Smoky Mountains Ranger

by LENA DIAZ,

  She started tearing them open. In the third one, she found nylon rope used for macramé, along with a pair of scissors. In another box she found picture frames and a shadow box. She yanked out the shadow box and broke it apart. The pieces of wood were thick and long, perfect for making a splint. She’d have Adam fixed up in no time. Then both of them could climb out of the window together.

  Holding the rope and wood in one hand, scissors in the other, she hurried back into the bedroom. Her mouth dropped open in horror, and she stumbled to a halt. Adam was still standing with one hand holding the bedpost. But he had a wicked-looking long gun pointed at him, and Damien was holding it.

  “Well, well, well. The last little PI finally makes an appearance.” He nodded toward his left arm, still in a sling. “Maybe I’ll get a chance for payback after all. Drop the scissors and that other junk.” He jerked his head toward the open bedroom door. “Daddy’s waiting.”

  She cast a miserable glance toward Adam and dropped her splint supplies to the floor. He was right. She should have gone out the window. Now there would be no help for him, or her. “I’m so sorry, Adam.”

  He gave her an encouraging smile without a hint of anger. “Go on. We’ll be okay.”

  Damien laughed. “Sure, yeah, you’ll be okay.” He chuckled and jerked his head again. “After you.”

  Jody straightened her spine and headed into the hallway.

  “Now you, cop. Go.”

  A loud thump sounded behind her, followed by a pained grunt.

  Damien cursed.

  Jody spun around.

  Adam was on his hands and knees. He must have fallen. Damien pulled his leg back as if to kick him.

  Jody ran forward. “Don’t touch him!”

  Damien turned the gun on her. “Back. Off.” He aimed his gun at her abdomen.

  “I’m okay. Jody, get out of here. Go.” Adam hauled himself upright, using the bed for support again. “I’m okay.”

  She rushed to him in spite of his protests and the gun following her every move. She shoved her shoulder under his left arm, acting as his crutch.

  He gave her an admonishing look, once again not happy that she’d put herself in more danger to help him. But he didn’t argue as he limped with her out of the room under the watchful gaze of Damien and his gun.

  Going downstairs was much easier because he used the banister and hopped down each step. But once they were on the ground floor without a banister to hold, he had to lean on her in order to limp into the family room.

  “Stop right there,” Damien ordered.

  They stopped in the middle of the room. Ned and another armed man they’d never seen before lounged against the left side of the massive fireplace. A third gunman stood on the right side of the fireplace. Damien crossed the room and joined him. And directly in the middle, ten feet away from her and Adam, stood the man who’d made her childhood worse than any nightmare.

  His dark brown hair was stylishly short with just a hint of gray at the temples. The charcoal-colored suit he wore was tailored perfectly to compliment his broad shoulders and trim waist. Gold cuff links winked in the light of the chandelier suspended from the twenty-foot ceiling above them. To anyone else, he’d look like a handsome businessman, perfectly groomed and ready for an important meeting. To Jody, he looked like a monster.

  She started to shake.

  Adam’s arm tightened around her shoulders.

  A loud crash sounded off to their left. Everyone turned toward the sound, except the monster. He let out a deep sigh and simply turned his head to look at the woman who’d just emerged from the kitchen and had dropped a tray of drinks onto the travertine floor, shattering the glasses. She stared at Jody, her eyes big and round, her mouth dropping open.

  “Amelia,” the monster said. “Our daughter has finally come home to visit.”

  Her mother didn’t move, didn’t say anything. She just stared at Jody in obvious horror.

  Footsteps sounded.

  Jody looked toward her adoptive father. His polished shoes clicked against the floor as he strode toward her.

  Adam tensed.

  Peter stopped three feet away and sighed heavily again. “Jody, Jody, Jody. Always the troublemaker. Maybe I should take you upstairs and turn you over my knee, eh? Teach you another lesson?”

  “You’ll never touch a hair on her head again, you lecherous pervert,” Adam snapped.

  Peter’s eyes narrowed.

  A muffled sob sounded from Amelia. She whirled around and ran into the kitchen.

  Peter rolled his eyes and shook his head. Ignoring Adam, he stared at Jody, a nauseatingly hungry look in his eyes. “If I only had more time.” He clucked his tongue. “But I have a funeral to attend. A dear friend died tragically in a car crash last week.” He chuckled again. “Seems to happen a lot to my friends. Car crashes.” He winked.

  Jody’s stomach lurched at the implication. Her parents, her real ones, had died in a car crash. Had Peter had something to do with that too?

