“Why is she not calling me?”
“I don’t have all the details yet—we’re getting them secondhand from Fredericksburg PD. But we believe that one of the gunmen was shot and they are holed up in a private residence near where the ambush occurred. Last I heard, Dunning and Kincaid were heading there but have gone radio silent. I wanted to keep you in the loop.”
“Where are they?” Sean asked.
“I can’t have you in the middle of this, Rogan.”
Sean wanted to hit something. “I want to come to headquarters and monitor the situation.” He swallowed his pride. “Please, Rachel. That’s my wife and my best friend.”
Rachel agreed. “All right, I’ll authorize it. Zach Charles is monitoring all radio transmissions, and Agent Proctor and a team are already en route. If you create any problems for Zach or my office, I will personally escort you out.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He hung up.
“What happened?”
Jesse looked panicked. Sean realized he needed to better control his emotions for his son. Jesse had just lost his mother—he was on an emotional roller coaster.
“Lucy and Nate are pursuing a group of fugitives. We’re going to FBI headquarters so I know what’s going on. But Lucy and Nate are the best at this sort of work. They’re going to be fine.”
They had to be fine. Lucy had to come home. Sean didn’t know what he would do if he lost her.
Chapter Four
Mason County, Texas
Sam had a great thing going with Reggie. There had been four of them, and they’d successfully robbed four banks and six high-end businesses last year in Dallas. Before that, Reggie and Sam alone had robbed dozens of places all through the South while they were trying to figure out what to do with their lives. They hadn’t been caught, weren’t even under suspicion of being involved. Of course, they had Reggie’s little brother, Kirk, to teach them what not to do, considering he’d spent a few years behind bars.
Once they brought Amanda and Jacob into the mix, everything got better. Their method was brilliant. Amanda was calm and collected and had the technical skills to shut down security; Reggie had the intimidation act down pat; Sam was fast and light and could grab enough to keep them going while they planned the next big score; and Jacob was a fucking brilliant wheelman.
Then Sam’s ma insisted they include Kirk and SueAnn. Sam should have stood up to her. He wanted to. He’d known it was a bad idea. But Sam couldn’t say no to his own mother, and Reggie thought Monica Trembly walked on water. Probably because Sam’s ma stood up to Reggie and Kirk’s good-for-nothing dad years ago and said that if he laid one more hand on his boys she’d shoot him full of buckshot.
So Sam went along with it, against his better judgment. And everything went to hell. Because both Kirk and SueAnn were fucking crazy. Separately they were bad enough, but together they were like Bonnie and Clyde. Thelma and Louise, if Thelma were a guy. SueAnn was Monica’s baby girl who could do no wrong. And his mother couldn’t see how volatile the kid was. She was certainly her father’s daughter, and there was no love lost between Sam and SueAnn’s dad, who—thank the Lord—wasn’t his father.
Or maybe Monica knew exactly who and what SueAnn was and just liked watching the fireworks.
With Reggie gone . . . damn, he really didn’t want to think about it. He missed his buddy, who was closer than his own brother. Sam liked Jacob fine enough, but he wasn’t Reggie. The kid was smart and stayed under the radar, always a good thing. Until now.
Sam was positive that the asinine idea for Jacob to get arrested came from Kirk. Jacob was smart—except when he listened to Kirk. Sure, having the inside information helped, but they could have figured out a better way to spring him.
Of course, flooding the basement had been brilliant. Sam wasn’t surprised that the flood had been Amanda’s idea.
And now they were stuck. SueAnn had been shot in the arm, and the truck was hot. Sam wasn’t a violent man. SueAnn had wanted to kill all three cops, but Sam knew better. Robbing banks and breaking out of jail was bad enough—but kill a cop? Hell, they’d have every fucking law enforcement agency from the podunk Brady PD to the Texas Rangers out looking for them, and they didn’t have enough money to stay hidden forever.
