Out of the corner of his eye, Alec caught furtive movement near the barn. He brought the binoculars back up and watched a skinny coyote trot through the long, golden grass.
When he got back to the Yukon, he shook his head.
* * *
JULIA HADN’T KNOWN time could move so slowly. She pictured the icy rim of a glacier melting, drip, drip, drip, receding in what might, in geological terms, be worrisome haste, but in human years was scarcely discernible. Matt’s previous escapades were nothing, her worry about them shallow. The worst had been when he’d stolen Alec’s SUV, but at least that time the climax had come quickly.
The doorbell rang at 9:00 a.m. Oh, damn, Julia thought numbly, jarred back to the fact that the world went on, whether she wanted to be part of it or not. Sophie was expecting to go to the horse camp.
“Come on in,” she said, closing the door behind her. Liana hovered right behind her. “Honey, I’m sorry, I should have called your mother. I can’t take you today. And Liana can’t go, either.”
“Oh.” Sophie’s face fell. “How come? Is she sick?”
“Matt’s been kidnapped,” Liana explained in a burst. “We have to stay here in case—” she stole a look at her mother “—in case...I don’t know, we hear something.”
“Do you want to call your mother?” Julia asked. “She might be able to find someone else to drive you.”
“I could do it,” Nell offered. “Unless she wants to stay to keep Liana company?”
“Could I go, too?” Liana asked, sudden hope on her face.
“No!” Seeing the way her daughter shriveled at her sharpness, Julia closed her eyes. “No,” she said more quietly. “I’m sorry, but whoever took Matt might...might...”
She was dimly aware that Nell was steering the two girls toward Liana’s bedroom and talking to them on the way. I’m shaking, she realized. And...oh, God, it’s only been five minutes since the last time I looked at the clock.
* * *
SWEAT DRIPPING FROM his face and plastering his shirt to his torso, Alec squirmed forward on his belly, a metal trough his goal. He’d almost reached it when he heard a whuff and the crunch of hooves on dry grass. Oh, shit. He turned his head and found himself looking at a pair of hooves not two feet away from him. Man, they were big, the edges horny and cracked.
He knew nothing about horses. Would this one step on him? But the enormous brown animal bent its head down and blew out heavily, inches from Alec’s face. He—she?—seemed interested rather than enraged, but what did Alec know? And would someone keeping watch out a window of the house or from the barn wonder what had caught the horse’s attention?
It chomped a mouthful of grass near him and began grinding it. Bits flew, as did slobber. Neither would make him any filthier than he already was. Hell, even if he did get stepped on, a few bruises would only join the scratches he’d already gotten today.
He took a chance and wriggled forward, using his elbows to propel him.
Evidently still intrigued, the horse wandered after him. Close to the metal trough, Alec rose to his knees. The horse nudged him with its big head, almost rocking him to his butt. He gritted his teeth and peered around the trough at the barn, built recently enough to still be the color of newly stained timber. The peak was crowned with a fancy little cupola. The place was plenty solid to hold a captive. A dusty green SUV sat parked by the closed double doors.
Keeping his head down, he dialed Vahalik’s number. When she answered, he murmured, “Run a plate number for me.”
“Go.”
He focused the binoculars with one hand, then read the number off. He was tempted to ask if she knew whether horses were inclined to trample people, but gritted his teeth and kept the worry to himself. “I can’t get any closer,” he said. “I’ll be back as quick as I can.”
Halfway across the field, his phone vibrated. He groaned and pulled it out of his pocket. Clay Renner’s number.
“Yeah?”
“Olvera thinks he might have something.”
Pedro Olvera was one of the two men on horseback.
“What?” Alec asked.
“He was watching a barn on Grass Valley Road. A pickup just pulled in. He knows the driver.”
Alec felt a jolt of adrenaline. “A deputy.”
The sergeant grunted unhappy agreement.
“Could be his place,” Alec suggested in fairness.
“Olvera says no. He also says Hansen knows shit about horses.”
“Okay. Tell him to keep watching.”
Alec resumed crawling, the horse wandering behind. Intensely grateful when he reached the fence—a couple of boards reinforced with a strand of barbed wire—Alec squeezed under it, rolled a few feet until he was among a stand of scrubby trees and rose to his feet. His joints protested. Ignoring them, he broke into a trot.
It could be coincidence that an off-duty Butte County deputy was visiting a friend out here today—but Alec had been a cop too long to believe in coincidences.
* * *
ONCE THE AFTERNOON shade stretched across the backyard, Julia had finally gone to sit outside, leaving the girls in the bedroom and Nell using her laptop in the kitchen. This was as alone as she could possibly get, and she needed that. Weirdly, she found herself fixated on the butte and the angel atop it. The duplex wasn’t ten blocks from the foot of the butte, and Julia could see the angel’s upper body and an arch of one wing.
Julia remembered Sister Regina, too. She’d been her favorite of the kids’ teachers at that school, a sweet-faced young woman who still had the gift of soft-voiced discipline. Sister Regina had used a glance, a touch on the shoulder, a smile, to quiet the kids when they got rowdy. That Matt had used her name seemed a sort of blessing to Julia.
