by Jenna Ryan
He set her aside, bent to retrieve his guns. “We need to go.”
Rather than object or question him further about the truck or its owner, Amber swept her hair back into a ponytail and wound the band around it. “Do we have a direction? A destination?”
“The Heart of Dixie Motel. Five miles north of Harper’s Bend, Mississippi.”
She repacked her bag, quickly, slipped the rings back on her finger and thumb. “The first RC-owned establishment on our list, I presume.”
“First of twelve.” He gave her a brief but still rather heated kiss. “Cross your fingers we get lucky.”
He didn’t say it, but Amber knew they needed to move fast. However they were doing it, Fixx’s men always seemed to be right on their heels. At some point, he was going to get tired of sending men out to die. He might not kill Rachel right away, but he’d have no compunction about shooting her and passing that news on to his former sister-in-law.
Strapping herself into the passenger seat, Amber breathed around a deep shudder. And wondered bleakly how many more people would be dead before this was over.
Glancing at Gage, she closed her eyes. How many, she thought, and who?
Chapter Twelve
“Here we are. The Heart of Dixie Motel.” Gage slung an arm over Amber’s shoulders. “Right next to the Heart of Dixie Bar and Grill, complete with pool tables, two bucking broncos, and a whole lot of bathtub whiskey in the front and back rooms.”
“Not going to ask,” she told him. “Are we checking in or just checking it out?”
“We have an RV, such as it is, Snowbird. Wouldn’t checking in look the tiniest bit conspicuous?”
“Maybe we’re sick of our crappy old RV, an RV that only has a single bed in it, by the way. At least one of us should do the decent thing and offer to sleep in the Winnebago while the other does the motel thing.”
Gage merely smiled and propelled her toward the bar. He was taking a risk bringing her into a bar, but leaving her alone seemed even more dangerous somehow. Six of one, he supposed. Anything they did or didn’t do was bound to have a consequence attached to it.
Lively country music spilled through the door, which had been propped open by a crushed beer can. Someone had vomited in a nearby bush, and someone was passed out under a window. A drunk man lay spread-eagle while a woman in high heels and bright pink pants shouted at him.
“I have to say, you take me to some of the most interesting places. Bullets flying, thieves lurking, drunks lying prostrate in the weeds, and bathtub whiskey flowing like water. Oh, and look, there’s mud wrestling, too.” She motioned at a makeshift ring set five feet away from and slightly lower than the musicians’ stage. “Maybe we should find a back booth.”
Amused, Gage flexed his arm over her shoulders and forced her to halt. “Afraid you’ll be drawn into the muddy fray?”
“Frankly, yes. Sorry if that disappoints you, but my hair-pulling, grappling-with-an-intoxicated-female days are far behind me.”
Now he laughed. “You grappled with intoxicated females?”
“Once. Back in college. Her name was Keely, and she had a really perky blond ponytail. Someone—not me—used it to yank her off her feet. She came up swinging, knocked two other women flat, then turned her wrath on me.’
“Were you intoxicated?”
“Totally. But I took kickboxing in high school. She swung, I kicked, she landed on her ass. The bouncer marched in and threw all of us out. Gage, almost every man in here is wearing a hat. I can’t see any faces. Are we going to stand out?”
“Not especially. It’s amateur night at the Heart of Dixie Bar and Grill. We could be here to participate.”
“Great. Do you sing?”
“About as well as I tap dance. You?”
“I’m Reba in the shower. Minus the water and steam, I’m probably more like Stevie Nicks.”
“Who was hot as hell in her prime and still is, which goes to prove it’s not all about vocal talent.”
“I’m sure Stevie will be delighted to hear that. The man in the ratty brown cowboy hat is watching us.”
Gage squeezed her shoulder. “He’s staring at you, not paying much attention to me. Here he comes.”
The man in question had a bottle of beer in his hand and a curious expression on his face. Ignoring Gage, he ran his gaze up and down Amber’s body. “You kin to Lorraine Bixby? Cousin or something?”
“She doesn’t have any family,” Gage told him. “We’re on our honeymoon, just up from Miami.”
