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  He counted the grass stalks that extended above his head to the sky. His lips moved with each number as he counted. One. Two. Three...

  He heard a car driving somewhere. He held his breath. The car went on. It no longer existed. The girl no longer existed.

  He didn't feel like moving. Lying there on his back, he couldn't remember ever moving. The beautiful grass rose above him.

  The stalks waved in the light breeze, back and forth across the deep, blue sky. A dark cloud passed in front of the sun and cast its shadow over him. It was the crow, returning to its perch in the top of the cottonwood.

  His eyes followed and found the trunk of the tree. It was a good tree, solid and old. Its gray lines led his gaze upward. Save for the crow, the tree was empty, stripped bare. The empty branches spread above him.

  Beyond was the blue sky. It went on forever. It reminded him of her eyes.

  38. Epilogue

  “Hey, Sarge!” Stan Knudsen stood and led the squad room in a round of applause and back slapping. “Welcome back!”

  They gathered around him as he walked in, all of the troopers wanting to shake his hand. He was a hero. The man who fought the desperate fight in the dirt, saving the young girl and ending the crime wave of the man the press called the 'Backcountry Devil.'

  Paul Sorensen survived his ordeal with Luther. Eight months after the incident on County Road 102, he returned to duty with the Iowa State Patrol. Five surgeries to repair muscle and tissue loss and extensive physical therapy made him ready to hit the road again.

  The extensive loss of blood during the struggle in the dirt that day reduced oxygen flow to the brain. His memory of events was hazy. The girl in the car was nothing more than a dimly remembered silhouette through the glass. Try as he might, he could not remember the rental truck or the man driving it.

  The man in the Toyota, Luther, was later identified as Everett Albert Stimple. After serving seven years in Lincoln County, Arkansas at the Cummins Unit of the Arkansas Penitentiary, Stimple was paroled from his armed robbery sentence. He left the state six days after parole and went on a multi-state crime spree, always targeting rural victims and managing to avoid detection until his encounter with Paul Sorensen.

  The decision to move east on I-80 into the more heavily traveled and populated areas of the Midwest puzzled investigators. Many believed that had he headed west and disappeared into the backcountry of Colorado, Wyoming or Montana he could have continued his rampage, or at least remained undetected for months, maybe years.

  Whatever caused him to travel east on I-80, back into the lion's mouth, so to speak, made his confrontation with law enforcement almost inevitable. Investigators concluded that while Stimple was an extremely dangerous man, he was not the sharpest tack in the box.

  Piecing things together and retracing his path, they were able to determine that after being paroled he committed at least six armed robberies and a murder in Arkansas, in addition to the murders in Kansas and Nebraska. It turned out that Everett Stimple was not a nice man and no one was really going to miss him.

  *****

  “Good God-a-mighty, what's that?” The older man in coveralls nudged the young man driving. “Over there.”

  “Where, Pop?” The man driving resembled the older man, thirty years younger.

  “There.” He held his arm out the open window of the pickup, pointing with his finger. “Thereabouts, see it? Under that big cottonwood.”

  “Son of a bitch. Looks like one of them trucks you rent and move things in.” The younger man slowed the truck to a gentle stop in the gravel, peering through the dusty window. “Yep, that's one of 'em. It's a rental truck.”

  “What the hell's it doing way out here, I wonder.” The man nudged his son's arm again. “Pull down the fence row here. Let's see what's up.”

  Five minutes later, they listened while a highly excited and relieved Barry Broomfield told them that he had had been sitting under the tree for two days, waiting patiently for someone to find him. He had seen no reason to tempt the girl, and he figured if she wanted twenty-four hours, he would give her an extra day, just to be sure. After all, she had been nice enough not to shoot him.

  He ended by asking, “Do you have some water? I could use some water...and something to eat.”

  *****

  Two weeks after Barry Broomfield was discovered under the cottonwood tree, security officers located his Nissan in a parking garage at Minneapolis - Saint Paul Airport. Police subpoenaed and received the security camera tapes from the parking garage, terminal and gates. It took another two weeks of tedious review to get a glimpse of the young woman who had parked the car.

