"There's also another scenario you're ignoring. This could be a set-up. If the initials are a clue, Ms. Raintree could be the killer," one of the computer technicians offered.
"That's ridiculous," Jack snapped.
"It's a possibility, but highly unlikely," Agent Coulter agreed. "I'm going to continue working the idea that she is somehow connected with the killer through an obsession. The similarities of the victims to her can't be ignored. Both of the missing suspects have known her for most of her life."
The profiler nodded. "It doesn't matter who the killer is at the moment. It's more important to find the den of the murderer. That's where Ms. Raintree and Ms. Blackcrow will be. It's somewhere no one will notice, somewhere well hidden and probably close to the property where the other victims were buried for ease of mobility."
Agent Coulter turned to Jack. "How many buildings were on your property originally?"
Jack closed his eyes for a few seconds. "The main house, the barns. It was a working ranch until my father died. There were large sheds for equipment, corncribs, silos and smaller barns for storage. There was a chicken coop when I was a kid, a windmill, a woodshed and a washhouse behind the house, but none of those structures had basements or storage underneath them. They had dirt floors. Those buildings have been gone for decades. At one point there was a bunkhouse—I don't know when that was torn down. Hell, I've been gone for twenty years. The main house and most of the buildings were built after the land rush in the late 1890s, that's been over a hundred years, there could have been dozens of buildings built and torn down. If someone was or is there on the property, won't that dog you've sent for find them?"
Jack went to the side door and stared out over the lawn down towards the end of the property by the tree line. That was where Josie wanted to build a small four-horse barn and put in a two-acre corral. This was Josie's property, not his. He hadn't been back to his property since the discovery of the bodies. He looked over at the pile of debris still waiting for them to clear it from the property. It was mainly downed branches from the small patch of trees planted at the edge of the property. He turned around suddenly.
"There's an old cottonwood grove about a half-mile from my parents' place. Back in the day, the government granted homesteaders more land if they agreed to put in forty acres of trees. When I was a kid, a homeless guy lived back in those cottonwoods in a sod house dug back into the hill. I remember he put a roof on it because he stole the shingles from one of our sheds. My Dad was threatening to go after him with a shotgun full of rock salt. Old Sid went around talking to himself all the time and lived out of people's trash. Some people tried to help him, but he didn't want help, he wanted to be left alone. He disappeared sometime during my teens. I vaguely remember the sheriff searching the grove in case he died back there, but I have no idea what happened to him."
"Can you find this place?" Agent Coulter demanded.
"Yeah, Old Sid would occasionally steal a cow and my father would send me to bring it back. If it's still there, I'll find it," Jack said.
"Take one of Daniel Dooley's dogs and give it the scent of something of Josie's, he'll lead you right to it and her if she's there," Buck offered. "Those dogs of his are good trackers, and they've been trained by professionals, so they don't go baying and barking—they are trained to be quiet. He hires them out to the county and state people all the time when someone comes up missing."
"It's worth a try," Agent Coulter agreed. He barked off the names of several of his team leaders who began to prepare and gear up for the assignment.
"I'll give Daniel Dooley a call and stay here with the boy," Buck volunteered.
"Thanks," Jack said with a nod. "Keep track of him, Buck, don't let him out of your sight."
Josie knew she had blacked out for a while. She had no way of knowing how long she had been there. Being alone was terrifying. Her arm hurt so much that bile from her stomach kept rising up into her throat, bitter and burning. Her legs and feet were numb, and they hurt with every movement.
She closed her eyes, flashing back to that other time when she had realized she was on her own.
Her team was not going to come in after her. It was more important for them to record, gather information and evidence. She had been the bait, and the hook for the sting operation, one lowly agent was not worth toppling multi-millions of dollars spent in months of surveillance. There was a chance for promotions for the higher-ups, commendations and positive press. At those levels, higher-ups ignored the age-old agent code of helping their own. Rescuing her was not worth losing what they would gain politically. She was expendable.
