The Hunters Series Box Set

by Glenn Trust

  “Here,” the manager said reaching out and pressing a button on the equipment on the bench. Immediately the device was illuminated and an LED display indicated a number. “Listen,” the young manager directed.

  Clay stood quietly listening to nothing for a few seconds and was about to speak when a voice came from the device. “One seven Alpha, ten - eight.” A different voice responded, “Ten - four, one seven Alpha, ten - eight.”

  The perplexed look on Clay’s face drew a boyish laugh from the manager who explained, “It’s a radio from a local Augusta police vehicle. I work on them.”

  “You work on them?”

  “That’s right. Have a contract with the county. They bring me their problem radios, and I fix them. Good chunk of our business here. Reason I come in at eight in the morning.”

  “Sooo…” Clay said, absorbing the information and trying to sort it out.

  “So, I was working last night late,” the manager said, adding, “Real late. I heard the trooper stop you, and then later heard them take you to the Statesboro post. And then the information you gave them about the old Chevy, the man, and the girl he has with him.” He paused and then asked, “She’s the girl you dropped at the truck stop, right?”

  “Yeah, she is,” Clay said slowly. “You sure picked up a lot on that radio.” He was beginning to feel somehow that his privacy had been invaded.

  “Oh, that’s not all. They briefed the GBI and some deputy from Pickham County over the radio, so I pretty much heard the whole story. That’s how I knew about the voice mail and the truck stop.” He paused to let this all sink in.

  There was a delay before Clay extended his hand to the manager. “Clay Purcell. From Pickham County.”

  “Don Potter,” the manager said, taking Clay’s hand. “So what’s your plan?”

  “Well, it’s kind of sketchy. Actually, I don’t really know, except that I thought I would follow the deputy from Pickham.”

  “That would be Pickham County 301. That’s how they identified him on the radio last night. What are you going to do after you follow him?”

  “That’s the sketchy part. I don’t really know. Just want to be around if…when, they find the girl. When they find Lyn.”

  Don Potter nodded in solemn understanding and said, “All right. Fair enough. Let’s get you fixed up.”

  Half an hour later, Clay pulled out from the shopping center parking lot. The portable radio leant to him by Don Potter, the electronics store manager and police radio repairman, sat on the seat beside him. He had been hesitant to take it, but Potter had assured him that it was a loaner. He used it to swap out with the police department when they brought him one for repair. It would not be missed.

  He made him make just one promise. He could listen, but no talking on the radio. It was for law enforcement, and Potter assured him they would both be in a world of shit if he got caught broadcasting on it.

  What had been a hazy plan was materializing, thanks mostly to Potter and the loan of the radio. Proceeding north out of Augusta, he followed the route he had last seen the deputy and GBI agent taking.

  Listening intently for any transmission to or from Pickham County 301 that might give him a location to head to, he drove steadily northwest along the Savannah River crossing back and forth from Georgia to South Carolina as the highway led him.

  Somewhere ahead of him, the deputy’s pickup was doing the same. And somewhere ahead of them? The question in his mind sent a chill down his spine.

  74. Away In the Pines

  He had chosen well. No lights in the parking lot, only what little light escaped the frilly curtains of the cabin windows. These would be empty until the weekenders came up from Atlanta to take photos of the leaves beginning to turn colors on the centuries old hardwoods that covered the mountains. Even if they had been occupied, the cabins were not connected, making any noise transference unlikely, not that Lylee would have allowed that to happen.

  In the gray morning mist drifting up from the creek, he cut the bands holding her to the seat frame and pulled Lyn roughly from the car. The hours of driving without the ability to stretch or move had left her weak and shaky. She nearly toppled over as she tried to stand, but the powerful grip on her upper arm steadied her while it caused her to wince with pain.

  With a practiced hand, Lylee kept the point of the knife blade in her back as he walked Lyn to the cabin door. There was no one there to see, but had anyone been watching the couple, walking so closely and intimately, they might have been taken for newlyweds.

