Hidden (Jacobs Family Series Book 1)

by Vannetta Chapman

  Ben had disabled its feed from the main computer. There was nothing the boy could harm, but he didn’t think he should interrupt the family’s private discussion. Though the ride was taking place in a bullet-proof, military vehicle on a covert mission in the middle of the night, they sounded like any other family out for a drive.

  “I said stop it and close your eyes. It’s past your bedtime.”

  Reggie snorted. “Don’t think they’re going to sleep anytime soon.”

  “We’ll transfer cars in another five minutes. Then it’ll be a straight drive.” Ben looked to Red who monitored Dana and Clay’s progress on the GPS board.

  “The tunnel is 3.8 miles ahead,” Red confirmed.

  “Everyone remember what they’re supposed to do?” Ben asked.

  “Roger,” Frankie said.

  “Ten four.” Tommy sat up straighter.

  Reggie tugged nervously at his AC/DC ball cap, but when Ben looked to him for confirmation, he nodded.

  Construction lights flashed as they entered the south side of the tunnel, exactly as the governor had promised. Dana did have some useful connections.

  A construction board indicated the road was closed for maintenance. Ben slowed enough for the worker to make out his plate number. Signaling to another man further down the line, two men stepped forward and moved the barricade in their lane, allowing them to pass through.

  Glancing again in his mirror, Ben confirmed the barricade was quickly replaced. He also saw his taillights reflect briefly against the weapon stowed in the worker’s holster as the man bent to reposition the barricade.

  It was good to know they had a little extra protection while they were making the transfer.

  Once into the tunnel, Ben sped up until he was even with the nondescript Jeep Cherokee. They stopped parallel with one another. Sitting in the Cherokee were Dana, Clay, George and Nina. Four adults, but no children. The Humvee had also held four adults—counting Ben, Red, Reggie, and Mrs. Mifflin, plus the two smaller children.

  Doors flew open, and all four of the Mifflins moved to the backseat of the Cherokee. Red stood with his forearms resting on the roof of the Humvee, weapon drawn and ready, eyes alert and scanning.

  Ben and Clay met at the front of the two vehicles and exchanged keys. In the darkness, he supposed they might look alike. Truth was, after less than two weeks, he respected the man in front of him tremendously and felt he knew him well.

  “Watch your back,” Ben said.

  “I always do, Marshall.” The smallest of smiles played on Clay’s face. It was a first, and it certainly couldn’t be misconstrued for outright friendliness. Ben wondered briefly if Clay had ever loved Dana, then he pushed the thought aside. He needed to focus on getting this family safely tucked away.

  They both turned to look at their respective vehicles.

  Dana remained in the front seat of the Cherokee. Of the four Mifflins sitting in the back, only the mother and Reggie were visible. The two younger boys now lay down where they couldn’t be seen. The vehicle would look exactly the same exiting the tunnel as it had coming in, if no one looked too closely at the driver.

  Clay would drive out with Red beside him, which hopefully would be all anyone would ever get close enough to see. For one thing, the side and back windows of the Humvee were darkly tinted. To be safe though, they’d gone with the same number of adults. George sat in the backseat, wore a ball cap, and was roughly the same height as Reggie. Nina would pass for Mrs. Mifflin at a distance, but if anyone came close the charade would be up.

  As for the children, the idea was they had fallen asleep.

  “Our two minutes is up,” Red called.

  Clay hesitated and finally settled on “Good luck.”

  Ben slapped him on the shoulder and continued around the front of the Jeep. The headlights created dancing shadows on the tunnel walls.

  Driving back in the direction they’d come from moments before, he stole a look over at Dana. He was fully aware they’d just sent four of their team members into harm’s way, but he had no doubt they could handle it.

  At the staff meeting, there had nearly been a fight over who would volunteer.

  Dana had to step in and remind everyone she determined assignments and she would choose who would go. Ben had wanted to laugh at the look of frustration on her face. She had to realize the issue was her staff’s dedication, and that was a good problem to have.

