Page 23 of Not Our Daughter

Yes. Police are setting up roadblocks, trying to trap them in the valley.

What do you want me to do?

Stay close. Be ready. You take your rifle?

Yes.

Brock owned a Fierce Rogue backcountry hunting rifle, one of the best on the market. It was incredibly lightweight and amazingly accurate, especially in his hands. He’d taken a beer can off the top of a fence post from more than a thousand yards out when competing with some buddies. The rifle was in the bag sitting in the Bronco’s back seat.

Good. You may have to do this from a distance.

Distance is not a problem.

Yes, I know. Shipley say anything to the cop?

Didn’t get a chance. I stopped it.

Good. Don’t let this get away from us.

I won’t fail again.

Sixteen

Cole drove hesitantly back toward Winter Park. The fastest way south through Colorado, New Mexico, and eventually on to El Paso, where he planned to cross the US and Mexico border, was Interstate 25. Which meant driving the Berthoud Pass out of the valley and crossing over toward Denver. Any other way out of the valley could take several more hours. The map app on his burner phone told him it was eleven hours to El Paso. And then another eighteen hours from there to their final destination: Sayulita, a village on Mexico’s Pacific coast backed by the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains. Population was around three thousand, plus a steady flow of tourists. Cole and Lisa had vacationed there when they were newlyweds. Sayulita had picturesque beaches, charming restaurants, and a relaxed atmosphere—unlike the hustle and bustle of the more prominent tourist resorts. They’d vowed to go back someday. He just never expected it to be under these conditions. But he felt the tiny beach town would be a great place to get lost for a while and start over.

He didn’t expect getting across the border to be an issue for them. He’d recently had a new set of fake passports created by a foreign contact, with whom he had remained connected under an alias. Cole had created and ditched so many aliases over the years he could hardly keep up with all of them. At this very moment, he had three different sets offake identities in his bag. They could become the Jensens, the Fosters, or the Rutters. He would sort that out later with Lisa and Jade, who would undoubtedly be stunned.

First, they had to get out of the valley. He felt his heart begin to race as he reentered Winter Park’s city limits. There was a lot of traffic as he drove slowly up Main Street because of the crowded scene around Hideaway Park, and traffic came to a crawl as everyone slowed to get a look at things. There were police vehicles parked up and down the street with red and blue lights blinking and officers nearly everywhere. Most seemed to be interviewing various groups of people.

“What’s going on?” Lisa asked from the back of the van.

They’d been very quiet on the drive over from Granby.

“Driving through town.”

“Why so slow?”

“There’s still a mob of people and cars here.”

“Are you sure this is the best way out?” Lisa asked.

“No, but it’s definitely the fastest.”

“Just don’t let anyone recognize you.”

“Believe me, I’m trying my best.”

Both Lisa and Jade were still sitting on their beanbags in the back of the van and tucked out of view. Jade hadn’t said much since he’d broken the news that they were leaving the country and headed to Mexico. Her mouth had dropped open, and her eyes went wide—and her face had basically stayed frozen like that for the past fifteen minutes. He knew this was a lot for his daughter to process. He’d had years to think about this moment and emotionally prepare himself. She’d had only a few minutes.

Cole felt his throat tighten up as he passed the park. He could see a collection of guys wearing matching dark-blue FBI jackets—the same jacket he’d seen in the back seat of the Ford Taurus earlier. He slouched down slightly behind the wheel. Even though he knew he looked dramatically different than he had earlier, it was not easy to be driving within fifty feet of several FBI agents whose only mission right nowwas to find and arrest them. He wondered who was leading the operation. Thirteen years ago it had been a special agent named Mark Burns. Cole had closely followed the investigation online, reading every single article he could find to try to stay one step ahead. He’d also researched everything he could find out about Burns—just in case they were ever put into the same room together and he needed to be able to appeal to the agent’s own humanity. From what he remembered, Burns was married at that time and had a two-year-old daughter. She would now be one year older than Jade.

The FBI’s pursuit of them had stayed active for several years, and then everything had just died off one day. Cole could no longer find articles and reports online anywhere. He’d presumed their case had been moved to a less urgent category. That’s when he and Lisa had decided to relocate to Colorado and start over in the mountains. He’d thought about Agent Burns here and there over the years, and every once in a while would search him up. Last he’d checked, Burns was working out of the FBI’s Washington, DC, office.

Cole kept the van inching forward. Big crowds were huddled everywhere watching the actions of the FBI agents and the police. He wondered what these people knew, if anything. Had it become public yet that he and Lisa were fugitives? Did everyone in town now have his photo on their phones? Cole thought about the private school where he’d taught history for the past eight years. The staff were going to be shocked. But he mostly mourned for his students. He’d given so much to cultivate deep and lasting relationships with the kids at the school all these years. Those efforts would now be obliterated in a single moment when the news finally broke about Mr. Shipley. The kids would undoubtedly feel betrayed.

Cole sighed. That was too painful to think about right now.

He kept the van creeping down Main Street and slowly passed by the opening of the alley where he’d barely escaped gunfire earlier. He saw an ambulance and two police vehicles parked at the curb and groaned when he spotted two uniformed medics wheeling a cart out ofthe alley with what looked like a black body bag on it. He presumed the dead police officer was inside.

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