Dead Too Soon: A Thriller (Val Ryker series Book 3)

  DEAD TOO SOON

  A VOW OF REVENGE

  Though a remorseless killer, Dixon Hess went to prison for the one crime he didn’t commit, and he promised to destroy those responsible. Police Chief Valerie Ryker triumphed over incredible odds, sending Hess back behind bars. But now Hess has broken free, and the entire Wisconsin town of Lake Loyal is in danger.

  A COMMUNITY GRIPPED BY FEAR

  When a school bus crashes on a snowy morning, Chief Ryker and her sometime boyfriend, Fire Chief David Lund, race to respond to the collision. As they rescue the children, it becomes clear this was no accident… but the launch of a monster’s newest diabolical scheme.

  A RACE AGAINST TIME

  With everything Val holds dear at risk and precious time running out, Val and Lund must turn to a cop named Jack Daniels and an assassin named Chandler for help. But all the help in the world won’t stop a rampaging Hess, and Val is about to learn what it feels like to sacrifice everything she loves… and everything she is.

  From nationally bestselling and award-winning author Ann Voss Peterson comes the highly anticipated third novel in the Val Ryker thriller series. Dead Too Soon follows Pushed Too Far and Burned Too Hot and is approximately 84,000 words long.

  DEAD TOO SOON

  A THRILLER

  Ann Voss Peterson

  Justice is hers…

  Author’s Note

  Many, many people make up a town, and the fictional burg of Lake Loyal, Wisconsin, is no different. To help readers keep track, I have included a Cast of Characters and a Public Servant Cheat Sheet for easy reference.

  Please visit my website to learn more about the books. While you’re there, sign up for my newsletter, and I’ll let you know about the next release. And if you’d like to leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads, I would appreciate it.

  I hope you enjoy the book.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One • Chapter Two • Chapter Three • Chapter Four • Chapter Five • Chapter Six • Chapter Seven • Chapter Eight • Chapter Nine • Chapter Ten • Chapter Eleven • Chapter Twelve • Chapter Thirteen • Chapter Fourteen • Chapter Fifteen • Chapter Sixteen • Chapter Seventeen • Chapter Eighteen • Chapter Nineteen • Chapter Twenty • Chapter Twenty-One • Chapter Twenty-Two • Chapter Twenty-Three • Chapter Twenty-Four • Chapter Twenty-Five • Chapter Twenty-Six • Chapter Twenty-Seven • Chapter Twenty-Eight • Chapter Twenty-Nine • Chapter Thirty • Chapter Thirty-One • Chapter Thirty-Two • Chapter Thirty-Three • Chapter Thirty-Four • Chapter Thirty-Five • Chapter Thirty-Six • Chapter Thirty-Seven • Chapter Thirty-Eight • Chapter Thirty-Nine • Chapter Forty • Chapter Forty-One • Chapter Forty-Two

  About the Author • Ann’s Thrillers • Acknowledgments • Cast of Characters • Public Servant Cheat Sheet

  Chapter

  One

  There is no ultimate measure of justice in this world. No definition that transcends human experience. No balance on which both kings and the lowest dog can agree. What follows is my story and my conclusions, based on fundamental truth, experience, and study.

  I know that by the time anyone reads this I will be vilified by law enforcement, by the media, by those who are self-righteous and desperate to avoid recognizing their own filth. I didn’t choose to be hated, but it’s a sacrifice I am willing to make in order to do what’s right.

  I would be a weak man if I let injustice endure. I am not a weak man. I am not beaten, afraid, or subservient. If vilification is the price I must pay to set things right, I pay it willingly.

  To those reading this, I offer a challenge. Instead of being smug, calling me a criminal, violent, and whatever other names you use to try to take away my humanity, I dare you to open your eyes.

  I have been told I am wrong without regard to the wrongs done to me. That I must turn the other cheek. That I must forgive. That the crimes of others were innocent mistakes.

