by Jenna Night
I see you.
Gooseflesh rippled across the surface of her skin as she quickly looked up. “He sees us,” she said to Leon. Then she looked around, trying to peer into the shadows of the surrounding forest and the tilting, aging buildings. Of course, the windows had long been broken. Doors were missing and, in some cases, entire walls had collapsed. But there were still places for someone to hide.
What if this wasn’t really Seth meeting them here? Or what if he wasn’t now contacting them because he was afraid and needed help? What if he—or whomever had sent the texts—had drawn them here to kill them?
Another message came through.
Drive forward to the turnabout.
“I think we’ve let Seth control the situation long enough,” Leon said after she relayed the message. “He must be in contact with at least a couple of neighbors or coworkers since he knows we’re looking for him, but other than that, he’s stayed out of sight. I believe he really is scared. The guy hasn’t got a criminal record other than driving under the influence. It’s possible he’s a brilliant mastermind intent on hurting us, but I think it’s more likely he needs our help.”
“You’re right.” She sent Seth a text.
Show yourself.
Three minutes dragged slowly by before the reply came.
Meet me at the old dry goods store. Building closest to turnabout.
“Pull up to that building,” Cassie said.
“Don’t let him talk you into going inside to meet with him,” Leon said dubiously as he started to inch the truck slowly forward. “We shouldn’t do much of anything until Daisy and Martin get here to back us up.”
“There’s no telling how long it will take them. Just because Martin wants to make his way around the rockslide quickly doesn’t mean he’ll be able to. Turn your headlights back on,” Cassie said when the truck was alongside the dry goods store.
“Step into the headlights with your hands up. When it’s safe, I’ll step out to talk with you.” Cassie spoke the words as she texted them, so that Leon would know what she was planning.
“That’s a good start,” Leon said cautiously.
“I want you to stay inside the truck where you can see everything,” she said. “Keep the interior lights turned off in case he decides to take a shot at you. And make sure your phone doesn’t light you up.” They’d done plenty of stakeouts and surveillance in the nighttime hours, so her last two directives weren’t really necessary. But she’d wanted to remind Leon to be careful. She didn’t want him hurt because of her drive to know who’d murdered Jake and why.
The rain had turned into a slight drizzle.
“Let’s keep the windows rolled down and cut the engine so we can hear anyone approaching,” Cassie said.
Leon complied.
While they waited for Seth to show himself, Cassie shifted her view back and forth from the windshield to the side mirror in case someone was trying to sneak up on them from behind. Finally, ten yards in front of the truck, she saw a figure walk out from the narrow passage between the dry goods store and the nearly collapsed storage building beside it.
Seth.
He’d cut his hair shorter than it was in his booking photo. And he’d bleached it from medium brown to an almost-white blond. He appeared noticeably skinnier than he had in the photo, too. But there he was, looking at the truck’s headlights, squinting.
Cassie reached for her handgun on the seat beside her, leaned forward, and tucked it into the waistband at the small of her back.
“Be careful,” Leon said as she slowly opened the door and slid out.
“Right,” Cassie said without looking at him. She kept her gaze locked on the person who could finally answer her questions.
“Seth Tatum,” Cassie called out as she stepped closer to the young man. He looked terrified, and younger than his twenty-three years. “I’ve been waiting a long time to talk to someone who knows what happened to my husband.”
“And I’ve been waiting a long time to get out from under this,” he answered, clasping his hands together in front of him and sounding genuinely overwrought. As Cassie drew closer, she could see the dark circles around his eyes and the exhaustion evident in his slumped posture. He started to drop his hands.
“Wait!” Cassie said. “Put your hands up. I’m going to pat you down really quick. Make sure you aren’t armed.”
He didn’t resist as she frisked him. She didn’t find any weapons on him. “Okay, you can put your hands down,” she said.
He dropped his hands.
Cassie took in a deep breath and slowly blew it out. Her stomach tightened as she anticipated what she was about to hear from the man in front of her. “Did you kill my husband?” she asked. That could be the real reason why he was scared and in hiding. He was afraid he was about to be caught and charged with murder. And maybe there was a small spark of decency in him that made him feel guilty for what he’d done.
“I did not.” Even though the rain had slackened, he was soaked and his T-shirt clung to his body. He’d apparently been outside in the elements for a while. Maybe he’d been hanging around Rubyville waiting for her arrival. Or he could have hiked over from the camping area Leon had mentioned.
“If you didn’t kill my husband, who did?” Cassie willed herself to remain calm even though, at the moment, talking with this man about Jake’s murder made her heart feel like it was cracking into pieces. Maybe Seth was lying. Maybe he’d intended to confess and then changed his mind.
“Who is with you?” Seth asked, lifting his chin in the direction of the truck.
“One of my bounty hunters,” Cassie said. “Leon Bragg.”
“Who else?”
“No one else.”
“Before I tell you what I know, I need you to tell me how you can protect me. Because when word gets out, well, it’s going to be big.”
