…
Mick woke to a face full of snow. The impact of his body in a snowdrift felt like wiping out on a bike. The sting of snow on his bare face was nothing compared to the jolt in his bones. Someone had dumped him into a drift, the cold permeating his consciousness. Daylight had faded, so he had no clue how long he’d been unconscious. Any amount of time was too long.
“Wake up,” Nate sobbed. His snotty face dug into Mick’s neck as he wrapped his arms around Mick’s shoulder.
Mick bit back a groan and kept dead still. The men who held them captive would have no trouble shooting Mick in the back of the head. The only thing keeping him alive was their belief he was bleeding out or dead from Vern’s gun. They wanted Mick as a patsy, had told Deputy Vern as much when they saved the traitor. Thirty seconds later and Mick would have ended Vern and gotten Nate out of the house.
“Leave him,” Wayne said. The man’s guttural voice was careless. Nate screamed as they pulled him away. The boy’s cries got louder and more desperate before car doors slammed and his sobs faded behind glass.
Mick had no clue where he was and very little time to get his shit together before the elements killed him. Every beat of his heart sent another gush of blood pumping from his wound. He waited for the sound of the car pulling away before he moved. The snowpack he’d landed in slowed the blood flow, but he couldn’t stay still much longer without painting a big target on his chest. Sooner or later they would figure out he wasn’t going to die from Vern’s gunshot. Nate’s scarf was on the ground next to him. Mick grabbed the wad of fabric and knotted the scarf tight around the wound on his leg.
The pressure on the wound sent a new wave of pain rolling through his body. Fuckers. It took more than a gunshot to keep him down. He rolled over, panting from the simple movement. Full dark greeted him. No way they were in town. Too dark. He turned to the side and saw the lights of the airfield in the distance.
Dread pooled like the blood coating the snow. They were going to fly Nate out tonight. Once they did, there’d be no finding the kid. And they still didn’t have a stitch of evidence against the mobster. Where was Dez? Had she convinced the sheriff to let her go or had the situation deteriorated after Vern survived and painted Mick as the rogue asshole? Mick was torn between the need to get Nate and the desperate need to make sure his woman was safe. The elements made the decision for him. He needed to move or die, and he knew which direction to find Nate. Mick pushed onto his hands and one good knee, gritting his teeth against the pain. He gained his feet through sheer will power but wasn’t prepared for the quick drop in his blood pressure. The ground rolled and buckled under his feet as his vision blurred.
…
Dez wore latex gloves and booties over her shoes to protect the crime scene. None of the details added up. Doug had been found bleeding by the patrol car but had a broken arm, a gunshot wound, and other minor injuries. Someone had gotten up close and personal with the deputy. He’d lost consciousness and no one could say when he’d be able to talk. Vern, on the other hand, wouldn’t shut up. They’d finally taken his sniveling ass to the hospital after he’d told anyone who would listen that Mick had taken the kid. The evidence in Aunt Peg’s house was hard to interpret. A body-size divot in a drift near the house showed evidence of an altercation by the door. Blood dripped through the white snow, into the house and down the stairs. Larger pools of blood cooled on the cement floor and bloody footsteps led out of the basement door.
The sheriff stood on her right. They stayed out of the way of the team pulling evidence. Peg had hidden in a utility closet behind the water heater. If anyone had looked in the closet, they’d have seen her in a heartbeat. She’d hidden Nate in the dryer, thinking it was the safer place. Now, regret and fear fermented. She hadn’t heard anything above the hum of the mechanicals. Shaken, she was upstairs wrapped in a quilt while a deputy took her statement. Dez’s stomach ached. She’d promised Nate she would protect him, and she’d failed. If she trusted the wrong person, she’d never forgive herself.
“This crime scene makes zero sense,” Jerry said.
Fear squeezed the breath form her lungs. The evidence made sense if you figured the deputies guarding the house had incapacitated Mick. Mick would come out fighting once Peg and Nate were hidden. The big guy came out on top since the deputies were down. So where was he? If Mick had taken out the bad guys, how come he hadn’t come in? Fear whispered that Mick wasn’t above using an innocent. He’d suggested it more times than she wanted to remember, and her heart broke to think she could love someone and not trust his motivations. The one thing she was certain of was that Mick hadn’t acted until they were attacked. Peg corroborated the fact that Mick went upstairs to answer the door after making sure they were hidden.