Josie shook her head to clear it of bad memories. She had fought her way out before, and she was not going down this time either. She started rocking and inching her body off the cot. She landed with a thump on a hard surface, swallowing a cry of agony from her broken arm. She maneuvered her way into a sitting position. Slowly she began to inch her way across the floor. Her hands were tied behind her back, and she was feeling for anything with the fingers on her good hand. She needed something, anything. Minutes—hours, she couldn't tell how long it took, but she eventually found a bottle. A flat bottle, she surmised as her fingers sized it up. It was probably a pint-size liquor bottle, intact, but she couldn't use it intact. She fumbled with it in the pitch darkness, lost her grip and it skittered away. She had to find it again. She found it and continued to inch her way until she was against the stone wall. She shattered the bottle against a hard edge of the stone. It cut her fingers, but she picked up a piece of the broken bottle and began the tedious process of trying to saw through the duct tape binding her hands together. She worked at it, bending her good hand upward and painfully holding the shard of glass between her fingers and hacking at the tape. Her hands were slippery and blood-soaked, but the wetness of the blood helped loosen the tape. Minutes—hours, she didn't have any way of knowing. At long last, her wrist broke free, and pain from her broken arm seared through her, taking her breath away as the break shifted. She bit down on the inside of her cheek; she would not blackout again! She would not! She would use the pain to stay awake. She would use the pain to stay alive.
With her freed hands, she found the bottom of the hood and pulled it off her head; she clawed her bloody fingers into the tape over her mouth and pulled that off too. It was dark in her prison, not pitch black but dark and the hovel stank of body odor, sweat, semen and damp earth. She grabbed a larger piece of the broken glass, slicing it through the tape around her knees and her ankles. She dragged herself over to a single chair where she rubbed her feet and legs trying to get some feeling into them, some function back into them, and painfully tried to pull herself up into the chair. It took a while; her legs were numb and rubberlike. She rubbed her legs some more, let the pain come as she stomped her feet, and flexed her good arm and hand. She dragged herself upright and staggered over to one of the narrow windows, tried to wipe the glass to get more light into the room. She only managed to add blood to the blackened filth.
She staggered back over to the cot and picked up the dark pillowcase that had been used for a hood. She wiped the window again. This time she gained a little more light. The room was not any wider than ten feet by ten feet. It contained the cot where her abductor had left her, and another cot with a camping mattress on it, the chair, the dinette table and a case of bottled beer. Crates were overflowing with men's magazines, not upscale publications, but the kind found behind the counters of men's shops-the kind that were hidden in disgusting holes like this prison where she'd been dumped. She tried the door although she knew it was a waste of time. She searched for something to use as a tool to pry it off the hinges, but found nothing.
Limping back over to the case of beer, she started breaking bottles. If she had nothing else, broken glass would be her weapon. When she had several long, jagged pieces from the necks of the bottles, she used her teeth to rip through the cloth of the pillowcase tearing strips of cloth from it and wrapping them around th
e three bottlenecks with their long jagged edges. Whoever, whatever walked through that door, they would find out Josie Raintree did not quit. For the first time in her life, she had found love. Love for Jack. Love for Alex and Buck. No one was taking that away from her. No one!
Jack guided a team of nine men and one dog into the woods. He was their guide, but Daniel Dooley's brown Labrador retriever was harnessed and moving quickly. Six men dressed in SWAT gear and armed to the teeth moved through the trees silently, spread out about six feet apart. Agent Coulter walked beside him. Jack had demanded a weapon, but Agent Coulter had denied his request. Jack was trained and capable, but this was an Agency operation.
"Hershey has the scent," Daniel Dooley whispered, noticing signals from his dog that the others could not interpret.
