Beau was in no mood to take chances. “Hagrid, get her! Control her!”
The giant mastiff bounded over the snow after Maude, like a fleeing deer.
Sid moaned from the driveway. “I slipped. Can’t get up.”
“We’ll come back to help you as soon as we can,” Beau yelled over his shoulder.
Sid yelled back, “Get her! I’ll be okay.”
Beau and Lenny plowed through the deep snow following Hagrid. They used their phones as flashlights, but the moon had risen enough to provide considerable light.
When Beau rounded the corner at the back of the house, he spotted Hagrid far ahead, barking like mad as he moved. The mutt’s deep voice sounded like cannon fire. Good thing he’s on our side.
Because Maude was so tall and strong, she’d developed a good lead. But then she screamed. Hagrid kept barking.
When Beau got closer, Hagrid was standing stationary, only a few yards from the forest boundary. But his body seemed to rise above the snow. Then his head bobbed down and crunch.
Maude shrieked.
Beau finally reached them and realized Hagrid was standing with his front paws pressing down on Maude’s back. She was buried in the snow. A spot of bright red by her side signaled trouble.
“Hagrid, good boy, back away, buddy,” Beau said.
The dog obeyed, and Beau patted him on the back.
Then, Beau remembered Maude’s gun and pulled his out. “Gacy, where’s your weapon? Keep your hands where we can see them.”
She stopped screaming long enough to yell, “Bastard bit my arm off!”
Beau and Lenny helped her sit up in the snow. Her right forearm was bent unnaturally, at a forty-five-degree angle.
To be careful, Beau checked her hip holster and found it empty. “Where’s your gun?”
She just cried.
Lenny dug around in the snow. “Hey, I think I see something metallic near the blood.”
He used a gloved hand to push away the snow and revealed a large revolver. Maude had pulled her weapon to use it on Hagrid, and he’d protected himself.
Thank the Virgin, the magnificent dog had been well trained. Beau petted him again. “Good dog, great dog.”
Chapter 29
Winter Park Medical Center
Athena, as Carol Winter, sat waiting with Skye at the urgent care center. Both were eager for Beau to call with news. But he didn’t.
“What’s taking so long?” Skye asked. “Is something going wrong? She gets away every single time.”
Athena had way too much experience with investigations going wrong, but she was determined to keep a positive attitude this time.
“Don’t jump to conclusions, sweetie. Police work always takes longer than I think it should. A dozen cops are up where you were held prisoner, all looking for one lunatic. I’m sure they’ll get her.”
At least, Athena prayed they would, and she put on her best smile. “So, tell me about Scotland. I hear it’s gorgeous—”
Athena’s phone rang. The caller ID said it was her favorite guy. She punched Answer. “About time, shamus.”
“Je suis désolé, ma belle.” Beau laughed.
That relieved her worry. The news had to be good.
“Maude tried to run for it,” he said, “but Hagrid brought her down. She went for a gun, but he was too smart for that. He crunched her forearm, breaking both bones. We’re headed for the urgent care center. Oh, and Sid slipped on ice and went down. I hope his ankle isn’t broken.”
“Everything else okay?” Athena asked to be sure he wasn’t saving the worst for last.
“Yep and all the evidence here confirms Skye’s story.”
The last bit of tension flowed out of Athena, replaced with a warm glow. “Great job, Boudreau. I doubt Ms. Dunbar wants to meet up with the bitch, so we’ll head back to the police station.”
Athena glanced at the young redhead just to be sure, and she nodded her head several times. “See you at the station. By the time you arrive, I’m sure the celebration will be well underway.”
-o-o-o-
Athena’s Ranch
Well after midnight, Athena and Hagrid finally made it home. Beau had driven them, but he couldn’t stay. The FBI and CBI were planning a major press conference to announce that they’d found the young Scot and captured her only surviving tormentor.
Athena slept in, despite Leo running a marathon inside her, beginning at seven a.m. While she was eating pancakes and bacon for breakfast, Elijah called. That sent a zing of worry through her. What if the other monster, Santiago, had gotten off?
She couldn’t bear to wait for him to tell her bad news, so she asked right away, “Guilty or innocent?”
He chuckled. “Have a little faith in me. I got this whole gang warfare business taken care of. Jury already reached a just verdict. I’m sure they spent half of that time arguing over who would be the foreman. Sentencing is set for six weeks from tomorrow. I doubt Santiago will leave prison again until she’s a doddering old maid.”
Athena seemed to float effortlessly above her chair at the dining room table. “Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I’ve been waiting soooo long for justice.”
“Got more news. As soon as the judge left the bench, I warned Santiago that she’d better keep you alive. Some very important people would know where to find her, and I promised her, from the highest levels of the Department of Justice, that if anything happens to you, her life won’t be worth a lick of spit. Off the record, of course.”
Athena had no idea what he meant, but it sounded good. Dominique was definitely vulnerable inside a prison. So, it seemed that Athena and Dominique had something in common. They both needed the other person to stay alive.
