Maggie stopped walking and drew closer to Jace.
“I want you to be careful.”
“I will be.”
She kissed him, just a soft laying of her lips upon his, but a kiss all the same.
Afterwards, he reached out and stroked her hair.
Maggie looked at the ground as she spoke.
“You didn’t kiss me back, so... I guess that means it’s not like that for you, hmm?”
“It ain’t that, but I know you can do better than me, girl. Hook up with one of those rich dudes at your school.”
“I don’t want to; I like you, and I was hoping that maybe you felt the same way.”
“Shit, Maggie, I like you, but I owe your brother a lot and I know that he don’t want me hitting on you.”
Maggie turned and began walking away.
“You don’t have to make excuses. I understand.”
“Maggie? Hey, wait up.”
Jace caught up to her and matched her quick stride.
“I meant what I said, I really like you.”
“Alright,”
“I’m serious!”
“I said alright, I get it.”
They walked the rest of the way back in silence and found him standing on the porch with the dog laying near his feet. He was looking over at the trail as if he were waiting for them to return.
Maggie pointed at the limo.
“Is that Billy’s, is Samantha here?”
“Yes, she’s with Jessica and she asked about you, go say hello.”
“I will.”
Maggie went into the house, but Jace stayed behind.
He said nothing, but when Jace saw that he was looking at him carefully, he raised his hands up.
“Nothing happened, dude; it was just a walk.”
He moved closer to Jace as he kept staring at him, and Jace began to wonder if he was in trouble, but finally, he spoke.
“She could do worse, but now go get ready. We leave in an hour.”
Jace nodded and walked by him and into the house, passing Jessica as he did so.
She went to her husband, but pointed back towards Jace.
“What did you just say to him? He had the biggest smile I’ve ever seen.”
“I guess he’s looking forward to the trip.”
“So am I, and I’ll be ready to leave when you are.”
“You’re coming along? What about the babies?”
“I knew that we might have to leave here to find them, and so I’ve been storing breast milk. They’ll be fine for a few days.”
“We’ll be assaulting a compound.”
“I know, and I know that I won’t be much use there, but I’m coming anyway. When you find them, and you will, Hanna is mine. That bitch threatened my babies, and for that she’s going to pay.”
“I don’t like us both being away from them for so long.”
“If we don’t find Jeffrey and Hanna soon I’ll come back, but I want the chance to settle this as much as you do.”
He took her in his arms.
“We’ll find them.”
“And we’ll kill them; they’ve run out of chances.”
He heard the vehemence in her voice, and tilted his head back to find fire blazing in her eyes.
“Look at you, and they say I have intense eyes.”
CHAPTER 11
The Chihuahuan Desert, Texas, 1.42 a.m.
Wade Cully woke up and rolled out from under the arm of a prostitute named Luciana.
He sat up on the side of his bed in the back of a luxurious motor home that once belonged to Billy Gant.
Something had awakened him, not a noise, but an instinct, an instinct honed from decades of living outside the law. He listened, and heard nothing, but there was a buzzing feeling in his head that was growing stronger, and so he got up, put on his pants and sandals, and tied back his long hair, before going into the bathroom and emptying his bladder.
When he eased open the trailer door, he had a MAC-11 sub-compact machine pistol in a shoulder rig and a flashlight in his hand. The light was off, but his thumb was poised on the button.
Before leaving, he looked back and saw that Luciana was still sleeping, but in his absence from the bed, she had commandeered the blanket and wrapped herself inside it, so that only her mane of thick, black hair could be seen.
Wade shut the door and moved slowly along the rear of the trailers. It was a clear night with a mostly full moon, and so he could see well enough to maneuver about. He had left two men on guard duty and they were seated atop the motor home in the center of the nine they had. They were in folding chairs, facing back to back so that they couldn’t be blindsided.
The motor home was the oldest and used for storage, so there was no one asleep inside it. The mammoth vehicle and its newer companions were all spaced twenty to thirty feet apart from each other in a semi-circle. A few had awnings attached to their sides, the awnings were all covered with sand-colored camouflaged netting, so as to blend in, in fact, anything that stayed outside was either covered with netting or painted beige so that it would be less easily seen from above. Not that anything flew low out here, other than the occasional sighting of hot air balloons far to the west, but better to be safe than sorry.
Wade reached the trailer without alerting the guards, and saw that they were awake and alert. When they were both looking away from his position, he moved silently but quickly over to the side of their trailer. With the flashlight stuck in his pocket, he began to climb the ladder on the side. He went up ever so slowly, knowing that the men on top would detect the slightest movement of the trailer. However, when he was halfway up, one of the men, a biker type with a bald head, named Gary, peaked over the side and aimed a gun at him.
“Shit, Wade, why are you sneaking up on us?”
“Keep your voice down, but tell me, have you seen anything?”
“Hell, there ain’t nothing to see but stars.”
The other man came over as Wade reached the top. He was a redhead with a large nose. His name was Davey and he had been named after Wade’s father. Wade had known Davey his whole life.
“Hey Wade, what’s up, couldn’t sleep?”