They had to lay low until tomorrow night when they’d score big; then they could head for their property in Mississippi. They had a place on the bayou, not in anyone’s name—at least, no one that the FBI or anyone could trace to them—and they would have enough dough to live for a long time. Then he and Amanda could grieve properly for Reggie, and SueAnn and Kirk could fuck like rabbits, and Jacob might be able to win back his ex-girlfriend. And their ma? Well, Sam suspected she’d go right back to SueAnn’s daddy up in Amarillo.
Fine by Sam.
But first, they needed a clean vehicle to get out of the area.
They’d found the girls in the barn, just down the road. Fifteen, sixteen—somewhere thereabouts. They were fighters, and one of them pulled a rifle out from behind a hay bale, but Sam grabbed it. Tied them both up with their horses, who were freaked out by the thunder and lightning. Made sure they didn’t have a phone on them. They spilled the beans that their ma was long dead and their father was out helping a neighbor shore up his levee.
There was a pickup truck in the garage with a camper shell. Jacob got to work on it—taking off the plates and making sure it was in running order. Amanda stayed with him.
Sam went into the house with his ma, Kirk, and SueAnn. The door was unlocked. Two large black Labs came running to them. They barked once, then got excited at the visitors.
Stupid-ass guard dogs, Sam thought. He scratched them behind the ears and one ran over to a basket and brought him a rope to play.
“It don’t hurt much,” SueAnn said as she sat down on the couch and put her feet on the coffee table.
“Baby, we gotta check it out. You’re bleeding.” Kirk kissed her neck and she giggled. Sam rolled his eyes.
“Knock it off,” Monica said. “Sam, search the house. Grab anything you can to stitch up SueAnn. Take off your shirt, girl, let me see if the bullet is still in your arm.”
Kirk helped SueAnn off with her shirt. Sam ignored them. He first locked the dogs in the mudroom, then found a fully stocked first-aid kit in a small bathroom. He handed it to his mother, then went down the hall and looked through the bedrooms.
Master room—masculine, a picture of the father and his now-dead wife on their wedding day on one wall. He must not bring other women here, it’d be right creepy to have sex with the dead wife looking down on him. But Sam verified that there were no women’s things in the room—no perfume or clothing. He glanced at the pictures and did a double take.
Two girls. And a boy. The most recent picture looked like he was seven or eight.
Where was the kid? Was he with the dad at the neighbor’s?
Sam pulled out his gun. He wasn’t going to shoot a kid, for chrissakes, but he couldn’t have him calling the police or getting his father. He looked in the closet. No kid, but a big-ass gun safe was front and center. Well, shit. The girls had a rifle in the barn, and now there were guns in the house? Did the kid have access to them? The safe was locked, but that didn’t mean the kid couldn’t get inside.
The police were already on the way because of the feds, but they had been listening to the police scanner and knew the roads were fucked up. Amanda was a planner, and they had created enough hazards in this storm to delay the cops for a while. Besides, they only needed a few minutes to stitch up SueAnn, grab supplies, and swap vehicles. Jacob had another truck waiting for them when they reached the main highway—and he and Amanda knew all the back roads. They just had to get going.
He left the master bedroom. “Kirk, get Jacob’s ETA,” he called down the hall. “I’m going to check the other rooms, but I want to be outta here in five minutes or less, understand?”
“Gotcha.”
Sam continued down the hall and looked into each of the
bedrooms. The girls’ rooms shared a bathroom. One girl was all frilly and into pink and purple and had posters of country music stars like Thomas Rhett and Sam Hunt and a young clean-cut kid Sam didn’t recognize. The other girl was a tomboy, had trophies up the wazoo—for wrangling. Impressive, for a girl. Junior this, junior that. Not a pink sock to speak of.
The boy’s room had a space theme going on and an eclectic collection of Legos and comic books strewn everywhere. He didn’t see the kid, but he now knew his name from schoolwork on his desk: Bobby.
“Bobby, you in here?” Sam called out. “I don’t want to hurt you, kid, but I need you to come with me. Just to keep my eye on you.”
Nothing.
