Clint Wolf Boxed Set: Books 16 - 18

by BJ Bourg

  “Who are they?” he asked in boring fashion. “Am I supposed to know them or something?”

  I followed his gaze and was about to explain what had happened when I saw the picture. I sucked in a mouthful of air and nearly choked on my tongue. While the printout that Karla had given me prominently displayed the names of Nicky and Regina Hines under a photograph of a doting couple, the people in that picture did not match the faces of the man and woman I’d spoken with in Otter’s Tail Campground earlier that morning.

  The skin on the top of my scalp began to crawl. The sensation spread like a wildfire through a dry forest as it raced downward along my spine and all the way to my toes. I shivered violently.

  “Get Amy on the radio!” I screamed, spinning from my chair and jerking the door to the interview room open. “Tell her to back off! She needs to back off now! She’s in danger!”

  CHAPTER 43

  Ten minutes earlier…

  Amy Cooke shot a sideways glance at Baylor Rice, who sat in the passenger seat of the undercover car. They were about forty minutes north of Mechant Loup and closing fast. Before long, this drive would be over and they would be going their separate ways again. While they had talked some on the drive to La Mort and back, it had been mostly small talk. She had always known Baylor to be a man of few words, but she had never realized just how few they were until they’d taken this drive.

  “Got any plans for Thanksgiving?” Amy asked, breaking the latest moment of silence, which had lasted about five minutes.

  “Nope.” Baylor’s eyes didn’t shift from the roadway ahead of them. She knew he was thinking something. Baylor was always thinking, but most people never knew what was going on inside that head of his.

  Amy shifted in her seat. She wanted to ask Baylor out on a date, but she was afraid he might say no. She couldn’t remember being this nervous about a man before. Usually, she simply walked right up to the man she wanted to date and told him it was happening. She had never been turned down.

  She sighed quietly. She wasn’t so young and confident anymore. After what Trevor had done to her, she’d been left feeling like a fool. That relationship had certainly made her gun-shy and she hated Trevor for it.

  “What about you?” Baylor asked after a moment. “What’re you doing for Thanksgiving?”

  “I don’t really know.” Amy was thoughtful. “Clint invited me to spend it with him, Susan, and Gracie, but I don’t want to interfere with their family time. I’d feel like the odd one out, you know? It was a nice offer, though, and I know it wasn’t a pity invite.”

  Baylor nodded and went back to staring out the windshield.

  Amy licked her dry lips. She was running out of time. Pretty soon, they would arrive in Mechant Loup and this moment—this opportunity—would have passed. She may never have Baylor alone in a car again. She started to open her mouth, but Baylor spoke first.

  “Care to do something?”

  “Huh?” Amy jerked her head around to glance at him, but he hadn’t budged. He was still gazing out the front windshield, with no expression on his face. His words had rolled so casually off his tongue that she was beginning to think she’d imagined them, when he suddenly turned to face her. His brown eyes bore into hers.

  “Would you like to do something for Thanksgiving?” he asked.

  “You mean—you and me?”

  He smiled and she felt her heart begin to pound in her chest. “That’s exactly what I mean,” he said. “It seems you don’t have plans and I don’t have plans, so we might as well do something together. Unless you don’t want to.”

  “No, I’d love to,” she said quickly, and then silently cursed herself for sounding too eager.

  “Cool.” Baylor turned back to the windshield and went back to his thoughts.

  Amy was wondering if she should ask a follow-up question, maybe suggest something to do, but the radio scratched to life. It was Karla McBride and she was requesting that Susan head to Otter’s Tail Campground and make contact with Regina and Nicky Hines.

  “Regina’s mother hasn’t heard from her since last night,” Karla said over the radio. “She’s worried they might’ve gotten into trouble.”

  “Isn’t that the couple we made contact with this morning?” Baylor asked.

  “It sure is.”

  Baylor scowled. “Do you know if there’s cell service at Otter’s Tail?”

