Hunting darkness, p.1
Hunting Darkness, page 1
Hunting Darkness
IZZY LLEWELLYN SMALL TOWN SUSPENSE SERIES
BOOK SEVEN
ZARA EVANS
Chapter
One
The inmate watched from the doorway, his back against the cinderblock wall, fingers touching the bare skin of his left wrist where something used to rest. The Planner stood near the industrial sink, shoulders relaxed but eyes fixed on the small barred window above the prep counter. That window looked out toward the loading area, and the Planner had positioned himself for maximum view while maintaining the pretense of work.
The inmate recognized that stillness. Years working collections on the streets of Las Vegas had taught him to read intent in body language—the difference between a man considering action and a man already committed to it. The Planner had crossed that line. Everything about his posture said execution mode, not contemplation.
The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting flat illumination across stainless steel surfaces and scuffed linoleum. The inmate shouldn’t be here. The kitchen area was technically off-limits without an escort, but the deputy behind wire mesh two rooms away wasn’t watching, and the security cameras in the small town lockup were angled on the prep area, not the corner where he stood.
The Planner’s head turned slightly, pale blue eyes tracking toward the doorway. He put his head down toward the sink and said, “Get out.”
The inmate stepped further into the kitchen instead, his prison-issue shoes silent on the floor. His pulse remained steady despite the risk.
“You’re up to something.” He kept his voice low, conversational. The deputy might not be watching, but sound carried. “You bringing something in or are you getting out?”
The Planner said nothing. His gaze returned to the window, dismissing the question as unworthy of response.
The inmate moved closer, reading the forced casualness in the other man’s stance. “I have to get out. I’m a dead man if I don’t.”
The Planner finally looked at him, expression unchanged. “You just got here.”
“One night too many.”
Outside, an engine approached. The inmate stepped beside the Planner near the window, close enough to see through the streaked glass. A white delivery van rolled into view, commercial grade with faded lettering on the side. The passenger mirror caught sunlight as it turned.
The deputy’s footsteps moved from the guard station. The inmate tracked the sound—crossing from behind wire mesh toward the exterior door, keys jingling. Through the kitchen’s interior doorway, he watched the deputy’s silhouette approach the reinforced steel door that opened to the loading area.
Metal scraped as the door unlocked. Bright California sunshine spilled into the dimness, revealing the delivery driver—navy work shirt, baseball cap, mid-thirties with the comfortable gut of someone who spent too many hours seated.
“Morning, Ray.” The deputy’s tone suggested routine, familiarity, small-town relationships where everyone knew everyone.
“Morning, Tom.” The delivery driver carried a produce box, which he deposited against the open door.
“You got this? I’ve got paperwork piling up.”
“You bet.”
The inmate eased back into the corner of the kitchen, the Planner unmoved between him and the guard as the latter glanced across the kitchen. The Planner looked down into the steel sink, pretending to complete his kitchen duties.
Security theater. The inmate’s grandfather had used that phrase years ago, before the gambling debts consumed everything. This facility performed security without actually securing anything. Minimal risk environment breeds maximum complacency.
The deputy’s footsteps retreated. Through the interior door, the inmate watched him settle back behind wire mesh, already focused on a monitor. The driver wheeled a dolly stacked with produce boxes toward the cool room, grunting with effort.
The Planner waited.
The driver deposited the boxes and then pushed the dolly back out the open door.
The Planner waited.
The inmate could no longer see out the window, but the Planner’s eyes were fixed on the van outside. A minute passed before the delivery driver returned with another load, wheeling the boxes into the cool room.
The Planner moved.
No hesitation. No telegraphed intent. He simply crossed the kitchen in four silent strides, coming up behind the driver as the man bent to adjust the dolly’s angle. A meat mallet slipped from the Planner’s sleeve as he raised his hand high, then drove it down fast, the tool striking the soft junction where neck met shoulder.
The driver folded. Not dramatically—no theatrical collapse. He just stopped being conscious, knees buckling as the Planner caught him under the arms and lowered him behind the shelving unit. The whole sequence took maybe three seconds.
The inmate’s throat went dry. Clinical violence. The driver would wake in an hour with a splitting headache and blurred memories, but the strike was made with precision, designed to incapacitate, not kill.
The Planner crouched beside the unconscious man, stripping off the navy work shirt. Cap came next, then shoes. Within thirty seconds he’d transformed from prison orange to delivery uniform, the fit close enough to pass casual inspection.
The inmate stood in his jumpsuit, bright orange screaming escaped convict to anyone with eyes. His fingers touched his bare wrist again.
“How am I supposed to get out?”
The Planner pulled the cap low over his dark hair, tucking the prison uniform behind the shelving unit with the driver. “You’re not.”
The words came flat, definitive. Statement of fact, not negotiation.
The inmate’s mind raced through options. He could bring the deputy running. Destroy the Planner’s escape and ensure they both stayed trapped. Mutually assured destruction as leverage.