At Agent Coulter's signal, the team members dispersed further, becoming invisible behind trees and brush. Twenty minutes into the woods, Agent Coulter, hooked up to ear buds, gave a signal for Jack and Daniel to stop and drop lower. "Someone is ahead of us moving through the woods, coming in from the west. Let's see if he leads us there."
"But—"
"My team is moving in closer. Whoever is moving out there—it can't be random. We're going to take him down, Jack. Let us do our jobs. Don't botch this up for us."
Jack nodded, hating that he was not in control.
Someone was striding through the woods, but they could only see him from the back and at a distance. He continued to walk, and the team continued to follow and move in closer.
Jack pulled at Agent Coulter's sleeve. "The sod shanty is over that small rise. There's a small creek over there."
Agent Coulter relayed that information to his men.
The man went down over an embankment and out of sight. Jack could not get a good look at him without showing himself. He could not see the FBI team members either, but he knew they were there. Dooley had dropped back with his dog. He wouldn't put his animal at risk.
The FBI team members waited. They had their visuals and watched as the man unlocked the door. They moved in fast with the intent to capture, but suddenly the man screamed, high-pitched hysterical screams, and he kept screaming. He fell backwards and was flailing, fighting off someone. He was covering his face and shrieking wildly.
A screaming specter of a banshee wielding long shards of glass in her hand attacked. She was slicing and stabbing without mercy.
One of the team members grabbed at Josie, but she dodged him as she continued to attack her abductor. Another grabbed her hand with thick leather gloves and disarmed her. She screamed as someone pushed her down on the forest floor where she remained. She curled up into a tight ball and began to make a high-pitched keening sound and shake violently. She flinched every time someone came near her. Several of the men entered the structure but came out empty handed.
Jack went to Josie, kneeling down beside her, but she wouldn't look at anyone. She hunched in on herself, breathing shallowly, shaking and still keening.
"Josie, it's me, Jack," he said. He held out his hand, but she flinched backward.
"Josie," Jack said firmly. "It's me! I'm not going to hurt you. JOSIE!"
The keening stopped as she peered up at him. Unfocused eyes gazed in a moment of clarity. "My Jack?" she breathed.
"It's me, Hellion."
With the wail of an injured creature, Josie launched herself at him, and he caught her, the impact of her nearly knocking him over. "My Jack?"
"Yes, sweetheart, it's me." Jack curled his arms around her gently. She was covered in blood, and he didn't know how much of it was hers. He didn't want to hurt her further.
"Take me home, I don't want to be here anymore," Josie whimpered.
"I will, sweetheart, I promise," Jack vowed.
"I've called for ambulances," Agent Coulter said, putting his hand on Jack's shoulder and looking concerned. "We'll have to take her out on a stretcher."
"No," Jack said firmly. "I'll carry her. I'll take her out."
One of the swat team members knelt down beside Jack looking at the blood-covered woman in his lap. She was rocking and making that strange keening sound. "Sir, I can give her something to mildly sedate her—to calm her down," he suggested. "We need to get those cuts on her hands disinfected ASAP. God knows what kinds of spores, mold and bacteria are in these woods or that shack. I can then determine her other injuries."
Jack nodded as he leaned down to rest his chin on her head, but before the Medic could give her an injection, she slumped unconscious in his arms. The Medic set the syringe aside and began to clean and bandage her hands. Another member of the team poured pure bottled water over and into her eyes, and wiped a disinfectant across the scratches on her face and neck.
Jack took his eyes off Josie for a second to see more of the swat team, administering first aid to her abductor. His eyes went back down to Josie when the Medic spoke to him.
"That's all I can do here. We need to get her to the hospital for stitches. Those shards of glass cut him up bad, but they cut into her hands too. Her left arm looks broken, as well," the Medic announced. Someone handed him a stiff flat piece of plastic, which he tightened against her forearm. He placed her arm against her chest and wrapped ace bandages around her to hold her arm in place. "Okay," the Medic said and he lifted her out of Jack's arms so Jack could get to his feet. He gently placed her back into Jack's arms.