Cassie bit back her impatience. Of course he would want to arrange some sort of deal to protect his own hide. Pretty much every fugitive she’d ever caught had wanted to negotiate with her.
She quickly thought about what she could offer in terms of protection, imagining that someone with extensive criminal resources like drug supplier Stefan Kasparov might be looking to permanently silence Seth. She could provide a safe location where he could hide. Plus, at least one personal bodyguard. Namely, herself.
But before she could answer him, a loud crack tore through the quiet of the evening, followed by several more.
Rifle shots.
Leon turned off the truck’s headlights, casting the center of the ghost town into darkness.
Cassie and Seth both ducked down. She drew her gun, grabbed Seth’s arm and pulled him with her as she started running. There was no way she would let Seth get away from her until she had her answers.
Cassie headed for the passage between the buildings—the same one Seth had used—trying to get to the back of the dry goods store and hopefully out of striking distance of the flying bullets.
Meanwhile, the truck’s engine roared to life. Leon flicked the headlights back on, the brightness appearing in Cassie’s peripheral vision, as he quickly backed up, swung the vehicle around and illuminated the forest in the direction of the shooter.
Cassie didn’t dare stop to watch, but from the corner of her eye she thought she’d seen two figures moving among the trees. The shooting had stopped, but she wasn’t foolish enough to think the attack was over.
“Where’s your vehicle?” she demanded of Seth as soon as they dropped down behind the back of the dry goods store. Several boards were missing from the building and what was left didn’t look especially strong, but at least it offered some kind of barrier between them and the shooters.
“My truck is parked at the campground a couple of miles from here,” he said, confirming both Leon’s theory that he’d been hiding at the campground,
and Cassie’s assumption that he must have obtained a secondary vehicle since his registered car was still parked in the garage at his house.
Crack! More shots sounded in the direction they’d just run from. Only this time, they ended with the dull thunk sound of metal striking metal. And then she heard bullets striking glass.
The gunmen were firing at Leon in the truck. She wondered if these were the same men who’d pursued them in the forest back in Stone River. If so, they were very good at tracking. And she and Leon—and Seth—were in imminent danger.
Lord, please protect Leon and guide us all, she quickly prayed, forcing her thoughts away from her fear before it could paralyze her.
“Who’s shooting at us?” she demanded of Seth.
He was hunkered down beside her, terror-filled eyes visible in the ambient light. She still had a grip on his arm, but he wasn’t acting like he wanted to get away from her.
“I don’t know who it is.” He practically wailed the words.
“You’re lying. How could you not know?” She shook his arm. “Who killed my husband? Who is afraid of being exposed? Is it Kasparov? Or people hired by him?”
Seth shook his head with several short, tight movements. “I’m not saying. If they catch us, and I haven’t told you anything, then maybe they won’t kill me.”
“At least one of the two thugs shooting at us has got to be the person who killed my husband,” Cassie said. “I think they intend to shut you up. And they want to shut me up, too, because they think I know something.”
“No,” Seth said firmly. “You’re wrong. The person who killed your husband could not possibly be one of those shooters.”
Cassie huffed out her impatience. Demanding that he explain himself would only end up with her being dragged back into another of his frustrating conversational circles and she didn’t have time for that. What she needed to do was to focus on Leon, making sure that he was okay. A few minutes had passed since she’d last heard gunfire, which could be a bad sign. It didn’t seem likely that the two shooters would have already given up and run away. Maybe one of their shots had hit the mark and they’d been able to silence Leon.
Her heart hammered in her chest and her blood ran cold at the thought of Leon being harmed. He’d become such a big part of her life. And not only because she worked with him nearly every day in a dangerous profession.
Somehow her sorrow-filled life had grown around him. Like one of the old trees she’d seen in the forest that had been split by a lightning strike, or charred by a wildfire, and yet the tree had not only survived, but had begun to grow in new directions, appearing to thrive once again despite the damage.
Around her, Cassie could hear rainwater dripping from tree branches and dribbling from the eaves of the roofs. The increasing breeze caused the surrounding tree branches and boards of the old buildings to moan and squeak. She looked around, listening intently for the sound of footsteps. Or the sound of someone loading a round into a rifle just before they fired at her.
She didn’t hear anything that concerned her. For the moment, at least, it seemed as if she and Seth were alone. Still, she didn’t dare put away her gun.
“Don’t go anywhere,” she whispered to Seth as she let go of his arm to reach for her phone.
He immediately took off running.
“You’re not getting away!” She leaped on him, shoving his face down into the mud. Before he could gather his wits, she was already standing on his back. She might not be a very big woman—certainly not as tall or as heavy as Seth—but she did have a pretty good idea of where to press her boot heel so it would inflict the most pain if he tried to get away from her.
“Okay, okay.” His voice was muffled as he tried to speak around the mud. “I’m sorry, I won’t do that again. Let me up.”
Cassie didn’t believe him, so she didn’t move. Meanwhile, she was disheartened when she glanced at her phone and there was no message or missed call notice from Leon.
