“My phone is locked, kid.” the sheriff said, glaring at Jake.
“Is that a fact?” Jake rolled the sheriff over and brushed his thumb over his phone to unlock it. “You tell them you handled the problem. It’s called cooperation, and it buys you a lighter sentence, sometimes.”
Jake leaned in closer to the handcuffed sheriff and hit REDIAL. “You do know what happens to former lawmen in prison, don’t you?”
Sheriff Walker glared at Jake as he held the phone close enough to the sheriff for him to talk.
On speaker, a male voice answered.
“Problem solved,” the sheriff said.
“Not quite,” said a voice with only a hint of an accent. “My men found two more problems you evidently missed. A gringo and a gringa. No more noise. I’ll have them disposed of upriver. You see to it there are no more problems on the bank tonight.” The phone clicked off.
“Where are the state troopers and the Coast Guard?” Mickey asked. “Didn’t you call them?”
“I’m guessing the sheriff made some calls, too, and diverted them.” Jake cast a hard look at the sheriff.
“But there’s only two of us,” she said. “I counted five on the deck of the barge. Could be more I couldn’t see. We need backup.”
“Make the call, but I can’t wait,” Jake said. Screw procedure. Screw a clean bust. “They have Holly.” He turned and ran up the levee.
“And Charlie. I’m going with you,” Mickey yelled.
Seconds later, she jogged behind Jake as she called for backup, reported that they were in pursuit, and that the sheriff was in custody and needed an ambulance.
“Custody?” Jake called over his shoulder.
“He’s not going anywhere. I cuffed his hands to his feet.”
A rustling came from the brush nearby. “It’s me, Charlie.”
Mickey rushed over to Charlie and threw her arms around him. “I thought they had you.”
Charlie grinned. “I knew you had the hots for me.”
“In your dreams,” she said, stepping back.
Jake raised his hands. “Hold on a minute. If you’re not the gringo, then who is?”
“An old guy in camo. I spotted him on the surveillance camera.”
A sickening feeling settled into Jake’s gut. He prayed Mackie wasn’t trying to play the hero.
CHAPTER 38
Holly’s derriere was cold, but what could she expect from sitting on the steel deck of a barge in the wee hours of the morning? She dared not move. The wolf man held a gun on them, and from the icy look in his eyes, he’d used it before. Somehow, she had to get off this barge before it shoved off, or she’d never see Holly Grove again.
Mackie sat beside her, but the wolf man had ordered them to keep quiet. She had so many questions as she studied Mackie. He looked like an aged Rambo with a salt-and-pepper braid down his back. He must have lost fifteen pounds and gained it back in muscle.
She eyed their captor. Could she and a retired Rambo fight their way out of here? Holly blew out a sigh. Where was Jake? The Coast Guard? Anybody? Sweet baby Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, have mercy.
The bald guy with the blondish goatee called to the wolf man. He ambled over and handed the bald guy a cigarette.
No way could they take down two bad-to-the-bone smugglers, but if help didn’t arrive soon, she’d have to think of something.
While the smugglers smoked and jawed back and forth in Spanish, Holly leaned over to Mackie and whispered, “What were you doing out here, and where have you been?” She looked him up and down. “Boot camp?”
His worn face cracked into a grin. “Yep. Miss Alice’s boot camp.”
“Huh?”
He rubbed his neck. “Long story.”
Holly glanced at their captors again, then turned to Mackie. “But why are you out here in the middle of the night, mixed up in all this?”
“A couple of weeks before Burl crashed, I was drunk and rode my bicycle home down the levee. I saw Burl and some goons off-loading a barge. They saw me, too, but Burl held them back. He told them I was a drunk and didn’t know what was going on. He probably saved my life, but . . .” He looked down and blew out a breath.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“For all I knew, you were in on it, too.” He thumbed his chest. “I fought for this country, and I’m not letting drugs in my back door.”
Holly blinked. She’d never seen Mackie climb on a soapbox like that before. Considering his little problem, his reaction surprised her.
“Booze or a little pot is one thing, but that powder is a killer. I saw that in . . .” He gave a sideways glance and rubbed his hand across his mouth.
