James Patterson - Thriller - Stories to Keep You Up All Night

Before she could say anything, Earl leaned in and shouted over the wind, "We just got word there's been a break at the prison. Miguel's dead-bastard caved his head in on the escape. That's all we know except to lock down the road."

"I just had a guy try to rob me. His car's still back at the Furlough. We think he's still around there." She brought a trembling hand to her face. "My God. Miguel. I just saw him over at the garage yesterday, getting a new radiator in his…" Her eyes welled. "Has someone told Leticia?"

"Thinning blond hair," Brian shouted past her. "Five-eight, five-nine, maybe. Skinny."

Earl's brows rose as his eyes shifted. "Who's this?"

"Brian Dyer. He's a CO up at the big house. He got shot protecting me. I gotta get him to the hospital."

"Okay. Go. Go. We'll take the Furlough." Earl squinted through the falling snow. The Subaru's headlights were barely visible. "That car up there?" He turned to the others. "Move it, let's move." He rapped a gloved fist on Laura's hood and she pulled past the roadblock, coaxing the Bronco back to speed.

They crossed the overpass, veering toward the south entrance, and started the long curve around to the interstate.

The radio crackled and Don's distorted voice came audible in waves. "-deadly escape from the prison…Miguel Herrera's body found stripped and frozen in the east yard."

Blocking the bottom of the on-ramp, just before the merge, was a felled tree. Brian shouted and Laura hit the brakes, sending the Bronco sideways. They coasted peacefully to a stop, an upthrust branch screeching up Brian's door. She let out her breath in a rush, and he laughed. Up ahead, on the interstate, was a furrow where some poor soul had trudged across from the frontage road, probably a half-frozen construction worker seeing to the sewage drains beneath the overpass. "I'll steer us around," she said.

Brian leaned forward and punched the cigarette lighter. His other arm was up around her headrest and he dropped it to the back of her neck. His hand was warm, so warm-he'd been holding it over the dashboard vent. The backs of his knuckles drifted down, grazing her cheek, her chin. She felt her neck muscles unclench, her body softening to his touch.

The radio reception came back in, if barely. "-security tapes show.used a starter pistol in their escape.one of the inmates shot in the foot going over the."

Laura's eyes widened. Her gaze jerked to the base of the tree- ax marks, not splinters. A mosaic of images pressed in on her. Miguel's wife's Subaru. The Furlough's empty parking lot even after Brian had arrived. His limp as he'd entered. The belt with the baton ring, poking out from the bottom of his state-issue button-up shirt. His face, already pale from the injury. The sweat on his brow-pain suppressed. And his stolen boot, thrown in the fire after the ruse so she wouldn't see that it had no bullet hole.

Brian's hand continued to play across her face. Trembling, she lifted her gaze but the stare looking back was unrecognizable. The snow beat against the window behind him, the branch scraping against the door. And then she saw the pale hand reach up over the tree trunk outside like something from a horror movie.

Brian's hand tightened and he drove a fist down across her chin. Her head smacked the window, her head lolled, and she slumped against the door. Digging in her pockets, he removed the rolls of cash. Then he reached past her ample breasts, tugged at the door handle, and shoved her with his good foot out into the snow.

Teddy slid down off the tree trunk, stamping his feet and rubbing his arms. Bits of ice stuck to his thin wisps of blond hair and his lashes, which framed bloodshot eyes. Brian fished the pack of Marlboros from his pocket, tapped out a cigarette and extended it between two fingers across the console. Teddy stepped over Laura's limp body and climbed in, his breath clouding against the wheel as he slammed the door against the cold. He took the proffered cigarette and set it between quivering lips. He removed the beige rectangle from his pocket-a carefully shaped block of used chewing gum-and tossed it into the back seat. Then he cranked the heat even higher, shivering violently and pressing his white fingers against the vents.

The cigarette lighter popped out and Teddy pulled it from the dash and tilted his head, inhaling the warmth.

Brian made a gun with his hand and pointed south. "To the sunshine."

Teddy maneuvered the Bronco through the soft snow of the shoulder, forging a path around the tree. As they pulled out onto the interstate, sheets of snow began to layer Laura into oblivion.

Technology and its ills, together with Native American mysticism, contrasts two worlds often at war-science versus back-to-nature values. In his first thriller, Necessary Evil, David Dun spun an action-driven tale of wilderness survival that highlighted this war of the worlds, pitting Kier Win-tripp against a ruthless corporate personality using human cloning to achieve medical cures.

Kier Wintripp is part of the Tilok tribe. Most of Dun's novels have involved characters from that tribe, which, although fictional, is in many respects based on various factual accounts of Native American life, lore, myth, history and religion. One aspect of Tilok culture is the Talth, a medicine person, part psychologist, part political leader, part judge, an expert on forest-survival arts. The pinnacle of the Talth is propounded by Spirit Walkers. These men come along only once a century and are recognized by their profound intuition concerning the affairs of men and nature. Kier was Dun's first, and perhaps most striking, Tilok character. A superb woodsman and tracker, a guide to youth, a teacher of the forest arts, he's also a doctor of veterinary medicine. Science being the ultimate rationalism, in Dun's novels Kier has many times sought, often unsuccessfully, to find peace in reason.

This is the story of how he became a Spirit Walker.

The old people said it was the spirit of a man unloved as a child, roaming the deepest forests of the mountains, but Kier Wintripp didn't believe in spirits that did the work of psychopaths.

He stood beneath the big conifers in front of his cabin picking huckleberries as Matty arrived with Jack Mix. A very curious combination. She an old woman, and he a former FBI agent. Matty approached and Kier sensed the tension in her frail body as she gripped his wrists with a grandmother's love. Mix kept back a respectable few paces.

"Jake, my grandson, has gone off into the mountains, to the caverns, with Carmen," Matty said. "They left three days ago before daylight and were returning late the same day." She stared at her feet. "And there's another thing."

He waited for her to explain.

"Jake was going to the cliffs, at the top of the caverns." "Below Universe Rock? The sacred place?" "It's wrong. I know."

"And they were to return the same day?"

She nodded. "The next day was my birthday. Jake would never miss his grandmother's birthday." He knew that was true.

"You will go?" Matty said, desperation in her voice. "Everyone knows you're descended from the last Spirit Walker. It's in you. You can find them."

His grandfather had indeed been a Spirit Walker, one of the tribe's mystics, revered men who came along once in a hundred years. They guided the Talth, advised the tribe, communed with spirits and discerned the hearts of men. Kier intimately knew the forest and taught the young its secrets. He was an ordinary man, half Anglo, half Tilok, but also a veterinarian trained in science, so part of him required the comfort of reason.

"You'll go get them," Matty said again, her voice breaking. "Please."

"I'll go," Kier assured her. "Spirit Walker or not."