Read Minutes to Burn for Free Online

“Sacramento.”
    Savage still refused to rise. “Why?”
    Walters’s jaw flexed again. Savage leaned back on his hands, kicking his legs out in front of him. With effort, Walters relaxed his face. He didn’t raise his voice, but he still conveyed anger by shaping his words into hard, compact syllables. “Briefing on a mission. The details are confi-dential.”
    “There now,” Savage said, standing up. “That wasn’t so hard.”
    The guard slid the door open, and Savage stepped into the corridor, brushing the dirt from his sleeves.
    “That’s it?” Fin shrieked. “You’re gonna let him go? Whaddaya mean a mission? I could fight a mission. I could fight a mission better than this weasel. You should hear him moan during push-ups. Like a bitch. Just like a—”
    As Savage passed Fin’s cell, he reached through the bars, bunching Fin’s shirt in his fist. With a sudden sharp movement, he recoiled his arm, jerking Fin’s head forward into the bars. Fin buckled and went limp in his grasp. Savage released him and stood facing both guards and Walters obediently before the clang had finished echoing up the corri-dor. Fin slumped to the ground, bent awkwardly over his legs. The two guards glanced at each other, then back at Savage, but Savage remained perfectly still, his arms at his sides, wearing an expression of total com-pliance.
    Behind him, Fin’s body shifted, his torso tilting over onto the floor. He began to draw air in slow, rasping breaths.
    “Well,” Savage said, gesturing down the narrow corridor. “Shall we?”
    “Confidential, huh?” Savage rolled a cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other, leaning back out of the open door of the camou-flage Blackhawk so he could feel the cold wind whipping across his face.
    His foot rested on one of the skids, still covered only with a sock. “Must be important for them to pull me out of the clink.”
    Walters snickered. “Yeah, they only use felons on missions of the utmost importance.”
    “I can imagine I’m probably a distant second to someone with real military training. Like, say, a park ranger.”
    Walters didn’t reply.
    Savage toed the small mound of supplies Walters had loaded in the back of the helicopter—rope, canteens, climbing gear. “We’ve been heading northwest for a while now. Last I remembered, Sacramento was due south of Billings.”
    “Your briefing’s not until tomorrow A.M. I’m just in charge of picking you up and dropping you off. I have a mission of my own here in the meantime.”
    “Helo shortage?”
    Walters nodded. “And everything else. The chopper’s due in Sac end of the day. They weren’t exactly gonna make a special outing to pick up a jailbird. Since I was headed out anyway, I landed the lucky task of trans-porting you. But first, we’re making a detour. You get to wait.”
    Savage nodded ever so slightly. He glanced down and wiggled his big toe, protruding from a hole in his sock. “Any way you could see about getting me a boot?”
    “Like I said, you get to wait.”
    The helicopter pulled in tight to the land, running along the top of an elongated gorge. Below, rivulets trickled along icy banks. Through the thick forest, Savage could make out only occasional spots of ground, white splotches showing through the patchwork of trees.
    Walters scanned the forest with a pair of high-tech binoculars. They whirred, electronically focusing as he swung them back and forth. “Glacier National Park. We had three campers killed here last week by a grizzly sow. One guy survived the attack, staggered back to a logging camp. Severe head wounds. Said he was batted around like a soccer ball. He did the smart thing though—curled up, covered his vitals, refused to panic.” Walters lowered the binoculars, and Savage was surprised by the intensity in his eyes. “Said he could hear the grizzly’s teeth clinking against his skull.” His top lip pulled up in the start of a sneer. “Park ranger stuff.”
    Savage