Free Bitter Crossing (A Peyton Cote Novel) by D. A. Keeley

chase. Was this scenario different? The majority of Maine’s population, as Kenny Radke had annoyingly indicated, was overwhelmingly Anglo. Any assumption that the young woman and baby were linked was based on location. They had been discovered within a quarter-mile radius of one another, after all. But she couldn’t deny that the assumption was also based on assumed ethnicity. And that assumption was based on skin color.
    Could racial profiling be more prevalent on the northern border? The coffee burned her stomach. She considered a more frightening question: Was there any way around it?
    Peyton shifted her gaze from the field to the river. The water was calm. Her mother had said her sister had called earlier that evening. At breakfast, Elise had been unwilling to discuss what was bothering her—perhaps she wanted to get it off her chest now. Peyton had a feeling that whatever was bothering Elise had to do with Jonathan, who had glared at her when she’d left the diner. What had that been about?
    She checked the volume on the radio, a large black rectangle where the console in a standard Ford Expedition was located. Red lights stared at her, deadpan: dead air.
    She put the plastic cup down, slid the Expedition into reverse, and drove out on Smythe Road, her mind running to Bill Henderson, owner of Henderson Farms, who hired migrant workers to help with the annual harvest. She could leave the day shift gang an email suggesting someone contact Bill. It might lead to a line on her swaying woman.
    Heading south on Route 1 at forty-five miles per hour, she saw sparse traffic. Garrett wasn’t exactly a “city that didn’t sleep.” She saw one van, but it had Maine plates—not the New Brunswick tags on the Aerostar into which the wandering woman had been pulled.
    Headlights appeared at the crest of a small hill. Even from a hundred yards with no radar, she could tell the small compact was exceeding the fifty-five-mile-per-hour limit as it cruised past her in the opposite direction.
    She tapped her brake lights to see the driver’s reaction.
    The Dodge Neon swerved, momentarily crossing the yellow dividing line, and quickly slowed.
    Someone was either nervous or drunk. She swung the Expedition around, hitting the flashers.
    When the driver of the Neon accelerated, the chase was on.

ELEVEN
    P EYTON WAS HITTING SEVENTY-FIVE miles an hour in a matter of seconds, and the Neon was no match for the Expedition’s horsepower.
    Route 1 weaved from one rural community to the next with few streetlights. The Expedition’s high beams slashed the darkness, illuminating the Neon’s license plate.
    With one hand on the wheel, Peyton took the radio and notified the stationhouse of where she was and what she was doing. As she read the plate number, the Neon’s brake lights twitched and brightened, the car skidding to a stop. All four doors burst opened. Four men leaped from the vehicle and started across an adjacent potato field.
    “Pursuit is now on foot,” she called into the radio, flung the door open, and burst out, Maglite in hand. “Freeze!”
    No one stopped.
    Running, she immediately took inventory, the Maglite’s beam traversing the field. Ski-Doo Jacket and tattered Army Coat ran side by side. They had thirty yards on her, moving fast. Paint-Stained Sweatshirt ran swiftly in a different direction. The fourth man, Brown Leather Jacket, was closest.
    She focused on the easiest prey. It had stopped snowing, but the dusting left the ground wet. Her right foot slipped, sending a jolt through her sore ankle.
    “Goddamn it, I said freeze !”
    Closing in, she heard Leather Jacket’s rasp. He was built like a bowling ball and lunged forward, as if dragging a weight.
    She dove at his feet and caught her right knee and left shoulder on jagged ground.
    His fall was worse—face-first on the frozen earth. When he rolled onto his back and started up, the Maglite showed blood on his face.
    “You bitch.”
    She took three steps back