I see the blood. Watch it gush from her chest, crimson spreading across the pink fabric of her shirt, pooling on the ground beneath. There’s so much, too much, it’s impossible to stop the flow. I have to try though, and I try real hard. Press my fists against the wound. She’s lying on her back, pale face turned skywards, eyes unfocused. I think that I’m crying, but all I can hear is that sound, the wheezing, gurgling. She’s trying to talk, and failing. Trying to breathe. Failing.
I opened my eyes, yanked my hand away from the gun. Standing, I gripped the edge of the worktop, breathing hard. I needed to get control, knew I had to get past this, because things were different this time. Dakota would be there. I had to be able to protect her.
I took the dishtowel from the hook beside the sink and folded it in half. Leaning down, I lifted my carryall from the footlocker and unzipped the front pocket. I took a breath, and before I could think on it any longer, scooped the gun and a box of ammo into the dishtowel, bound them real tight and stuffed them into the pocket before zipping it closed. I told myself it was a precaution; I’d never have to use them. But it sounded hollow, like a throwaway line I’d bullshit someone else with. Didn’t help.
I turned towards Dakota’s bedroom. ‘Honey, you ready yet?’
‘Nearly, Momma.’
I took the carryall to my bedroom and set it down on the patchwork quilt of my bed. The bag was always packed for a last-minute job, with changes of clothes and underwear: practical, non-sexy underwear. All I needed. So why, this time, was I wondering about more? I took two steps towards the closet and stopped. Shit. It was a job, not a date. I hesitated a moment longer, then opened the door and yanked a matching set of black lace panties and bra from the underwear tray and threw them into the carryall. Be prepared, always. Another of my mentor’s rules.
I went into Dakota’s room to see if she was done. I found her sitting on the fuchsia-pink rug beside her bed, selecting bottles of nail polish from her dress-up box.
‘Hey, sweetie. How many you got there?’
‘Five.’
‘You think it’s enough?’
She tilted her head to one side. ‘I guess. Maybe we could do each other’s nails?’
I smiled. ‘That’s sweet, honey, but I’m gonna be real busy these next three days, and there’s going to be a lot of riding in the truck. It could get dull.’
Dakota smiled. ‘I don’t care. I wanna go with you, Momma. I always have to stay home, and you promised we’d spend more time together this holiday.’
She was right, I had promised. But that had been before the final demand arrived. ‘Okay, sweetie, but I need for you to promise me something.’
‘Like what?’
‘That you’ll do exactly what I say, no question. I have to know I can count on you.’
‘Like in the lookout game?’
I smiled. The lookout game was one I’d invented to teach her about being vigilant, staying safe. I never wanted her to get into trouble the way I had when I was a kid, but if she did, I sure as hell wanted her to be able to get herself out of it. ‘Just like in the lookout game.’
Dakota grinned. ‘I promise, Momma.’
I nodded. ‘Okay, good. So you got your toothbrush?’
Dakota rummaged in her rucksack and pulled out her purple toothbrush. ‘Right here.’
‘Good job.’ I picked up her sleeping bag from the frilly purple duvet. Nodded towards her rucksack. ‘You ready then?’
She zipped the bottles of nail polish into the side pocket of her pack, hoisted it over her shoulder and grinned. ‘Ready.’
I triple-locked the apartment and we started down the stairs to the parking lot. Dakota was humming a tune to herself, jumping down the steps two at a time, acting like we were heading out on holiday rather than a bounty-hunting gig.
I couldn’t share her joy. Taking the job had been all about the money. And it was good money, for sure. But since I’d first realised the fugitive was JT, a doubt had nagged at me. And the more I thought on the case, the more I felt a real uneasiness about the thing. See, back when I’d known him, JT had been all about justice. Sure, justice by any means – rough or legal – but the mentor I’d known had stood by his actions, every time. So him turning fugitive didn’t sit right. If he’d committed a crime and skipped out on the consequences, I figured the facts of the matter must be a whole lot more complicated than Quinn, Bailey and the thin file in my purse were telling. I needed to figure out the real truth, had to know what’d changed him.
