Prologue

Southern Idaho, 2012

“You really think they’re in there?” Jess Parker asked as they knelt in the heavy line of trees that ran the perimeter of the LaRouche farm, scanning the house in front of them with binoculars.

U.S. Marshal Remy Boudreaux’s attention was focused on the biggest window along one side of the large ranch-style home. Lights barely illuminated the interior, but he could see enough to know there hadn’t been any movement since he and Jess had started watching the place fifteen minutes ago.

He pulled the binoculars away from his face and grinned at his partner. “I haven’t seen them, darlin’, but my instincts are screaming at me that all three of those scumbags are in there.”

Remy normally would never call a fellow marshal darlin’, but considering that he was in love with this particular one, he figured it was okay.

Jess grinned back at him because she flat-out adored his N’Awlins accent, though he could just barely make out her expression in the darkness. Even so, that little smile dazzled him. It was one of the things that had attracted Remy to the tall redhead in the first place, convincing him to throw caution to the wind, blow off every rule in the U.S. Marshal handbook, and get into a romantic relationship with her.

“You know I always trust that instinct of yours,” Jess said. “How are we going to handle this?”

Remy turned back and scanned the farmhouse where the LaRouche family—Tammy, Jack, and their three kids—lived. From the outside, nothing seemed amiss. Just another summer night in the rolling wheat fields of southern Idaho. But it felt like the hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end. Something was definitely going on in there, and he was damn sure it had to do with the three murderous prison escapees they were looking for.

“Let’s move closer, so we can get a better look,” he said softly.

Before he could move, Jess reached out and grabbed his shoulder. When he turned to look at her, she leaned in and kissed him. It wasn’t a long kiss, but there was definitely heat. They’d only been sleeping together for a couple of months, but the passion between them burned with a fire hotter than Remy had ever experienced.

“Be careful,” she whispered after she pulled away. “Those three assholes are dangerous. There’s no way in hell they’ll willingly go back to prison.”

Then Jess was moving, pulling out her Glock and skulking toward the side of the farmhouse. Remy drew his own sidearm and followed, watching as her lithe, athletic body moved through the night ahead of him.

He hadn’t needed Jess’s reminder that the men they were after were dangerous. He’d read the transcripts from their trials, seen the prison records, talked to the other inmates at Leavenworth who’d had dealings with them. These three men were beyond evil.

No one knew how Conrad Neal, Joshua Cobb, and Walter Ramirez had even managed to break out of the Leavenworth federal penitentiary in Kansas. As far as anyone could tell, the men had been in their cells before lights-out, but when the sun came up, all three were gone. Remy’s job wasn’t figuring out how they’d managed to escape, it was tracking down the men and putting them back in prison.

Neal was likely the leader of the trio of escaped convicts. His record indicated he had a high IQ and a charismatic personality. Unfortunately for him—and the rest of society—he was also possessive as hell and had an out-of-control temper. He’d beaten three men to death in a bar in Oklahoma simply for smiling at his girlfriend. One of those men had been an off-duty FBI agent, hence Neal’s 118-year term in federal prison.

Cobb had been convicted of multiple charges of murder as well, along with rape and arson. The son of a bitch thought he wouldn’t get caught if no one could recognize the woman he’d attacked, so he’d murdered her, then burned down her house, assuming all the evidence would disappear. But the fire he’d started in Oregon had spread across the border into Washington, resulting in the destruction of dozens of homes and the deaths of three more people, including a firefighter. That had earned him a life sentence in Leavenworth.

Ramirez might have been the scariest. A doctor for the Veterans Administration in Arizona, Ramirez had invited male patients over to his house for private treatment sessions and then experimented on them. He was serving a life sentence as well.

When Remy and Jess reached the side of the house, he cautiously peeked in the window overlooking the kitchen sink. At first, he didn’t see anything, but then he caught sight of Ramirez sitting in the shadow-shrouded living room, smoking a cigarette and watching TV. There was a teenage boy sitting beside him, tied and gagged, staring at the television.

Shit.

Remy was right. Again.

Everyone else on the task force had thought Remy and Jess were wasting their time running all the way out to Idaho on a crazy hunch. But ever since he could remember, Remy had listened to his gut. So while the rest of the marshals focused on the various friends, pen pals, and visitors the three convicts had been in contact with over the past year, Remy and Jess had been busy tracking down the one person suspiciously absent from Neal’s life since his incarceration—his former girlfriend, Tammy Andrews, or rather Tammy LaRouche, now that she was married.

Tammy hadn’t testified in Neal’s defense. In fact, she’d never shown at his trial. She hadn’t visited him in prison, called him, or even written him any letters. The poor woman had been so traumatized by the whole ordeal in the bar that she’d simply walked away from Neal and never looked back.

Some people might consider that a betrayal. According to an inmate Remy had spoken to at Leavenworth, Neal was one of those people.

“If someone does him wrong, Neal will remember it for the rest of his life and do whatever it takes to get revenge on that person,” the inmate had said. “He’s one vindictive son of a bitch.”

Beside Remy, Jess was on her cell phone with the local PD, requesting backup. He hoped this town had a SWAT team, because they were going to need it. When she hung up, they slowly moved around the outside of the house, hoping to pin down exactly where Neal and Cobb were hiding.

They were a few feet from the back door when a woman’s scream cut through the humid night air. A split second later, there was a crashing sound, followed by coarse laughter and another terrified scream.

Remy’s gut clenched. Going in on their own was insanity, but he and Jess had no choice. Their backup was at least twenty minutes out. They couldn’t wait.

