Blood Trails

by Diane Capri

  He heard a noise at the back door. The small hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention. He looked at the clock. He’d been inside the house for twenty minutes. If he’d triggered some sort of silent alarm, surely the police would have arrived before now.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Flint flipped off the microbeam and slipped it into his pocket. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness and his trips through the house had shown him how to avoid bumping into the furniture. He hurried to reach the kitchen before the intruder managed to unlock the back door. He drew his weapon.

  The inky weather concealed the intruder as well outside as the heavy window coverings concealed Flint inside. Which could mean the intruder hadn’t seen Flint’s footprints in the fresh snow since the floodlights were disabled. He thought the house was unoccupied.

  Flint heard the gas furnace kick on and rumble and the forced air puff through the ventilation system. Warm air blew across the top of his head. He didn’t move.

  After a few seconds of inept fumbling, the intruder managed to open the lock on the back door. He pushed the door open and entered the mudroom. A second intruder followed and pushed the door closed behind them.

  Flint pressed himself against the wall in the darkest corner of the kitchen.

  The two shuffled heavily into the kitchen from the mudroom. One turned on a microbeam and pointed it at the floor. He swept the beam around the kitchen, keeping the light below the windows in an effort to avoid being discovered.

  The beam ran across Flint’s boots and continued its sweep instead of flashing up to confirm that the boots were occupied. Flint breathed quietly, readied his Glock, and searched for a better answer. A gunshot inside the house would surely alert the entire neighborhood and destroy Melanie Barnett’s home. Flint wanted to avoid both.

  The intruder shuffled past Flint’s corner and into the living room, his microbeam aimed like a laser moving toward something specific. The second man followed behind.

  The forced-air furnace continued its low rumbling and the hot air blew into the room. The scent of both men wafted with the heat, a scent he recognized. He identified the bulky silhouettes.

  He spent no time seeking answers, although plenty of questions presented themselves. Now was the time to deal with these two—before they dealt with him permanently.

  Flint moved quickly to disable the second man, Trevor, the one he’d originally dubbed Earless. Trevor was big. His weight and size placed an undue amount of stress on his knees. Flint had noticed his gait at the airport and again in the alley fight. He’d likely been injured many times before. His ligaments and tendons were damaged already, which made them perfect targets.

  Flint planted his left foot securely on the floor. He aimed the heel of his right boot and kicked the outside of Trevor’s right leg, slightly above the joint, bending the knee at an unnatural angle. The right patella’s lateral dislocation was instantaneous.

  Trevor screamed and folded onto the floor, writhing in pain. Broken bones and torn ligaments hurt like hell. Surgical repair would be required. He wouldn’t be walking easily or sneaking up on anybody else anytime soon.

  His screaming was an inhuman howl that might send hunters to silence a beast. Flint pulled back his Glock and punished Trevor’s temple with the butt. The screaming stopped the instant he lost consciousness.

  Flint stepped back into the deep shadow.

  Paxton had been leading the way into the house. When Trevor screamed and hit the floor, Paxton was several strides away, focused intently on his mission.

  Paxton turned his big torso as quickly as he could and swung the microbeam toward Trevor. But he was slow. Slower than Trevor had been. The beam took a moment too long.

  It illuminated his companion’s limp body first. Trevor lay on his side, his right leg at an odd angle, painful to look at.

  The microbeam’s path aimed forward. Paxton shook his head rapidly, as if to process the bewildering stimuli coming at him too fast. He held the microbeam in one hand; the other hand was empty, hanging by his side.

  Paxton’s movements were slow and deliberate. He squatted beside Trevor to check his carotid pulse and made another mistake. He balanced on the balls of his feet, giving Flint the opening he needed.

  Flint stepped forward swiftly, Glock pointed at Paxton. But he held his fire. Instead, he pushed Paxton’s ass with all of his weight focused on the sole of his boot and sent him flat on his belly on top of Trevor. Paxton landed heavily. His breath pushed out in an audible oomph. The sight might have been comical under different circumstances.