The smugglers’ voices in the background filled the awkward pause as Holly wondered what Mackie had held back.
“So,” Mackie said as he looked at Holly again, “I watched the river from the top of the levee for weeks. The next time I saw Burl at the barge, I called Sheriff Walker. That old snake in the grass blew me off. Said I was drunk.” Mackie lifted a shoulder. “Which was true . . .” He dropped his gaze to the deck. “But Burl was dead a week later.”
“You don’t think—”
Mackie shook his head. “I can’t prove a thing, but I wouldn’t put it past them to sabotage Burl’s plane. I thought it was all over after he died, but the shipments kept coming. So, I called Sam, and he called Jake.”
“Why didn’t you call Jake yourself?”
“Drunk,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Besides, he’d never believe me.”
“He will now.” She patted Mackie on the knee. “If not for you, Jake would have never come to investigate.”
“I didn’t have proof until you asked me to clean out Burl’s container, and I found his stash.”
“Quiet,” the wolf man shouted.
Holly waited for him to turn around, then whispered to Mackie, “What did you do with it?”
“I figured you didn’t know the stash was there, because you asked me to clean the place out. But I couldn’t trust you—so I hid it.”
“In Eudora?”
“Yeah. Drunk decision. I figured I’d decide what to do about that sober and no one would look in the coffin until October.” Mackie gave a hard grin. “Gave me a month to have a dry day.”
Holly shook her head. “So why didn’t you move it before I hauled Eudora out of the barn?”
“Couldn’t.” He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced at the guys with the guns. “Remember when you had some suits coming to look at renting the hangar? When they showed up, I recognized one of them from the night I saw Burl at the riverbank. I got on my bike and hauled tail before they pegged me.”
Holly’s stomach pinched. “They asked if you’d do maintenance if they rented the hangar and how to get in touch with you. I figured you’d want the job.” She winced. “Since you don’t have a phone, I told them where you lived.”
“They found me, all right. They chased me to the river, and I made them think it took me. If I didn’t turn up anywhere, they’d think I’d drowned, and that’d be best after what happened to Burl. Couldn’t go home or get a drink anywhere. I got the shakes so bad, I went to Miss Alice to get me through. I’ve been hiding ever since.”
“And she came here.... It was you who was sleeping in Abe’s cabin.”
“Sorry. I’ll work off the rent.”
“Why there?”
“I owed Miss Alice for helping me out, right?”
Holly nodded.
“You know how the Deltas love bridge.” Mackie took another look back at the guys with the guns. “Glaucoma is blinding Miss Cora Beth, and she read where smoking pot slows down the disease. Miss Alice thought I might have a connection.” Mackie lifted a shoulder. “I didn’t, but I told her I knew where I could get enough to last the rest of her life. When it wasn’t there, I didn’t know whether I’d finally killed my last brain cell or what.”
Holly closed her gaping mouth. “So that was you in the barn and in the house, looking for Eudor
a.”
He nodded. “I figured I was drunk and misplaced it, or you were in on the smuggling. Only way to figure it out was to move in, and Miss Alice didn’t trust me alone.”
The guy with the ponytail flicked his cigarette into the river and gave the wolf man a nod. They both started walking across the barge, toward Mackie and her.
She leaned into Mackie and whispered, “Can you swim?”
“Like a fish.” He winked at her. “Follow my lead. We’ll jump on the downriver side, so we don’t get sucked under the barge.”
“No talk,” the wolf man said, jabbing a machine gun at Mackie.
Mackie held his hands in the air. “Hey, man. She’s gonna puke again. If you don’t let her do it over the side, it’ll be all over the place.”
Holly followed Mackie’s lead and gagged. Then she puffed her cheeks out like she was going to spew.
The bald guy screwed his face up and took a step back. The wolf man waved his weapon toward the side of the barge.
Mackie helped her to the edge of the barge and whispered, “I’ll distract him. You jump.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
Holly looked at the current below, then back at the big guns. She’d take her chances with Old Man River.
The cold that slapped her took her breath away. Muffled gunshots sounded from above. Then bullets streaked through the water around her. She dove deeper, until the current took her.
