Read SET HER FREE chapter one

Chantelle Lawrence tapped her fingernails anxiously against the countertop as she watched the news on the small TV mounted to the ceiling in the corner.

She was four hours into her shift at the gas station, and she probably wouldn't have come in if she knew about what they were reporting on before she left the house. She had two kids at home – fourteen and sixteen, capable of handling themselves in most situations, but a jailbreak?

Their house wasn't all that far from the jail.

"…believed to still be within the secure perimeter set up by the U.S. Marshals early this evening…"

Donna Reagle, the shiny-haired blonde who reported for WKYC, was right outside the barricades, the Summit County Jail visible over her left shoulder. Search helicopters with their powerful spotlights were circling in the air, and Chantelle's stomach was in knots.

She was the only one working this shift – that was how it always was so her skinflint of a boss, Rick, could squeeze the maximum profit out of this grungy little dump. He didn't tolerate call-offs or late clock-ins.

She doubted he would be too happy if she told him she needed to close the store so she could go home and check on her sons.

They're fine, they're playing Gears of War 567, or whatever release number they're on right now, she tried to tell herself. Probably don't even care what's going on.

She'd already called three times to tell them to lock the doors, close the curtains, go get the baseball bat she had under her bed and keep it near them just in case.

"Mom, we're fine," Jayden had said the third time she called, his voice tinged with that teenagery annoyance she knew so well. "It's not like it's even a prison. Don't they just put guys who don't pay their parking tickets in there?”

Chantelle didn't actually know who they put in the jail. All she could picture was John Wayne Gacy and the Unabomber and her ex, who'd once gotten blackout drunk and come after her with a kitchen knife.

The bell above the door jingled, pulling her from her thoughts. A couple of customers walked in, one of them heading toward the back of the store. The other, a man in a holey t-shirt and worn jeans, approached the counter.

"Thirty bucks on pump three," he said, holding up a credit card. "And a pack of Winstons."

Chantelle keyed it into the register, her eyes going back to the TV where Donna Reagle had been replaced by a pair of mugshots. Darius Nelson was printed beneath the smiling photo of a white guy with messy hair and pimples dotting his cheeks. His eyes looked wild and Chantelle couldn't get over the smile – like he was just thrilled to be standing there in prison orange.

The second mugshot barely even caught her attention by contrast – an olive-skinned, middle-aged man whose most prominent feature was thick eyebrows that extended nearly all the way to the bridge of his nose. Rocco Armato was printed beneath him.

"Have you been following that?" Chantelle asked her customer.

He glanced at the screen and shrugged. "Kinda hard not to. It's all over the news."

"I've been watching all evening," Chantelle said. She turned and found the cigarettes on the rack behind her, passing them across the counter. "My kids are home alone and we live a couple blocks from the jail."

The man pocketed his cigarettes. "I wouldn't worry too much. I'm pretty sure real-life jailbreaks aren't nearly as exciting as they are on TV. It'll probably be over soon."

Chantelle smiled. "Yeah, that's what my son said."

The man gave her a sympathetic look then headed out the door.

Chantelle watched her other customer move around at the back of the store. He was young, probably just a few years older than Jayden, and he was wearing a baggy hoodie in the sweltering heat of June. After a few minutes, he left without making eye contact with her, hands stuffed into his hoodie pocket.

Stealing stuff, clearly. But she wasn’t paid enough to notice that kind of thing. Not when she had to assume that everyone who set foot in the store was concealed-carrying.

She watched out the window as the young thief walked across the parking lot and disappeared up the street, and the guy at pump three finished gassing up and drove away. Then she stepped out from behind the counter and started straightening shelves just to get her mind on something other than the news.

She was on the far side of the store tidying the snacks when the door jingled again. "Evening," she said with a nod to a man in coveralls who nodded back and headed for the beer cooler at the back of the store.

Chantelle found a nearly empty carton of beef jerky, and a few stray sticks scattered on the floor. She rolled her eyes as she bent to pick them up. This must have been what her thief was after.

Not that she could entirely blame him. Jerky was expensive as hell these days.

The doorbell chimed again and Chantelle didn't bother to stand up again as she called out her greeting. She was fishing for beef jerky underneath the shelf.

Instead of an answer, or even the grunts she got most of the time from tired guys getting off second shift, Chantelle heard a familiar click.

The lock on the door being turned.

Her heart skipped a beat. She'd never been robbed on the clock, but she knew coworkers who had and they told her to keep her back turned if it ever happened to her. Don't look at him so you can't identify him. Just let him take whatever he wants.