“S’at so?” Finally, the man acknowledged his presence. “What y’all do down there in Miami?”
Keeping his expression pleasant, Gage replied, “We’re cops.”
The man snorted. “Why?”
Amber grinned at him. “We like guns.”
“Well, hells bells, so do I. Wouldn’t be a cop on account of it. I’m guessin’ the honeymoon story’s crap. If so, are you here on vacation or a manhunt?”
Gage sized him up. Pudgy with soft hands and a gimpy right leg, and he’d been standing at the dark end of the bar, scoping the room. “Do you own this place?” he asked.
The man chuckled. “Matter of fact I do. How’d you figure that so quick?”
“It’s what I do.”
“Huh.” The man regarded Amber. “What do you do, cop-wise?”
“Missing persons.” She offered a smile and a subtle body movement that would have made a corpse sit up and take notice.
The man’s eyes glittered, bringing a curse to Gage’s throat. He didn’t like the interested look on the guy’s face, not a damn bit. Which pissed him off almost as much as the feeling itself.
“You on the hunt for someone now?” the man asked.
“Got a line on a young woman,” Amber said. “She’s a drug addict, on the run with some friends. Three, maybe four of them. Her MO is to hole up for a while, stay out of sight, until she thinks it’s safe to surface.”
Okay, that was a damn obvious deception. Gage squeezed her shoulder again. “We’re not working tonight, Ginger. Remember that.”
She took hold of one of his fingers. Didn’t bend it back, but he figured she was tempted. “Thanks, Fred, dear. I keep forgetting that. Tell me, do you have any vacancies?” she asked the still-dazzled owner.
“What? Oh, yeah. Plenty. Twelve rooms, nine vacancies. Bar’s where we make our money. You, er, fixing to stay a spell?”
“Only at the bar.” Gage freed his finger, then moved his arm so he could catch hold of Amber’s ponytail. “A drink, a meal, and we’re back on the road. Got an old friend we want to see about twenty miles out of town.”
“Harry, you get your butt over here,” a woman with platinum-blond hair and black roots shouted from behind the bar.
The man’s vision cleared in a snap. A scowl took its place. He swallowed a large mouthful of beer. “That’s the wife yelling at me. Pretty woman walks in, she goes all green-eyed and suspicious. Y’all take care. First drink’s on the house.”
“Thank you, Harry,” Amber began, but Gage cut her off by tugging gently on her ponytail.
“Yeah, thanks, Harry.” His brows went up. “Washrooms?”
Harry wagged a finger to the right of the stage.
His eagle-eyed wife scarcely spared a glance at Harry as he made his way back to her through the crowd. Her gaze was locked on Amber, and it got meaner the closer her husband drew.
“Shit.” Gage shoved Amber ahead of him. “She has her phone out.”
Amber twisted her head to see. “Is that bad?”
“She’s pointing at it and you. Harry’s waving her off. Now she’s stabbing the screen.”
Swinging to face him, Amber caught all his fingers. “Are you saying there’s a wanted poster out on me?”
“There’s something.” And Gage kicked himself that the idea hadn’t occurred to him sooner. “My guess is Fixx and/or Mockerie put the word out about you to the criminal element first. But that word can be broadened substantially in today
’s world. Social media is a powerful tool. All they’d have to do is post a picture of you, say you were Fixx’s sister who’s gone missing, and offer a large reward for any information leading to your whereabouts.”
Fortunately, he’d parked the Winnebago a good half mile away, far from probing eyes.
“There’s a side door.” He pointed straight ahead. “Go. Meet me at the RV.”
She nodded, took the keys he gave her. “What’re you going to do?”
“Create a diversion. I’ll be right behind you.”
She muttered something unflattering before they parted. He watched her jog toward the RV, made sure no one was following her, then ducked back inside and scanned the corridor walls. He spotted the red fire alarm, flipped up the casing, and pulled it.
The shriek was deafening up close. It cut through the music and noisy chatter. He hoped to hell it broke Harry’s wife’s train of thought.