“Nah, I got a bad feeling. You sure you ain’t seen anything, heard anything?”
“I saw a woodrat run by a few minutes ago, but that’s it,” Davey said.
Wade nodded.
“All right, but I’m gonna take a look around for a minute before I head back to bed.”
“When you get back, give that Luciana a jab for me, will ya?” Gary said, and all three of them laughed.
“Hell, I’ll send her to you when you get off guard duty.”
Gary grinned. “Well, alright then,”
Wade went back down the ladder and made a circuit around the trailers. He and his people had left so many footprints in the surrounding sand that it was a waste to check for others, but he did spend a few minutes shining his flashlight out into the darkness.
The buzz in his head was still there, but he’d begun to think that it was paranoia. That damn Jeffrey was wanted by the cops and that meant that they’d be looking everywhere for him.
He turned the flashlight off and shrugged.
They were in the middle of nowhere, well hidden, and the last he’d heard on the radio, Jeffrey was in Dallas, far north of where he was.
Wade opened his trailer door and went inside, after a quick stop at the fridge for a swig of iced tea, he undressed and got back in bed. The night was chilly, and so he reached over and pulled on the blanket.
“Hey Luciana, don’t be hogging the cover.”
When the blanket slid off the form beside him, a flashlight came on, and he saw a pair of righteously cold eyes staring at him from a face streaked with camouflaged greasepaint. At the same time he registered that, he felt a knife enter a half-inch into his belly.
“Call out and you die.”
The voice was barely audible, and yet, loud and clear all at once, and Wade felt the j
ab of pain and the trickle of blood at his stomach.
“Mitchell ain’t here,”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know, are you his brother?”
“I’m his brother.”
“There’s fifteen men here, all armed,”
“We got in, we’ll get out,”
“We?”
Jace stepped out of the bathroom. He was dressed in sand-colored camouflage gear from head-to-toe with his face similarly painted.
“You kill Luciana?” Wade said.
“Nah,” Jace said. “She’s only knocked out.”
“Good, she’s just a whore, no sense killing her.”
“Mitchell,” he said, and eased the knife in farther.
Wade sucked in air through his teeth at the fresh pain, and the trickle of blood became a steady flow.
“I don’t fucking know where he is. He came back here and I ran him off.”
“You and your people have more hideouts than this. Give us the locations.”
“The only real place we got is in Mexico, but a cartel took that town over and we lost it; that’s why we’re camped out here.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not lying; losing that place was what made Billy want to move us back into Destina, but that plan went all to hell. Now Billy, he had a place way up northwest somewhere, but I never knew where, only him and my father knew where it was, and you killed them both, didn’t you?”
“Mitchell, now, or die,”
“I don’t know where he is you son of a bitch, and I wouldn’t say shit if I did know, you killed my father!”
He looked over at Jace. “Knock him out.”
Jace rushed forward and jabbed a needle into Wade’s arm. In a matter of seconds, Wade was unconscious.
He climbed from the bed and he and Jace exited the trailer, to make their way towards the guards.
***
Gary was thinking about Luciana’s ass when Davey touched him on the shoulder.
“You feel that?”
“What?”
“The trailer, it moved.”
“I didn’t feel anything, but maybe Wade is coming back.”
“I’m gonna take a look.”
Davey went and peeked over the side and saw nothing. He shrugged, walked back, and no sooner sat down when he felt it again, only stronger.
“Hell, don’t tell me you don’t feel that?”
Gary nodded.
“Yeah, I do.”
This time they both looked, and still there was nothing.
“The wind must be picking up, shaking the trailer,” Gary said.
“I don’t feel any wind, do you?”
“No, but maybe it’s a low breeze, anyway, it’s nothing.”
They sat down once more and again the trailer shook slightly. They ignored it, and Gary went back to thinking about Luciana.
When the whistling sound came, both he and Davey jerked their heads towards the ladder.
There were two men there, each holding on to a side of the ladder with one hand, while a silenced pistol was in the other.
Gary knew that the silencers were more for affect than practicality, if they had to shoot, silenced or not, the pistols would be noisy in the quiet of the desert, and two large bodies hitting a metal roof would only add to the noise. Still, since he would be one of those bodies, he kept his hand away from his gun.
“Sound an alarm and die,” the bigger form said, and then the man seemed to rise on top of the trailer as if his legs were on springs.
As the other man climbed up, the first man glided over and took away their weapons.
“You dudes, Feds?” Gary asked.
“Jeffrey Mitchell, where is he?”
“Shit, Mitchell’s long gone, Wade ran him off, him and those two women of his.”
“Where would he go?”
“Hell, I don’t know; the last I heard he was up near Dallas.”
The tall man spoke to the other man.
“Give them each a shot.”
“I used the last of that juice on Cully.”
“Then we do it the hard way,” the big man said, and as he was saying it Gary saw him reach behind, saw the leather sap, felt the impact, and fell into blackness, but luck was with him, and he dreamed of Luciana.
***
They slid down the ladder and walked off into the darkness, as they topped a rise, he took out the radio and called.
