All the Lost Little Horses (A Desperation Creek Novel Book 2)

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “Not of Linette’s, although I sent a deputy to her ranch to grab an item of clothing in case we need it.” Erin. “The man who abducted her has been staying in this house, though. I think this T-shirt is his.” He held it out.

  Jed had found it on the floor almost under the bed. It reeked of sweat.

  Dr. Knappe took the shirt and presented it to his dog, who buried her snout in it and took a good, long sniff. Snoopy then lowered her sensitive nose to the ground…and without hesitation headed toward those scuff marks.

  She moved so fast, she’d have left them behind if her handler hadn’t had her on a leash. A man in his late fifties, Knappe had no trouble keeping up. Jed’s heart drummed as he stayed on their heels. He was afraid of coming on Theo and Linette too suddenly, but it had now been an hour and a half since the helicopter pilot had spotted them. Linette would have hampered Theo, who’d have had to keep her under control. Still, Jed didn’t like to think of how far they could have gotten in that length of time.

  Mostly, he and Knappe jogged, slowing or stopping only occasionally when Snoopy paused as if momentarily uncertain. She always caught the scent again quickly, and took off with unmistakable eagerness.

  They’d been moving for forty-five minutes when the vet pulled his dog to a stop.

  “Cabin,” he murmured to Jed, who came to his side.

  The clearing in front of them was substantial – close to an acre, he thought. The cabin was newish, the lawn a week or two late for a mowing. Either Theo had known this place was empty and kept it in mind as a bolt hole – or he’d been prepared to kill anyone in his way.

  The small-paned windows in the cabin were smaller than Jed would have liked, and from here he didn’t see any not covered by curtains or blinds. He couldn’t assume Willis and Linette were inside – this could be a decoy, if they’d continued on – but it made sense Theo would make a stand here. The log walls were solid. It would take a howitzer to rip through them.

  Jed eyed the surroundings, focused on the slight rise behind the cabin where he’d set up.

  Crack.

  Fuck! A chip of bark from a tree not a foot from him barely missed his eye.

  He dove towards the veterinarian, tackling him to the ground.

  Crack. Crack.

  With a whine, Snoopy scuttled back to huddle with them.

  Eyes on the cabin, watching for any movement, Jed pulled out his phone. He’d get this place surrounded, then go for his own rifle. Sooner or later, Theo Willis would pass in front of a window.

  Jed wouldn’t hesitate to blow off his head.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “Somebody is out there.” Theo sounded disbelieving. “I’ll fix that!”

  He was almost out of sight, but Linette heard him unlocking the front door. He must have cracked it open, because she could see his right shoulder and the butt of the rifle as he lifted it and fired. Once, twice, three times.

  Linette winced with each explosive sound.

  He must have shut the door and locked. The next thing she knew, he’d rushed to another window and peered between blinds. “How did the fuck did they find us so fast?” He spun toward her with that shocking speed he’d always possessed. “You have GPS on you, don’t you?” His voice rose. “Where is it?”

  “I don’t!” Linette instinctively shrank from the huge, enraged man advancing on her. The too-familiar sight snapped her into a flashback. It flickered like a double exposure; one second she was here, the next she saw another time and place. His fist would be descending. She felt the phantom pain…

  No. Abruptly, she was back to the present. She hurt because he had already hit her. If his last blow had cracked her cheekbone, what would this one do?

  I’m not the same person. I’m stronger.

  For what good that did her now. Unfortunately, she couldn’t retreat very far, since he had cuffed her to the handle of the refrigerator here, too.

  Nor could she keep herself from hunching into a small ball when his enormous hands reached for her. He groped his way over her body, thighs, between her legs, hips and finally breasts, which he squeezed painfully before he straightened and glared at her.

  “Where’s your phone?”

  “I…don’t know.” She’d had it in the back pocket of her jeans while she worked in the barn this morning, hadn’t she? That seemed like an eternity ago. She could tell he didn’t believe her, but his search would have found the phone if she had it.

  “Maybe whoever lives here was coming home,” she suggested timidly.