  Flint raised the Glock and applied the same force to Paxton’s thick head that he’d applied to Trevor’s, with the same result.

  Paxton’s body relaxed on top of Trevor, his nose nuzzled in the other man’s neck. Flint whacked them both again for good measure and because he could. They were out cold and he wanted them to stay that way.

  He stepped back and looked at the pile of brawn. He wasn’t sure what they had been looking for inside the house, but he knew they wouldn’t have found anything more than he already had.

  He spent about a minute working out what to do with them. His choices were limited.

  He could kill them both easily enough. But that solution presented other problems. For one thing, he wouldn’t leave two dead bodies here for Melanie Barnett to find when she returned. If she didn’t come back soon, they’d decompose into a mess she’d never be able to remove from the only home she’d ever owned. She didn’t deserve that. But the only way he could move them while they were unconscious would require a team of horses.

  He couldn’t bring them around and then push them out under their own steam either. Trevor couldn’t walk, and marching these two around in this neighborhood would attract all kinds of the wrong attention.

  Body removal was only half the equation. He needed another uninterrupted hour or so here in Charlestown and then time to find Oakwood before Crane found out his mercenaries were done. More time would be even better.

  He’d stopped Crane’s relentless interference. He still had time to find Oakwood and get her to sign Shaw’s contract before the deadline expired. He intended to use the time to finish this job and be done with Crane and Shaw for good.

  Finding Laura Oakwood’s new contact information in the Barnett house would have made things easier. This was another dead end, but it wasn’t the only answer.

  He made his choice. Paxton and Trevor were no threat to anyone now. He checked them for weapons. He found two guns and two knives each and left them in place. He didn’t remove the clips and empty the chambers. Loaded guns were more likely to get them arrested and neutralized longer than empty ones. Added to the long list of offenses they’d already committed, they’d be neutralized for a few weeks at least.

  He slipped out the back of the Barnett house and locked the door. He left the floodlights unscrewed. He hustled around the garage and through the neighborhood, retracing his steps in the shadows. When he’d traveled a mile away from the house, he pulled out one of the burner cell phones and dialed 911.

  Breathlessly, with urgency, like a frightened eyewitness would, he reported the crime. “There’s a home invasion. Two men. They’re inside the house. They’ve got guns. Hurry!”

  The operator repeated his words and then asked his name. Twice.

  In reply, he ended the call, dismantled the phone, and dropped the pieces into the wet snow as he walked quickly to the west side of Charlestown while the emergency response system did its job.

  There was only one hospital in town where Selma Oakwood Prieto could have been treated for sickle cell disease. All he needed was her current address. If she’d supplied one, he should be able to find it in the hospital’s electronic medical records. He’d try the personal touch first.

  Flint lifted his face into the biting wind when an EMS unit and two police cruisers sped past, sirens blaring, headed toward the Barnett house. He grinned. One mission accomplished. Paxton and Trevor would be p
issed as hell.

  Their boss, Felix Crane, wouldn’t be too happy either. Flint would deal with him soon enough.

  Local authorities would be looking for the third man in the Barnett home invasion. When Paxton and Trevor regained consciousness, they’d be pressured to name their attacker. While neither of them saw Flint inside the house, they could make a pretty accurate guess, and they weren’t the type to let him go.

  Scarlett would be both pissed and pleased. Happy he’d found Oakwood in time, sure. But mad as hell that she hadn’t been able to do it herself. His grin widened. Any day he could best Scarlett on a level playing field was a good day. It didn’t happen very often.

  Flint turned up his collar, stuffed his hands into his pockets, and tucked his head deeper into his jacket. Wet snow packed onto his boots as he walked. The world was blanketed by silence and cold, but he could smell success headed his way.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Charlestown General Hospital was located west of the college campus. It was a teaching hospital. Charlestown College’s health services school provided students for nurses and related medical professionals to be trained there. The hospital wasn’t likely to have a large staff of experts for treating sickle cell disease, but whatever its size, the staff would be competent enough for most issues.