* * *
Jake, Mickey, and Charlie watched through night-vision binoculars as three men tossed crates in a fire line from the barge pushed up to the bank to a trailer attached to a four-wheeler.
“Fan out,” Jake ordered. Together, they didn’t have a chance; but separate, they might fool the smugglers into believing there were more of them.
Jake found cover behind a birch in the underbrush. He glanced upriver and spotted Mickey crouched behind a stump and Charlie belly down in a thicket. As long as the barge didn’t push off and the situation remained calm, he could wait for backup. They were ten minutes away, but ten minutes ticked by like days.
On deck, two armed men guarded Holly and Mackie. Jake tracked them in his sights. He couldn’t take any chances.
Mackie said something to the gunmen, then helped Holly to the edge of the barge. The bald dude backed away, and a muscle-bound monster of a man with black hair trailed them to the side. Holly leaped into the river, and Jake’s gut felt like it went overboard, too.
He trained his sights on the gunman at the edge of the barge, but Mackie jumped on the big dude’s back and blocked any chance Jake had of getting an accurate shot. Automatic gunfire charged the night as the gunman shot into the water and Mackie rode his back.
“ICE. Freeze where you are,” Jake called from behind cover. “Drop your weapons.”
Crates crashed to the ground, spilling bags of marijuana. The men on the fire line drew their weapons and some ducked as best they could behind the crates or the trailer. Their heads swiveled as they searched past the riverbank for a hidden target in the dense underbrush of the bottom woods.
“I got one of yours.” The big dude pressed the barrel of a pistol to Mackie’s head and held him as a shield.
Jake called to Mickey and Charlie, but not loud enough for his voice to reach the barge. “Either of you have a clear shot to take that guy out?”
“Negative,” they said in tandem.
“Aim at the fire line,” he called back, just above a whisper. Jake kept his weapon on the big dude holding Mackie.
“We could drop five of yours any minute,” Jake yelled back to the big dude. An optimistic prediction at best, but the the fire line grunts squirmed.
“So what?” The gunman tightened his grip on Mackie until his feet lifted off the deck.
“I’ve also got the goods Burl was skimming from you.”
“We knew that hombre was stealing. Why you think he’s dead?”
“Let my man go, and he’ll get the goods.”
“No. You get the goods. Then I’ll let him go.”
Cold steel touched the back of Jake’s neck.
“Drop it,” Mr. Dunbar said.
Jake turned his head slowly and just enough to glimpse Mickey and Charlie held at gunpoint, too.
* * *
Holly gulped air into her lungs as she hauled herself onto the riverbank. “Mackie, you there?”
“Psst,” came from the dark.
“Mackie?”
A wrinkled hand motioned to Holly.
She blinked, not believing who she saw. “Miss Alice? What are you doing here?”
Dressed in a black velour jogging suit and tennis shoes and carrying her purse, Miss Alice stepped from behind a cottonwood. “Mackie called me from your cell phone. He said you’d been grazed by a bullet. I came to check your wound, and all hell broke loose.”
“I’m okay. It’s not even bleeding anymore.”
Miss Alice pulled Holly into the bushes, then shined a flashlight on her head. “Just a scratch.” She aimed the beam in Holly’s eyes.
Holly blocked the light with her hand. “How did you get over the levee?”
“I’m old, not crippled,” Miss Alice huffed. “Your pupils are equal. Any nausea?”
“Yes. When I saw the blood.”
“Head wounds bleed a lot. Any nausea since?”
“No, but if you don’t quit shining that light in my eyes, I’m going to have a headache.”
Miss Alice clicked off the flashlight. “You’ll be fine, until I can give you a thorough examination.”
“Where’s Mackie?”
“Back on the barge.” Miss Alice stepped over a fallen log with her white tennis shoes. “Let’s go.”
“You can’t go there.” Holly grabbed her by the arm. “They’ve got guns.”
“I’ve got one, too.” Miss Alice reached in her purse and pulled out a revolver that looked like the kind used in old westerns. She handed the gun to Holly. “In fact, I have two,” Miss Alice said, grabbing a twin revolver from her purse. “This one was my husband’s.”