  None of what was done to me happened by mistake.

  Niccolò Machiavelli once wrote that if an injury has to be done to a man, it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared. I have been injured, years of my life stolen, my family taken away. Is it surprising that I’m angry? If you lost everything through no fault of your own, wouldn’t you be angry, too? Wouldn’t you want people to understand your pain? To feel the sharp grit of it for themselves?

  If they didn’t want to be held responsible for what they took, they should have made sure I couldn’t strike back. They should have killed me when they had the chance.

  But they didn’t.

  She didn’t.

  I will not make that same mistake.

  —Convicted murderer Dixon Hess, from his A MANIFESTO FOR JUSTICE, as received by the Wisconsin State Journal.

  Chapter

  Two

  Grace

  Grace Ryker peered out of her bedroom window just as the yellow school bus rumbled past her driveway and continued down the snowy country road. She should be on it, sharing a seat with Brad on their way to school, just like any other weekday morning. Instead, she was getting ready to leave her life and everything she loved behind.

  “See me wave, Grace?” Brad prodded her over the phone.

  “Of course.”

  She hadn’t, not with the blizzard of heavy, clumped snowflakes making the world look as if it were shrouded in fog. But a little lie like that didn’t matter. Not now. “I waved back.”

  “Sure you don’t want to tell me where you’re going?”

  “Sorry.” Grace wished she could. Brad loved Chicago, mostly because he was a basketball nut and a Chicago Bulls fan. But Aunt Val warned her not to tell a soul about her impromptu trip. Maybe Aunt Val’s friend would take Grace out to buy Brad a Bulls sweatshirt or something, a gift to bring back.

  “Wherever you’re going, text when you get there, promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Your aunt, she’ll catch him. I know she will.”

  Grace nodded, not certain her voice would work. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in Aunt Val, far from it. Val and her officers would do everything they could. Grace just wished she weren’t being sent away. She wished she could do something to help.

  Grace tugged the suitcase zipper closed with one hand and listened to the cacophonous blend of shouting kids, the newest from Taylor Swift, and the low roar of the bus’s engine over the phone. Sounds of the regular life she was leaving behind.

  “I don’t know when I’ll be back. Aunt Val told the boarding stable we’d have the horses there for a whole month.”

  “A month? No way,” Brad said. “You’ll be back by this weekend. You gotta be.”

  This weekend. Sectionals for the state boys’ basketball tournament. And Brad was starting forward, tallest player on the team.

  “I don’t know.” Grace’s voice cracked a little. She hoped Brad didn’t hear.

  “Your aunt will get him before then. You’ll see.”

  As much as Grace wanted to believe Brad was right, she couldn’t ignore the heavy feeling in her stomach, the pinch at the back of her neck. She raised her fingers to her face, tracing the light ridge of the scar that ran across her cheek, the mark Dixon Hess had left the last time he’d been free.

  Grace was getting up the nerve to say good-bye when the sound of a crash came over the phone, so loud she pulled it from her ear.

  “Brad?”

  Shouting voices. Yelling. Screaming.

  “Brad? What happened? What’s going on?”

  Val

  Val Ryker stared at David Lund’s bruised and battered face across the kitchen table.
She must not have heard him right. She couldn’t have. “What did you say?”

  “Marry me.”

  Val opened her mouth to give some kind of response, then, realizing she had no idea what that response would be, she closed it without uttering a sound.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  Lund chuckled. “Of course I am. That’s what you love about me.”

  Val let out a groan. Pushing out of her chair, she grabbed her crutch and hobbled over to the kitchen window. The yard outside looked solid white, detail blurred thanks to the vision in her right eye. Her right hand tingled slightly this morning. But who knew? In an hour, it might be totally numb.

  When Val had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, she’d resigned herself to being alone once Grace left for college. It was the way things had to be. Maybe even the way they should be.