  Entering the room, Lylee put the chain on the door and without saying a word pushed Lyn into the bathroom.

  “Stay here and stay quiet,” he said with a small smile, putting his index finger to his lips.

  Then he closed the bathroom door. He had work to do, preparations to make.

  In the main room, the curtains over the window that looked out over the rushing creek waved in the breeze from the air conditioner. The room was frigid. Lylee had turned the air conditioner up to high, even though the early autumn mountain air was cool. The loud hum from the fan covered any other sound in the room.

  Although clean, the cabin smelled slightly musty from years of guests. The air was scented with overtones of wood smoke that had drifted for years from the fireplace in one corner and permeated the furnishings. Such details were lost on Lylee who was oblivious to everything except his preparations.

  Leaning with her back against the wall of the bathroom, Lyn looked around and saw that the only window was a six-inch wide glass slit running horizontally over the tub near the ceiling. Slowly, she sank down the wall until she was seated on the floor, her head resting forward on her raised knees and her hands over her ears. She tried not to hear the sounds coming faintly through the door.

  A cricket hummed and chirped from a corner behind the small trash can. She listened to the sound lilting and rising and then quiet for a few seconds.

  When it stopped, she would count the seconds until the cricket took up its song again. She forced herself to focus on the cricket’s chirps until she drifted away…away from this place to a place where time had no meaning anymore. She just was.

  There was no connection to anything in the room…no connection to the man in the next room. She was in an empty place, alone with the hum of the cricket.

  She stayed in that empty, distant place until, after a time, she became aware that she was no longer in the bathroom. Raising her head, she saw that she was seated on a chair in the main room of the cabin. The curtains over the window fluttered in the breeze.

  It was cold. She wanted to move to fold her arms together to warm up and realized that she was bound again, this time to a steel tubular chair with a hard plastic seat.

  Metal rivets and brackets holding the chair together cut into the bare flesh of her thighs and back. She became aware that she was nude. An uncontrollable shiver overtook her thin frame, partly from the cold and partly from the fear of what would happen next.

  She stared hypnotically at the swaying curtains in the window. Her eyes, fixed on the them moving in the breeze from the air conditioner, saw nothing else. She had no idea how long she had been sitting on the cold, hard chair. Tie wraps, like the ones that had bound her in the car, now held her wrists securely to the steel tubular frame. A piece of duct tape covered her mouth.

  Someone was with her, but she stared past the form standing in front of her to the fluttering curtains. She let them take her mind to a different place. The curtains became tall pine trees swaying in a Canadian breeze. There were mountains in the distance. Not like the Georgia mountains, these were tall and snow covered.

  She shivered in the cool air blowing from the mountains. It was cold but refreshing. It was as she had dreamt—cool, crisp and clean.

  She had finally made her escape. It was a quick trip, faster than the jets she had seen flying high overhead on clear days in south Georgia.

  One moment she was in the small cabin room staring at the swaying
curtains, hearing the loud hum of the air conditioner fan…the next, she was in the midst of the swaying pines and cool, Canadian breezes.

  Tatters of memories, far past and recent, flashed by in a confusing blur. The misery of her life at home in Judges Creek…the pain and abuse inflicted by her father…the poverty and hopelessness…the emptiness at the loss of her brother.

  There were more recent ones too. The betrayal by Henry at the truck stop…the man in the room with her now. The memories chased her mind to the faraway place.

  Somewhere deep inside she knew she was safe there, in the swaying pines. It was dangerous and frightening in the cabin. She did not want to be there, could not be there. In the pines, surrounded by the cool breezes, there was no pain, no betrayal, and no fear. It was her running away dream. It had come true.

  The faces of the brothers, the ones who had dropped her at the truck stop, flashed by in the whirlwind of scattered thoughts. The face of the young one came into focus for a moment.