“I’ll tell you what I think.” Dez led the sheriff out the back door and into the frigid night air. “Stiles brought help and they were here, either in the house or waiting nearby. Convinced I would take the fall, they wanted to set up Mick.” Was she spinning the scenario to make Mick look better than he was? The differences he talked about a few days ago were painting an alarming picture today. Still, she couldn’t tell the sheriff her doubts. Not until she talked to Mick. “The only way my theory works is if one or both of the deputies guarding the house are dirty.”
Jerry cursed and walked a tight circle in the snow. “They’re both bloody and bruised.”
If they were dirty, they deserved what they got. She couldn’t stomach the thought of someone hurting Nate, and Sully would hurt him. Maybe not physically, but the boy was too good to fall into a life of organized crime. Sully would wreck his soul.
“We’ll find the inside guy,” Jerry said. “Right now, we need to find your witness.”
Nate had lost so much in just a few days, and now he was missing. The thought made her panicky. Was the kid with Sully, or was Mick using him to get to Sully? There were too many unknowns.
Mick had been straddling a fine line in his pursuit of revenge, and he might have crossed to the other side. If so, he was a dead man. Tears burned the back of her eyes at the thought of it, but living life as the daughter of a dirty cop had taught her a few things. There were some lines you couldn’t cross. The ache burrowed deep. Sleeping with Mick had been a mistake. All hell had broken loose on this case. She’d nearly been framed by Stiles, Stiles was in lock-up, and her partner was trapped on the other side of a snowstorm. Nate was missing, her aunt’s house was a bloody crime scene, and Mick was knee deep in it. This was why she had rules. Instead of keeping her eye on the job, she’d chased her hormones. The last time she’d done that, she’d ended up pregnant, but apparently she hadn’t learned her lesson.
This time, she wouldn’t be able to reinvent herself. Mick was too much a part of who she was and what she did. They were intertwined in ways she’d never been with Derek.
There was no getting over a man like Mick, but she couldn’t love a man who used Nate like a pawn. It had taken only a few days to fall in love with Mick. She could damn well figure out how to fall out of love. Mick had been warned. A child was more important than revenge. Period.
The whole situation was seriously fucked up. And underneath the anger and regret, she was terrified that it was Mick’s blood on the floor. How messed up was that? She wasn’t even being a good detective right now.
“Stiles came in through the airport. Only way in. That’s the way they’re taking Nate out, and they have a head start.”
A hard look crossed the sheriff’s features. “Let’s roll.”
Dez followed him to his SUV. “We’re going to need every man you have.” They didn’t know how many men they’d be facing, if any. Hell, maybe this was a wild goose chase, but it was the only plan they had.
Jerry gave the orders for a single man to stay back and guard Peg and protect the scene of the crime. The rest followed them out of the once quiet neighborhood under strict orders for radio silence. Once out of the city limits, darkness was absolute. The chains on the SUV t
ires ground into the snow keeping them on the road. At a crossroads five miles out of town, the chains jangled on bare asphalt. “Someone’s plowed a path to the airport. That normal?”
“Nope.” The sheriff kept his eyes on the road. He looked alert. The tension on his shoulders promised a hard response to whoever was screwing with his town. The sound of the chains chewing up road jolted her nerves. She pulled her Glock from the holster. Jerry had given it back once they’d put Stiles in a holding cell.
“Are you sure you’re going to need that?” he asked.
Wind attacked the vehicle, pushing them back, fighting their progress down the dark road. As they crested the ridge, the lights of the airfield pointed the way. “Yes,” Dez finally answered.
“I didn’t want to believe it,” Jerry said. The rest of his thoughts remained his own as they approached. He turned off his headlights so they wouldn’t announce their presence to whatever waited at the airfield. The cars behind him followed suit. The air shimmered with the potential for violence. The power of it rode the wind and chilled her soul. Nate was down there. Scared. Defenseless. Alone. She closed her eyes against the guilt assuaging her. The failure to protect Nate was on her. She’d slept with the wrong man. Again. And she was moping about it like a teenage girl. Again.