“Do you know how to use it?” Holly asked.
Miss Alice cocked a brow. “Want to see my license to carry?”
CHAPTER 39
As Jake watched Mickey and Charlie walking to the barge at gunpoint, a click sounded close behind him. He shut his eyes and waited for the blast.
Then he heard another click.
“Go ahead. Make my day,” Miss Alice whispered.
Jake turned his head slowly to the right. In his peripheral view, Miss Alice stood with an old-school revolver pointed at Mr. Dunbar’s back. Beside her, Holly held a matching gun. His heart darned near stopped. Never had Holly looked better or had he been happier to see her.
Holly winked at Jake and jump-started his heart.
“I’ve always wanted to say that,” Miss Alice said.
“Have you women ever killed a man?” Mr. Dunbar said with gravel in his voice. He stood perfectly still, with his gun pointed at Jake’s side and his back to the women.
“No, but I’ve watched them die,” Miss Alice said.
Holly lifted her gun a little higher, and her brows pinched as she steadied her aim. “Put that gun down, so I don’t have to see my first.”
Holly looked serious. A shiver of unease danced across Jake’s shoulders. Whoa. If either woman pulls the trigger, they’re just as likely to shoot me. But more likely, Dunbar will turn on them and take his chances with me, unarmed.
He needed to make a move and fast. Before he could twitch a muscle, Dunbar spun around to the women. Instinctively, Jake went for the gun to protect the women. He struggled to force Dunbar’s arm toward the ground to keep him from shooting Holly or Miss Alice.
Jake caught sight of them dancing around the scuffle, with their guns tracking Dunbar and sometimes him. “Get back. Don’t shoot.”
Dunbar squeezed off two rounds into the dirt. Shouts rang out from the barge. If Dunbar didn’t
respond soon, they’d either shove off with Mackie on board or come to check on Dunbar.
Jake crushed Dunbar’s neck in an armlock. “Drop it, or I’ll squeeze you till you mess your pants and die,” Jake said, straining to get the words out.
Holly took a step closer and leveled a shaky pistol barrel at Dunbar. “At this range, I won’t miss.”
“Careful, deadeye,” Jake said. “You don’t want to see two men die.”
Realization flashed across Holly’s face as she took a sideways step, changing the angle of her aim. “Sorry.”
Dunbar’s gun hit the soft ground with a thud.
Jake grinned at Holly. “Good job, sweetheart.”
Miss Alice dug in her purse and pulled out a ball of what looked like knitting yarn. “It’s nylon. You can tie him up with this.” She edged over next to Holly and pointed her revolver at Dunbar, too.
Jake nearly chuckled as he yanked Dunbar’s hands behind his back. “If I were you, I wouldn’t make any quick moves.”
More shouts came from the riverbank, and Dunbar’s men closed in. Jake could see Mackie wrestling with two goons on the barge now.
Jake tied Dunbar’s hands behind his back and then picked up the man’s weapon. Jake pointed the gun between Dunbar’s eyes. “Call them off.”
Dunbar gave him a steely “go to hell” look.
Jake cocked his gun and matched his stare.
“Put the guns down,” Dunbar yelled.
Guns clattered to the ground as Dunbar’s men raised their hands over their heads. Mickey and Charlie picked up the guns and herded Dunbar’s men in a line, then made them lie facedown on the riverbank.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jake caught Mackie launching the big goon into the river. Jake blew out a breath. Then he shoved Dunbar to the ground and tied his feet. “Make yourself comfortable.”
* * *
Holly noticed Miss Alice tuck her revolver in her purse, then toddle off toward the barge. Nosy didn’t begin to describe the woman. Holly shook her head and nearly grinned.
It’s a good thing she stuck her nose in my business and Mackie’s. Things could have turned out much worse if she hadn’t. And even worse if Jake hadn’t been here.
“You’re soaked.” Jake put his coat around her shoulders. He held her at arm’s length, then inspected the nick on her head. “I told you to stay in the house. Do you realize you could have been killed?”
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