“Watch me,” he breathed.
He marched the Crawfords at gunpoint the quarter-mile back to the farmhouse while carrying Pearson the entire way, not missing a step, not even breathing hard.
After they had reentered the house and made their way to the dining table, Wolf motioned with his hand and said, “Sit” in a way that would not be easily disobeyed.
The elder Crawford thinned her lips and nodded as she took a seat in one of the wheel-back chairs and hunched forward on her elbows. Her eyes narrowed even further than they had been. “She’s gonna die if you don’t get her help soon.”
Wolf said nothing as he carried Pearson over to a cushioned chair in the adjoining living area, next to a stone fireplace. While he did, he never took his eyes off his two captives and kept his finger tight on the shotgun’s trigger the entire time. He slid the gun out from under her and set her down gently.
“What now?” Pearson tried to whisper to him through the pain. She uncovered her wound and checked it.
He chanced a peek at the hole in her abdomen. Blood was seeping out of the wound but was already congealing around the depression in her pale skin. It was enough to care about but probably not enough to kill her. Neither was her belly distending, which would indicate she was bleeding internally.
“We need to get you to a hospital,” he said.
“I’m okay. What we really need is to find out what they know first.”
“He’s right, my dear,” Maggie said. “Better that I call it in. They’ll get here faster that way.”
Pearson squeezed Wolf’s hand and nodded. He straightened and moved back to the table. As he did, he noticed the family portrait on the wall behind Maggie. He’d seen it earlier, but had not paid it much attention. It wasn’t large, so he stepped closer. Maggie Crawford was in the picture, as was the big guy at the table and the other son she’d sent into town. There was another man with her who must have been her husband. He had his arm around her. He was a short, balding guy. There was one other man there as well that Wolf recognized—the cook from the diner.
Wolf nodded at the picture as the pieces fell into place. He moved behind Henry. “Who are you working with?”
Maggie twisted and grinned smugly. “Like I’d tell you.”
Wolf tapped Henry’s injured shoulder with the barrel of the shotgun. The man practically jumped out of his chair.
Maggie’s grin faded. “Leave him be,” she said in a warning tone.
From the other room, Pearson spoke. “She’s not going to tell you anything. Not with what they must be involved with.”
Which was patently true, Wolf realized. Why give up anything that could be used against them? Maggie did not seem like the type of person who would do that—not without a whole lot of persuading. Plus, speaking to him was one thing. Saying the same in court or to a tassel-shoed district attorney was another. And, what hard evidence was there to connect them with anything at this point? Anything at all…
Maggie must have seen him thinking and understood the situation just as well as he did. There was no way a system that always had so much sympathy for the victim, yet still made excuses for the bad guys could ever be relied upon to pass judgment on the Crawfords. Not in a way that would be just and fair. But, neither could he pass that judgement. His days of killing were over. There had been too many terrible things he had done in Iraq—too much blood, too many lives, and far too much death. And he really did not have a choice right now. He had to work within the system and hope that justice eventually prevailed.
But he was barely hopeful for that.
“Let me borrow your phone,” he said to Pearson as he returned to her.
Her brow furrowed. “What are you going to do with it?”
“It is time to end this.”
“No,” she said. “We have to find the girl first. I know people like these scumbags. What they are hiding… They think they will get away with it. And they will once you bring in the authorities. Think, Raymond, think. Are you going to let them win?”
She’d used his first name, which gave him pause. Only his grandmother ever called him Raymond. But, what she had said had not been enough for him to change his mind.
“They are not going to win.” He held a hand out to demand the phone.
Reluctantly, Pearson gave up her cell phone. Wolf took it and held it high enough that he could keep an eye on his captives and dial with his thumb.
“Passcode?” he asked.
“You don’t need it for…just…”
She then told him the passcode and he entered it and began to dial 911. But he had to dial with his left thumb, and that wasn’t easy.
Then he stopped cold.
There had been a noise outside.
A car door.
- 34 -
THE BINDING
THE FIRST GUY who came through the front door was Otto Crawford. Following him were the cook and the waitress from the diner, JT and Tammy, respectively. And when the two entered the room, what they saw, they did not seem to be expecting.
Wolf was already waiting for them inside and was holding a shotgun at the ready.
“Come on in,” he said.
Once the initial shock wore off, wordlessly the three lifted their hands in the air and filed down the short hallway together and into the living area. Pearson had moved from where she had been sitting by the fire. The chair she had vacated was drenched in blood. Her blood. But she was now standing on wobbly legs, propping herself up on the back of one of the wheel-back, dining-room chairs. She was holding the snub-nosed .38 in a shaky hand and aiming it at Maggie and Henry, who were still seated at the table.
“Sit down,” Wolf said to JT.
“What the hell is going on here?” the man asked.
“Shut up,” Maggie barked from across the table.
Wolf ignored them both as he culled Tammy from JT and indicated toward Pearson. “Go see if you can help her.”
The reunited Crawford clan all adjusted themselves in their seats to accommodate JT and Otto.
“It’s a regular family reunion,” Pearson half-jokingly said to Wolf’s back in a voice barely louder than a whisper while he made sure everyone’s hands were up and displayed on the tabletop. Tammy joined him, standing alongside and getting a nasty glare back from her husband.