Hoped to hell that it wasn’t my fault.
Course, I should have guessed just where my curiosity would get me, but right then I had no idea that the new life I’d built for myself and my daughter would be shot to shit inside of twenty-four hours.
3
Yellow Spring, West Virginia. A place deep in Hicksville country, and much further from my Florida territory than I’m usually inclined to travel. We’d covered the nine hundred miles in thirteen hours – quick work even by my standards. Still, all that driving had sure made me ache. Good job we’d almost reached our destination.
With all that had happened to his brother, I knew Merv would be twitchy and trigger happy, so it was important for anyone keeping lookout to believe I’d come alone. I gave no mind to Dakota’s protesting about it. The safest place for her when we entered the location would be behind the blacked-out windows in the fully kitted-out fugitive transport section of the truck. There, ducked down in one of the moulded plastic seats, she’d be hidden from outside view, but visible to me through the Plexiglas screen.
When the navigator’s display showed we were three miles from our target, I pulled off the road. It was near on midnight, and it’d been a long half-hour since we’d passed any indication of human life. As we’d swept around a sharp bend, the headlamps had picked out a gap in the trees and given me a glimpse of an old gas station with two pumps and a rusty sign out front, all shuttered up for the night.
With the Silverado’s engine idling, I took my cell from its cradle on the dashboard and dialled the number for local law enforcement. I usually work alone, but this place was real remote and I reckoned that the assistance of a lawman or two could help ease the situation should things get ugly.
The call didn’t connect. No signal. Damn.
I’d have to get things done the old-fashioned way. I sure hoped that wouldn’t be a problem. I reminded myself this was a straight pick-up, a transfer from Merv to me. Told myself the only reason I was worried was because Dakota was here. Didn’t quite convince myself, though. I was uneasy. I’d not managed to connect with Merv even though I’d tried to call several times these past few hours. There’d been no answer on his cell, although maybe the signal was patchy this high up in the mountains. But there was no answer on the home phone either. Seemed unusual behaviour if he was waiting for my call, as he should have been. I do not like unusual. Unusual has a bad habit of causing me grief.
I glanced at Dakota. ‘In the back now, honey.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘But I hate it in the cage, the seats are too hard. Why can’t I just stay up front with—’
‘No. You promised you’d do whatever I said.’ I knew she’d hardly slept on the journey, and tiredness made her cranky. ‘I need you to do this for me. Please.’
‘Can I play Goldrush Galaxy on your cell then?’
I didn’t want her to be bored. An unhappy child was in no way helpful for my focus, and without a signal the cell was of little use to me. I unplugged my smartphone from the charger and handed it to her. ‘Sure. But volume off, okay?’
As she climbed into the back, I reached into the stowaway box beneath the passenger seat for my carryall. Taking my rig from the bag, I removed my jacket and fastened the straps in place. I made the usual checks: plasticuffs, taser, pepper spray. Left the gun in the bag. Satisfied, I pulled my jacket back on and turned to secure the Plexiglas screen between Dakota and me.
With the divider in place it felt like I drove the final m
iles in solitary. Me and the radio was all. Mountainside FM: Classic Country. Those whiney lyrics, guitars and shit seemed fitting companionship. Besides, I couldn’t get a clear signal for any other station, not smothered under the heavy blanket of the trees. So I drove those miles listening to the sounds of The Grand Ole Opry, winding my way up the crumbling blacktop, the temperature falling the higher I went. Whether it was the gloom, or the lonesomeness of the tune on the radio, or the melancholy that came over me when I allowed myself to dwell on the fact that I was about to pick up the man who’d been my mentor, I don’t rightly know. Still, in that moment I’d gotten the strongest feeling that this job was going to be trouble.
The road had hugged tight to the route of a broad mountain stream for a good while before the navigator told me I’d reached my destination. To my left the ground fell sharp away from the raggedy edge of the asphalt, a clear twenty-foot drop to the water below. The stream, wide and shallow, had more power than a casual glance might give it credit. But I knew from the way that white foam kicked high over the stones in the riverbed that it took no prisoners. I shuddered. No doubt that feral beauty had lured many folks to their death.