  Investigators traced her movements through the airport and determined that she had bought a series of tickets on different airlines to various cities in the United States. The woman used the ID and credit cards of one Lauren Pierce from Syracuse, Kansas to purchase the tickets and meals as she traveled, but Lauren's parents confirmed that the woman in the security videos was not their daughter.

  The last stop on the woman's circuitous airplane journey was Spokane, Washington. From there the trail went icy cold.

  *****

  A few days after investigators hit a dead end in trying to determine the identity of the girl who shot Paul Sorensen's attacker and kidnapped Barry Broomfield at gunpoint, two young men fishing the banks of the Arkansas River in Ford County, Kansas came across a young woman walking along the shore. When they beached their small boat to investigate, they found that she was blond, blue-eyed, and very dirty. Lauren Pierce had been wandering the backcountry along the river for days

  She told the local sheriff that she met another girl, about her same age, at a bar in Topeka. They had drinks and chatted with some guys. The young men commented on the resemblance between the women. They could have been sisters.

  Sometime during the evening, she lost track of what was happening. When she woke up, she was alone in the prairie, with a sack of snack cakes and water from a convenience store. Her car and her belongings were gone.

  Disoriented and confused she had no idea how long she had been unconscious. Detectives believed that she probably suffered the effects of a potent dose of Ecstasy or some similar date rape drug.

  Doing what she had always been told to do when lost in the wild, she stayed for several days by the dirt trail.

  When the snack cakes and water ran out, she started walking. If she had walked a half mile to the north up the dirt road, she would have found a state highway and surely been rescued within hours.

  Unfortunately, she chose to walk south. She found the river eventually and decided to follow it downstream, hoping to run across some sign of civilization. There wasn't much to find in that part of Kansas.

  The local sheriff tied the strange, lost girl to the missing person report in Syracuse filed by Lauren Pierce's parents. After some investigative digging, the trail led to Lauren's Toyota stopped by Paul Sorensen on the side of an Iowa country road.

  There was no evidence to identify the woman who had drugged her, but investigators did discover that the disappearance of Lauren coincided with the escape of one Alice Trent, a twenty-five-year-old white female from a lock-up in a nearby county. In jail, awaiting trial for assault on her ex-boyfriend, the pretty, blue-eyed inmate had won the confidence of the corrections staff and been made a trustee. She was assigned to janitorial work in a county building when she walked away.

  Alice was familiar with jail, having been in and out numerous times for petty thefts and minor assaults. The attack with a knife on her boyfriend as he slept was the gravest charge she had faced. A guilty verdict would land her in the Women's Prison in Lansing. Other inmates heard her vow that she would never do time there. Shortly after, she walked away from the county building in a pair of coveralls left in a closet by the regular janitor.

  Investigators on the Broomfield case felt that she resembled the woman in the surveillance camera videos from the Minneapolis - Saint Paul Airport. That was as
far as the investigation went.

  The Pierces received their daughter back as an answered prayer.

  ****

  “How you doin'?” Blinking a pair of hypnotically blue eyes at the man at the bar, the young girl smiled broadly. “You need some company?”

  His gaze rested for seconds on the blue eyes, then moved down over her breasts to the curve of her ass seated on the barstool. He returned the smile with a nod. “Always lookin' for company.”

  She smiled softly, turning the iced glass in her hand in circles on the bar top leaving wet rings. The blue eyes looked into his, and she said, “I'll keep you company...if you want me to.”

  End – For Now

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  Whether you leave a review or not, I am grateful to have shared this book with you and hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it for you. Best - Glenn

  Contact Glenn Trust

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  Finally, you can visit the Amazon Author Page- Glenn Trust, Author Page at Amazon where you can find all of my books and leave a post or comment. A review is always welcome and appreciated.

  About the Author and His Work

  This is the blah, blah, blah section. You know the author’s “glory page” where he gets to tell you grandiose things about himself and the deeper meaning of his work. Whatever.

  It’s also where you get to see the confident poised picture of the author, maybe smoking a pipe, or leaning back with an “I told you so,” disaffected, or slightly superior look on his face. I don’t have any of those pictures so I thought you might like to see a picture of Gunner the Dog. He’s better looking than me anyway.

  Here he is doing one of his favorite things on one of our camping trips. If you really want to know more about me (God knows why) keep reading.

