered with information as the case progressed.
"Alright!" Williams began, immediately demanding utmost command with just that one word. "We fucked up royally this morning. But we're not going to waste time dwelling on that! Let's move on and get this guy in custody where he belongs. We need to contain the area; institute a perimeter."
Williams glared around the room, establishing eye contact with each person there. "I trust you are all familiar with this case. But I want to make sure you know exactly who it is we are dealing with here. Luke Snyder and Noah Mayer killed seven people in cold blood, including Mayer's ownfather; a man much valued and admired by the FBI and a close friend of Senator Marsden.
"Do we know how they escaped?" a young officer asked from the back of the room and many of the others present nodded their interest.
"No," Williams answered flatly. "They had help from the outside. But investigators at the time turned up nothing. Snyder and Mayer escaped the day of their sentencing; and have been in hiding ever since. This is the closest anybody in law enforcement has every gotten to apprehending one of them!"
Williams paused for a moment to allow that to sink in. "Okay! Now that we're all on the same page, what do we have so far?"
All eyes fell to Archie.
"Not much I'm afraid. Snyder managed to convince Officer Miller to drop him at South Central Hospital here." Archie indicated the location on the map for the benefit of the agents not from Arlington. "Officers are already there checking it out, but as you can expect, he's long gone."
"What about his home?" Williams asked, "It's a trailer right?"
"Yes, we have officers stationed there as well as at Leyton Motors. But I doubt he's stupid enough to return to either."
"Roadblocks?"
"With the manpower we have available, it will take at least two hours to block every exit. I've had to call in reinforcements from Bedford and Grand Prairie."
"We do have one advantage," volunteered Deputy Police Chief Peter Carroll from where he stood, leaning against the wall.
"What's that?" Williams asked.
"Guy's been caught off guard, hasn't he? No matter how smart he is there's no way he was prepared for what happened this morning."
Archie silently nodded.
"You may be right." Williams agreed. "We might just have a chance to make history here people. So let's not waste any time. We don't know what their plan of action is. But you can be sure they have one."
"We have to think logically here," Archie said. "They're gonna need things to escape. A car, money… Where's that gonna come from? His wallet was left at the garage. He can't go home."
"We know he called Mayer," Peter reminded them.
"Yes." Williams nodded. "Did anybody notice anything strange during that call. Who was there?"
"Well I was," Archie said. "But damned if I was listening in. Why would I? Sullivan, you were there. Do you remember anything?"
Officer Kenneth Sullivan shook his head, red hair flopping from side to side. "None that I recall."
"Hey!" An excited yelp from the back of the room had all heads turning. It was young FBI Agent Dennis Soble. He was half standing at a computer screen with one hand in the air like a schoolboy trying to get attention in a class.
"You got something to share Agent Soble?" Archie asked.
"I think so. I took a chance and ran the name Sutherland through the system, filtering out anything not Arlington related…"
"And?" Williams was growing impatient.
"And I got one hit... Leo Sutherland, age 12, registered at Baldwin Junior High."
Archie sighed. "Nice try Soble, but how would two guys on the run from the law end up with a kid? It's too long a shot in the dark."
Soble stood tall, chest out in pride, an all-knowing grin on his face. "Same home address as the trailer."