  He glanced at her again as he made his way out of the tunnel and continued south into the darkness. Her face was a mask of concentration while she monitored the comm frequencies and kept an eye on the GPS board. He longed to reach over and massage the stress from her shoulders, but the backseat full of passengers stopped him.

  The sounds of yawns and deep breathing told him the younger boys had settled in to the more normal ride and were beginning to drift off. Mrs. Mifflin stared off into the dark shadows of the night. Reggie alone sought his gaze in the rearview mirror.

  They had spent six hours at the office, pouring over pictures of felons.

  It was Nina who had found their man and brought the picture up on the screen for Reggie to identify.

  He didn’t have a record, at least not a federal one.

  He didn’t have any aliases—even the one he’d given Reggie didn’t appear anywhere. He wasn’t on any watch list they could find.

  But his family had lost their ranch to a land reclamation project when he was a boy—over forty-five years ago. The family had been given the fair market value, according to the State of New Mexico.

  They had appealed the ruling and lost.

  When the father had refused to leave, the family had been forcibly removed and the home of three generations bulldozed. There had been two stories in the local newspaper about it. Both on the front page.

  After the dam was built and the land flooded, the state had considered the case closed.

  Chance Drogan had not.

  When Nina placed five men’s pictures on the screen, Reggie had immediately identified him.

  It took them another twenty minutes to learn Drogan had served two tours in Vietnam as an explosives expert.

  Thirty-four

  Dana looked at the family gathered around the old Apache gentleman and assured herself it was okay to leave.

  If Ben trusted him, she should too.

  Mr. Tafoya seemed to sense her doubts. He walked with her back to the Jeep and opened the passenger door.

  “You’re welcome to come out anytime, Miss Jacobs. I assure you no harm will come to this family here. I regret I did not know about their situation earlier. We would have intervened on their behalf.”

  “Thank you, for everything.” Dana peered into the face that was a mass of wrinkles. “And I don’t mean to offend you, but…”

  Ben joined them, grasping Tafoya’s hand once again. “What my boss wants to say, but is too polite to spit out, is she’s afraid you can’t keep them safe.”

  Dana didn’t deny Ben’s words. Her cheeks warmed in the cool, night air at his bluntness. “Drogan has been one step ahead of us from the beginning. Even if he followed the decoy north, he’ll eventually realize where we gave him the slip. Then he’ll backtrack.”

  “Unless Clay catches him, or kills him,” Ben pointed out.

  “We can hope.” Dana looked at the two men beside her and the family waiting a few feet away in Tafoya’s truck. “They didn’t deserve to be caught in this. I want them safe.”

  Tafoya’s smile split the wrinkled lines of his face. He reminded her of Ben in many ways. She wondered if Ben had a few drops of Apache in his own bloodline.

  “My people have dealt with warriors for hundreds of years—both those that are honorable and those that are not.” Tafoya looked up at the night sky. “Many nights, under these same stars, we have had to protect our women and children. God has given us the skill and cunning to do so. Men like Drogan are not new to me or the Apache Nation. They are like the old coyote—wily and dangerous at times
, but not to be feared.”

  Dana nodded as if she understood, even though she didn’t.

  Tafoya held his arms out to the night, as if to catch the wind in them. “If you come looking for the Mifflins, you will not find them nor will anyone have heard of them.”

  At Dana’s look of alarm, he placed a hand the color of the earth on her arm. “Come to me, and I will take you to them. They will be close. They will be well.”

  With those words, the old man crossed to his truck. His worn, leather boots crackled against the gravel road. As he drove away, Reggie turned and looked back, finally raised one hand in farewell.

  Dana felt a lump in her throat and wondered if perhaps she needed a vacation when this case was over.

  “It’s harder when there are kids involved,” Ben murmured. Instead of walking to his side of the car, he moved behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist, and rested his chin on her head.