“Then I start yelling.”
The Planner paused, one hand adjusting the cap’s brim. His pale eyes assessed the prisoner with the same indifference he’d used on the driver—measuring threat level, calculating odds, running scenarios. The math couldn’t have taken more than three seconds.
“In the back of the van.”
He moved toward the door before the inmate could respond, glancing through the wire mesh toward the guard station. The deputy sat hunched over his monitor, a glazed look as if he were watching the computer update.
The inmate’s heart beat so hard he thought it might explode. This was commitment. Once he climbed into that van, he was betting his life on a violent stranger whose name he didn’t know, whose motivations he couldn’t guess, whose ultimate intentions might include dumping his body in the desert once they cleared the county line.
But staying meant dying. The syndicate’s reach extended into every institution he’d ever encountered. It was only a matter of time until they found him here, and they had ways of inducing another prisoner into action. Then his death would come in a shower room or during transport.
At least the Planner’s violence was immediate and comprehensible, and not directed at him.
A phone rang at the guard station.
The deputy’s head turned toward the sound. He reached for the receiver, body language shifting from paperwork mode to conversation, attention pulled completely away from the kitchen area.
The Planner slipped through the propped door.
Sunshine and heat washed in briefly before the door swung mostly closed again, leaving just the gap wedged by the produce box. The inmate counted three racing heartbeats, giving the Planner time to reach the van, then he kicked the produce box inside to let the door close behind him.
His shoes made whisper-soft contact with the concrete as he crossed the loading area. The van’s rear doors stood open, interior dark and smelling of waxed cardboard and overripe fruit. Empty crates lined one side, secured with bungee cords. Enough space for a man to crouch between them and the wheel well.
He climbed inside, wedging himself into the gap. The metal floor radiated heat. His breathing sounded impossibly loud in the enclosed space.
The doors closed from the outside with a muffled thunk that seemed to echo through his bones.
For a moment there was complete silence except for his own pulse thundering in his ears. He pressed against the crates, making himself small, and found a narrow gap in the metal partition separating the cargo area from the driver’s cab. Through that gap, he could see fragments—the Planner’s hands on the steering wheel, a slice of windshield showing the gatehouse ahead.
Nothing happened.
No engine sound. No movement. The inmate’s throat constricted. Was this it? Had the Planner closed him in here to be discovered when the real driver woke? Was this prison orange jumpsuit about to become his shroud?
Through the gap, he watched the Planner’s hands resting motionless on the wheel. Not gripping, not fidgeting. Just waiting with that same inhuman patience he’d demonstrated in the kitchen.
Then the prisoner saw what the Planner was watching.
The gatehouse stood fifty yards ahead, a small structure with a single guard visible through its windows. A civilian car approached from the main road, slowing for the checkpoint. The guard leaned forward, attention pulled completely toward the incoming vehicle.
The van’s engine started.
Vibration traveled through the metal floor into the prisoner’s bones as they rolled forward. Slow. Careful. Nothing that suggested urgency or deviation from routine. Just a delivery van completing its regular schedule.
The prisoner’s fingers found his bare wrist, touching the skin that had once held his grandmother’s silver bracelet. He’d sold it eight years ago for rent money during the first time he told himself he could live a life outside the syndicate. Sometimes he could still feel the weight of it on his skin.
Through the gap, he watched the gatehouse grow larger. The guard’s posture remained focused on the civilian car—checking the driver’s license, comparing faces, performing the security dance that meant nothing because nothing ever happened here.
The Planner removed his left hand from the steering wheel, adjusting the cap lower over his face. Then he let his hand fall into a casual wave, fingers loose and friendly. The gesture of someone who’d made this run a hundred times, a familiar face completing familiar work. Trying not to look like it was blocking the Planner’s face from view, but doing that all the same.
The guard’s hand lifted in response. Casual. Distracted. Already looking back toward the civilian car as the van rolled past the raised barrier.
The inmate’s lungs burned. He’d been holding his breath without realizing it. Air rushed in as they cleared the gate, tasting of cardboard and fear and something else he didn’t want to examine too closely.
They were out.
Sunlight streamed through the gap, painting bars of light across the cargo area. The road sounds changed—smooth pavement replacing the facility’s concrete. The inmate listened for sirens, for shouting, for the screech of pursuing vehicles.
Nothing.
Just the van’s engine and the whisper of tires on asphalt and his own hammering pulse slowly, gradually, beginning to ease.
He’d escaped. With a man whose name he didn’t know. Whose planning had been flawless. Whose violence had been precise. Whose ultimate destination and intentions remained completely opaque.
The inmate shifted slightly in his cramped space, orange jumpsuit catching on metal edges. The syndicate would be looking for him. The FBI would be looking for him. And now local law enforcement would join the hunt once the unconscious driver was discovered and the empty cells got counted.
But he was moving. Not trapped behind bars waiting for death to arrive in familiar forms.