Phone clutched in her hand, she sat in an Adirondack chair they’d brought from California. She’d pulled it off the hot concrete of the patio onto the lawn, which was turning brown despite Alec having moved sprinklers around a couple of evenings a week. She’d kicked off her flip-flops and rotated her ankles to feel the sharp prickle of dried grass blades against the sensitive undersides of her feet.
She used to shake her head over people who freaked at the idea of going anywhere without their phones. Who needed to be accessible to every distant acquaintance at every moment? Now it had become her teddy bear, her blankie, her string of rosary beads, never out of her hand.
Ring, she willed it, feeling the cool, smooth surface beneath her fingers.
Alec had called every couple hours today to let her know how the search was going.
“In other words, you haven’t found anything,” she had said once, more sharply than she had meant.
“We’re narrowing the possibilities,” he’d corrected her, his voice gentle.
Now she heard the sliding door and her head turned. It was Nell, carrying a glass. “Lemonade,” she said.
Julia struggled to summon a smile as she took it. “Thanks.”
Her new friend nodded, seeming to understand her desire to be alone, and went back inside, closing the door behind her.
Despite the shade, it was baking-hot in the yard. She’d have to go back in soon, Julia realized. She tried to make herself think about what trees and shrubs they ought to plant this fall to begin transforming the characterless rectangle, to believe Matt would be here to sulk because she was making him help dig holes, but her mind balked.
The phone rang. Her heart skipped a few beats as she stared down at the screen.
“Alec?” she answered breathlessly.
“We’re pretty sure we’ve found where he’s being held, Julia.” His voice held a vibrant note. Hope. “We’ll move on it after dark.”
A wave of dizziness struck, and she bent forward to put her head between her knees.
“Julia?” he said
urgently.
“I’m here.” The dizziness was relief and fear in equal measure. “I wish—” she started, before thinking better of it.
“What do you wish?”
She told him. “I wish I was there, with you, seeing for myself.”
“I know, sweetheart.” The mere sound of his voice strengthened her. “I know.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ALEC POCKETED HIS PHONE, reeling at some of the things Julia had said. He didn’t even know why; she’d said them all before. Apparently he hadn’t believed her. He sure hadn’t expected her to worry about him so much, not consumed as she was by fear for Matt.
She wanted to be sure he would wear a vest and had asked anxiously whether he intended to go in first. He’d evaded answering. No, he probably shouldn’t; two members of the search team, one county and one city, were SWAT. But Matt was his nephew, his responsibility, and hanging back wasn’t in his nature.
It was the words I love you that really got to him.
“You don’t blame me?” he’d asked, his throat feeling thick and his tongue unwieldy.
“No. How can I?” she’d said. “How could you not arrest Roberto Perez? How can you not follow through and make sure he doesn’t get a chance to damage more lives?”
“Matt wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for my job.”
“Weren’t you listening to what I told him the other day? If I’d loved Josh enough, if everything had been right between us, I wouldn’t have resented his job. I can’t resent yours, Alec.” She was quiet for a minute, then said words he’d remember for the rest of his life. “No matter what.”
She loved him. No matter what. She was telling him that even if Matt didn’t survive...
A guttural sound tore from his throat. No, damn it! He couldn’t think that way.
He laid his head back in Vahalik’s SUV, grateful for the momentary privacy.
As the afternoon had waned, a couple of watchers remained stationed on the rise to the south of the property owned, as it turned out, by a prominent area defense attorney. Ed Gulden, mid-forties, known to be sharp and ruthless. Divorced, no kids. He hadn’t made an appearance as yet today; he might or might not know what the place was being used for. A background check had made clear that he was the go-to guy for drug traffickers arrested within the tricounty area, though, and had a hell of a success rate in getting them off, or at least reducing the charges. What he did for a living wasn’t a coincidence, any more than the appearance of that deputy sheriff had been. Alec had no doubt this guy was on retainer and as dirty as his clients, but unless he showed his face, proving that would be a matter for another day.
If Olvera hadn’t gotten lucky and spotted his fellow deputy arriving, they might have passed on this barn. The men inside were being smart. There hadn’t been a lot of traffic. Pedro Olvera and the second mounted deputy, a guy named Carson Tucker, had continued watching, though, and had seen another two men arrive, glance around with deceptive casualness and then disappear inside the barn. A few minutes later, two others left. The dismaying part was that one of the new arrivals was a detective with the sheriff’s department, working property crimes.
Alec had now met Sergeant Clay Renner, who was steaming.
“Those sons of bitches,” he kept saying. “I worked with Bart Witten.” Alec understood why that especially pissed him off. To do this job, you had to be able to trust your fellow officers in general and a partner in particular.
Yeah, Colin was going to have a job of cleaning house once he won the election. Having now done his share of it with ABPD, Alec didn’t envy him.