“Send them in, Lawson, the guards have been handled.”
“Affirmative,” Lawson answered.
He put the radio away and watched for it. They came seconds later. Twenty men, dressed in black with ATF written across their backs in white lettering. They moved into the trailers and began rousting the last of Gant’s people.
With no further need for stealth, lights came on towards the west, and he and Jace walked back to their command vehicle, a panel van with all-terrain capabilities.
After greeting him with a kiss, Jessica said, “Anything?”
“Cully thinks that Mitchell is headed northwest, but he doesn’t know where.”
“Any casualties?” Lawson said.
“Two possible concussions, and Cully will need a few stitches.”
“What’s next?” Jace said.
“We go northwest and hope to pick up Mitchell’s scent.”
“That sounds like a long shot.” Lawson said.
“Yes, but we’ve got something in our favor,”
“What’s that?”
“Circe Doyle, if she was foolish enough to give away their location once, perhaps she’ll do it again.”
***
His words came true several hours later, as Circe closed the bathroom door on the trailer and took out the cell phone she’d stolen from Wade’s compound.
Jeffrey and Hanna were outside, but Circe still cringed when the phone played musical notes as it came to life.
It took her a minute to remember the actual phone number, since she would normally have it on speed dial, but when it finally came to her, she dialed and heard it ring.
***
Kathy and Doyle were still in bed, a place they had spent most of the past twenty-four hours.
Kathy awoke first, then reached out and grabbed Doyle’s phone.
She nudged him. “Your phone, baby,”
Doyle woke up, gave her a sleepy smile, and took the phone.
“Hello?”
“Daddy, Daddy it’s me, Circe.”
Doyle was awake immediately and sat up on the edge of the bed.
“Honey, oh, Circe honey where are you?”
“We’re in Colorado, but listen, Daddy, I need you to do something for me. I need you to call the police and tell them that Hanna will be in a place called Tobin.”
“Tobin?”
“Jeffrey says it’s in Nevada. We’ll be there by tomorrow.”
“Forget that. Tell me where you are right now so that I can come and get you.”
“No Daddy, I love Jeffrey and I’m staying with him, but Hanna has to go, so call the police and tell them that she’ll be in Tobin tomorrow afternoon picking up supplies at the supermarket. I can’t call them. If I did they might trace the call and find Jeffrey.”
Doyle massaged the bridge of his nose as a vision of Circe dying in a police shootout flashed across his mind.
“Baby, you’ve got to get away from Mitchell. Where are you staying? I’ll come and get you.”
“Daddy, I have to go. Do as I say and call the police on Hanna, please? She really needs to go, Jeffrey is mine.”
“Circe, honey I—”
“Goodbye Daddy,”
“Circe? Circe? Shit!”
Kathy put a hand on his shoulder.
“Where is she?”
“Right now she’s in Colorado somewhere, but she says that they’re headed for a place called Tobin, in Nevada.”
Doyle told her about the rest of the call, including Circe’s plan to get rid of Hanna.
“I’ve been through Tobin as a kid. It’s not far from Reno. So what now, call the police?”
Doyle shook his head.
“No. Mitchell will use her as a human shield or something if the cops corner him. Oh Jesus, Kathy, I’ve got to get my daughter back.”
Kathy saw the pain in his eyes as an idea came to her.
“We’ll go there. We’ll grab Hanna ourselves and then trade her for Circe.”
“What if she’s armed?”
“So, you’ve got a gun, and Hanna won’t be expecting someone like me to come at her.”
Doyle shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
“We can do it.”
Doyle shook his head some more, his mind a jumble of fear and confusion.
“If we’re going to do it, we’d better leave soon,” Kathy said.
“All right, yes, we’ll go there, and once we’re there we’ll figure things out.”
Kathy kissed him.
“It’ll work out, you’ll see.”
Doyle sighed. If it did work out, it would be the first thing in his life that ever had.
***
A knock came at their hotel room door, when he opened it, he saw Lawson’s smiling face.
“You were right, she used that phone again and it’s been traced to an area near Durango, Colorado.”
“When do we leave?”
“There’s a car outside and the helicopter is waiting.”
Jessica moved past him with their travel bags in her hands. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 12
As Lawson said, Circe’s call originated from a cell tower near Durango, Colorado.
The cell tower had an effective range of forty miles, give or take a mile or two depending on the phone’s location, and so left an area of over five thousand square miles to search.
The FBI and local authorities were checking out every hotel and motel in the area, but were coming up empty. They also established roadblocks, but Jeffrey’s luck held out and his motor home, driven by Hanna, was one of the last vehicles to make it through before a blockade could be put in place.
In any event, the old motor home towing the small car behind was hardly what one would consider a getaway vehicle, and it attracted little attention on the road.
***
It had not gone unnoticed who had received the call, and the FBI traced Hank Doyle to the motel where he and Kathy Jessup were staying. He had used his credit card to pay for the room, and so it was a simple matter to track his location.
The TAKEN! Series - Books 13-16 (Taken! Box Set Book 4) Page 9