Through the partition gap, he watched the Planner’s hands remain steady on the wheel. No tension. No celebration. Just focus on the road ahead, wherever that road led.
The inmate’s fingers touched his bare wrist one more time, then dropped away. The bracelet was gone. His name was compromised. His handlers had failed him. The syndicate wanted him dead.
But he was breathing. Moving. Free of the cage.
For now, that would have to be enough.
Chapter
Two
Izzy set the box down in Cole’s living room—their living room—with more care than the contents deserved. Sweaters and off-season clothes, nothing fragile. But this was the last one. The final physical remnant of her life at her grandfather’s house, of the woman who’d arrived in Darkness nine months ago carrying nothing but grief and failure.
She straightened, wiping dust from her jeans. Morning light poured through the wide windows, turning the exposed beams golden and painting geometric shadows across the wood floor. The cabin felt different than it had even a week ago. Still Cole’s bones—his furniture, his choices in the kitchen visible through the open archway—but her presence was beginning to mark the space. Books on the side table. Her jacket on the hook by the door. Small shifts that said home in a way that made her throat tight.
“That’s the last of it?”
Cole emerged from the kitchen, coffee mug in hand, brown hair still damp from the shower. His T-shirt pulled across his shoulders as he moved, worn jeans riding low on his hips. The casualness of him—barefoot in his own house, their house—did something to her that she didn’t have words for.
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s everything.”
He set the mug on the mantel and crossed to the box propped against the wall. The one with bubble wrap visible through the open top. Not something that had come from her aitona’s house. This was the Sierra Nevada sunset painting they’d bought on a trip to Harris two weeks ago, both of them circling it in the small gallery before Cole had said that one and she’d realized she’d been thinking the same thing.
“Ready?” He glanced at her, waiting for permission.
Izzy nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
Cole lifted the painting free, careful hands on the frame as the bubble wrap fell away. The canvas caught the morning light—deep oranges and purples, the mountains rendered in bold strokes that somehow captured the harsh beauty of this place without softening it. The artist had understood that the eastern Sierra Nevada didn’t do gentle. Just raw and magnificent and unforgiving.
Like the life she was building here.
Cole held the painting against the wall above the couch, testing the placement. “Here?”
Izzy stepped back, her sheriff’s eye for detail emerging automatically. Measuring angles, checking the horizon line against the room’s geometry. “Left. Maybe two inches.”
He shifted.
“Up a bit.”
His shoulders flexed as he adjusted, holding the heavy frame steady while she assessed. Their movements synchronized without discussion—him trusting her judgment, her trusting his patience. When had that happened? When had they learned to work together like this, reading each other’s intentions before words became necessary?
“There.” She moved closer, checking the level one more time. “That’s perfect.”
Izzy marked the wall with a light pencil while Cole retrieved the hammer and picture hangers from the box. His hands were steady as he drove the nail, three strikes that sent small vibrations through the floorboards. When he lifted the painting into place, it settled with a soft whisper, the image seeming to belong on this wall, in this room, in this life they were creating.
He stepped back beside her, arm settling around her shoulders.
The gesture should have felt restrictive. After Mark’s betrayal, after the FBI, after building walls so high she’d thought nothing could breach them, physical affection had felt like a trap. But Cole’s warmth against her side didn’t cage her. It just existed, offered without demand, present if she wanted it and gone the moment she pulled away.
Izzy let herself lean into him. Conscious choice, not instinct. She was still learning how to accept comfort, still teaching herself that wanting something didn’t make it dangerous.
Nanook padded over from his spot by the fireplace, squeezing between them with a contented rumble. The three of them stood together, looking at the painting. At the home they were building. At something that six months ago would have felt impossible.
The contentment that filled her felt fragile. Precious. Like something that could shatter if she acknowledged it too directly.
This moment, she thought. Remember this.
Standing in their cabin. With art they’d chosen together. With a man who saw her—really saw her, all the broken pieces and sharp edges—and stayed anyway. With a future that felt real instead of theoretical.
Her phone vibrated against her hip.
Izzy’s hand hovered near her pocket, fingers not quite making contact. She could ignore it. Let voicemail pick up. Preserve this peaceful moment just a little longer.
The vibration continued. Insistent.
Cole’s arm dropped from her shoulders before she pulled the phone free. Both of them already knowing what the call represented, what it would demand.
Dispatch showed on the screen.
“Sheriff Llewellyn.”
Adrianne’s voice came through with its usual upbeat register, but Izzy caught the tension underneath. “Sheriff, there’s been an escape from the county jail.”
Izzy’s spine straightened automatically as her entire posture shifted. The domestic contentment vanished behind professional focus so fast it left an ache in its wake.
“How many?” Her voice hardened, questions forming in rapid succession. “When did it happen?”
“One, maybe two inmates. The guards discovered it about twenty minutes ago. A delivery driver was found unconscious in the cool room.”
“His condition?”
“Possible concussion. Paramedics are on site.”