On my right, the ranch looked like your average mountain homestead, but then appearances don’t always tell the whole story. The feeling was stronger, sitting at the base of my throat, an invisible hold tightening its grip notch by notch to somewhere between fear and excitement. It should be easy, I told myself, a straight collection and return. It should be, yet part of me was wondering why JT had come out here, so far from his native Georgia, and if he’d meant for himself to be found.
I braked to a halt and grabbed the file from the dashboard. Inside the cover lay a ripped-off sheet of yellow legal paper with the address scrawled across it: Yellow Rock Ranch, Yellow Spring. The handwriting was Quinn’s, not mine, the letters neat, tight, economical. Merv’s aunt’s place, he’d said. This was where Merv had JT held. After a long moment I turned the truck on to the driveway. It was time to get this done.
The wooden gate had once been painted white but in the glare of my headlamps I could see it was past its best. It stood rotten on its hinges, propped forever open by a boulder. I continued on, bumping along the dirt road flanked by more of the same ageing, whitewashed railings. I reckoned the road would at one time have been stone, but after years of dirt and weather it was now camouflaged by earth. As I drove, I noted the land, the way the hillside swelled up to the front and the left of the driveway, and fell away a few hundred yards to my right.
I came to a ranch house.
Two vehicles stood parked outside: a Ford with the licence plate MERV and a black SUV. Could mean up to eight people inside, could mean jack. I’d seen wooden horse barns as I’d come up the hill. There’d be plenty of room there to hide a vehicle, or as many as you pleased.
The energy of the place felt ambiguous, hard to read. Unusual.
I parked a little ways from the house, killed the lights and climbed out of the truck.
Silence.
I heard no bug chorus like back home, no sounds from cattle or ponies or whatever animals this ranch was supposed to work, and nothing from the house. Didn’t seem natural. The tension in the base of my throat tightened yet another notch.
Tucking my purse under the driver’s seat, I kept my eyes down and whispered to Dakota, ‘Stay out of sight.’
I locked the Silverado and put the key in my pocket. Reaching inside my jacket, I double-checked the paperwork from Quinn was secure; I needed to have it on me to make my entry into this property and JT’s surrender to me lawful. It was where it was supposed to be.
On my reckoning, twenty-three paces would get me to the front porch. I set out towards it. By my sixth stride it seemed like the slap of my heel on the baked earth could raise a giant from slumber; by the eleventh I’d grown real aware of the inches between my right hand and the place where my X2 lay snug against my ribs under cover of my beat-up leather jacket. At stride seventeen I heard them.
I’m no rookie, but having Dakota so close added a whole other layer of tension to the situation.
I slowed my pace. Listened harder. I counted three voices, all male. None was JT. By stride twenty I saw that the glass had been slid back from the high window in the front room, leaving the mesh screen the only thing separating the inside from the out. I could hear enough to know that the men were playing cards, and that the one called Gunner was winning and oftentimes was inclined to cheat. From the clinking of glass, I reckoned they were drinking too and that this wasn’t their first of the night.
A twig snapped beneath my boot. I froze on instinct, although rationally I knew that made no kind of sense. With the window open those inside would have heard me drive up. Yet they didn’t appear to be interested. That meant they were either stupid for paying no mind to me, cocky in believing that they didn’t need to, or secure in the knowledge that there was someone else on guard duty.
My dollars were on options one or two. Sure, if there was a lookout somewhere up in the trees then they’d have had eyes on me from the moment I left the highway, but, seeing as Merv knew I was coming, there would’ve been little point. What I didn’t understand is why these men hadn’t reacted to my arrival. Unusual. Again. The best thing to do now was to get inside and find JT.