  I write books. Seriously, that's what I get to do every day. It's great.

  I have been fortunate to author some that have achieved bestseller status, including The Hunters Series of mystery suspense thrillers. It took me a lot of years to get to that point, but I wouldn't trade any of them for a minute. I love writing books for you and the journey that brought me here.

  I am a native of the south, Georgia specifically. I spent much of my life there, but I have lived in many other places as well. We moved a lot when I was young. Eventually, we ended up back in Georgia in my teens where I finished school and went to work.

  I wanted to write from an early age. A really long time ago, when I was still a young police officer in Georgia, I was writing short stories in my spare time and sending them off to magazines. One day I received one back in the mail.

  Life Happened

  Attached to it was a nice handwritten letter from an editor (this was long before the days of email and texts). The story manuscript was folded and smudged, and there were coffee cup rings on the edges of a couple of pages, which told me they had actually read it, maybe discussed it around an editorial table, or just used it to sop up the coffee.

  In her letter, the editor said a lot of things that I don't remember, but it was not the usual form letter that I was accustomed to receiving. It was original and personal.

  She said they liked my story, had strongly considered it for publication, but that it wasn't quite believable. Disappointed as I was, I was struck by her last words to me... “Don't stop writing. You're good at this. We almost bought this one.”

  I remember staring at that a long time. Then I folded it up and tucked it in a file and ... stopped writing.

  I wish I could tell you a different story, but I can't. I stopped writing for many years.

  There were lots of reasons. Yes, I was disappointed, but the letter that should have encouraged me not to give up was forgotten. Life happened. Dreams of writing were pushed aside by other things... important things.

  Mostly I needed money for my young family. In the 1970s, police officers in Georgia were not paid a lot even by the standards of the day. I worked part-time jobs whenever I wasn't working at the police department. Many weeks I had no days off at all.

  I'm not unhappy that I did my best to take care of my family. It was the right thing to do and working for them was the joy of my life. Children grew up; then grandchildren came along. More life happened.

  Then... The Internet Appeared

  Then out of the blue, this thing called the internet appeared and guess what. I was at a point in life when I didn't need to work part-time jobs every spare minute of the day. I could write again.

  It's different these days. I can publish a book whether I convince an agent or editor to read it or not. I am an independent writer/publisher, an “Indie.”

  Being an Indie is not easy. There are no big marketing budgets and TV appearances to spark book sales. There is only you and me.

  I like it that way. I get to write what I want and you get to read what you want with no middle-person between us. No agents or publishers dictating what the storyline will be or what sells.

  It’s a partnership between us, writer and reader, and it's a marvelous thing. The old closed publishing world that required almost a miracle to have the right person read your work is changing thanks to the digital age. I am grateful to still be around to experience it and enjoy it.

  As of this writing, I am eleven novels and a collection of short stories into my writing adventure. It hasn't been easy, but it has been worth it.

  Some years back, I left Georgia, working for a large corporation. Then I moved west and became the city manager of a small mining community in the mountains of northern Nevada. Now my wife and I live in the deserts of the far west. You got it... more life happened.

  Don't be a Follower -- Make Your Dream Real

  It took many years to get here. Life is like that, with lots of twists and turns and surprises. I like it that way.

  Now, I write every day. I wouldn't change a thing. One thing though... I wish sometimes I
had been able to find a way to keep writing while life was happening. It's not a regret, just an assessment, and it brings me to a bit of advice if you have read this far.

  Don’t follow your dreams. Followers get nowhere except up the backside of the person in front.

  Work your dream. Life will happen and then happen some more. That's as it should be, but you are the one who will make your dream a reality.

  Best- Glenn

  More Books By Glenn Trust

  Click Here > Glenn Trust Books to find all of his work, including:

  The Hunters Series:

  Eyes of the Predator

  Sanctioned Murder

  Black Water Murder

  Blood Reckoning

  Redemption

  The Killing Ground

  Walk into Darkness (November 2018)

  Blue Eyes Series:

  An Eye for Death

  A Desert View

  Blue Water Horizon

  Nowhere Land

  Fruits of Evil

  Other Novels:

  Dying Embers

  Mojave Sun

  Lightning in the Clouds - A collection of Short Stories