  “They’re supposed to be away,” he snapped.

  He raced back to the living room to look out of the window.

  What if he’d killed someone who had had an innocent reason for turning into this driveway or walking up to the house? The owner, a neighbor, a UPS driver.

  The odds weren’t good that whoever was out there was looking for her.

  Linette grappled for understanding. Why had the helicopter been here in the first place? This couldn’t be much more than midday. Jed had no way to know she’d been kidnapped, unless… No, even if by chance someone had stopped at her ranch and found Ken, how could Jed possibly have guessed where to send aerial reconnaissance?

  Probably a child was missing or something like that. Or – had the helicopter been up watching for some cattle being moved?

  A shout came from another room.

  Unless Theo’s paranoia had become so exaggerated he was seeing things, it seemed the cabin was being surrounded. She’d been wrong; somehow she and Theo had been tracked. But how?

  After fleeing the old house where he’d first taken her, they could have gone in any direction. As Theo dragged her through the woods, she had wished desperately that Jed, or anyone else, was right behind them. Was it remotely possible someone had been trailing them, moving like a ghost between the boles of the pines? Or had more time passed than she thought? Her vision was still funny, and her head throbbed, but she didn’t think she’d passed out. She peered toward the nearest window, but through filmy white curtains she couldn’t see the angle of the sun.

  Going very still, she realized she also couldn’t see Theo. On that thought, she looked frantically around. She should have already done that. Unless she planned to crouch here waiting for him to murder her, she needed to use her head, whether it throbbed or not.

  The refrigerator was located at one end of the kitchen counter and cabinets. A doorway leading into a utility room was on the other side of the fridge. Theo and she had come in that door. It didn’t have an inset window, as such doors often did. Remembering the solid sound it had made closing behind them, Linette thought it was a steel door. She distinctly recalled Theo turning a deadbolt lock, too. There was a window in there, though, she could tell from the quality of the light.

  She started to wonder how he’d gotten a key – or had the door been unlocked? – when she pulled herself back. Not important. So focus. What could she reach that had the potential to be a weapon?

  She heard the footsteps just before Theo reappeared. Linette took care to round her shoulders and stay on her knees, trying to look cowed. It must have worked, because all he did was rake her with a disparaging glance on his way to...maybe a dining room?

  A wooden block holding a selection of knives taunted her from the far end of the counter. Otherwise, a set of red glazed ceramic canisters were the only things on the counter, and they were almost as far away. But she could reach one set of cupboard doors and at least two of a stack of three drawers. She prayed they didn’t hold waxed paper and aluminum foil, or tablecloths and napkins.

  Theo passed by again, trailing invectives. Rage and, she thought, fear contorted his face. This time she heard him bounding up a staircase.

  Cupboard first. A toaster. A waffle iron. A blender. A few pans, none cast-iron. Damn. Quiet, quiet, quiet. Linette eased the cabinet door shut. Hiding a cast-iron frying pan behind her back would have been a challenge anyway.

  Still no sound of Theo coming bac
k down.

  First drawer held silverware. A butter knife didn’t make much of a weapon. A fork…well, maybe, if she didn’t find anything else. What she’d give for a hoof pick.

  Feet thudded on the stairs again.

  “I don’t see anybody in back,” he growled, coming straight to her. “We need to get out of here.”

  She made a point of cowering. “But, what if someone shoots at us?”

  His mouth curled. “Yeah, you’ll make a good shield.”

  Why hadn’t she noticed back then that he never really smiled or laughed? What passed for a smile on Theo’s face was closer to a jeer, derision, a sneer. If he was happy, a smirk.

  Never violent, right this minute Linette would take pleasure in swinging the longed-for cast-iron frying pan at his face.

  Lacking that…she stood passively while he unlocked the cuff from the refrigerator handle and jerked her toward the utility room and the back door.

  *****

  Erin crouched at one end of a large propane tank tucked beneath the eaves behind the cabin. She was confident she couldn’t be seen from any window, and she had a narrow view between the tank and the log walls of the cabin to the back door. She, and all the other deputies now ringing the cabin, had orders to keep Theo trapped inside.