  “Hell, it’s like most of this area—if there is service, it’s not reliable.” Amy increased her speed. “We’re closer than Susan, so we can check it out.”

  They hadn’t gone three miles when Baylor squinted and leaned forward, pointing at some approaching headlights. “Isn’t that an RV similar to the one they were in?”

  Amy slowed the undercover car and focused intently on the front windshield of the approaching vehicle. Just as it drew near and was about to blow past them, a streetlamp lit up the interior and she was able to see the occupants clearly. It was Nicky and Regina Hines. She snatched up the radio.

  “It’s Code Four, Headquarters,” she said as she whipped the car around in the middle of the highway. “We’ve located them on the highway, heading north. They’re safe. We’re attempting to make contact now.”

  The undercover car wasn’t equipped with police lights or a siren, so Amy was forced to honk the horn and flash her headlights. She eased into the left lane and flashed the lights again. She could see Nicky’s face in the side mirror. At first, he seemed oblivious to what was going on behind the large RV, but he finally glanced in the mirror. He seemed alarmed, but she buzzed her window down and waved. His face relaxed and he waved back, tapping the brakes as he did so.

  “He saw me,” Amy said to Baylor. She slowed and waited for Nicky to find a place to pull over. “I guess Regina didn’t want to spend another night in that scary place.”

  The northbound shoulder was narrow in that immediate area, but it opened up after a mile. It was here that Nicky slowed and steered the lumbering vehicle to the side of the highway.

  Amy pulled the undercover car over too and was about to shove the gearshift in park when the back door burst open and Regina Hines suddenly appeared. It took a split second for Amy’s mind to register what was happening. The sweet young woman she’d met earlier that morning was now standing in the doorway wearing a blue sun dress and an expression of twisted hate on her face—and, most notably, she held an M-16 in her hands and there was a drum magazine attached to the bottom.

  Amy Cooke, a young officer of the law with a full life ahead of her—one that might have finally included some real romance—stared death in the face and defiantly accepted her fate.

  “Bring it, bitch!” she bellowed as lead and fire spat from the throat of the rifle and peppered the windshield of the undercover car.

  CHAPTER 44

  I stood over Karla in stunned silence, waiting for a reply from Amy or Baylor.

  “Call her again!” I demanded—a little too aggressively.

  Karla fumbled with the radio handle. “Headquarters to ML-4, disengage immediately. Do not make contact with the subjects. Do you copy?”

  Static…

  I was about to snatch the controller from her hand when the radio scratched to life.

  “Headquarters, shots fired!” It was Susan, and I could hear the urgency dripping from her voice. “We’ve got officers down! We need an ambulance out here immediately!”

  Before I could even process what she was saying, I caught movement from the hallway behind me. I whirled around to see Dwight making a mad dash for the lobby. His eyes were wild as he reached for the handle. He never made it. I was on him in an instant and tackled him hard. He let out a grunt when his torso made contact with the hard floor.

  “Where in the hell do you think you’re going?” I jerked his arms behind his back and cuffed him. “You’ve got some explaining to do!”

  Horror filled my mind and my hands trembled as I escorted Dwight back to the interview room. I shoved him inside, pulled the door sh
ut, and locked it this time. I then quickly returned to the radio room. I hadn’t heard any more traffic while I had been taking Dwight into custody, but I could tell by the tears in Karla’s eyes that it wasn’t good.

  “They…they got Amy,” she said in a weak and trembling voice. “Amy’s down.”

  My heart sank to my boots. I wanted to collapse where I stood, but I just couldn’t allow myself to break down. I also wanted to get to the scene as soon as possible, but I needed some answers from Dwight.

  “Do we know how bad it is?” I asked, terrified of the answer.

  Karla shook her head, the tears flowing freely now. “It’s not…it’s…it’s really bad. Takecia said she’s unresponsive.”

  “Oh, God.” I reached for the ache that suddenly appeared in my chest and stared around the room. Everything was a blur. I tried to push through the fog and decide my next course of action. “What about Baylor? How’s he?”