She had to know that he was all right. And they obviously needed to meet up.
You ok? she finally texted, wary of the possibility that if the bad guys had managed to overpower him, they would have his phone and would likely try to trick her into revealing her location.
Several seconds passed with no response.
She stepped off Seth, grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet. “If you try to run, I will push your face into the mud again,” she whispered fiercely. “And after that, I will use you as a human shield if there is any more shooting. Do you understand me?”
She wouldn’t really use him as a human shield. But he didn’t know that.
Seth’s eyes grew wide and he nodded vigorously. “Yes, ma’am.”
Cassie triple-checked that the sound notifications were turned off on her phone. And then, phone in one hand and gun in the other, she started walking along the back of the dry goods store with Seth beside her. She headed in the direction she’d last seen Leon’s truck, remaining hidden behind the buildings. She half expected Seth to take off running again, but he didn’t.
Once she got closer to the truck, she would look for footprints in the mud and then figure out which direction to search for Leon next based on what she saw. She and Leon had found each other in the wilderness while being tracked by deadly gunmen before. They could do it again.
She’d just stepped past a narrow gap between two weather-beaten buildings when she heard the sound of a footstep. And then felt the cold metal of a gun muzzle pressed against the side of her neck.
TWELVE
Leon scanned the moonlit ghost town, his gaze sweeping across the aged, creaking buildings as he searched for movement or maybe the flicker of a shadow.
The shooters knew what they were doing. Leon had been able to discern that there were two of them, but that was all he knew. Because, after initially opening fire, they’d vanished.
Cassie, where are you? His heart pounded as he stayed hidden behind the corner of the half-collapsed stable. From there he had a fairly good view of the abandoned town. He was tempted to boldly step out and start looking for her. Anticipating that she might be hurt or in trouble made his heart feel like ground glass in the center of his chest.
This wasn’t the first time he’d feared for her safety, and he knew how to force himself to resist the instinct to act, to take a breath and try to be smart instead. He couldn’t afford to take any risks that might get him killed or incapacitated, because that would leave Cassie completely on her own. Facing at least two gunmen intent on killing her. Plus Seth Tatum, who was a completely unknown factor for Leon right now. There was no telling which side that guy was on. Maybe the meeting had been a setup from the beginning.
Leon had last seen Cassie when she’d darted past the old dry goods store with Seth in tow. He focused his gaze in that direction now, hoping that the gunmen hadn’t also seen her there. And if they had seen her, she’d hopefully moved on to somewhere else by now. He steadied his breathing and listened. The buffeting breeze had kicked up again, shaking the raindrops from needles on the pine trees and increasing the volume of the low moaning sound the branches made as they swayed. That made it hard to hear anything.
He glanced down at his silenced phone. He had one flickering bar, indicating minimal, unreliable connection. Great. She could be messaging or calling but the communication wasn’t making it through. Or she could be in a situation where she couldn’t reach out to him. Or where it might be dangerous for her to use her phone.
Where were the other bounty hunters?
He tucked his gun into his waistband and quickly composed a message to Martin. Need help NOW! and hit Send while silently praying. Please, Lord, let this go through. He was counting on his colleagues to at least be close to the ghost town by now. If so, they’d be quicker to respond than the cops, so he’d sent his plea for help to them first. He was about to call 9-1-1 when he heard w
hat he thought was the sound of a dog barking. And then he realized it was the short, barking laugh of a man.
Goose bumps rippled over Leon’s skin. It was likely one of the gunmen laughing. And the laugh of a bad guy was never a good sign.
He shoved his phone back into his pocket and grabbed his gun. Then he started a crouching run across the weed-choked road that divided the town, heading toward the long building that used to be a boardinghouse.
The years Leon had spent partying in the past felt like wasted time to him now. But at the moment, because those choices had led him to spend hours wandering through the ruined old buildings of Rubyville, they were proving helpful. He knew the layout of the ghost town. He knew the good places to hide. He knew that the unsettling laughter he’d heard had come from behind the single-story building beside the boarding house. And he knew that if he went into the boarding house, he could move through one of the sections of missing wall and slip into the building next to it. From there, he’d be able to see what was happening in the back. Hopefully, he’d be able to see Cassie.
He took a quick glance over his shoulder. There was no sign of anyone behind him. And no one had taken a shot at him, so the gunmen were likely together. They obviously knew he was in the proximity of the ghost town, somewhere. They’d seen him drive his truck to the edge of the surrounding forest, trying to catch them. Most likely, their first priority was to kidnap or kill Cassie. Then they would come after Leon.
Not if he found them first.
He made his way through the boarding house to the wall adjoining the neighboring building, his movements aggravatingly slow as he navigated the few floorboards still in place and the exposed dirt where the others had rotted away. He crossed into the connecting building and dropped down into the corner beside a window where the glass had been broken out long ago. He could hear a man talking, his voice unfamiliar. But then he heard that barking laugh again.
Doing his best to stay out of sight, Leon took a quick look out the window. What he saw sent his heart tumbling to his feet.