  Erin had only her handgun, which felt huge in her small hands right now. She practiced regularly at the range, and was a competent shot. Not satisfied with competent, she put in more hours facing down the bull’s-eye than did any of the other deputies. None of that practice helped right this minute. She’d been in tense situations before, but had never had time to think, I may have to shoot and kill a man today. She closed her eyes momentarily. God forbid anyone else ever guess she’d suffered a case of nerves like this.

  And…that wasn’t all wrong with her. She kept dwelling on why she hadn’t followed up on those fingerprints sooner. If she had, Linette might never have been abducted. That young ranch hand might not be battling for his life at this very minute. She’d let something drop, and the consequences were dire.

  If either Linette or Ken Fields died, Erin didn’t know how she’d live with it. Maybe Niall Callaghan wasn’t a jerk. Maybe he was right, that she didn’t have what it took to do this job well.

  She gave her head a hard shake. She couldn’t afford this now. Do what you have to do, indulge in guilt later.

  Oh, and while she was at it? She silently begged Jed to hurry. Call her a coward, but she didn’t want to have to confront a vicious thug wanted for murder on her own.

  At a scraping sound that had to be the deadbolt sliding in the steel door not twenty feet from her position, Erin’s heartbeat jumped and wobbled, but she also murmured into her radio and steadied her grip on her weapon.

  *****

  By the time Jed made it back to the cabin where Linette was being held captive, he’d been updated on several fronts. He might as well be in another dimension, his world narrowed until he heard and understood what was said even as none of it touched him. He recognized the ice that encased him, that allowed him to do a deadly job. At least the calls coming in on his cell phone distracted him from the inner core of pain he couldn’t let cripple him.

  Harrison Seward had seen his downfall coming and swallowed a gun, one with a suppressor that had cut down on the sound so that, combined with thick walls in the old police station, no one heard the shot. He had likely been dead for half an hour or more before Grant discovered him.

  A dozen cattle rustlers had been arrested, four of them police officers. These were the “in” crowd Niall had mentioned. For the moment, the cattle that had been loaded into two stock trailers were released on Seward’s land again. A search of Seward’s records would have to wait; most sheriff’s deputies were out at the cabin preventing Theo Willis from taking off. The state patrol had really come through for the Hayes County Sheriff’s Department today.

  At this moment, Jed couldn’t even think about the rustling investigation, the number of compromised law enforcement officers or the shocking end for a man who’d been respected by the citizens of this county during a long career in Fort Halleck. All Jed could think about was Linette. How frightened she was, whether she’d been hurt, whether that scum had raped her.

  Whether she was still alive.

  He pulled up behind a row of police vehicles at the foot of the driveway leading to a cabin that belonged to a local bank president, currently in Cancun, Mexico. Jed had spoken to him. The distraught man hadn’t had the least idea that anyone was living at the old farmhouse a quarter of a mile past his place. He did admit to keeping a hideout key under a planter on the front porch. It worked for both the front and back doors.

  “Nobody in the neighborhood has had a break in,” he mumbled.

  He had talked Jed through the layout of the interior. It was conceivable they’d have to go in, but that would be a last resort. The risk to Linette – he had to believe she was alive – would be too great.

  Willis might be smart. He was quick to turn violent, seemingly lacked any conscience, and he’d killed before, possibly more than the twice that they knew about. What he hadn’t done was serve in the military. There was no indication he’d ever belonged to a gang. He wasn’t a career criminal. All of which meant it was unlikely he’d spent much time handling his guns – although that shot earlier had come closer to Jed’s head than he liked. Even so, Theo would have no idea how to protect himself from a man who knew what Jed did, who’d spent years as a government-sanctioned assassin.

  Mostly, Theo Willis reserved his anger for women. Lacking any control over his temper, he lashed out viciously, taking advantage of his size. And he’d had Linette in his complete control now for almost four hours.

  Tiny cracks weakened the ice containing Jed’s emotions. He’d never been this scared in his life.

