The Big Finish Read Free Page A

Flynn had absorbed from his thousands of hours of film study were bogus, never worked off screen, but he hoped, by god, this one might.
    He stepped back from the pine, keeping the trunk in the attackers’ sight line, and he hurled the rock over their heads back into the woods behind them. It clattered into leaves and fallen brush. The man behind Burkhart swung around, tracking the noise, taking a step or two away from Flynn’s hiding place, but Burkhart wasn’t fooled. One-handed he adjusted his goggles and began a slow sweep of his weapon in Flynn’s direction.
    Flynn ducked back behind the tree. His chest so constricted, he couldn’t draw a breath. The man hissed to his partner and Flynn heard the dry crackle of their steps fanning out around him.
    Flynn brought the whistle to his lips and blew two sharp blasts. He blew twice more as he was sprinting away, the automatic fire shredding the trees around him, strafing the branches, spurting the dirt at his feet. The deafening bursts of gunfire made any more warnings unnecessary, but Flynn blew the whistle twice more as he raced through the darkness, leading the men deeper into the pine forest that smelled so lovely.
    If his friends had followed their evacuation plan and fled into the darkness on foot, heading down the bank to the canoes, everything might have worked out differently. But they panicked, or Cassandra overruled them and herded them into the van, unwilling to abandon their vehicle and gear. He heard the van’s engine cough and fail to catch, then turn over again. The damn starter motor had been cranky for weeks, but they were short on cash and hadn’t replaced it. He heard one attacker change direction, rushing toward the campsite, and he heard the engine sputter to life, then the bark of gunfire, howls of rage, and even louder howls of agony.
    Flynn veered toward the camp, sprinting low. He didn’t know what he could do to help the others, but he had to try.
    All around him the pine forest was thick with scent. It was that rich odor he was thinking of, the sappy sweetness of evergreen, when he felt the hard electric tug on his shoulder, then another in his leg, and a second later a stinging spray of buckshot, then a creamy warmth spreading down his back.
    After a breathless moment, he felt a surge of unexpected joy, a release from the tension of these last few days, these last months, an exhilarating letting go, and for the next hundred yards as the mindless bullets ripped apart the air around him, Flynn Moss seemed to float above the rough terrain, fearless and strong, his feet barely grazing the earth as he saw the moonlit water up ahead, the silver current that streamed through this fertile countryside, flowing and flowing, as all rivers did, their waters inevitably returning to the welcoming sea.

TWO
    A WEEK AFTER THANKSGIVING, AN early afternoon in December, Thorn sat at a computer console in the Key Largo library, once again searching for news of his son, Flynn Moss.
    He’d propped Flynn’s latest postcard against the base of the monitor and was scanning the rows of photographs Google search had selected for him when he typed in the words “Marsh Fork, Kentucky.” None of the images on the computer matched the green hills and lazy blue sky of the postcard.
    On his screen there were maps of the area, placing Marsh Fork in the eastern end of the state near the West Virginia line, and there were images of miners with coal-smudged faces and hard hats standing shoulder to shoulder and staring into the camera with a resigned weariness. And photos of Marsh Fork Elementary School, a one-story, tired-out brick building surrounded by a tall chain-link fence. But most of the photos featured protest rallies inside gymnasiums or in green rolling fields or in front of Marsh Fork Elementary.
    The protestors held up hand-lettered signs demanding the governor save their kids, save their elementary school, save their community, save their mountains. A few rows