Free Origin - Season One by Nathaniel Dean James Page B

remembered how much he’d had to drink. Turning up at the sheriff’s office smelling of beer and carrying a bag full of money didn’t seem like such a shit-hot idea. He decided it was best to leave it until morning. Just turning the money in by itself would probably get him off the hook for leaving it a little longer than necessary.
    He drove away at a cautious 25 miles per hour. When he was out of the town proper, he pushed the Volvo up to 30. He no longer felt drunk, but still found his vision blurring if he kept his eyes open for too long without blinking. As he came out of the final bend in the road and onto the straight that led out of town he saw something that made him slow down. Thinking he was still a little more intoxicated than he had suspected, Jesse rubbed his eyes and opened them again. The scene didn’t change. There was a car half-buried beneath one of the tractors on the forecourt of Farmland.
    Jesse pulled to the side of the road, got out and took a few steps toward the tractor. The car beneath it was peppered with tiny holes, like the ones you see on road signs someone has fired a shotgun at for fun. Just as he thought the evening had reached its pinnacle of unlikelihood, it got even stranger.
    When he turned around, the sight that greeted him was so bizarre something in his subconscious dismissed it as a figment of his imagination. A man was standing about ten feet in front of him dressed in jeans and a biker’s jacket. In each hand he was holding some kind of large rifle. To Jesse they looked a bit like the weapons used by imperial storm troopers in the original Star Wars films. When the man spoke, what he said rounded the evening off with frightening finality.
    “Son, you wouldn’t have a hard drive on you by any chance, would you?”

Chapter 19
    Interstate 91, Vermont
    Tuesday 18 July 2006
    0030 EDT
    Francis cursed when he saw the blue lights. Two black sedans had pulled off the road onto the central divide between the south and northbound lanes. He put the bike in neutral, killed the engine and the lights and let the momentum take him forward. Ross’s black convertible was on the other side of the road, parked a few feet behind a white and brown police cruiser, its own strobes blinking red and blue.
    He coasted another thirty yards and pulled off the road. Leaning the bike against a tree he pulled the pistol from his jacket and ran back toward the cars.
    A gunshot rang out. Someone shouted and Francis turned to see four men running across the northbound interstate. They got back into their cars, crossed the divide and sped off in the direction he had come from. Francis watched them go, then ran to Cynthia’s car.
    It was empty.
    The decal on the door of the police cruiser said Orleans County Sheriff . The man who had been driving it was lying facedown on the grass by the passenger door. A few yards down the slope lay a single white sneaker. Francis began walking in that direction and almost tripped over Cynthia before he saw her.
    She had been shot. A line of blood ran from the small hole in her forehead into one open, staring eye. Her face was a ruin of running make-up and blood. Her bottom lip was badly swollen and her left cheek had been split open. He searched the body quickly, then ran back to her car.
    The hard drive wasn’t there.
    Francis returned to his bike and almost lost it as the back wheel spun out on the grass.
    He caught up to them just in time. When they passed a sign that said Morisson – Population: Just Right , one of the unmarked cars turned off its blue lights and left the interstate.
    Francis followed it.
    When it reached the intersection in the middle of town, the car turned left and parked outside a single-story brick building with a red tiled roof.
    Francis pulled into the gap between a red Ford Bronco pickup and an old Buick Regal that looked like it was being held together with body filler.
    From where he sat he could see the building through the cab of the