The wooden boarding of the porch creaked as I stepped up on to it. The planks felt spongy, bending beneath my steps. I flinched at the tuneless clank of the wind chimes that hung from the canopy above an old wooden swing. A three-person bench was positioned over to my right. Beside it were two ceramic dog bowls. In one the dregs of water were green with algae. It was hard to know what the meat had once been in the other, for now it was putrid and festering. A good sign, for me at least. I guessed whatever dogs they’d had here had been gone a while.
I opened the screen door, and rapped my knuckles against the more solid inner door three times. Inside, the voices fell quiet. The familiar surge of adrenaline fizzed inside me. I started to count, slow and steady in time with my breath; holding my focus.
I’d reached fourteen by the time the inner door opened. A youngish man, mid-twenties I guessed, stood in the doorway. He wore faded denims, a plaid work shirt and an unwelcoming scowl. He looked me down and up again, then spat tobacco on to the wooden board an inch to the right of my boot. ‘What?’
I stood a little taller. Weight balanced evenly on the balls of my feet. Ready. ‘I’m Lori Anderson, Bail Runner for CF Bonds. Here to collect Robert James Tate.’
He frowned. Whether he knew JT had skipped bail or not, I guessed he hadn’t reckoned on meeting a bail runner who was a woman. In my business, I had that a lot.
I put my boot against the doorframe. ‘I’m here at Merv’s invitation.’
He sniggered. ‘Is that right? Well, seems y’all are out of luck. Merv’s gone for takeout.’
This seemed real unlikely seeing as his truck was parked out front. Still, if it were true, I guessed Merv could be gone a while; I’d passed no food joints of any description on my way in.
Pulling the papers from my pocket, I waved them at the guy. ‘I have reason to believe Tate is at this address. He’s a fugitive, skipped bail back in Florida. You need to stand aside.’
He didn’t move or speak. I took his silence as an invitation and stepped past him into the house. He kept his back to the wall, allowing me along the hallway to the front room with him following behind like a faithful pup. But, despite this attempt to keep it hidden, I’d clocked the semi-automatic stuffed in the back of his pants.
Half a step into the room, I knew my earlier instincts had been correct. This was no place for a child. Quinn might have thought this would be an easy job, but I was standing in a nest of Copperheads that were a whole other level of wrong. Two heavy-built men stood before me. Not our kind of people. They had knives tucked in their belts and the recklessness of liquor shining in their eyes. If you counted the pup with the semi-automatic blocking my exit, there were three. There was
no sign of bounty hunter Merv Dalton, or of the elderly aunt who owned this place. I was the only girl at the dance.
Not a great situation, but there I was with a job to be done. Stay or leave, I had a feeling these boys weren’t going to make either option easy. ‘I’m looking for a fugitive. Robert James Tate. I’m here to take him into custody.’
The biggest guy, a bloody dagger tattooed on his left forearm and a red bandana tied over the crown of his lank brown hair, took a step towards me. He didn’t look none too friendly. ‘Is that right?’
I recognised his voice as the guy winning at cards, Gunner. I nodded. ‘Give me Tate and I’ll be on my way.’
Behind me, the pup sniggered. The weasel-faced man next to Gunner stared at me with dark eyes, a lusty smirk spreading across his lips. ‘Why you want to leave so fast?’
I knew what he was thinking: I was a woman for the taking. But he couldn’t have been more wrong. I held my ground. ‘I don’t want any trouble. Just Tate.’
Weasel-face ran a hand over the black stubble covering his skull. ‘Hell, woman. Don’t you like a little fun?’
The men slid closer, like a bunch of coyotes circling their prey. I scanned their faces, but not one of those boys made eye contact. They were having themselves a good old look-see, checking out what they thought I had to offer. The tension tightened another notch at the base of my neck. I did not like where this was heading.
The way those men stared made me feel real naked. Straight-up predators they were. Bailey must have gotten his information wrong. There was no way this house was inhabited by an elderly widow; it was a loveless place with bare-bulb lighting and cracked plaster walls, and Merv’s boys didn’t seem inclined to give JT up that easy. I figured there were two ways things could go. With Dakota waiting in the car out front I had to make sure both ended in my favour.
Deep Down Dead Page 3