  “I…I don’t know. We got a call saying a car had been in a crash with a motorhome and when Susan arrived she said shots were fired and an officer was down, but that the suspects were gone. I got a call from Takecia a second later telling me Amy was unresponsive and it didn’t look good. She told me to contact the state police and all neighboring parishes and have them send every available unit to the area.”

  I wanted to head straight to the scene—wanted to be by Susan’s side and help catch these killers—but Dwight was our only lead at this point. We needed his help. We were out of time. It was now or never and I needed him to start talking immediately.

  “Call Sheriff Turner,” I said quickly, “and ask him to have a detective come down here and transport Dwight to the Criminal Operations Center. I need to get down to the scene, but I can’t leave while he’s still here. He’s our only witness at this point.”

  Karla nodded as I spun away and headed for the interview room.

  Dwight was sitting in his chair and looking pale when I burst through the door. I shoved the desk out of my path. It slid violently across the floor and crashed into the wall. I dragged my chair directly in front of his.

  “You’re going to tell me everything you know about these murderous thugs,” I said through clinched teeth, “and you’re going to do it now!”

  “I can’t.” Dwight was sweating profusely. “They’re…they’re gonna kill me.”

  “If Amy dies, your life ain’t worth two shits!” I moved so close to him that my nose was almost touching his. “The game’s over, pal. This ain’t about confessions or evidence or going to prison—this is life and death, and you’re gonna tell me everything you know about the man and woman who’re out there killing cops—and you’re gonna tell me now!”

  Dwight licked his dry lips. “Who’s Amy?”

  “Amy is Peggy—she the one who delivered your pizza.”

  “Oh, no! The fine broad?”

  I scowled, remembering how full of life Amy had been just a few hours earlier. I bit back the stinging in my jaw. I didn’t know the full extent of her wounds, but the fact that she was unresponsive after being shot was a horrible sign.

  “Yeah,” I said in as strong a voice as I could muster. “They shot Amy.”

  I could tell he was struggling with the decision. After a long moment of shifting his eyes and breathing hard, he finally let out a long sigh. “Okay, I’ll tell you everything I know,” he said, “but you’ve got to protect me.”

  “I ain’t promising you shit,” I said menacingly. “You’ve been jerking me around long enough. Had you talked sooner, we would’ve been able to avoid what happened to Amy, so I’m dropping this right at your feet, mister. If you don’t start telling me something useful in a hurry, I can’t guarantee your safety.”

  Dwight gulped, and I knew he didn’t know if he was in danger from me or the killers. I let his mind go wherever it would. I just needed him to talk before another officer got hurt.

  CHAPTER 45

  “You’re looking for Roy Masters and Shannon O’Neill,” Dwight Bell said in a shaky voice. “Roy’s my cousin. He’s been living with me for about a year now. He met Shannon online. They’ve been dating for about six months. He…he borrowed my Trans Am to go up and get her. I wasn’t going to let him use my car—it’s the only thing I own that’s worth a shit—but he told me her dad was abusing her. He said he needed to help her escape. I told him to call the cops, but he said she couldn’t—that her dad was well-connected. I…I felt sorry for her, so I let him take the car. He promised to be back in two days, but he wasn’t.”

  “When did he leave in your Trans Am?” I kept glancing at my phone, hoping for an update on Amy.

  “It was…um…sometime toward the end of last month. I think it was the Thursday before Halloween.” He thought about it and then nodded. “Yeah, it was definitely the Thursday before Halloween.”

  I snapped my fingers to hurry him up. “Come on, tell me everything you know and be quick about it.”