  Lund had confused everything, and although Val didn’t want to push him away, she wasn’t sure she could pull him closer, either.

  “The snow is supposed to turn to rain in an hour or two,” Val said. “The roads should be clear pretty soon after that. You and Grace can head out then. I think I’ll call that private investigator I hired, Harry McGlade, and see if he’s heading back to Chicago. Maybe he can follow you, just in case.”

  The floor of Val’s old farmhouse creaked with Lund’s footsteps. Then he was behind her, his hands warm on her shoulders, the scent of coffee mingling with cheap aftershave. Something new he’d picked up that Val really needed to tell him to throw in the trash. “Lund, really, now isn’t the time.”

  “Listen, Val, if there’s anything I’ve learned in the past week, it’s that life is short.”

  “You’re saying you want to marry me because you think Dixon Hess is going to kill us all?”

  “Nothing of the sort. He’s the one with something to worry about. I hear Chief Val Ryker is after him.”

  Val twisted around to look him in the eye. She tried her best to give him a smile but it was beyond her.

  “I don’t want to waste a second, Val. We’ve lost enough time already.”

  “Time? I need time to figure out what’s going on.”

  “With Hess?”

  “Frankly, yes. And between us, too.”

  Lund’s hands fell from her shoulders and hovered useless at his sides. “You really don’t know yet?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to focus on anything but Hess.” Her tone sounded more defensive than she intended. She shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

  “Go to Chicago with us.”

  Val had arranged to have her seventeen-year-old niece stay with Val’s old friend and former boss, Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels, in order to get the girl as far away from Dixon Hess as possible. That Lund was the obvious choice to drive Grace and the three horses to the Windy City was a bonus.

  “And who is going to run the PD?”

  “Oneida, as usual.”

  Val had to concur with that. The dispatcher and all-around mother hen was the force that made the tiny department work. But that didn’t let Val off the hook. “I’m chief.”

  “And shuttling us off will only give him what he really wants. No one to watch your back.”

  Lund was definitely a romantic. Val was a realist. “You can watch my back by getting Grace and the horses safely to Chicago. I’ll deal with Hess.”

  Provided she could figure out what his next move would be.

  “Aunt Val? David?”

  Val turned toward the sound of her niece’s voice.

  Grace scampered down the steps. Her face was flushed, her eyes pink as if she was on the verge of tears.

  “What is it, sweetheart?”

  “I was on the phone with Brad, you know, saying good-bye, and… and I think the school bus crashed.”

  “Crashed?” Lund said, grabbing his coat from the back of a kitchen chair. “You’re sure?”

  Val’s phone rang. She fished it from her pocket, her dispatcher’s name filling the screen. At the same time, Lund’s fire department radio erupted in emergency tones, then the Baraboo dispatcher’s voice broke through the static.

  Val tuned out the fire call and answered her phone. “Oneida, do you have a location on the bus?”

  “How did you know it was a bus? Are you reading tea leaves now?”

  “Location?”

  “Out by you. Sunrise Ridge Lane. I don’t have much more than that. The girl who called was not very coherent, and she didn’t stay on the line. Jones is on her way. EMS and fire, too. Or at least what’s left of our fire department.”

  Val was staring at most of what was left of the fire department’s Lake Loyal branch in acting chief David Lund. The rest—building, trucks, and gear—had been wiped away by explosives and fire, along with most of the town’s east side.

  “Call the county. We’ll need their help.”

  “Already done.”

  “The school district?”

  “On their way. They have another bus en route, too.”

  Val eyed her niece. There was just one thing left. “Oneida, Officer Edgar just got off his shift, right? Is he still there?”

  “On his way home. You want him out at the crash site?”

  “No. Here at the farm. With Grace. Just until we get back.”

  “Got it,” Oneida said and signed off.

  As soon as Val pulled the phone away from her ear, Grace pounced. “I’m going with you.”

  “That’s not a good—”

  “I can help.”