He glanced at Jess, hating the idea of her going in there. If she was simply his partner, he wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but she was more than that to him. There was no way in hell she’d ever let him go in alone though.

“Watch yourself in there, okay?” he whispered.

“You too,” she said softly.

Taking a deep breath, Remy led the way to the door, then grabbed the knob and turned it. Once inside, he and Jess quickly moved through the kitchen toward the living room, where he’d seen Ramirez and the boy.

The kid was still sitting there, bound and gagged, but there was no sign of Ramirez. Remy gave Jess a nod. As one, they checked the rest of the room and the hallway beyond, covering each other at the same time.

Another scream came from the back of the house. Remy immediately headed down the dark hallway toward the sound, Jess at his heels. Charging into a room with three armed fugitives who’d already shown a willingness to kill and as many as four possible hostages was definitely in the category of Bad Ideas. There were so many ways it could go wrong, he couldn’t even count them all. But he didn’t have a choice.

When he got to the door at the end of the hallway, he lifted his foot and kicked it in. The only lights on in the large master bedroom were two small bedside lamps, but even in their dim glow, the scene that met his eyes was horrific. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as he took everything in, his head trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

Jack LaRouche was tied to a big armchair that had fallen over on its side in the corner, his head hanging loosely to the side, blood from his battered and bruised face running down to stain his flannel shirt and the light-colored carpet.

Tammy was lying on the bed, shallow slash marks across her face, her brown eyes filled with horror as she reached her bound hands toward where Cobb stood near the footboard with a girl who couldn’t have been more than ten in his grip.

Ramirez was standing casually in the corner near the husband, a sick smile twisting his ugly face, a knife in one hand and an automatic pistol in the other. There was no sign of Neal or the LaRouches’ third child.

Muttering a curse, Cobb lunged forward and scooped up a big .357 revolver that Remy hadn’t even seen near the bed. Remy leveled his weapon and started to squeeze the trigger only to freeze as Cobb ducked behind the girl. There wasn’t any way Remy could shoot Cobb, not without hitting the girl.

Shit.

Remy had half a second to come up with a plan before Cobb and Ramirez started shooting. Knowing Jess would take care of Ramirez, Remy charged Cobb and the girl he was using as a human shield.

He felt the first bullet hit him somewhere to the right of his belly button, then another higher up on his chest. He was wearing a lightweight Kevlar vest under his shirt, but the first round hit well below the bottom, going right through his stomach. As painful as that shot felt, it was the one to the chest that worried him more. His preference for increased mobility, which meant he sacrificed protection by wearing the lighter Kevlar, had just bitten him in the ass. The ballistic fibers of the vest had failed to stop the fast-moving .357 round. The pain in his chest hadn’t been the hammer punch it should have felt like if the damn vest had done its job. Instead, it felt like he’d been stabbed with a hot poker.

Gritting his teeth against the pain, Remy leaped at Cobb and the girl. She cried out as Remy slammed into them. They all went down in a tumble of arms and legs, hitting the floor hard. Remy grabbed the barrel of Cobb’s gun and shoved it toward the ceiling. Then, making sure the girl was out of the way, he fired a round point-blank into the fugitive’s head.

Remy immediately rolled to the side and came up on his knees, aiming his weapon at the spot where Ramirez had last been standing. At least that’s what he attempted to do. He succeeded for the most part, but his right arm wasn’t very steady and he was moving slower than usual.

Thankfully, Ramirez lay on the floor, unmoving. Jess stood beside the convict, staring at Remy in horror. Fighting a sudden wave of dizziness, he looked down and saw the blood covering his stomach. Okay, maybe he was hurt worse than he’d thought.

He lifted his head to tell her that he was okay, but the words stuck in his throat. As he watched, blood slowly seeped through her blouse on the upper left side, just above the line of her vest. Oh God, she’d been hit too. And she was bleeding really badly.

He was so focused on Jess that he almost didn’t realize Neal was coming out of the bathroom with the LaRouches’ other daughter clamped against his chest. Before Remy could react, the man lifted his gun and shot Jess three times.

Remy swung his weapon on Neal at the same time the girl jabbed her elbow into the man’s gut. Neal lost his grip on her for only a split second as she fought to get away, but it was enough time for Remy to get a shot off.

The round wasn’t well aimed—neither Remy’s arm nor his vision was steady enough for that—but it hit Neal in the shoulder, allowing the girl to get away. Remy squeezed the trigger and didn’t stop until his Glock ran out of ammo and Neal lay dead on the floor.

Remy dropped his weapon and pushed to his feet, but his legs didn’t seem to be taking requests at the moment, so he had no choice but to crawl over to Jess instead. It was less than ten feet, and yet he was gasping for air by the time he reached her.

He ignored the lack of oxygen and the blackness threatening to engulf everything around him, focusing on Jess and her beautiful face. She was bleeding now from more places than he could ever hope to stop, but he tried all the same, pressing one hand to the wound in her chest and the other to a gash in her neck. Then he leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers.

“I told you to watch yourself,” he whispered.

Unbelievably, her blue eyes fluttered open and stared up into his. “I’m…sorry.”

He shook his head, trying not to cry but unable to stop the tears. “Stop it! It’s going to be okay. I know it in my gut, and like you always say, my instincts are never wrong. Never!”

Jess smiled at that. A moment later, her eyes closed and she was gone.

Remy closed his eyes too, tears streaming down his face. Even as his heart broke in his chest, the pain in his body slowly began to fade. It wouldn’t be long now. At least he and Jess were leaving this fucked-up world together.