  Clay. That was his name. He looked concerned. She thought from the midst of the pines that it was a good face. She wondered why he had not come to get her, why he was not with her in the pines. But then she pushed the thought of the young man away, because thinking of him threatened to bring her back to the cabin room, a terrible place.

  No, she would stay away in the cool pines. No one would find her, not the young man, or her father, or the other man. She was safe in the pines.

  A hand reached out to her, and one of the horns of the man’s ring circled the nipple of Lyn’s right breast, scraping it lightly. When there was no response, Lylee dragged the back of his hand and the sharp horn of the ring across the breast leaving a red, bleeding scratch.

  Lyn’s head moved from side to side, as if trying to escape from something. Lylee pushed the sharp ring hard into her breast, and her head came up. Her eyes opened and focused on him for just a second, and then she tried to flee to that faraway place, but Lylee would have none of it now. He grabbed her by the hair at the back of her head and pulled her head back so that she was looking into his eyes.

  “Time to wake up, hon,” he said gently.

  The softness of his voice and the artificial tenderness were more frightening than if he had screamed at her. The incongruity of his tone now, with the harsh grasping pull on her hair and the sting on her breast from the ring, was confusing. Bringing her eyes up to meet his, they widened with fear. And this was, of course, what the man had intended.

  The man’s glistening, nude body stood in front of the girl. Despite the chill in the room, he was covered from head to foot in a sheen of sweat and excitement. The dim light from the bathroom behind the girl cast a yellowish glow across the room.

  In his right hand, Lylee held a large hunting knife. The blade rested on the top of the girl’s shoulder. Without putting any pressure on the knife, he slowly dragged the heavy knife across the shoulder and the flesh separated into a small cut, dripping blood. The girl’s eyes widened and focused on him through the stinging pain.

  Good, he thought. Good.

  The man moved his left hand down to his groin and held himself. In a brief swirling moment of lucidity, Lyn realized that her struggle for life now depended on her ability to maintain her distance from what was happening in the room, and from what was happening to her.

  Giving in to the terror and pain would give him what he wanted and take her to a place she would not survive. Desperately, her wide, frightened eyes focused on the fluttering curtains. She searched frantically in her mind for the pines swaying in the cool breeze. They were lost. She was lost.

  Her eyes clamped shut so that she would not see what was happening in the room. Somewhere a cricket chirped distantly. She focused on it, following the chirping hum until she dared peek out through half closed lids.

  Her eyes opened wider, and she was there again in the cool pines where the breezes blew. She was safe in the pines, and she would stay there as long as she could.

  75. The Plan Worked

  “Pickham 301, out at state patrol post, Toccoa.”

  Clay’s head jerked violently at the words from the portable radio beside him on the seat.

  “Ten - four, Pickham 301, out at Toccoa.”

  Amazed that his plan had worked, at least a little bit, Clay pulled over to the shoulder of the two lane highway to scan the map he had been driving with in his lap. Since leaving Augusta, he had meandered his way through the northeast Georgia countryside to the area of I-85 and the South Carolina line. Finding the highway he was on, he placed a large finger on the dot that said Toccoa on the map. Maybe an hour he thought, maybe less.

  Then what? Good question. Somewhere in his brain, Clay knew that this whole excursion was now more obsession than anything else. He had to know that the girl was safe. Had it not been for the traffic stop by the state patrol last night and the subsequent information he was able to gain from his time at the patrol post, he probably would have turned back by now. He would be listening silently to Cy’s justifiable anger at his desertion from their job and business.

  But knowing that the girl, that Lyn, was in a car with a killer had changed all that. He would go on. He had stopped wondering why. The question no longer troubled Clay. He was committed to seeing this through to the end. That was that. Figuring it all out could wait until later. For now, he would follow the trail and see where it took him.

  Pulling back onto the road, he steered the truck to the northwest. Somewhere up there ahead was an old Chevy with a young girl in it and a man who had left two bodies behind in Pickham County and was capable of who knew what. The thought caused Clay’s foot to press slightly harder on the truck’s accelerator.