The bunk bed was raised and didn’t provide any place to hide underneath. Sam opened the closet, which overflowed with stuffed animals but no kid. Sam poked around, but the kid wasn’t hiding in there.
Shit.
He went back to the living room. “There might be a kid around here somewhere,” Sam told SueAnn and his mother. “I can’t find him.”
Monica had finished bandaging SueAnn’s arm. His sister was drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. Sam grabbed it from her and slammed it down on the table. “No drinking on the job, dipshit.”
“Don’t call your sister names,” Monica said. “The bullet was stuck in there, I gave her the bottle to dull the pain while I dug it out.” She showed him the bloody bullet she’d extracted.
“If you hadn’t shot at the cops, they wouldn’t have fired back.”
“We should have whacked them when we had the chance,” SueAnn said.
“Enough of this,” Monica said. “Your brother is right about one thing: If you get branded a cop killer, all bets are off. We’re already going to be the subject of a manhunt, we need to get out of here and finish what we started. We have one job to do, and we’re going to do it, understand? No going off the reservation, hear me?”
“Yes, Ma,” SueAnn said.
Sam hoped Monica could keep the brat under control, because they couldn’t afford any screw-ups in the next thirty-six hours. He looked at his watch. They’d been here for twelve minutes. Not all that long, which was a good thing. But he’d wanted to be out in ten.
Sam peered outside. The rain was still a bitch. Branches and bushes that had been ripped from the earth littered the landscape, stopping only when they encountered a barrier. No cop cars. He could barely see Jacob and Amanda in the garage across the muddy gravel drive. Kirk was running back toward the house, not caring that he was drenched. He put his thumbs up when he saw Sam looking at him.
“We’re ready,” Sam told his mother. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Grab one of the girls, Sam,” Monica said.
“No.” Shit, what was his mother thinking? They didn’t need a hostage. “She’d slow us down.”
“We’re behind schedule, if those feds are looking for shelter, this is one of the first places they’ll find. I—What was that?”
Sam didn’t hear anything.
Monica jumped up and stomped into the kitchen. Sam followed. A door vibrated, as if it had just been closed.
Monica opened the door and said, “There you are. You didn’t look very hard, did you, Sam? You’re getting soft.”
Sam looked inside the pantry. A boy was crouched in the corner. He had a knife in his hand. Sam almost admired the kid.
“Bobby, right?” Sam said.
The kid didn’t respond.
“Look, drop the knife. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Monica pulled out her gun and aimed it at the kid. “Drop the knife or you’re dead, boy.”
Bobby dropped the knife. Monica grabbed him by the arm and pulled him up. “Got our hostage, let’s go.”
A gust of wind tore through the house and Kirk shouted over the storm, “We got company!”
This day could not get any worse.
Chapter Five
There wasn’t much cover along the long driveway leading up to the house on Brandenberger Road, but Lucy and Nate had two advantages: First, the house was around a bend; and second, as they got closer there were more trees to hide their approach. So they ran in the open, then hunkered down behind a small woodshed as soon as they caught sight of the house. Lucy was so wet she didn’t even feel it anymore. As they watched, a man—neither Trembly nor Carr—left the house and headed to what appeared to be a large carport on the other side of a barn. He wore all black with a gun on his hip and a rifle slung over his back.
Nate called into Fredericksburg on the radio. “Agent Dunning here. We’re in position near the house. One hostile visible, possibly patrolling. The suspect’s vehicle is in front of the house. ETA?”
“Dunning,” a male voice came on the phone, “this is Rabke. We have a problem. Someone diverted a drain right onto the highway, and several cars are stuck and in danger of being washed off the road. We can’t pass until we clear this.”
“On purpose?”
“That’s what my crew is telling me. And with the amount of water coming down, they have to fix it immediately.”
“We have a young boy in immediate danger.”
“We can’t pass at this point. We’re working as fast as we can—once it’s clear, we’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“How can they get out of here?” Nate asked the local deputy. “The highway isn’t an option.”