“You want me to sit now, too?” she asked.
“No.” Wolf continued to cover the others with the shotgun, daring any of them to defy him. Calmly, he said, “I need you to do something else for me. I need you to find some rope. Can you do that?”
She stared at him for a moment, then nodded and said meekly, “I think I know where I can find some.”
“Get it,” he ordered. “Don’t look back. Just get it.”
“Don’t you dare do that,” JT said.
She hesitated, glancing between Wolf and Pearson before finally nodding and leaving the room.
“You bitch!” JT called after her. “You’ll pay for—”
“Shut up,” Wolf said, coming around and sticking the gun against JT’s head.
“You ain’t gonna do nothing,” JT said.
“Don’t give him any ideas, boy,” Maggie chided back.
“I’m not worried, Ma. I know what’s going on. You know what’s going on. They don’t. He’s got nothing on us, Ma. We’re all clean as the wind-driven snow. We’ve been careful.” He shook his head and growled out, “Bastard’s got nothing on us.”
Wolf cracked him in the side of the head and nearly knocked him off his seat.
“Oww, what did you do that for?”
“How many girls have you…kidnapped?” Pearson asked from her chair near the fireplace.
“I shouldn’t tell you shit. But it don’t matter none. What can you do about it? We got about seven total. Was gonna be more, but my goddamned wife let one of ‘em go. That’s why—”
Maggie slammed her palm against the tabletop. “Shut the hell up.”
“Why? He ain’t got nothing for real on us, Ma. No
one here can prove a goddamned thing. So he’s got to kill us or let us go. And, since he ain’t got to killing us yet, he’s planning on letting us go. He just doesn’t know how to do that yet. Maybe if you give him some money, he’ll go away.”
“Who are you all working with?” Pearson asked, then coughed wetly.
Wolf circled the table, keeping the shotgun barrel ready to shoot anyone who dared to move, knowing how fast it was going to go once the first one tried. He just wondered which one it would be and where he should aim.
“You think we as hell know?” JT asked. “Only Ma knows that piece. We weren’t told anything. Better that way, she says.”
“Son,” she growled, “shut the hell up. And I mean it.”
JT scoffed and glanced away from his mother.
Tammy returned with differing lengths of rope. “Any of these okay?”
“You helping him out now?” JT said. “Better not be, bitch.”
With Wolf’s guidance and her hands shaking, she helped him wrap each of the Crawfords’ wrists together, and then laced the rope over and under before knotting it. He figured they would eventually be able to work their way free, but they were restrained enough for the time being, so he lowered the shotgun and relaxed a bit.
Tammy took a seat across from Pearson and set her hands on her legs and waited there like a child that had given up and was ready to accept punishment.
“What the hell you gonna do to us now?” JT taunted, starting to laugh. “You can’t do jack shit.”
- 35 -
COME TOGETHER
PEARSON’S PHONE RANG. She answered it and then nodded back at Wolf from the chair by the fireplace. “That phone we’ve been tracking? It’s been switched back on. It’s now somewhere in Kansas and whoever’s got it is headed due south.”
“What phone?” JT asked.
Wolf ignored him. “Do we need them any longer?”
“Not really. We can follow the phone now. Whoever has it must have the girl. If not, they know where she is.”
Though, as Wolf glanced at the assembled Crawfords, he knew Pearson’s contact would not be able to trace the cell if it was turned off again, and he was also sure that she was thinking the same thing.
But there was no need to reveal that, not yet.
“Guess we don’t need your assistance any longer,” Wolf said to Maggie as he raised the shotgun and aimed it at her.
He’d checked the gun earlier. There were plenty of shells for each of the Crawfords—including the new arrivals—with one, maybe two extras in case he missed. But it was very hard to miss with a shotgun. Not when he was this close
“Wait!” Maggie said.
He lowered the gun.
“Let my boys go,” she said. “Do that and I’ll tell you where you can find the girl.”
“Are you certain we do not need them?” he asked Pearson over his shoulder.
“No, not anymore,” she coughed.
“Good,” he said as he raised the gun and took aim again.
“Wait, goddammit!” Maggie cried.
Wolf waited a beat but did not lower the weapon. “Who is it then?”
Maggie let go of a deep breath.
“Don’t say anything to him, Ma,” JT pleaded. “Not to this asshole. I already told him all he needs to know. Those little bitches deserved all that they got. And he’s not gonna do anything about it. He can’t. They are all gone now and no one will ever find them again.”
The thought of what these Crawfords might have done with those girls caused Wolf to begin to squeeze the trigger. What would it matter if he killed them? He’d just be removing more of the kind of evil he despised most. He could run away. He could kill them all and get lost in the world again before anyone could catch up to him.
But…Pearson.
Wolf drew a deep breath through his nose. Otto and Henry were nodding their heads in agreement with JT, and they were mostly right. He could not kill them, much as they all deserved it. Plus, he did not know for sure how far or how wide their involvement went, and until he did, he would just have to wait. They were tied up for now, which was good enough until he could sort things out. However, being tied up would not hold them for long. And definitely not long enough to give him time to find the girl who called herself Melody.