“Get your head on straight,” Jerry said. “Stay focused or you’re no good to us.”
The sheriff was right. She put Mick in the same compartment she’d put Kimberly and for the same reason. If she wanted to get through the next hour, she had to get in the zone and stay there.
Should they go in hot? Run the fence and attack? Most times, Dez preferred the direct approach, but going in hot could get Nate killed. There were at least four hangars, and they didn’t know which one held the kid.
“We need to circle the wagons,” Jerry said. “Come up with a plan.”
She nodded. They had to assume the radios were monitored, and if they continued down the road, they’d be spotted for sure.
Instead of slowing, Jerry downshifted and steered the vehicle off the road. Here the chains did their job, chewing up snow and dirt as they headed to a flanking position. Dez anticipated they’d keep going until all the vehicles had cleared off the highway, so the sudden braking slammed her against the seatbelt. She turned to give the sheriff a dark look. He pointed to the side. She couldn’t see a damn thing in the dark. He jumped from the vehicle with a flashlight. She followed him out. Several yards back they crossed a trail headed toward the airfield. Jerry shone his light up and down the trampled snow. Big assed shoes had marched through the snow, which they likely wouldn’t have seen if it weren’t for the trail of blood.
Dez dropped to her knees in the big, bloody divot where Mick had fallen. She had no doubt it was his big shoes and blood that left the trail. There were no little shoeprints next to his, so Nate wasn’t with him. The amount of blood they’d tracked through the snow worried her. Even a man as powerful as Mick couldn’t survive that much blood loss. Not for long.
All her internal ranting and moaning had been so very wrong. She wanted to cry but the cold froze her tear ducts. For the first time since she’d found herself pregnant at sixteen, Dez was truly terrified. She rocked back and forth trying to hold it together the way she had running through suburbs after Nate’s family was killed, but she couldn’t pull herself together when there was a very real possibility that Mick was dead or dying. While she was casting Mick as the villain, he was bleeding out on this cold, lonely stretch of mountain.
Chapter Twenty
The shivers had stopped a half hour earlier. Mick rammed his numb fingers into his pockets, but the cold beat ruthlessly against him. A flush warmed his ears, or so it seemed. He was starting to think Wayne knew exactly what he was doing when he dumped Mick in the snow. If they ever found his body, it would be a miracle.
The heavy flow of blood from his wound had stopped, but Mick didn’t have a clue if that was a good thing. He stumbled in the dark, tried to right himself, overcorrected, and ended up crashing to the ground. Snowpack softened the blow. Marginally. Fuck, he wanted to stay down for the count. At least the wind stopped beating at him on the ground. He’d never been so freaking cold that he couldn’t feel his feet. Or his knees, hips, and thighs. Even the pain stopped throbbing from the wound.
Mick closed his eyes for a minute. A flush spread from his ears to his cheeks making him warmer. The picture of Dez, now more real than fantasy, tempted him to sleep. To dream.
Nope. His body lied. Stay down and die. That was the truth. Freezing was supposed to be a peaceful death.
Fuck. That.
The growl came from somewhere deep, a primal scream against the frigid forces battling him into the ground. Muscles quaking, Mick rose from the snow like a floundering beast. His stiff legs moved like logs, but they moved, beating against the heavy snow, lifting his feet through yet another drift to keep moving. He pictured Dez waiting for him at the end of the day, and that image kept him moving.
One step. Another. Revenge paled. The need to protect Nate diminished. His existence focused on staying upright. For Dez. Time blurred like his vision. The darkness gave way to a flurry of white. The illusion of light kept his feet moving. With light came warmth. He forgot where he was going until his body slammed into an invisible barrier. He crashed back on his ass, his wet frozen ass. The splitting pressure felt like it would shatter his skin.