  Though she knew they needed to be on their way, she leaned back against him and allowed him to support her weight for a moment.

  “Long day, boss.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’re closer than we were twenty-four hours ago.”

  “I suppose we are.”

  Then Ben surprised her again. Instead of continuing to talk, he simply held her. They both looked out at the billions of stars—the same stars Tafoya had drawn their attention to. She allowed the peacefulness of the night to seep into her soul, to minister to her spirit.

  She wouldn’t get a lot of sleep, and she would still have more to do tomorrow than she could possibly accomplish. But she would have this moment to cherish.

  Maybe it would be enough to get her through what lay ahead.

  Something told her she would need every bit of help she could find to struggle through the next few days, possibly weeks—including the man standing next to her.

  No, make that especially the man standing next to her.

  Thirty-five

  Ben had once seen St. Elmo’s fire. He’d been shipping across to Iraq at the time. They were still three days off the coast, and the men’s moods had gone from a slight twitch to a constant itch. By the evening of the second night of misconduct, the captain had slapped them all with extra duty cycles. Undoubtedly, he’d hoped to work the restless energy out of them.

  Ben was on the deck, scrubbing the walls by the light of the aft lights at 1900 hours. The sky was dark as pitch, and no one was talking. It was unusual for a crew. He was accustomed to camaraderie wherever he served. It was how you survived the long days and endless nights.

  He remembered glancing over his shoulder several times, as if expecting to see something. There was nothing to see though except the blackness of the sea. Even the stars had been blotted out by the clouds that had plagued them for days.

  Suddenly, every hair on his arms, neck, even scalp had stood straight up. He’d thought he must look like a cartoon character. He started to turn to the guy scrubbing six meters down from him when a blue ball of fire ran down the flagpole of the ship and shot out across the water.

  It was followed immediately by an eerie greenish glow, which lasted no more than five seconds, and then the rain started. It fell in sheets.

  Ben stood there, soaked to the bone, grateful what had hit them wasn’t a bomb.

  Relieved the itch that had plagued him for two days was finally gone.

  Able finally to draw in a deep breath as the electricity that had built up around the ship finally dissipated.

  Weather reports later confirmed it was St. Elmo’s fire.

  Looking around the department room two days after leaving the Mifflin family with Mr. Tafoya, it occurred to Ben they could use a ball of St. Elmo’s fire. Not likely in the middle of an office in Taos, New Mexico on a sunny day. Not entirely impossible.

  For one thing, the itch was about to kill them all.

  Clay stalked around the office as if he could force Drogan into another encounter.

  Captain refused to let anyone else near the radios.

  Red had broken Nina’s chair when he plopped down in it in disgust. Nina, for her part, kept her counsel to herself. She spent every spare moment reading Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, as if some secret from Drogan’s plan might be embedded there.

  But worst of all was the haunted expression on Dana’s face. She looked as if she hadn’t slept since he dropped her off late Tuesday evening. Even though it was now Friday afternoon, he was willing to bet the few bucks in his wallet she was not taking off the weekend.

  He’d tried twice to distract her with offers of dinner. Both times she’d flatly refused him.

  St. Elmo’s fire would spark up this group quite a bit in his opinion.

  Ben stood and tossed the stress ball he’d been abusing to Red. The ball hit him in the shoulder, but he never looked up from the computer terminal he was staring at. Ben sighed and crossed to Dana’s office. He knew she would turn him down, but he might as well try before he left.

  Knocking once, he waited for her to look up. She never did, though she did answer. “Come in, Ben.”

  He walked in, but didn’t take a seat. She was intent on watching four separate Internet windows. He couldn’t make out the contents, but he could see the headers. Three were spybot cams. The fourth was the ID photo of Chance Drogan.

  “Why do the bad guys always look so harmless?” Ben asked.

  Dana sat back in her chair and tapped her bottom lip with two fingers. “They practice blending in. Look at him.”