She stood upright, facing the wall, hands up. "Take whatever you want from the register," she said, her words shaky. "Control, shift, E. The drawer will open. I haven't seen your face and I won't look."

"We don't want the register." The gruff voice sent a chill down her spine and tears sprang to her eyes.

"Please…" she started, before she could even formulate what she was begging for.

"We want your clothes."

"What?"

She turned. It was instinctive, driven by confusion. Her clothes?

She gasped. It was the two men whose faces she'd just seen on TV. Standing at the end of her aisle was the shorter and crazier-looking of the two, Darius Nelson. His face was marred by red marks and the look in his eyes was one of barely contained violence. If there was any question at all, the bright orange jumpsuits they wore labeled them as the escaped convicts.

"Oh dear God…" Chantelle whispered, half surprise, half prayer.

Without warning, Nelson reached for a glass soda bottle on a nearby shelf, smashing it to create a jagged weapon.

Chantelle's eyes darted to the other fugitive, Armato, she remembered. He stood by the door with a hard, unyielding gaze. He made no move to arm himself or approach her, but it was clear he wasn't planning to let her leave.

Ever? the panicked thought squeaked inside her head.

"I have two sons–"

"Shut up!" Nelson hissed. Then he turned toward the beer cooler. "We know you're in there," he called. "Come out with your hands up. We want your clothes, too."

Chantelle's heart raced so hard she wondered if this was what a heart attack felt like. She couldn't breathe and her vision was blurring with the panic. God, please let that man in the cooler be packing heat, or have a knife, or know karate, SOMETHING.

A few seconds ticked by and there was no response from the beer cooler.

Nelson gestured to Armato. "Go get him."

Then he turned back to Chantelle. He took a few steps up the aisle, the broken bottle held out in front of him. The sickly-sweet stench of something rotting came with him the closer he got. Suddenly, warmth flooded her crotch. Chantelle looked down to see a dark stain spreading across her jeans.

Nelson saw it too, his face turning a deep, angry red. "Are you freaking serious?! I gotta wear those, and now they're soaked in piss!"

He swept his free hand over a shelf, sending candy bars in their boxes flying at her. Chantelle put her hands up, curling in on herself.

"Nelson," Armato warned. "Calm down. I'll wear the wet jeans."

But Nelson was beyond reason. With a roar of fury, he lunged at Chantelle, the jagged edges of the broken bottle glancing over her forearm as she put up her arms to protect herself.

Glass shattered overhead, and wetness rained down on her.

She cringed and waited for an impact, but instead she heard Nelson bellow, "You think you're some kind of hero?!"

Chantelle peeked one eye over her raised arms, realizing it wasn't Nelson who threw the bottle. The guy from the cooler had made his move, hurling a beer bottle at Nelson, but his aim wasn't good and now the fugitive was even more pissed off.

"You just made the biggest mistake of your life!" Nelson stomped past Chantelle, spittle flying from his lips as he advanced on the man.

"I'm sorry," the man said, backing away, hands raised.

"Don't you dare piss those coveralls, you hear me?" Nelson snarled. "Those are mine and I want 'em dry."

In a few shockingly swift strides, Nelson was in front of him, and then his hands were around the man's throat. Chantelle screamed, a sound that bubbled up from her gut without her permission, and she watched as the man's eyes bulged and his cheeks turned a sickly purple. He clawed at Nelson's hands, but the fugitive simply stood there in front of him, patiently squeezing the life out of a man larger than himself.

Jayden and Jameson. Her sons' names pushed to the front of her brain and Chantelle came back to her senses.

She looked at Armato, who was still guarding the door.

Nelson was preoccupied with his victim at the back of the store.

No one was paying attention to her and this was her moment – maybe the only one she'd get to save herself and see her boys again.

She ducked down below the shelves and started to move toward the front of the store. She couldn't get past Armato at the door, but there was a panic button behind the counter, installed after the last robbery, or she could lock herself in the storeroom and call for help on her cell.

Jayden and Jameson. She chanted her sons' names in her head for courage.

She got to the end of the aisle and her heart skipped a beat.

Now was the time she'd have to make a run for it out in the open. They'd see her, and it'd just come down to who was faster.

She put her head down and took a deep breath. Jayden and Jameson.

And then a pair of scuffed black work boots appeared in her line of vision. That rotten smell wrinkled her nose and cloyed at her throat.

Chantelle looked up. Armato stood directly in front of her, his dark brown eyes devoid of emotion. He seemed calm, with none of the unpredictable energy of his partner, which made it all the more chilling when he commanded, "Take off your clothes."

