by T. R. Ragan
Madeline Blair was toying with him, he was sure of it. And Lizzy Gardner was assisting her, helping her get away with murder.
He knocked on the front door. Waited. No answer.
He peered into the front window. Couch, lounge chair, coffee table, television. Nothing out of place. Nothing happening in there. He hitched up his pants that his wife had never gotten around to hemming for him. With a grunt, he headed to the side of the house. He reached over the side gate and unlatched the metal fastener before pushing the gate open. It creaked. He plugged his nose as he passed by two garbage canisters. The Browns must have had fish recently. Nothing beat the foul odor of dead fish.
He’d been told to be careful, that Seth Brown could be armed and dangerous, but he saw no reason to pull out his gun. He scraped the heel of his boot across the dying lawn in the backyard to get something sticky off his shoe. There was a small shed in the far corner of the backyard. He really didn’t understand why Jimmy had been so insistent about him checking the place out. Jimmy had said he’d do it himself if he was in the area. But he wasn’t, so that left Detective Chase to be gofer boy. He should have sent one of his rookies at the station. They loved this kind of shit.
He looked through the window on the side of the shed. There were shelves lined with old paint cans, maybe some paint thinner, gardening tools. Three bags of fertilizer were stacked on the ground next to a push mower. If it weren’t for the powerful smell, worse than the dead fish odor he’d already gotten a good whiff of, he would have left already. But that smell bothered him. He opened the door. The powerful stench forced him to take a step back. It smelled like excrement and rotted eggs.
Using a hand to cover his nose, he peeked his head inside and used his other hand to hold his Maglite and take a look around. There was a dead rat on the floor. That had to be the source of the smell. Ready to head back to his car, he spotted droplets of red paint on the floor. Still using his Maglite, he stepped inside the shed and followed the trail to a plastic bin. It took some muscle, but he popped the lid open, wanting to make his search official. Nobody would be able to say he hadn’t been thorough.
Not quite sure what he was seeing, he leaned in closer and moved his Maglite around until the beam of light fell squarely on a human mouth, open, as if frozen in terror. Confused, wondering if it was a Halloween mask, he moved the Maglite higher until the beam of light revealed a nose and two eyes—wide-open eyes—looking up at him, screaming for help.
Stumbling backward, unable to comprehend what he was seeing, he tripped over a rake and dropped his light. He knocked a paint can or two off a shelf before he was able to get out of the shed. He fell to his knees and lost his lunch right before his beeper sounded, one beep after another. What the fuck was going on around here?
CHAPTER 68
Lizzy’s arm was wrapped up. She would need stitches later, but for now the tape and gauze would do the trick.
The woods were abuzz with a coroner’s van and police vehicles with their flickering strobe lights. Yellow police tape was being tied from tree to tree. A truck backed into the area, filling the woods with its high-pitched beeps before it finally came to a stop. A thin metal structure grew straight up out of the back of the truck until the metal bar forming its roof beam drew even with the trees. At the top of the structure were two massive floodlights that illuminated the area, giving eyes to dozens of technicians and uniformed officers.
Each technician was assigned a designated area. They didn’t waste any time getting to work. They knew the drill, each man working diligently to collect evidence in plastic containers and bags that would be taken to a secure place, where the evidence would be removed and allowed to air-dry before the moisture could cause any growth of microorganisms.
Farther back in the woods, crime-scene technicians wearing boots and overalls were preparing to dig up what looked like recently dug graves. Most of the action, though, was over the hill and beyond, where Seth Brown’s body lay among the dead leaves, his head somewhere north of that.
It was freezing. Kitally was huddled beneath a scratchy wool blanket while she and Lizzy waited for the detective on the site to finish questioning them. He kept getting called away, though, and they had both turned down his offer to sit inside the police vehicle.
“What are the chances of that machete being returned to its rightful owner?” Kitally asked Lizzy.
“It might take a while, but I’ll give your chances of being reunited at fifty-fifty.”
“Not bad odds.”
Lizzy had to force a smile, since she felt thoroughly conflicted by what had happened in the woods. Yes, she’d been justified in taking the life of a man who was trying to kill them, but she had never killed a man until tonight. She held up her hands. “No shakes. No quaking at the knees. My breathing is steady. Not normal.”
“I can’t imagine that killing someone would feel good,” Kitally said, being the perceptive young woman she was, “but don’t forget that the man drugged you and was trying to kill you. It was self-defense.”
They both grew quiet as they watched a body bag being carried over the hill toward one of the vans.
“I don’t know about you,” Kitally went on, “but I feel pretty good to be alive right now. I saw the look in that man’s eyes. I’ve never seen anything like it. He was possessed.”
After a few quiet moments between them, Lizzy asked, “How did you know to come?”
“I was bored. I had nothing better to do than track your whereabouts and that’s when I noticed you were headed in the opposite direction of where I told you to go. It didn’t make sense. When you didn’t answer your phone, I knew something was wrong.”
“You went with your gut,” Lizzy said.