If she could be found at all.
And, if he refrained from killing them all outright, could he trust anyone to help? How? And who? Who had been corrupted? Who hadn’t? There was really only one person he could trust right now. He looked over at that person. She was fading fast. Her eyelids were heavy, and she was struggling just to keep her head up. He had to get her to a hospital, and soon. Then he remembered something he’d spotted when they’d first arrived at the farmhouse.
It just might work.
But before he could act on what he’d seen, he heard another noise coming from just outside. He put a finger to his lips, raised the shotgun, and slipped back down the hallway toward the front door.
There came a knock.
“Maggie?”
Wolf recognized the voice. It was Kristina, the deputy.
She knocked again.
He positioned himself behind the door and waited. After another knock, the knob twisted and the door opened.
“Maggie? Henry? Hello…?” Kristina asked cautiously.
“He’s got a gun!” came JT’s shout from the kitchen.
The deputy crossed the threshold. Her sidearm was coming out of its holster, coming up, getting ready. But by the time she was ready to take aim and fire, Wolf had already placed the business end of the shotgun against the nape of her neck and pressed it into her soft, yielding flesh.
“You,” she said contemptuously.
He disarmed her of her 9mm Glock and slipped it into his waistband. Then he removed the radio from her hip and led her into the living room to join the others. She scanned the room as she entered, assessing the situation. It was obvious that she was thinking the same way JT had been talking. If she were going to be shot and killed, it probably would have happened already, which was just what Wolf had wanted her to think.
He led her to the last of the vacant chairs and motioned for her to sit in it. He kept the shotgun pointed at her the entire time.
“You will never get away with this,” she said as if that might sway him.
It didn’t.
He turned to Maggie. “You have a storm cellar?”
She remained silent, but he already knew the answer, so the question did not actually matter. He only wanted to witness her reaction. She swallowed with a bit of difficulty and glared back at him.
“What are you thinking?” Pearson asked from her chair.
He never took his gaze off the deputy. “I’m thinking we tie this one up like the others.”
- 36 -
DOWN IN THE HOLE
ALL BOUND TIGHTLY together with their hands out front, Wolf led the little party of Crawfords, plus one, outside and across a weedy gravel driveway to a mound of dirt and grass jutting up from the ground. He’d seen the small hill when they’d arrived on the property and wondered why there was such a heavy metal bar fastened across the outside and secured with padlock and chain. He’d guessed then that it was a storm cellar, but that bar across the plain steel rectangle of the door appeared a little extreme for simply keeping people out of the shelter. It seemed far better suited for keeping someone locked away inside. He just hadn’t realized it at the time. And now, he figured, it would serve as the perfect location to hold the clan, plus one, until he could find the girl who called herself Melody, however long that might take.
“Open it,” he instructed Maggie, tossing her a large ring of keys he had found by the front door.
JT spun to face Tammy, who was helping Pearson to walk. “Listen to me,” he said to his wife, “you’d better not go along with them. Not if you know what’s good for you.”
Tammy said nothing in return. Instead, she looked at the ground while helping Pearson to take anothe
r labored step.
“Look at me,” JT spat at Tammy. “I said look at me! This is all your fault, bitch. You let that little slut go! If you think the beating I gave you hurt before, just wait until I—”
Wolf jammed the barrel of the shotgun into JT’s ribs, driving the man down and onto his knees. He put the shotgun against the guy’s ear and pressed until JT’s head was bent nearly against one of his shoulder blades.
“Do it,” the guy said. “I dare you!”
Wolf held steady, caught between wanting to and not wanting to.
“Leave him be,” Maggie said. “We will all do as you say. Just let him go.”
“He’s just being a big pussy, Ma,” JT said. “He ain’t gonna do nothing.”
Wolf clocked him again, this time spinning the shotgun around and cracking the butt end against the guy’s jaw.
JT fell to the ground. “Pussy,” he repeated, spitting fresh blood.
Wolf ignored him.
Maggie, shaking her head, unlocked the steel door. She opened it against rusty hinges that squeaked a shrill note, and Henry and Otto went inside first, vanishing into the blackness beyond. She remained behind, head still pivoting back and forth.
“Don’t shoot him, okay? He’s got a mouth on him, but he’s still my boy.” She then followed Henry and Otto down inside the shelter.
Kicking JT to his knees, Wolf forced him to crawl the few steps to the top of the stairs that descended into the shelter and gave the guy a solid kick, which collapsed JT’s leg and sent him tumbling down inside and into the darkness to join his clan.
Wolf motioned Kristina to go in last, and she took a tentative step, then another, but eventually submitted to reality and followed. Wolf descended after her, leaving Pearson behind with Tammy. He glanced around at the entirety of the small space, ducking the low ceiling and looking for ways the Crawfords might escape.
The tiny room was barely large enough for them all to fit inside together, especially with the two big boys, Henry and Otto, taking up so much room. A single caged light bulb hung from the ceiling with a thin chain dangling from it. It was low wattage, but enough to see by. Old grit on the floor scraped and scratched as he moved about.
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