  “We don’t know the extent of this, Grace. Your friends… some might be very hurt. You don’t need to see that.”

  “Seeing or not seeing isn’t going to change anything. I’ll worry either way. If I can help, at least I’ll be useful.” Tears pooled in Grace’s eyes and streaked her cheeks.

  “Oh, honey.” Val wished she could wipe it all away, the tears, the fear, the memories. “You’ve been through enough. Finish packing, and I’ll call you once I know what happened.”

  “I don’t want to stay here. I want to help.”

  “Staying here will help. It will help me to know you’re safe. Accident scenes are busy. They’re confusing.”

  Grace looked down, picking at the cuticles of her left hand, a habit that had started when she was a little girl.

  “If it was any other time, I’d take you with us. You’d be a big help, sweetheart. I know you would.”

  Grace nodded.

  “Finish packing. As soon as we can get things back to normal and the roads are cleared, we’ll load the horses, and you and Lund can hit the road.”

  Christopher Edgar made it to the farm in what had to be record time, especially during a snowstorm. He was stomping the snow from his boots when Val opened the door.

  “Chief.”

  “Thanks for coming, Chris. There’s coffee if you need it.”

  He shrugged out of his coat, still dressed in his uniform. “Thanks. I need it, at least until I get home and have a cold one. You know how crazy snowstorms can get. You’d think people would be used to driving in the stuff come March.”

  Leaving the veteran cop reading the newspaper and Grace pacing the floor, Val and Lund bypassed Lund’s pickup, which was already hooked to the horse trailer, and climbed into Val’s car.

  Sunrise Ridge Lane was only a few miles from Val’s farm, closer as the crow flew. Lund drove the first mile in silence, nothing but the rhythmic slap of the windshield wipers, but when he cleared his throat, Val knew what was coming.

  “Grace could have helped.”

  “You and Grace are so alike sometimes I think you must be the ones who are related.”

  “We’re stronger together than on our own, Val. I just wish you could see that.”

  Lund turned onto Sunrise Ridge and started up the hill. Forest on either side marked the shoulders of the twisting road, the pavement between blanketed in white.

  Lake Loyal was nestled among the Baraboo Bluffs, a rough a
rea of swelling hills, sharp valleys, and numerous outcroppings of purple rock. Few roads wound through the most rugged of the bluffs, and none of them were fun to drive during a snowstorm.

  Sunrise Ridge was one of the worst.

  Many accidents had happened here, some Val tried not to think too much about. She prayed whatever had happened to the school bus would not make that list.

  Only a few tire tracks marred the snow, and Lund followed them over the crest of the first hill, the car still tracking well. The wipers slapped rhythmically, ticking off the time.

  Val checked her watch. Less than fifteen minutes had passed since the call.

  They descended into a valley, then wound up the next incline. It wasn’t until they’d reached the top that Val spotted the skid marks already covered by rapidly falling snow. Easing around a sharp bend, they came upon the bus.

  It rested perpendicular to the road, its flat nose diving into the ditch, back wheels dangling in the air, the forward momentum stopped only by a clump of pines. The back emergency door had taken damage, and a dump truck rested behind it. Ginny Jones’s black-and-white blocked the road.

  Lund slowed to a crawl. “Looks like the dump truck hit them from behind.”

  “Must have been following too close for conditions, didn’t see the bus slowing.”

  “How can you miss seeing a big yellow bus?”

  Val shook her head. How did most accidents happen? People lived busy lives and didn’t pay enough attention to the things that mattered most. And now a whole busload of kids had paid the price.

  “Got that Halligan bar I gave you?”

  “Trunk.”

  Lund stopped the car next to the squad and popped the trunk. They climbed out into the pelting snow.

  The going was slow, Val’s single crutch unstable on the slick ground. Maybe she should have used two, but she hated having no use of her hands. Her right hand was also compromised by the current flare-up of her MS. What wasn’t tingling was totally numb.