  “Fortunately for me—” his voice was lowered in a conspiratorial tone “—my dear friend had finished the task I gave him before his...demise.”

  “Forging land leases?” Adam accused. “Helping you arrange accidents for the true owners? Convincing Senator Sinclair to push an infrastructure bill so you could sell all the land you stole to the government and make a fortune?”

  Peter slowly turned his head like a snake and speared Adam with his dark-eyed gaze. “To be fair, I bought some of that land legitimately.”

  “You didn’t buy Jody’s land legitimately. You stole her inheritance. Including this house.”

  “Well, well, well. Someone’s been busy, haven’t they? Faking that damn will cost me a pretty penny. I spent years covering that up. And all it took was one very stupid drunk councilman in a bar to complain to the wrong PI about the problems he was having performing title searches to bring it all crashing down around my ears. I gave him explicit instructions to exclude the Radcliffe properties from those searches. But he wasn’t the detail-oriented man he should have been. And Sam Campbell started sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. Who knew he’d recognize the Radcliffe name? My bad luck that you were working for him. Doesn’t matter now, though.”

  “I’ll bet you killed the councilman. And you killed Sam,” Jody accused. “And Tracy. And my real parents. For what? Land? Money?” She waved her hand to encompass the mansion. “By all accounts you were quite wealthy even before my parents’ deaths. And now you have this. Don’t you have enough already?”

  He smiled. “You poor, silly girl. You can never have enough when it comes to money.”

  She surged forward, wanting to slam her fists into his smiling face. But Adam tightened his arm around her shoulders, anchoring her against him. He turned his body slightly as if to protect her from her adoptive father. It caused her arm around his waist to bump against something beneath his shirt, something in his back pocket.

  She glanced up at him. He was staring intently at her.

  The scissors.

  That’s what was in his pocket. He must have fallen on purpose in her bedroom so he could grab them. And he was letting her know he would use them when the time was right. But how could the time ever be right with four gunmen twenty feet away? And who knew if Peter was armed? She cleared her throat and looked back at the monster.

  “You have the land and the folder,” she said. “I don’t have any proof that you stole anything from me. It would just be my word against yours. You can let us go.”

  He clucked his tongue again. “Right. And your boyfriend here would just ignore everything that’s happened? He’s a cop. Cops don’t ignore and let things go. At least, not the honest ones who refuse to take bribes. And word on the street is that he’s one of the good guys. Which means, of course, you both have to die.”

  “Bribe
s?” Adam said, obviously stalling for time. “Just like you bribed Judge Jackson when Jody went to court? And bribed him again to file those bogus land claims?”

  Peter speared him with a look full of hate. “You know way too much, cop.”

  “What about the pictures?” Damien stepped forward. “I chased them through those stupid mountains to find out where that PI hid the pictures. There weren’t any pictures in the folder.”

  Peter rolled his eyes, a pained expression on his face. “There were never any pictures, you moron. I made that up because you didn’t need to know exactly what I was looking for. You were just supposed to find out where Campbell might hide any information he collected.” He pointed at a folder lying on a decorative table against the wall. The folder that had been in Jody’s storage unit. “Everything I need is in there. Now all you have to do is kill these two and I’ll be on my way.”

  “No.” The voice, barely above a whisper, came from the kitchen doorway.

  Everyone turned to see Amelia once again standing there. This time she was holding a pistol. And it was pointed at her husband.

  “Ho, ho,” Damien exclaimed, laughing. “Trouble in paradise, boss?”

  “Shut up.” Peter stared at his wife. “What do you think you’re doing, Amelia?”

  “What I should have done when Jody was a little girl. Stopping you.” Her lower lip wobbled and the gun shook in her hand. “I’m so sorry, Jody. I swear I never even suspected that he might be hurting you until that counselor from your school talked to me.”

  “Shut up, woman.” Peter strode toward Amelia. “She lied. I never did anything to her.”

  Amelia wrapped both hands around the gun and brought it up higher, pointing directly at Peter’s head. This time, her hands weren’t shaking. “Not one step closer. I’ll shoot you. I will.”

  He stopped, his eyes narrowing. “Now why would you do that?”