As people poured through the exits, Gage took a moment to see who emerged from the motel rooms. The doors opened one, two, three. A pair of kids stumbled out of number three, a sixty-something male in his boxers ran out of number two, and a middle-aged couple in nightclothes shuffled from number one. They congregated under a lamppost, removed from the bar crowd. In the absence of any flames or smoke, they seemed anxious to return to their rooms.
Harry and his wife were the last to leave the bar. His wife had a phone placed to her ear, but every wild gesture she made appeared to involve the building. In the distance, Gage heard a siren. Thanks to a group of heavy-handed drinkers, chaos continued to ensue. For that moment, Harry’s wife had weightier things on her mind than a raven-haired beauty whose face was very likely plastered across several social media sites.
Should have checked that out earlier today, he berated himself. He could have contacted McCabe and had him search for and pull any photos of Amber. But too little too late would likely be the catch phrase in that case. He’d have to revert to keeping Amber out of sight as much as possible, even in backwoods towns.
She had the key in the ignition and the engine idling when he joined her. “Anything?” she asked with head bent over the phone.
“Rachel’s not here.” Gage checked the mirrors, saw nothing, and eased the RV out of its hiding place. “Did you locate anything on the social media sites?”
“Lots.” Amber passed him her cell. “I didn’t have to dig very hard to find any of them. I’m Fixx’s beloved stepsister and worth a cool million tonight. How flattering is that?”
“McCabe can wipe the pictures and the offer.”
“It’ll only pop up again someplace else. I want to say this surprises me.” She took her phone back. “But it really doesn’t. Fixx has all kinds of nasty tricks up his sleeve. He screwed Gareth up once. Owen wanted his son in the business. Gareth wanted to pursue his music. His father had him blackballed within the musicians’ community. Under a false name, he flat out accused Gareth of plagiarizing another artist’s songs.”
“Gareth must have been pissed.”
“He was. I gather he went into his father’s hotel office shouting threats.”
“How did he come out?”
“According to Luka, amazingly calm. Still waters,” she said. After a last look, she shut down the site and plugged her phone into the lighter to charge it. “How long will it take McCabe to eighty-six the photos, et cetera?”
“He’ll already be on it. I emailed him on my way back to the RV.”
“A million dollars.” Pressing on her eyelids, she gave a humorless laugh. “How high do you think Fixx will go?”
“Extremely, if he’s smart and doesn’t want to die himself. Mockerie has limited patience. How many million would it take for your sister to be tempted?”
He saw her indignation rise. Then he watched it bleed away. “I don’t know,” she admitted, and that time, she pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “A million might tempt her. I hope it wouldn’t, but it might.”
“And you still want to find her?”
“I said she might be tempted, not that she would be. She cares a lot about money, but believe it or not, there is more to her than that.”
Unfortunately, McCabe’s research, which Gage had tapped into, suggested there wasn’t. All indications were that Rachel loved money and men above all things. From the Owen Fixxes of the world to anyone and everyone who could get her what she wanted.
Gage arranged to hook into the electrical outlets at a service station near Tupelo. They took turns using the washroom to clean up. Being a gentleman for once in his life, he let Amber have the bed while he made do with a foldout chair and a footstool. Before he slept, though, he needed to see what was what. So he took Elvis outside and let his iPad play while he contacted McCabe again.
“Pictures and reward offer are wiped,” were the first words out of McCabe’s mouth. “Are you safe? Is Amber?”
“She’s asleep. I’m outside with the King and a Bud Light. You need to give me something here. We’ve got Fixx’s or Mockerie’s bastards chasing us all over hell and back. She’s stuck on rescuing her sister, and I’m only half convinced the sister isn’t trying to draw her in.”
“Has Amber spoken to her?”
“In a limited way. Amber says the pleas for help are real. Maybe they are. Rachel seems to be a background player at this point. Fixx is relying on tails for the moment. One of them almost caught up to us at Mama K’s.”
“Shit.”
“My sentiments exactly. She’s carrying something, I can’t figure out what, where, or when she acquired it. It wasn’t in a vehicle. I ditched Abel’s truck in a mud bog.”
“He’ll love you for that.”
“You’ll get him a new one. What have you got on Fixx’s family members?”