  Flint located the hospital’s main entrance. He hurried uphill along the driveway to the covered valet parking area. As he approached, oversize double glass doors opened wide enough for medical teams pushing gurneys.

  Inside, the hospital’s gift shop and information center were on the right, admissions on the left. Ten feet beyond admissions, the wide corridor divided into three paths, each leading to one of the facility’s separate wings.

  He glanced at the posted directional signs on the walls as he moved through the admissions area and veered right, to the east wing, toward the surgery and general admission floors.

  Selma Oakwood Prieto had lived with Melanie Barnett for an unknown period of time. Inside the Barnett house he’d seen candid photos of her taken before age eighteen, but he’d found none for the years between eighteen and now. Which could mean that she had been treated at Charlestown General as a child. While she might have been treated here after she reached majority, he’d have limited time to search the records. Smarter to investigate pediatric records first. Once he located her Canadian SIN, or social insurance number, her medical records would be easier to trace.

  He wasn’t stopped at the front desk.

  He found the elevators and rode with a group to the third floor. When the elevator opened, he walked toward the surgery wing. Surgery was one of the busier sections in any hospital. Visitors were commonplace.

  The waiting room was full. Flint claimed one of the vinyl chairs among the families of surgery patients and watched the process.

  A young female volunteer manned the desk, answering questions about timing and location of patients for visitors by checking her computer and contacting staff in the operating rooms.

  The phone rang occasionally. From time to time, she left the desk to escort families to the recovery room as patients were moved from the operating rooms and shuffled through the various staging areas preparing for discharge or inpatient beds. When she was away from the desk, it remained unoccupied.

  He waited until the volunteer escorted an elderly man who moved slowly, using a walker. She’d be gone at least a few minutes. He claimed her chair and attacked the keyboard. After applying a few sophisticated hacks to bypass the security walls, he was able to access patient records.

  He searched quickly until he found records listed by diagnosis. Sickle cell patients were a small subset of the hospital’s total patient database. When he sorted based on birth year, he found seven patients in the same age bracket as Selma Oakwood Prieto. Four were males. Three were females born between 1988 and 1991. Only one record listed a child with a single parent.

  The child’s name was Sally Owen. Born in 1989. The mother’s name was listed as Leslie Owen. The emergency contact was Melanie Barnett. Residence address was listed as the Barnett house.

  He moved his search to the next level.

  From the first record, he located SINs for both Leslie and Sally Owen. He saw treatments listed for Sally through last month. He forced his lips not to smile.

  Before he could review anything more, he heard the volunteer walking back toward the waiting room, chatting with an orderly. He shut down his search and moved away from her desk with moments to spare.

  He resumed his seat in the waiting room for a bit before he told his seatmate he was headed to the cafeteria and left. Within three minutes, he was outside again, trudging through the snow. An EMS unit pulled into the emergency room entrance, and Flint wondered if Paxton and Trevor were inside. But he didn’t wait around to find out.

  He walked the back streets to the private landing strip where Drake waited with the Pilatus. Drake spooled up the engines and began to prepare his flight plan. “Where are we going? Home?”

  “Hang on.” Flint opened his laptop and connected to the satellite. He pulled up a database and plugged in the SIN for Leslie Owen. He did the same for Sally Owen. Both listed the Barnett home as current residence.

  He had a name. He had identification. But he still didn’t know where Selma Oakwood was living. Or her mother, Laura. He knew they were still in the area somewhere because Sally Owen had been treated at Charlestown General Hospital as recently as last month. Which meant Sally, at least, had to live within driving distance.

  He pulled up a map of Charlestown and surrounding areas. Charlestown’s northern border opened onto wide prairies, but it was adjacent to smaller towns on three sides. All three would have seemed like big cities to Laura Oakwood.