  She leaned forward, used her mouse to switch to the full body view, and zoomed out. “The man is sixty years old, but still he managed to look like a teenager on the school’s security video.”

  Ben walked around to stand behind her and study the screen. “He’s stayed in good physical condition—five ten, one seventy tops, put a backpack and a baseball cap on him, and you can’t tell his age unless…” He reached forward, drew a box with the mouse, and zoomed back in, “you look closely at his hands.”

  Dana shook her head, rotated the picture, zoomed out, and looked again at his profile. “The man is bald, Ben.”

  “True, which is probably why baseball caps were invented—to hide male baldness.”

  “Beady, little, blue eyes. They’re set too close together. Don’t you think? He looks like a rat.” She minimized the profile and went back to the spybots.

  Ben returned to the far side of the desk and sat in one of the chairs.

  “This one has been hovering around his last known residence. No one has entered or exited the building, but if you look closely, you can see a reflection or something in the window. Here. In the southeast corner.” She tapped the screen with the eraser end of her pencil. “Maybe he’s in there. He could have enough supplies so he doesn’t need to come out.”

  “Dana—”

  “I know what you’re going to say. The spybots have infrared cameras, but what if he had some sort of coating on the inside of his doors, walls, and windows? Or maybe he’s artificially lowered his temperature.” She chewed on the eraser and leaned closer to the screen. “He could be in a bunker underneath the house. Would that show up?”

  She finally turned and looked at him, hope lighting her tired features.

  “How long have you been sitting here?”

  “I don’t see how that has any relevance.” She scowled, then dismissed him with a wave. “Never mind. If you were checking in before you left, there’s no need.”

  “Dana, the spybots have remote pilots. They are well trained and have flown many missions in every conceivable scenario. Let them do their job.”

  “And what am I supposed to do, Ben?” She turned her frustration on him full force, slapping the desk as she spoke. “Do I sit here and wait to see where he strikes next? Swoop in and clean up another mess?”

  Clay stopped what he was doing in the room outside her window. He made eye contact with Ben, but Ben could only shrug. As far he was concerned, it would do their boss good to let off some
steam.

  Fortunately for them both, Dana missed the exchange.

  “Don’t sit there and stare at me. I don’t have the patience this afternoon for your… patience.” Apparently realizing how absurd she sounded, Dana collapsed back into her chair. She pushed her hair away from her face and stared at Ben who still hadn’t uttered another word. “You scared to speak, Marshall?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Dana stared at the ceiling for a moment. “All right. Let’s start over. Why did you walk in here?”

  “Sure wasn’t to invite you rock climbing.”

  “Afraid I’d beat you to the top?”

  “I’m more afraid you’d push me off once we got there.” Ben steepled his fingers and studied her while the smallest of smiles tugged at the corner of her mouth. “We’re all frustrated, Dana. Waiting is the hardest.”

  “It’s not my first operation.” The quarrel was back in her tone.

  “I know it’s not, but maybe if you got out of the office they would relax a little.” He nodded toward the crew working in the large room outside her door. “Maybe if you left for more than four hours, they would follow your example and get some rest. And don’t deck me for saying what you know is the truth.”

  Dana glared at him across the desk.

  Ben waited and kept his mouth shut.

  “Do you think I haven’t tried?”

  He had to strain to hear her.

  “I can’t sleep because I see Frankie and you walking out of those flames. I come to work and all I find is more dead ends. I know about waiting, Ben. But this is more like a hurricane, brewing on my doorstep. I should be doing something.”

  Instead of arguing, he nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. How about we head west at first light? Go see Drogan’s homestead?”

  Dana shook her head. “The one he lost?”

  “Sure. We know where it is.”

  “That’s crazy. It’s under water, or didn’t you get that memo? They built a dam, flooded the entire valley.” When Ben didn’t contradict her, she asked, “What do you expect to see?”