Epilogue
Moraine Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
Three days after Skye had escaped from hell on the mountain, she found herself, Mingus, and Erin high in the Rockies again. Her family was meeting with her American cousins from her mum’s side. Patty Kazan and her husband Randy lived in Cody, Wyoming. They came to Estes Park to spend a few days visiting.
Naturally, everyone had been curious about Skye’s horrible few days, and she ran through the basics for them. She was getting pretty good at boiling several days of absolute horror down to less than ten minutes, including the explanation for the cast on her left ankle.
Ten minutes of terror was more than enough for the manly man, and they walked up ahead to a park trail that wandered through a broad, windswept, mountain valley. It was scenic enough in its own right, but it also happened to be filled with hundreds of elk. She definitely wasn’t back in Scotland anymore.
Skye would’ve preferred to talk about anything but the Gacy family. Nonetheless, Erin and Patty kept asking questions about those two monsters. Why had she done this and not that? Skye answered honestly, but each response only led to more questions.
Finally, she stopped walking. “How about we give that subject a break for a few years or so?”
Both women froze with their mouths wide open. In two-part harmony, they said, “Of course, dear.”
Finally, they could talk about something else. Anything. “I’ve never seen a sky this dark blue. No clouds, and it’s in the fifties Fahrenheit today, even though we’re standing at eight thousand feet in elevation. All the colors are amazingly intense. The mountains look glorious, encrusted with snow.”
She turned around and noticed Patty’s smiling eyes. They were a sparkling blue that looked familiar. Where had she seen that color before?
“How peculiar,” Skye said. “I just noticed that Patty’s eyes look just like the good eye of a woman I met in Winter Park. She was so kind to me. Her name was Carol Winter. Not only are your eyes the exact same color, but they’re shaped the same, too.”
The two mums exchanged a knowing look, but only Patty spoke. “Interesting, but people usually tell me my eyes look like Scarlet O’Hara’s.”
&n
bsp; ~Finis~
Thanks so much for reading my book!
Athena’s and Beau’s harrowing adventures continue. If you would like to read the first chapter of the next book in this series, Anointed, please turn the page.
Book 3 Excerpt—Anointed
Monday
Broadway and Thirteenth Avenue, Denver, Colorado
On a cool July morning, Viola Hawkins rode her bike to work. A couple of months ago, she’d been hired as a baby accountant at a large accounting firm in downtown Denver.
She pedaled past the central Denver Library building on Thirteenth Avenue, but her thoughts were far away—at the top of Mount Bierstadt. She climbed the Fourteener the day before, and the views were to die for. But the exertion had almost given her a heart attack.
Suddenly, her mind lurched back to reality when a white van cut in front of her. Its tires squealed as it slowed to make a right turn. She braked hard, practically flipping over her handlebars. Her front tire bumped the vehicle, leaving a black mark.
She uttered a torrent of swearwords until the van’s side door slid open. Two burly Hispanic guys wearing jeans and dirty T-shirts jumped out.
Instead of apologizing, they grabbed her. One of them kicked her bike to the curb.
Viola pulled back and screamed. “What are you doing?”
They hauled her toward the open door.
She tried to free herself, but they were way too strong. “Leave me alone!” she screamed while she kicked at them and howled. “No! Please!”
Still wordless, they yanked her into the van. The cargo area was empty, except for a third middle-aged Hispanic man who sat cross-legged on the filthy carpet. He was slim and muscular. As soon as Viola and the two guys were inside, the third shouted, “¡Arriba, arriba!” and slid the door closed.
The van jolted into motion. She couldn’t see the driver because a black curtain hung behind the front seats.
Viola cowered against the far side wall, surrounded by her kidnappers. The two rougher-looking guys grabbed her backpack and tossed it to the slim man. Then they zip-tied her hands behind her back.
“Help!” she screamed, hoping someone outside the van would hear.
Slim backhanded her across the mouth. “Shut up,” he said in a calm voice with a Spanish accent, “or I will cut out your tongue. Then, how would you be able to thank me as I fuck you blind. And of course, the others will want their turns. That’s only fair.”
Too slowly, Viola realized she needed to be damned careful around these assholes.
Slim rifled through her backpack and removed her purse. He found her wallet and took out her driver’s license. He stared at it in the dim light for a moment. The van had no windows in the back, and only a little light leaked around the curtain in front of them.
In Spanish, Slim said, “Raul, time to return.”
She knew the language because she’d spent an undergraduate semester in Madrid. The driver made a right turn, then another. Were they on Broadway? More importantly, where the hell were they taking her?
And why had he checked her identity? They had been stalking her. For ransom?
Not possible. Her mother didn’t have any money, and her father had abandoned both of them twenty years ago. As for Viola, she only had a few hundred bucks in the bank.
Slim continued to pull things out of her backpack, including her phone and an iPad she’d just bought.
“Raul, pull over for a second,” he said, again in Spanish.
Before the driver did, Slim grabbed a two-foot-long billy club he’d stashed under the front passenger seat. It had lots of nicks, as though it’d seen plenty of use. In English, he said, “Stay quiet, or else.”
