Free The Big Finish by James W. Hall

down.”
    Thorn pressed the arrow key and the pages rolled by. Most mug shots were of white kids in their twenties, mainly guys, a few females, a single Asian, and a black woman. He read about a couple. The crimes they were busted for, their plea deals, the names of those incarcerated because of them. Their eye and hair color, distinguishing features, tattoos, scars. Last known location.
    “And that?”
    He nodded at a photo of a pudgy young man with long curly hair and thick glasses. There was a bright red X marked across the photo image.
    “It’s not obvious?”
    “They caught him.”
    “And dealt with him.”
    “Say what you mean.”
    “That particular case, I don’t know the specifics, but if the kid was lucky, a bullet to the back of the head.”
    He paused, staring at the screen, tried to focus, concentrate on the young man’s face, block out the dizzy spin of the room.
    “What does this have to do with Flynn?”
    “Keep scrolling.”
    He tapped the down arrow, continued to scroll through the page until he came to a dark-haired girl whose eyes stopped him. Intense, but with an impish squint. A vague familiarity. Another red X across her face. Printed in bold letters, her name was CARMEN SANDIA CRUZ.
    He looked up at Madeline and she closed her eyes and nodded.
    “In that photo she was nineteen,” she said. “Since the time she was old enough to walk she adored animals. The kid who brought home snakes, iguanas, stray dogs, birds wrapped in fishing line. We built cages in the backyard for the possums.
    “She went off to vet school in Georgia, befriended a woman in the ELF. This person is taking courses in the daytime, spending her nights breaking into chimp labs or SUV dealerships, tearing up the places. Her new friend talked Carmen into going along on a raid. Carmen thought it was a harmless political protest for a cause she believed in, but it turned out to be more than that, a lot more, and afterward she felt so guilty about the vandalism they’d committed she confided in me and I passed along a few names to my superior at the FBI and some of the culprits went to prison. Though not her friend, not the leader.”
    “And her friend figured out where the leak came from.”
    “Yes,” Cruz said. “She did.”
    She stared out the window at the shadowy parking lot.
    “When did it happen?”
    “Sixteen months ago. Carmen was thrown from the rooftop of a four-story apartment building in Atlanta. Supposed to look like suicide.”
    “And you’ve been tracking this woman.”
    “Since it happened, every hour, every day. I’ve gotten close, lots of near misses. But now I think I have her. Where you and I are headed, Pine Haven, North Carolina, the woman who did this to Carmen, she’s holed up there, she may be injured. She and your son, Flynn, are members of the same group. In fact, I believe you may have crossed paths with her before. She calls herself Cassandra.”
    Thorn repeated the name quietly.
    Cruz said, “Red hair, thick and curly, a tall woman. Athletic. Imposing.”
    Thorn nodded. That was her. That was Cassandra.
    “And Flynn?”
    “Cassandra and Flynn and a few others were in Carolina, planning some kind of action against a hog farm.”
    “Hog farm?”
    “Concentrated animal feeding operation, known as a CAFO. A high-density process, large number of animals crammed into tight quarters. A heavy environmental impact on the surrounding community. Just their sort of target.”
    “I don’t understand,” Thorn said. “What about Tina, the guns, all that?”
    She tapped him on the shoulder, motioned for him to get up.
    She took his place in front of the computer and brought up a Web page with a black background and faint yellow print. Lots of boxes filled with brief messages.
    She scrolled through several pages until she found the one she was after, then stood up and signaled for Thorn to sit.
    “What you’re looking at is a message board where the radical ecocommunity congregates. A public