“There are dozens of roads all through the area. At least four off Brandenberger, ranch roads mostly, with a truck they should make it. There’s several places to cross Beaver Creek to the west. It’s riding high, the bridges could be out. They’re not feats of engineering. Some roads only go through when the creek isn’t running. If they cross, they’ll head to Hilda, where there are several roads going off to several highways. If they don’t, they’ll head south toward Loyal Valley—again, several ways out from there. We can’t cover all of them.”
“Contact my office. Send them a map of the area with all possible exits marked. Over and out,” Nate said, and swore under his breath. “I hope we have the people to cover, but getting up here is going to be difficult, and we can’t rely on the sheriffs when they have the storm to contend with. And we have to assume Trembly’s gang has the kids. What did the kid say? Two sisters?”
“They were in the barn.”
“We check the barn first, see what’s going on, then head to the garage. If they’ve split up, it’ll be easier to take them down. Ready?”
She nodded. Nate led the way to the back of the barn. They walked around, hugging the wood. The barn was in good repair, and they could hear horses inside jittery from the storm. There was a side door, which was good because if they walked around to the front they’d be visible from the house. Nate pushed. It was locked from the inside.
“We have to take the chance,” Nate said. “It’s only ten feet from the corner to the opening.”
Lucy followed. Nate peered around the corner. He gave her the signal and then ran low to the opening of the barn, guns out, expecting to find a hostile.
No one, just four horses antsy in their stalls.
Nate went right, Lucy left, and they searched the barn.
In the first empty stall, Lucy found two teenage girls back-to-back, hog-tied, and gagged. She whistled and Nate came running.
“We’re FBI,” Lucy whispered, pulling the gags out of their mouths. “Don’t make a sound.” She started with the knots, but Nate said, “I got this, clear the rest of the barn.”
Lucy did—no hostiles anywhere. A minute later she was back in the empty stall and Nate already had the girls out of their ropes much faster than she could have done it.
“Bobby, our brother,” one of the girls said. “He’s inside.”
“We know. He called nine-one-one,” Lucy said. “What happened?”
“We were soothing the horses, the thunder freaks them out. And then these two guys came in with guns and tied us up. Asked as about our parents—”
“Where are your parent
s?”
“Or dad is at our neighbor’s ranch—they have to shore up part of the creek or we’ll all flood. Our mom died five years ago.”
“Bobby’s eight?” Lucy asked.
“Yes—you have to help him, please. We didn’t tell them he was in the house, we said we were home alone. Bobby’s smart, he’d hide or something. But what if they found him?”
Nate said, “Did you hear anything else? Did they say something?”
The younger sister, about fourteen, said, “They want our truck. It’s old, didn’t start right away, but one of the guys said he could fix it. And if they can’t, they were going to wait for my dad and—And, well, they’ve been here about fifteen or twenty minutes.”
“Is there someplace in here that you can hide?” Nate said.
“The tack room. It has a lock on the door.”
“Do it.”
The younger girl ran over to the corner and picked up a rifle. “We tried to get to it, but they stopped us.”
“Take it in the room. Law enforcement will identify themselves, okay? Don’t shoot at the cops. Be safe, don’t make a sound, until someone comes for you. If you hear anything, stay put.”
“Just get our brother,” the older sister said. “Please.”
The sisters ran to the back of the barn and locked themselves into the tack room. Nate and Lucy went over to the opening of the barn—the doors had been secured open on the outside, so there was no way they could close them or use them for cover without making a lot of noise.
The sound of the old truck starting cut through the storm. “They have it running,” Nate said. “We play this by ear—the priority is making sure the kids are safe, even if we have to let Trembly go.”
“Understood,” Lucy said. “If Bobby found a place to hide, we ride it out and then go get him.”
“Exactly.”
They peered through a slat in the barn and watched as the guy who had crossed the road five minutes ago headed back to the house. He gave someone a thumbs-up sign and jogged against the wind. When he got to the porch he stopped, leaned against the house, and lit up a cigarette.
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