She nodded.
He opened the side door partway and tossed the phone and tablet onto the sidewalk in front of a bar she recognized. They were on South Broadway.
The driver took off again, and he kept turning in various directions, seemingly at random. Maybe he thought they were being chased. I should be so lucky.
Viola tried to keep track of where they were going until Slim grabbed her chin. “My lovely, you look so tense. How about we both relax? I know just the thing to make you forget about this unpleasantness.”
“Please, sir, let me go. I don’t have any money, and I swear I won’t tell the police.”
He laughed like those things were the least of his worries. “I’ll be gentle, my dove. You’re going to need a friend where you are going, and if you’re extra-nice to me, I might keep you for myself. Otherwise, my amigos will insist I share.”
This was getting worse. Begging for mercy wasn’t helping. “Listen, I’ve got my ATM card in there. I’ll give you all my money if you let me go.”
Slim translated what she just said into Spanish. The other two thugs cackled. She couldn’t understand everything he said in his slangy Mexican dialect because in Madrid, she’d learned proper Castilian Spanish.
“Pound her hard, Diego,” one of them said. “I’m next.”
She wanted more than anything to tell him to shut his filthy mouth.
Diego ignored the other two. Instead, he stared into Viola’s eyes and whispered, “You are chica. You’ll need a strong friend like me.”
Chica was slang for incredibly hot, but he was just saying whatever he thought would convince her to stop resisting. Viola knew full well that she was too skinny to appeal to guys. She looked more like a teenage boy than a woman. And her face was boring. Guys rarely gave her a second glance.
But Diego pretended to be entranced. He twirled her long, dark brown hair around a finger and stared into her eyes. His free hand moved to the zipper on her riding jersey.
Viola got a sick feeling in her stomach. She turned her head, trembling. Leaned away and shut her eyes.
He let her hair unwind from his finger. “My chica has a headache? Well, you will get other chances later.”
Viola froze in place, afraid the least gesture would encourage him or the others. After a moment, she could hear Diego sorting through her backpack’s contents again.
She dared to glance. He’d pulled out the work clothes she’d planned to wear that day and a small spray can of mace. Then, Diego told Raul to find a trashcan.
When the van stopped, Diego popped out for a moment and stuffed everything except her purse and wallet into the trashcan at a gas station. All he had kept was her wallet.
Raul kept driving and continued with his twists and turns. God only knew where they were going.
Diego tried to talk to her, but she did her best to ignore him. But when she didn’t answer direct questions, he slapped her.
Then, he asked her, “Do you think I’m handsome?”
The son of a bitch was never going to leave her alone. She couldn’t control her feelings anymore and burst into tears.
-o-o-o-
Athena Kazan’s mountain ranch, near Ward, Colorado
Athena Kazan was tired of carrying a wrecking ball around. She’d gained forty pounds with Leo, and she couldn’t wait for him to decide to enter the world. Even before her pregnancy, her balance had been terrible. These days she walked everywhere using two hiking poles to keep her upright.
God willing, the baby wouldn’t wait much longer. Actually, he was a cloned über-baby who’d been created by a brilliant Chinese scientist. May he rest in peace.
According to her OB-GYN, Leo appeared to be perfectly normal. Just like the dozens of other über-babies who had already made their way into the world.
All she had to worry about was raising her little genius, mostly on her own. But hopefully not entirely. Her boyfriend, Beauregard Boudreau, loved kids, and he’d been a huge help so far. Beau was even going to take three weeks off, as soon as Leo came home from the hospital.
Because Athena was anal-compulsive, she’d already anticipated most things she’d need after her labor pains began. She’d even lined up a dog sitter for her two furry buddies.
She hadn
’t expected a call from Roger Conway at the US Marshal’s Office. That usually meant trouble. He knew how close she was to delivering, and he wouldn’t disturb her unless it was important.
After a moment of catching up, he said, “The warden from the federal women’s prison in Oklahoma City just called. Our favorite crazy bitch, Dominique Santiago, managed to get herself shivved by a Crip last night. Something about Santiago selling bad oxy inside. A guard saw the attack and responded immediately, but the attacker had severed both of Santiago’s femoral arteries. She bled out in seconds.”
Roger had called because Dominique’s dad, Fernando, was a hothead, and he’d blame Athena for getting Dominique sent to prison in the first place. Also, DOJ had been informally using Santiago as a hostage to discourage the cartel from attacking Athena. Now that Dominique was gone, Fernando would put a price back on Athena’s head.
“No worries,” she said. “I hid from them for years, and I can do it again. And you’ve already agreed to put my family in witness protection. We’re doing most things right. Also, I have a more secure way for you to communicate with me, and I’ll let you know soon about how to sign up.”
“Fine, secure is great,” he said, “but I’m still worried. If you don’t mind, I’m going to start looking for a backup place for you to hunker down. I won’t talk to anybody about the new place. I have my doubts about whether we’ve found everyone within DOJ who works for the cartel.”
-o-o-o-
The rest of this story, Anointed, will soon be available in the Kindle Store.
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