"Sir, you can take her now. We'll bring this piece of shit out behind you."
Jack waited until the team cuffed the man's hands and legs together. Four of the team members, each one taking an arm or a leg lifted the man to carry him out.
Jack carried Josie every step of the half-mile out to the road. If he had to shift her for a better grip, he felt helping hands take the load and hold her gently until he could regain his hold. There was a gentleness in the way the tough, swat team members touched her. There was compassion and admiration in their eyes. There was no way any man in that group was going to let anything else hurt her by force or accident.
Once they settled Josie and strapped her into the ambulance gurney, she stirred and began that strange keening again. The local EMTs knew her. They knew her as their strong-willed sheriff. They looked around at the black-outfitted men with questioning eyes.
"She fought with the devil today," Agent Coulter said roughly. "She won!"
Chapter 12
When Josie opened her eyes, it was to a world of white, a fuzzy world, but she wasn't in pain, and she knew she was in a hospital. She looked around and saw Jack sitting in a chair pushed up close to her bed. He was touching her fingertips since her right hand was heavily bandaged and was taped down to a flat plastic board. An IV needle dripped something into her veins. His eyes were watching her.
"Good morning," he said softly.
Josie attempted a smile. "It is. I'm alive. Did I kill that bastard?" Her voice was rough and dry.
Jack gave her a weak grin and got up to pour her a glass of water and nudge the straw at her lips, which she took and drank. "You tried your best. You had him screaming like a girl, and he's going to look pretty damn ugly from now on. He's going to look like the monster that he is. You hit the carotid artery. He was bleeding out, but they stopped it. He'll live to face trial."
"Good," Josie said, her voice breaking. "Layla Blackcrow, did she survive?"
"Yes. Her kidnapping was unrelated. Her boyfriend abducted her. He carted her off because they'd had a fight, and she wouldn't talk to him. All is well there and as soon as they saw the report claiming she was missing, they called the police to straighten out the false reports. When her parents reported her missing, everyone sort of jumped the gun, the tape of him carrying made it look pretty conclusive. She's not filing charges against her boyfriend, and she stayed with him of her free will, so no laws were broken."
"Good! Thank you for finding me, Jack."
"A lot of people were involved in finding you, sweetheart. Believe it or not, Alex was the key."
"What? How?"<
br />
"We have plenty of time to discuss all the details later. The doctors said you weren't molested."
"I know, but it was close, too close. I didn't know who it was until he opened the door to that hole. Do we know why yet?"
"That's going to take a while to figure out, if ever. He's a psychopath who clearly went off the rails a long time ago. Meanwhile, there's a hospital lobby full of people wanting to see you, but no one is allowed in until your doctor clears you for visitors. The FBI pulled rank to get me in here with you. It's only four-thirty in the morning. I don't think your doctor is going to be around for a couple more hours. You need to close your eyes and get a couple more hours of sleep and rest."
"How long was I there?"
"Twenty-nine hours."
Josie nodded. "Do you think you could hold me for awhile?"
"Of course. I'm always here for you. You're my little Hellion."
An hour later, Jack opened his eyes as a nurse came in to check the IV. She smiled, seeing a large man stretched out in the hospital bed holding her patient in his arms. She winked at him and quietly left the room. Josie slept huddled in his arms, safe and secure.
Alex burst into the room, bringing with him a dozen helium balloons in bright colors.
"Mom!" He dropped his eyes, "I mean, Josie."
"Come here, Alex," Josie said, as the boy went to her side. "Thank you." She kissed him. "The balloons are great, but it's a nicer present to hear you call me Mom. We'll get there. We'll keep fighting until we do; I promise. I'm not giving up on my hero."
"I want you to be my mom," Alex whispered. He backed off as he tried to hand her trailing ribbons from the balloons only to realize both of her hands were injured. His face flushed and he looked worried. "Do your arm and your hand hurt?"
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