He crawled closer to the impediment. Silver diamonds, sharp, metal. A fence. A chain-link fence. Icy metal bit into his hands as Mick pulled to his feet and kept climbing with all the grace of a drunken bear. At the top of the fence, he rolled his body over the frigid metal bar. Time stopped the moment the balance shifted to the other side. A sudden lightness filled his chest, and then he flipped into a free fall. His lungs gave out as gravity dropped him into another drift. The oomph at the bottom woke him.
The airfield stretched out in front of him. If they had security on the fencing, he was in a pile of frozen shit deeper than the drift he landed in, because no way could his numb body move fast enough to evade. He was lucky to be moving at all. The landing lights on the far side of the building illuminated and reflected off the snow like Christmas, so bright Mick had to squint to bring the metal building into focus. He followed the outline of the building to a door. Clumsy hands clawed at the knob, which twisted. The door gave way with a creak loud enough to alert the authorities, and Mick was beyond caring what waited on the other side. He stumbled his way over the threshold. The heated air stung like a limb that had fallen asleep and was waking. Pins and needles? No, this pain felt like spikes and spears stabbing his extremities. Swaying, he collapsed.
…
A line of sheriff’s vehicles parked outside the rim of lights around the airfield. Staying in shadows and out of sight from the windows, Dez followed the sheriff to the airfield office. He’d let her come the rest of the way after making her promise that she’d stick to the plan and focus on the mission. She agreed, which was a lie. Her mission was to save both Nate and Mick. The image of the two of them was the focal point she used to pick herself out of the snow and back on the path to the airfield.
The wind and cold pelted her at the same miserable pace as the fears pummeling her insides. The bloody trail leading to the airfield could be anyone, but not many men had size thirteen feet. She closed her eyes but couldn’t stay the images flickering through her imagination like a horror show. The bloody trail added up to serious blood loss, and as strong as Mick was, even mountains toppled. Had he made it inside? Was he safe?
Fear ripped her heart to confetti. She loved him, every shade of gray in which he lived, and the thought of losing him cut her open.
They entered the airfield office to find the open space dark except for a safety light against the back exit. There was no sign of life or death in the empty building. Using hand signals, they shoved through the office on a mission. A hollow howl whistled through the low metal building, an echo of the storm outside. At
the back exit, they found a trail of bloody, melting snow. A shiver ran up her arms, encasing them in goose bumps.
Mick.
Whoever caused Mick to bleed was in for a serious kick in the ass. Using the same formation, they ducked between buildings and entered Hangar One. Two planes, no humans, no dead bodies, but a trail of bloody snow. Relief and worry combined. The blood trail without a body was proof of life. Mick was here, but he was injured. Need beat deep within her soul to find him, him and Nate both. Alive. Any other outcome would wreck her.
Of all the scenarios swirling in her brain, one of the worst was not finding Nate at the airfield. If they had chosen wrong, the boy wouldn’t get a second chance. After all the effort expended, Sully wouldn’t kill his own flesh and blood, but the violent, ruthless man would turn Nate into an abomination.
The promise she hadn’t given Nate’s mother weighed on Dez’s shoulders. The responsibility fell on her whether she had agreed or not. To protect was more than a motto, more than a job. To protect was the vow she’d given Nate, and to herself when she’d first become a cop. Stiles was wrong. She hadn’t joined to absolve her father. When she was a kid, no one had stepped up to protect her. She’d joined the force to protect those who could not protect themselves. Failure was not an option.
The wind between Hangar One and Hangar Two had died down, or she’d gotten used to the slap of Mother Nature’s cold fury. The door didn’t make a sound when they opened into the hangar, but the shriek of blowing wind announced their presence. So much for stealth. They ducked quickly into the building, one man slipping on snowmelt and crashing to the ground, right next to a body.
The slam of her heart nearly choked her. The body was shorter than Mick, and narrower, but for a moment… For a moment, fear won. Mick was not invincible. The body could have been his.
The deputy who tripped turned the body face up. The spider web tattoo and dark stringy hair were familiar. Wayne. There were no obvious signs of injury, but he was lying in a pool of melted snow. She glanced around. They were all tracking in snow, turning the slick cement floors hazardous.
Unstoppable (The Untouchable Series) Page 19