They’d have liked to get a listening device close enough to the barn to give them a more accurate idea of how many men were in there, but it wasn’t possible. The pastures and corrals were extensive. A few trees sprinkled the pastures, but none were close to the barn, which had small-paned windows looking three directions out of four, and the fourth faced the detached three-car garage. Olvera and Tucker had spotted movement through the one window they could see.
Best guess was, a minimum of four people were in there besides Matt. More could be a problem. But all vehicles were tucked out of sight in the garage, which limited the transportation. And why waste manpower guarding a scrawny kid?
The upside was they had a warrant. The sole witness had finally been allowed to sit down with photos of every employee of the sheriff’s department and had picked out a deputy. Along with what they’d seen here, it had been enough for the judge.
Alec stayed where he was for a while, running through their operational plan, looking for flaws. He kept finding them, too many of them. He told himself no plan was ever perfect, but knew this one was a disaster waiting to happen.
Not hard to list the problems. Number one: nonexistent cover. Anyone approaching would be vulnerable. Two: obvious motion-activated lights mounted front and back. Three: the damn barn was solid, which meant entry had to be through existing doors and windows. Double doors on the pasture side were bound to be locked, possibly barred. Ditto the double doors on the front, where men had come and gone. Tucker had had the best angle to see the arrival. He thought there’d been a prearranged knock, but couldn’t quite make it out, which eliminated the possibility of fooling anyone inside.
The part that worried Alec the most: they were planning multiple entry points. That raised the risk of losing officers to friendly fire.
They all knew the risks. They could think this through, hold off until tomorrow or even longer. But in the end, he, Colin, Jane and Clay Renner had all agreed to go. Putting off the assault held another risk that trumped the others—that someone on the team would open his mouth to a buddy he trusted. They’d spotted two deputies so far, but that didn’t mean they were the only two cops involved. Colin and Alec had never been sure they’d identified every crooked cop in their own department. Best way to prevent anyone on this operation from talking to friends was to keep them here, where they couldn’t have a few beers with their buddies and develop a big mouth, and were given little opportunity to make private phone calls. It was far from perfect, but it was the best option they had.
He didn’t know how he would have endured waiting another twenty-four hours or more, either, or what that would do to Julia.
They had to get close enough under cover of darkness to look in windows and try to figure out where Matt was being held and whether anyone was actually with him. The plan was to shatter windows and toss in flashbang grenades even as the largest group was breaking through one set of doors with a battering ram. Jane and a young officer with ABPD were both small enough to follow the flashbangs through the windows if the going looked good. Renner hadn’t said much, but he’d looked especially unhappy about Vahalik’s inclusion in the assault team.
A rap on the passenger window beside him made Alec start. While he brooded, dusk had deepened the sky. He rolled down the window to find McAllister standing there, a bundle in his arms. “Change of clothes,” he said, passing them through. He wore black himself now, as well as a vest.
“Thanks,” Alec said quietly. “You see Julia?”
“Yeah. She’s strong.”
Good thing one of them was. He hadn’t been able to face her himself, instead asking Colin to stop by and pick up dark clothing for him to change into. One of Jane’s detectives had already brought back enough Kevlar vests to go around when he picked up the other equipment they needed.
Alec glanced at his watch. “Two hours, ten minutes.”
“We’ll be ready.” Colin nodded and faded away into the murky, purple-gray evening.
Alec had an eerie vision, just a flash, of a group of kids playing in the neighborhood on a hot summer evening. His turn to be it. Hearing running footsteps, whispers, a far-off giggle. An engine as some mom or dad came home from work, threading the parked cars that lined each curb. In his m
emory, Josh was out there somewhere, hiding.
His own voice. Ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine. Ready or not, here I come!
He groaned, scraped a hand over his face and unzipped his chinos to begin changing.
* * *
TWO HOURS LATER, he stood with his back to the rough barn siding to the right of the doors, 9 mm SIG gripped to go. He and Colin McAllister, who was flattened on the other side of the doors, had been able to slide into position from each side without setting off the motion-detector lights.
Only Clay Renner hung back. He had the radio and was listening to reports from Vahalik and Dunlap, a young ABPD officer assigned to go in the other window. The hope was that one or the other would see enough to give them greater certainty. The final call was Renner’s.
So far the quiet was absolute. Alec couldn’t even hear Renner’s murmur. Not far away, the battering-ram team stood by, waiting for the sound of shattering glass.
When it came, there were shouts inside the barn. The pair of lights above the doors sprang on as two of the biggest guys, Carson Tucker and an ABPD officer named Abe Cherney, drove the battering ram at the seam between the doors. The wood groaned and splintered. They backed off and made another attack. Flashbangs were going off inside. The pop, pop, pop of gunfire, too. The broken doors fell open and Alec and McAllister went in.
The chaos was near complete, although from long experience Alec was able to see it in snapshots. Horses were screaming and bucking in stalls to Alec’s right. Hooves thudded against partitions. The shocking light of the flashbangs burned his retinas. Goddamn, there were too many people in here. They’d estimated low.
All a Man Is Page 26
