Free The Killing Season by Mason Cross

substitution.”
    “He wasn’t meant to be transferred?”
    “It was scheduled, but he was meant to go on his own. Death row transfers are almost always solo. A bunch of the guards called in sick—stomach flu epidemic. They tagged him along with Mitchell, who was also meant to be moved alone.”
    Banner massaged her right temple with her index finger in slow circles. “A celebrity serial killer and a Mob witness. Sounds like they were playing pretty cavalier with the star attractions.”
    “It seems so, ma’am.”
    Banner hated being called ma’am. She knew it was a chain-of-command thing, but it set her teeth on edge every time. It made her feel about a hundred and five. “But why didn’t they have an escort?” she asked.
    Paxon looked uncertain, as if she were somehow personally to blame for the lapse in security. “The original paperwork has Mitchell’s transfer coded 1AA. That means silver service—outriders, chopper, decoy vans, the whole ball of wax.”
    “So what happened?”
    “Somebody recoded it the day of the transfer. It was downgraded to regular security only. Mitchell went from VIP to standard class.”
    Banner was incredulous. “‘Somebody’? Wouldn’t something like that need to be signed off on by a bunch of people?”
    “In theory, yes. In practice . . . maybe not. This time it seems to have gone unchallenged.”
    “So who made the call?”
    “The relevant document is signed by the prisoner transfers coordinator, Paul Summers.”
    Banner opened her mouth only for Paxon to answer her question before she’d voiced it.
    “Summers didn’t show up for work today or yesterday. We’ve got an address; he lives just outside of a town called Janson. It’s about twenty-five miles north of here.”
    “Good work. Do we have anybody out there?”
    Paxon shook her head. “We only just got the heads-up.”
    Banner looked away from Paxon and at the busy scene around them. Castle was on the phone; Blake was nowhere to be seen. Chances were she’d have to head back to Chicago soon. The consensus at Quantico was that Wardell would be heading back to familiar ground. In the meantime, there wasn’t much she could do here until Sandra Veldon and her car were accounted for. Banner dug the keys to the gray SUV out and jiggled them in her hand. “Come on.”
    “To Janson?” Paxon sounded surprised.
    “Where else? Let’s see what Paul Summers has to say about all this.”
     
    14
     
    4:42 p.m.
     
    Paul Summers lived off the beaten path, in a farmhouse about three miles off the old Highway 51. Banner and Paxon missed the turnoff the first time. On the second pass, they saw that the sign for Whitecart Farm had been obscured by bushes.
    Paxon was driving, so Banner had been the one to answer the call from one of the other agents chasing up the Summers lead. It turned out his bank account had been credited with a hundred thousand dollars from a bank in the Caymans the previous Friday afternoon. That made it official: The escape hadn’t simply been a matter of the Russians getting lucky.
    Not that it really mattered anymore: Caleb Wardell had personally tied up virtually every loose end on that particular case by killing Mitchell and his would-be assassins. Running down Summers and whoever else had been involved in downgrading the transfer was a side project. The real issue was the genie they’d inadvertently let out of the bottle.
    As Paxon negotiated the narrow, rutted dirt track that led up to the house, Banner ejected the magazine in her Glock, checked the load, then slapped it back in.
    “Expecting trouble?” Paxon asked.
    “No guts, no glory,” she replied. “But I’ll be happy to be disappointed.”
    They knew something was wrong as soon as they heard the barking. They heard it a good thirty seconds before the house came into view. It got louder as they approached. Paxon steered through a wide-open security gate and into the yard in front of the house.
    It was a conversion that must have