“Exactly. I’ve always trusted my instincts.”
Lizzy wondered why it had taken her so long to give Kitally a chance. She was a remarkable young woman. As the detective approached them, someone called out, “Detective, we’ve got a body. Male.”
“What kind of shape is he in?”
“Bashed-in skull. Not a pretty sight.”
“Another one over here,” a different voice called out from behind a copse of trees. “Female. Victim was stabbed multiple times. The front of the skull has been crushed.”
Lizzy knew they might find two more bodies before the night was up, maybe more; she didn’t know much about Seth Brown.
“You’re shivering,” Kitally said, holding open her blanket.
Lizzy stepped closer and huddled beneath the blanket with her.
“Case closed, Boss?”
“Yeah, case closed.”
CHAPTER 69
Just as they had seen on the computer screen earlier, perimeter fencing had been installed around the boundary of the property. Once they got through, there would be another fence around the main building. The outer fence was definitely higher than they’d thought, though. The fence was ten-foot-high chain link, the kind of fencing you would see around a tennis court, except the top of this particular fence was lined with razor wire.
“At least it’s not electric,” Tommy said before he knelt down and used heavy-duty wire cutters to cut through the chain link. He held up a section and waited for Hayley to crawl through before he did the same.
If she looked straight up, she could see the sky blanketed with stars. The only sounds, other than the crunching leaves beneath their boots, were the occasional hoot of an owl and a trickling stream in the distance. When they got to an area that had been cleared of trees, they had to tread carefully over rotted tree stumps and dead branches.
Moving at a slow but steady pace, Hayley followed Tommy, absorbing the weight of her body in her knees, staying low to the ground, crouching under low-hanging branches as she moved along, concentrating on the terrain and her environment. Eyes focused on the ground, she watched for anything that might make too much noise: crackly sticks and bru
sh.
They both saw movement ahead and stopped, neither she nor Tommy so much as flinching as a figure walked past no less than twenty feet away from the copse of trees concealing them. As planned on the ride to the mountains, Tommy headed after the man. It wasn’t long before she heard a thunk.
She headed that way and found Tommy fast at work, covering the guy’s mouth with duct tape. The man was out cold. Hayley helped drag the body to a tree. While Tommy secured him, Hayley kept an eye out for anyone else who might be patrolling the area.
Tommy took the two-way radio clipped to the guy’s belt along with his cell phone before they headed off again. Another twenty feet in, they heard voices.
Hidden behind a grouping of trees, Hayley saw three figures on the other side of the chain-link fence. One of them was leaning against an SUV; the other two stood nearby, sharing a smoke. At the sound of grunting, she looked over and saw Tommy and another man rolling around in the dirt just a few yards away from her, legs and arms flailing.
Shit. Staying low, she pulled out her stun gun and ran to where they wrestled in the dirt. Almost dragged into the scuffle, she jumped back and out of the way.
Grunts and moans echoed off the trees. They were being too loud.
After Tommy got the guy in a choke hold, keeping the guy from shouting for help, Hayley saw the other guy’s fingers wrapped around his radio, his thumb trying to find the switch.
It was now or never. Hayley moved in and pumped the guy with an electric charge. His body twitched.
Tommy pushed the guy off him and held up his hands. “You could have shocked me.”
“Nope. Not how it works. Taser is designed to go from one point to another—I’ll explain later.” They made quick work of fastening the man to a tree in the same fashion they had handled the other guy. When that was done, Tommy took hold of Hayley’s shoulders and said in a whisper, “I’m going to go in and take out those three. Keep your eye out for more stragglers.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she said in a low voice. “You’re not taking those guys out on your own. That would be a suicide mission. You stay here and watch my back. I’ll do it.”
“I know you want to get Brian,” Tommy said. “I want you to get Brian, too, but you’ll be dead before you ever get to the guy.”
“But you won’t be? This is my problem . . . my mission, not yours.”
“Look, you’re going to blow this thing. I’ve got this. Let me go in and do my thing. Then you get in there and take care of Brian.”
She didn’t like it one bit. “We need to be patient and wait until we know if there are any other men patrolling the area.”
He shook his head. “It’s too risky to wait any longer. Once Brian, or whoever is inside the compound, catches on that they’ve got two men not responding to their calls, they’ll be scouring the grounds and you’ll never get inside that building.”
Hayley exhaled.
“I know you’re perfectly capable of taking all three of those guys on your own, but I’ve got this.”
She watched him walk off. What choice did she have? She needed to get in that building. Moments later, she held her breath as Tommy cut into the second fence and crawled through. This fence was also chain link but without the razor wire.
This was ridiculous.
What was she doing standing there watching him? Three armed men against one. She never should have let him go off alone. As she stood tall, she saw Tommy, his back against the backside of the building as he sneaked closer to the three men. His gun was drawn. No tree covering. It was a suicide mission. That’s when she saw the unaccounted-for figure sneaking up from behind Tommy. She wanted to shout to him, but that would only serve to alert the other three men.