  “Um, he called me late that night to say he’d made it to her house in Illinois, but I didn’t hear from him for four more days. I tried calling his cell phone to check on my car, but it went straight to voicemail every time I tried. He finally called me that next Monday from a local number. He was whispering and he sounded scared. He asked if the cops had come by the house, but I told him no. I asked what was wrong and he said he was on the run and that he was hungry. He asked me to come get him at a campground in Mechant Loup—I can’t remember the name—but I told him I couldn’t, that my truck was on jacks. I asked him about his phone, but he said Shannon destroyed it so the cops couldn’t track them. He said he couldn’t be caught talking to me or she would kill him. I told him to bring back my car or I would report it missing, but he told me she would kill him if I involved the police. It was all real scary. I’d never been involved with something like that.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Well, I didn’t hear from him for a week after that.” Dwight took a breath and blew it out heavily. “And then he just showed up at my house late Saturday night out of nowhere and said they needed a place to lay low. It was him and Shannon. He was driving my Trans Am and she was driving a dark-colored Jeep Grand Cherokee. I had looked out the window when I first heard my car pull up and I saw them taking some big bags from my trunk and putting them in the Jeep. I thought I saw some guns, too. That was before they even knocked on the door. When they came in, Shannon asked to use the bathroom. That was when Roy pulled me aside.”

  “What’d he tell you?” I asked impatiently.

  “He said Shannon killed her dad—shot him in the face with a shotgun while he was sleeping—and then stole a bunch of weapons and ammunition. Apparently, he was ex-military and he had a huge collection of automatic rifles and bullets.”

  “Where in Illinois did this supposedly happen?” I asked.

  “He didn’t tell me, but I looked up Shannon’s name after they left and I found a news story from Cook County, Illinois where a man was killed and his daughter was missing. It was a picture of her. It said she was twenty-one. The police were acting like she was in danger, though, and not that she was a suspect.”

  “What was her dad’s name?” I asked.

  “Floyd O’Neill.”

  I made a note of the name and then asked, “What else did Roy tell you?”

  “He, um, he told me that they had been hiding out in a campground in the Georgia mountains, but they had to leave because Shannon killed a cop. He said they were driving around looking for food when a cop pulled them over. He said it was right outside the campground. Shannon told him to run from the cop, but he was afraid to get in more trouble. When he wouldn’t do it, Shannon grabbed one of her dad’s automatic rifles, stepped out the passenger’s side door, and opened fire. He said it sounded like she shot about a thousand rounds. She even went up to the cop’s door to finish him off. When she was done, she pointed the gun at Roy and told him that he was either on her side or he was dead. After that, he went along with everything she told him
to do.”

  I gritted my teeth, but didn’t interrupt him.

  “Shannon even told Roy it was his fault the cop was dead and that if she went down for murder, he would go down for murder, too. He said their only choice was to keep running. He said they came back to Louisiana, but they were afraid to come to the house at first because they thought the cops were on to them. That’s why he called and asked if the cops had come by the house. He said they were gonna hide out in the campground for as long as they could, but then that man and his daughter showed up.”

  “Did he say how they got the Jeep Grand Cherokee from the man?”

  Dwight hung his head and nodded slowly. “He said they killed a man and his little girl at that campground in Mechant Loup. He said that…um…Shannon made him kill the young girl.”

  “Did he say why they killed that poor man and his daughter?” If Dwight wrongfully thought a young girl had been murdered, I wasn’t going to correct him. “Why didn’t they just steal the damn car?”

  “They were killed because they had seen too much,” Dwight said. “They had seen Roy and the Trans Am, so Shannon said they had to go. She said they couldn’t leave any witnesses behind.”

  I shook my head at the senselessness of it all. “Chad and Alice Pierce didn’t know shit about Roy and Shannon or what they had done. They were minding their own business, having a nice father and daughter weekend in the wilderness when these animals showed up and destroyed their lives.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Dwight’s lower lip quivered. “But they’re real paranoid right now. I’ve never seen Roy act like this. He had this crazy look in his eyes. I think he’s losing it. And Shannon is pure evil. She…she would kill me if she knew how much Roy told me. I thought she was gonna kill me the next day when they left, but Roy convinced her I was cool. She…um…she’s got this crazy idea that they’re a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde on the run from the law and they plan on gunning down everyone who gets in their way.”