  Carrying his rifle and a duffle with any accessories he might conceivably need, he jogged up the driveway. Melting into the trees just before he would have emerged into the clearing, he immediately saw Ben Fischer waiting for him.

  “What’s been happening?” Jed asked.

  The excitement mixed with nerves he’d expect from an officer as young as Fischer showed on his face, but his report was concise and steady. “A few minutes ago, he opened the back door. Deputy Brown is back there. She yelled, ‘Police.’ Ordered him to lay down his weapons. He shot at her.”

  The muscles in Jed’s jaw spasmed.

  “Bullet pinged off the propane tank behind the house. She shot back, he retreated inside. She doesn’t think she got him. Nothing since.”

  “Okay.” He thought about what the homeowner had told him. “I understand there’s an upstairs window in back with no blinds or curtains, and another window on the ground floor with blinds that may have been left open.”

  “Yeah, the utility room. Can’t see into the kitchen through it, so unless he’s standing by the washer and dryer—” He shrugged.

  “Has anyone actually seen him well enough to identify him?”

  “The upstairs window, once,” Fischer said confidently. “Kittson is back there in the woods.”

  Jed hoped his wince didn’t show. Ned Kittson was pot-bellied, in his sixties and a year from retirement. But that was the current sheriff’s department: the young and the old. Jed and Grant were the only two with experience under their belt, but not too many years. Jed wished Grant were here, but understood that he had to take control of the police chief’s apparent suicide and the rest of the mess there, especially determining whether the officers who hadn’t already been arrested were law-abiding, or just hadn’t happened to be caught red-handed today.

  “I’ll set up in back,” he said. “Let me know if Willis shows up clearly at any other window. Hold your fire unless he’s clearly alone or comes out shooting. He might be using Ms. Broussard as a shield.”

  “Yes, sir.” Fischer restrained his hand before he saluted. Barely.

  At the sound of an approaching vehicle, Jed eased behind the thick
bole of a pine. If this wasn’t Grant, it almost had to be…

  The engine cut off, and a door slammed. Sure enough, Chris Jarman stormed up the driveway. In this situation, the deputies had had to revert to using their radios, so he’d have heard what was happening here, if not at the other two crime scenes currently being processed.

  Maybe Jarman was here to protest being left out of the action, but it was also possible he thought he could help Willis, or just screw with Jed because he was pissed.

  And damn, Jed did not want to deal with this piece of shit, not now when Linette’s life might hang on him getting set up to shoot, but Jarman had to be incapacitated.

  “You’re my backup,” Jed murmured to Ben Fischer.

  He swallowed hard, but nodded.

  Jed stepped in front of the new arrival. “Put your hands on the tree.”

  Looking shocked, the jackass started to obey.

  “You are under arrest for aiding and abetting a killer,” Jed said grimly. “I’ll be taking your weapon—”

  Even as Jarman said, “What the fuck? I don’t know what you’re—” he turned to face Jed, his hand dropping toward the butt of his gun.

  Jed had his Glock in his hand and pointed before this asshole had the chance to be even stupider. Fischer was only a beat slower.

  Jarman flushed purple with fury. “You can’t do this.”

  “Face the tree. Let me see your hands on it.”

  “You have no goddamn right—” He must have been able to tell Jed was the wrong person for him to argue with, because he flung himself around and obeyed.

  When Jed said with surface calm, “Take his gun,” Deputy Fischer stepped forward and gingerly removed Jarman’s weapon from the holster. Looking shaken, he laid it on the ground a distance away, then on Jed’s order cuffed his fellow deputy. A minute later, they searched and found a backup gun at his ankle. Confident he had no other weapons, Jed had Fischer put Jarman in the cage in the marked vehicle he had just arrived in.

  Jarman was screaming for an attorney when they shut the door and walked away. He had good reason. The arrest wasn’t legally justifiable, given that the only solid evidence was the padlock – which Erin had removed from Jarman’s personal vehicle without a warrant. Since she’d put it back, it couldn’t serve as any kind of evidence. Right this minute, Jed didn’t give a shit.