“No more than Amber’s probably told you.”
“What about Sidney, Tom’s slick counterpart?”
“Sidney Hollingsworth. Name sounds snotty, but he’s a child of welfare and abuse. He clawed and scratched his way out of a nasty New York ghetto. Drives a Porsche Carrera these days.”
“Interesting. Have you talked to Amber’s actual contact?”
“Hell yes. Guy’s been living in my office. He’s also planted false information both in Black Creek and at the hotel where Amber used to work. Could be those false trails are what’s keeping the numbers on your tail down to a manageable level.”
“Define manageable.”
He heard the grin in McCabe’s voice. “Look at it this way, Gage, she’s gorgeous, she’s in trouble, and she’s not a homicidal maniac. Keep your eyes open, and don’t let little sis play her.”
“Do my best.” Gage took a long pull on his beer. “I want Almira Gulch next time.”
“Next time,” McCabe promised.
Gage disconnected, took another drink, and listened to the cacophony of riverside insects and animal life. One by one, he eliminated chirps, croaks, and hums. Until only one thing remained.
It was the sound of a powerful truck engine revving in the dark.
…
They kept to the back roads and managed to check out two more RC motels. Amber learned to skulk and creep. She even gritted her teeth and peeked through several unshaded windows. She saw two naked grandfathers, a couple who’d snuck a pit bull into their room, and a man who might have been a shoplifter emptying stuffed Owen Sheffel bags onto his bed.
Intriguing discoveries, but no sign of Rachel or her captors anywhere.
Her phone rang while she waited for Gage to check out the last room in the second motel. She answered at once. “Rachel! Where are you?”
“I got away.” Her sister’s voice was low and urgent. “They left me alone with a guy named Benny. I bonked him on the head with a whiskey bottle.”
“Who’s Benny?” Amber began, but she shook the question off. “Never mind. It’s not important. Where are you?”
“I don’t know. Near a road. I hear traffic. I think there’s a lake somewhere around here, too. I smell
water.”
“That could be the river.” As she talked, Amber jogged around the motel with the hope of intercepting Gage. Stars glimmered overhead, so she took care to stick to the shadows. “Can you give me something else?”
“No. I’m scared to move.”
Amber tried another tack. “Do you know where you were, where they were holding you?”
“No.” The tears came. She heard them in Rachel’s voice. She also heard the telltale quiver of fear. “If they find me, they’ll take me back, and I’m afraid they’ll hurt me.”
Meaning they hadn’t yet. Amber spotted Gage and waved him forward. “Who was holding you, Rachel? Was it Owen?”
“No! He wouldn’t. He’s not a monster. We should go to him. You come and find me, and we’ll go to Las Vegas, both of us. We’ll make him listen.”
“That won’t work.” Amber put the call on speaker for Gage. “It doesn’t matter what you want or even what Owen wants. It’s James Mockerie who’s running the show, and he wants us dead.”
“I know that name. Mockerie. Why do I know it?”
“He’s Owen’s boss. Now stand up and head toward the road. Don’t let anyone see you; just locate a sign and tell me what it says.”
“Won’t they be looking for me on the road?”
“I said find a sign, not flap your arms at oncoming traffic.”
“I hate you for doing this to me.” Rachel’s tension bled through a line that cut in and out. “It’s cold, I’m wet, I think I disturbed a skunk, and the ground’s all soft and icky. Oh, wait. There’s a sign. Stupid place to put it. I need a flashlight.” Amber heard a click. “Good thing that asshole Jess smoked. It says Bitterroot Lake.”
Amber glanced at Gage, who entered the location into his phone. “Just a minute. We’re Googling it.”
“Who’s we? Oh, yuck, something slimy fell on my head.” A short, sharp scream followed. “It’s a slug, a big, creepy slug.” She burbled out a sob. “Get me out of this nightmare. Alexa—Amber. Make it go away.”
“Love to,” Amber said under her breath. “Do you have a location?” she asked Gage.
“She’s seventy-five miles due south of here. Unfortunately, the roads run anything but straight between us and her. As a point of interest, there aren’t any RC motels in the vicinity.”