"Please…"

She could still hear the guy in the coveralls wheezing and kicking out at Nelson, but she could also tell his strength was flagging. Chantelle started to sob as she reached for the buttons on the front of her work polo, the gas station's logo embroidered on the chest, her cheaply laminated name tag pinned right below it.

She pulled the shirt over her head and handed it over, feeling the threadbare thinness of her white cotton bra as she crossed her arms in front of her chest.

"The pants too," Armato said.

Chantelle hesitated for a moment. Did he really just want her clothes, or was he going to try to… She braved a glance toward the beer cooler. She couldn't see Nelson and the man anymore, but she could hear snaps popping open and fabric straining.

Hot tears fell down her cheeks as she unbuttoned her jeans. The wet crotch made them hard to take off, and she had to take her phone out of her pocket and kick her sneakers off too. While she undressed, out of the corner of her eye she saw Armato stripping off his orange jumpsuit, down to a white t-shirt and underwear. The front of his shirt was streaked with dried blood.

Please, no, she prayed. Just take the clothes and go…

"Pants," Armato demanded, holding his hand out.

She gave them to him, then pressed her back up against a rack of potato chips, the bags crinkling behind her. Armato took her phone and she kept her eyes on the floor, watching out of the corner of her vision as he tried to fit into her jeans. He was at least a foot taller than her, and probably fifty pounds heavier. He barely got his feet through the bootcut leg holes.

He let out a huff, then called, "Not gonna work, Nelson. I need the coveralls."

“No way, you told me I don't have to wear the piss pants," he spat back.

"Look, if I could walk down the street in my tighty whiteys without getting noticed, I would."

Nelson's head popped up over the shelving. "You saying I'm small?"

Chantelle raised up just tall enough to keep an eye on him. He was small for a man, certainly smaller than Armato. He was close to Chantelle's height – five seven – and of the two of them, he certainly stood the better chance of fitting into her jeans.

Armato held his hands up. "I'm not saying anything other than we can't hang out here all night. We have to keep moving."

Keep moving. It was like a reminder to Chantelle as much as it was for Nelson. Nobody was guarding the door now. For all she knew, the guy in the coveralls was dead and she'd be next if she didn't make a move.

The two convicts were busy fighting with each other.

Now or never.

She pushed off the chip rack like a runner off a starting block. Her socks were slippery against the tile floor but she ran with everything she had toward the front door.

Her hand was on the lock.

Hope swelled in her chest.

And then a fist closed around her ponytail, yanking her backward so hard tears came to her eyes and she landed flat on her back. It nearly knocked the wind out of her, and then Nelson straddled her hips, looking down at her with that eerie, unhinged smile, coveralls in one fist and something small and silver glinting in the other.

"Where do you think you're going, sweetheart?" His breath was hot and rancid, and the closer he got, the stronger the rotting stench became, squeezing at her gag reflex. "You're not leaving here until you're in a body bag."

"Oh God, please, no." Chantelle was blubbering now, more adrenaline and terror pumping through her veins than blood. "I have two boys at home. Please don't take their mother from them."

Nelson threw the dark blue coveralls at Armato, then turned back to her. "Lookie what I found."

He held up a folding pocket knife, only about a three-inch blade but enough to do plenty of damage.

"You got a car?" he demanded.

Chantelle shook her head. "I-I take the bus."

"Figures." Nelson looked annoyed. He played with the knife, running it over the tip of his finger and then holding it up so she could see the blood, how sharp the blade was.

"Please just let me go," she begged. "I didn't see anything, I was in the back room the whole time. You can have my clothes, and anything you want in the store. My sons–"

"How old are they?" Nelson asked.

She swallowed hard, trying to steady her voice. "Jayden is sixteen, and Jameson just turned fourteen." He let her keep talking, so she did, saying everything she could think of to make them real to him. "Jameson loves basketball and he's been working so hard to make the varsity team next year. And Jayden, he's so smart. He wants to be a doctor."

"Sixteen and fourteen, huh?"

Was that a glimmer of empathy in Nelson's eyes? Chantelle allowed herself to hope. But then they turned cold, all of the humanity bleeding out of them as she watched.

"They're old enough to survive without you," Nelson declared. "And they're gonna have to."

"Please, please, please," Chantelle sobbed.

The only other sound as Nelson bent toward her with the knife was Donna Reagle on the television mounted in the corner. "Recently convicted of a brutal triple homicide, police warn that Darius Nelson should be considered extremely dangerous, and you should not approach him under any circumstances–”

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