  76. Lunch Break

  Rye County Deputy, Grover Parsons, had been on the sheriff’s department for just a little over two years. It had been his dream as a young boy to go into law enforcement. The local department was just his starting point. He had bigger plans.

  He was building his skills and gaining experience so that his application to the State Patrol would be well received. In the meantime, he enjoyed patrolling the woods and farmlands of north Georgia.

  He was young and single, and like most of the young men in the area, he had grown up hunting in the mountains and fishing the cold streams. These had remained his primary off-duty activities and had developed in him a self-confidence and independence that served him well as a deputy.

  His dad liked to brag about the time his boy, Grover, had been fishing a creek alone up on Taylor Mountain when a black bear had come out of the woods not fifteen feet from where Grover stood knee-deep in the cold water. Telling the story, his dad made it sound like his boy, Grover, was a modern day Davy Crockett, wrestling the bear and subduing him with a pocketknife.

  The truth was that the bear and the young man had stared at each other for several seconds, both equally startled by the other’s presence. Eventually, Grover turned, pointed his fishing rod at the bear, and waving the rod tip in the bear’s face shouted, “Go!”

  The bear did, and Grover went back to his search for trout in the mountain stream. Still, Grover was known around the county as a calm, independent, and robust young man who would not easily back down and who was very resourceful.

  Wheeling his county car into the parking lot of the small country store and cafe that sat at the crossroads in Crichton, he advised the radio dispatcher that he would be out having lunch. Walking through the front door, he nodded at the old man behind the register who was reading the Atlanta paper spread on the counter in front of him. The old man gave him a quick lift of his head in return and went back to studying the paper.

  Seating himself at one of the four small tables on the cafe side of the building, he greeted the man at the next table.

  “Hey, Gannet. How’s it goin’?”

  The man smiled back over his cheeseburger and gave a muffled reply through a mouthful. “Good, Grover. Pretty good.”

  “Afternoon, Fran,” Deputy Parsons said to the
heavy woman who walked up, wiping her hands on a white apron.

  “Afternoon, Grover,” she said with a smile and then looked quickly over at the counter where the old man, her husband, still had his head bent over the newspaper. The smile turned to an exasperated scowl for a moment before she looked back at Grover and asked, “Usual?”

  “Yep. Cheeseburger, fries and a coke.”

  “Right,” she nodded, and waddled to the small kitchen in the back.

  The deputy looked over at the man at the next table and spoke to pass the time until his food arrived.

  “Wonder what she would do if I ordered a tuna sandwich?” he said grinning.

  Gannet stifled a low laugh through a mouthful of fries. Everyone knew that you could get two meals at Fran’s cafe. Fried eggs and bacon for breakfast, and cheeseburger and fries for lunch. That was it. No reason to order anything else, but she always came out to ask.

  “So anything goin’ on at your place, Gannet?”

  “No, not really,” the owner of the Creek Side Cabins replied. He munched a bite of burger and added as an afterthought. “Had a young couple check in this morning. Early, just after five.”

  “Really? That’s a little strange, isn’t it?” Grover looked towards the kitchen where the sounds of metallic scraping on the old griddle signaled that lunch would be ready soon. He was hungry and his stomach growled.

  “Yeah, but they’d been traveling all night. Needed a place to rest for a couple of days, they said. Told them we had a full house this weekend, but they could stay until then.”

  The kitchen noises were now accompanied by the aroma of the sizzling burger wafting through the area. Grover’s stomach gurgled in anticipation.

  “Kind of unusual, isn’t it? Someone checking in so early and in the middle of the week this time of year?”

  “Yeah. Bit out of the ordinary. They seem like nice folks though. Man’s from Texas.”

  Deputy Parsons’ eyes squinted slightly. “From Texas?” he asked reaching into the breast pocket of his shirt.