Once again, Tommy was rolling around on the ground, fighting. It felt like forever before one of them stood up. The man started shouting to the other guys. Shit. She saw Tommy struggle to get to his feet.
“Run,” she said under her breath.
The other three men were headed their way, everyone shouting at once.
A shot rang out and then another. Tommy fell to the ground.
No. Hayley stared in disbelief. Fury swept over her in one giant wave, snapping her out of her stupor. She reached over her shoulder for her gun, ready to charge in, when a hand clamped over her mouth and dragged her back into the wooded area. She bit at the hand, twisted and kicked, tried to get away.
“Fuck. Knock it off,” her captor said. “We’re here to take care of Rosie, same as you.”
She stopped fighting long enough to see that there were five guys hovering over her. They were dressed in camouflage pants and dark shirts. She recognized two of them as part of Wolf’s entourage. “Is Wolf here?”
The guy in front of the pack shook his head and asked her to fill them in on what all the gunfire was about. It rankled to know that these guys weren’t much better than Brian, but she needed their help. She needed monsters to fight a monster. In fact, she never should have allowed Tommy to get involved. It had been a selfish move on her part.
But these guys? These guys were expendable.
Without wasting another second, she told them how many of Brian’s men she’d seen. She also told them about Tommy, described what he looked like and told them he’d been shot and needed help.
They would take out the men outside, while she planned to head inside the building.
She led the pack, crouching low and making little noise as she moved along, showing them the way.
CHAPTER 70
Jessica opened the door, surprised to see Magnus, a DEA special agent, standing on the other side.
She frowned. Two years ago, she’d fallen for the guy. Fallen hard. And then he’d been called away to work on a case in El Salvador. She’d called and e-mailed but it wasn’t long before she could tell she was cramping his style, so she’d stopped. And hadn’t heard from him since.
He was wearing gray corduroys and a black sweater. His hair was dark and much longer than the last time she saw him. His jaw was unshaven. The fact that he looked sexy as hell unnerved her. “It’s been a while,” she said.
“Too long. You look great.”
“What’s going on?”
He raised a questioning brow.
“Why are you here, Magnus?”
“Ah,” he said. “You’re angry with me.”
She crossed her arms. “Why would I be angry?”
“Can I come inside? Just for a moment?”
She let him in, watched him look around her apartment for a moment before she realized she was acting childishly. Magnus wasn’t the first guy who had disappeared after she’d made her feelings for him clear, and he wouldn’t be the last. She followed after him and offered him something to drink, decided to show him she was a big girl now: confident, secure, all grown-up.
When he turned around, she was right there next to him. He reached out and took hold of her waist, pulled her close so that they were chest to chest.
He smelled amazing—just like she remembered—but she pushed him away. “You can’t just come in here and start cuddling me as if there’s something going on between us. I haven’t heard from you in almost a year.”
“Three hundred and ten days, sixteen hours. But who’s counting?”
Nice touch.
“We screwed up,” he announced.
“We didn’t screw up. You screwed up.”
He rubbed his jaw. “We should have made rules before we parted ways.”
“Rules?”
“Relationship rules,” he explained. “One call or e-mail every week, rain or shine.”
“I tried that,” she said. “It didn’t work.”
“You’re right. I suck at long-distance relationships. Maybe we can try to work on a short-distance relationship.”
“Your timing sucks, Magnus. I was ac
cepted into the academy. I’m moving to Virginia in a few weeks, right after Lizzy Gardner’s wedding.”
“I know.”
“You know what?”
“I know you got into the academy. I’ll be your instructor. Or at least one of your instructors.”
She plunked a hand on her hip. “Are you serious?”
“I knew it was fate the moment I saw your name on the list.”
“Fate?” She shook her head in disbelief. “You believe in fate?”
He lifted his palms up. “What else could it be?”
She laughed. “You’re a jerk.”
“I know.” He stepped closer.
“You could have called before you came.”
“You might not have opened the door.”
“True.”
He reached for her again.
Her cell phone rang. She turned away and picked up the call. It was Kiki, Wolf’s girlfriend. Jessica had visited her in jail and given her her number, told her she would get her out of jail if Wolf cooperated. The girl was talking fast. Something big was going down, Kiki told her, and she figured she owed Jessica a favor for getting her out of jail, which Jessica had had nothing to do with, but whatever.
Jessica told Magnus she’d just be a minute. Then she went to her bedroom and shut the door. “Slow down,” she told Kiki.
“A chick named Hayley came to see Wolf. She’s intent on taking down a guy named Brian Rosie.”
“How did you know I knew Hayley?”
“Wolf said something about the two of you being friends. She’s your friend, isn’t she? Because if she isn’t, there’s no reason for me to be telling you any of this.”
“She’s my friend. You did good.”
“So if I tell you the rest, we’re even, right? You got me out of jail and I help you help your friend.”
“That’s right,” Jessica said, wishing the girl would just spit it out already.
“It seems your friend wanted Wolf and his guys to help her take out Rosie.”