  The village to the north and the one to the west had populations in the fifteen thousand range. It was both harder and easier to lose oneself in such small towns. Harder because people tended to know each other, to keep tabs on activities, gossip more. Easier because small towns were more likely to be off the grid for electronic surveillance.

  All three towns were within driving distance of Charlestown, but one was larger and boasted a small private airport, more businesses to provide jobs, and a few urgent care clinics in case of medical emergencies or ongoing treatment needs. Which made the town less intimate. Less likely to have nosy neighbors, perhaps.

  There was no time to check all three towns and hit Shaw’s deadline. One, maybe two, was all he’d be able to fully investigate before his clock ran out.

  Drake was ready for takeoff. “Where to?” he asked again.

  Flint wasn’t the least bit sentimental, but he had to bet Laura Oakwood was, once upon a time. Her high school sweetheart and the father of her child was Rosalio Prieto. Everyone who loved him, his sister Teresa had said, called him Leo. Laura Oakwood’s best friend and her high school principal said she’d been in love with Leo. She ran away from home with him. Made a baby with him. Kept that baby when she could more easily have taken a different path. Robbed a convenience store with him. Killed a woman because of him. She’d lived in exile for almost thirty years. All because of Leo.

  When faced with a choice like where to live with their child, would Laura Oakwood have broken that pattern? Unlikely.

  In response to Drake’s question, Flint said, “Head to Saint Leo, Manitoba.”

  Saint Leo was the second-largest city in the nearby province of Manitoba, fifty miles east of Charlestown. The population was seventeen thousand. More than 7 percent of those residents were Latin American, which suggested doctors would have at least some familiarity with sickle cell disease at the local clinics, given the disease’s prevalence among Hispanics. And 52 percent of the population were females who could be Laura Oakwood or her daughter, Selma. He’d hunt down every single one of those women if he had to. But he would find Laura Oakwood. One way or another.

  “You’re my captain,” Drake replied, as he began preparations for takeoff. “It’ll be a short flight
.”

  Flint paid no attention to the warning. He was busy searching the census records and tax rolls for the home address of Laura Oakwood, a.k.a. Leslie Owen. Seconds after Drake touched down at the Saint Leo Executive Airport, Flint found what he’d been searching for. He also found employment records for both Leslie Owen and Sally Owen.

  As a kid, he’d have fist pumped the air and shouted, “Yes!” He grinned instead. He encrypted and uploaded the information for Scarlett.

  Not long afterward, Drake had the Pilatus on the ground. Flint unbuckled his harness and grabbed his jacket. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Reports say weather is deteriorating. We can’t stay here too long. It would be better to fly south as soon as we can.” Drake frowned. “We’ll head back to Houston after this?”

  “Maybe.” Flint unlatched the exit door and lowered the flight stairs. “I hope.”

  Drake nodded. “I’ll fuel up and prepare. Call me when you’re on your way back.”

  Flint descended the stairs and left Drake with the Pilatus. What he needed now was a four-wheel-drive vehicle to navigate the snow-covered roads. He spotted a vintage Toyota 4Runner parked in the back of the executive airport lot with less snow covering it than the other vehicles. Maybe it belonged to a pilot who was now in the air on his way to somewhere else and wouldn’t need the SUV for a while.

  Less than two minutes later, he was on his way.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Saint Leo was buttoned up for the night. Most of the stores had closed an hour ago. Snow fell in tiny, hard flakes that stung his skin and kept him alert.

  The woman Flint believed was Laura Oakwood left work at the Saint Leo Urgent Care Clinic and walked along the snow-covered sidewalk, head down against the cold north wind blowing from the mountains through the corridor between the buildings. She stopped for the automatic doors to open then entered the drugstore. Inside, she threw off her hood and stamped snow off her boots onto the mat.

  Until that moment, he hadn’t been sure. But this was definitely the woman he’d seen in Melanie Barnett’s framed photographs. Laura Oakwood. It had to be. All the pieces fit.