  “Because you hurt little girls!” she cried out. She looked toward Jody. “I swear, I never knew. I asked Patricia and Patience when your counselor brought those charges against Peter. But they said you were lying, that their daddy would never do that. He would never do those horrible, awful things.” Tears spilled over and slid down her cheeks. The gun started shaking again. “They were little girls, too. I believed them. I never knew they were scared of him, that they lied. For him. Until Patricia had her baby last month. And she and her husband wouldn’t let Peter near the baby.” A sob burst between her clenched teeth. “Oh, God. Your own daughters. How could you, Peter?”

  His face turned a bright red. He looked at Damien. “Shoot her.”

  Damien’s men raised their guns.

  Adam took a limping step forward, his hand going behind his back. Jody grabbed his arm, but he shook it off.

  “Adam,” she whispered, “please don’t. They’ll kill you.”

  He took another wobbling step and pulled the scissors out of his waistband.

  “Hold it,” Damien said, raising his hand and motioning toward his men. “Lower your weapons.”

  Adam stopped, the scissors clutched in his right hand. But no one seemed to notice. They were all looking back and forth between Amelia, Peter and Damien.

  Adam took another step, and another, moving closer to Peter, the scissors down by his side, half concealed by his hand.

  Jody wanted to grab him, stop him. Instead, she moved with him, trying to keep from having a big gap between them to make it less obvious that he’d moved closer to Peter.

  Damien faced his boss. “You some kind of perv, man? You like to hurt little girls?”

  Peter looked down his nose at Damien. “You’re a murderer and a thug. Don’t tell me you’re suddenly developing a conscience.”

  Sirens sounded in the distance.

  Damien and his men exchanged worried glances.

  “Don’t be idiots,” Peter said. “They’re going somewhere else. Not here.”

  “Yeah, well. We ain’t taking that chance,” Damien replied. “Not for some sicko who hurts kids.” He motioned to his men and they headed for the door.

  Peter stepped toward them. “One million dollars. I’ll give one million dollars to the man who shoots my wife.”

  Jody gasped.

  Amelia’s eyes widened.

  All four men turned around.

  “A million?” one of them asked, aiming his gun at Amelia.

  “No.” This time it was Adam who stepped forward.

  The man turned his gun toward Adam.

  Jody stepped forward. “No!”

  Adam shoved her behind him. “You really want to go to jail for a pedophile?”

  The man’s gaze darted to Peter, who was now glaring at Adam.

  “Even if you don’t care what he’s done,” Adam continued, his voice calm, matter-of-fact, “do you think you can trust him to follow through with the money?”

  “Two million!” Peter yelled.

  The man swung his pistol back toward Amelia.

  She stood frozen, tears tracking down her chin. She didn’t seem to know what to do and was obviously too scared to pull the trigger on her gun to defend herself.

  “Wait!” Adam yelled.

  The man looked at him but kept his gun trained on Amelia.

  “He’s asking you to kill his wife,” Adam said. “You really think he’ll honor his word to you, someone he barely knows? Everything he does is about money and protecting himself. And you think he’ll give you a million dollars, two million dollars? More likely he’ll hire someone else to take you out for a few thousand. He kills everyone who gets in his way or threatens what he wants. Listen to the sirens. The police are almost here.”

  The sirens were much louder now. But were they coming here? Or to Adam’s house a few blocks away?

  Adam took another step forward. “When the police get here and find Amelia dead, what do you think Peter will tell them? That you killed her. A home invasion. He’ll blame everything that happens here on you. The forensics will back him up. You go to prison. He goes on to enjoy his millions.”

  The gunmen shared concerned looks. One of them headed out the door. Ned followed, leaving Damien and the other gunman.

  “Those cops aren’t coming here,” Damien said, looking like he was considering cashing in on Peter’s offer.

  “Of course they aren’t,” Peter said. “No one has any reason to suspect me of anything. You and your men made sure of it.”

  “Jody called 911,” Adam rushed to say. “Right before the crash. They’re definitely coming here. Sounds to me like they’re three or four minutes out. You’d better hurry and decide whether you want to go to prison or get out of here.”

  “Check her phone,” Damien ordered the other gunman. “Hurry.”

  “I don’t have it,” Jody started to say, thinking she’d lost Adam’s phone in the crash. But the gunman pulled the phone out of his own pocket.

  “Pass code,” Damien said. “What’s the code to unlock it?”

  She gave him the code that Adam had given her in the car. The gunman keyed it in and swiped the screen a few times. His face went pale. “She ain’t lying. She called 911.”

  “Screw it,” Damien said. “Let’s get out of here. Wait in the Charger. I’ll be right there.”

  His partner threw the phone down and ran out the door.

  “Did he really hurt you as a little girl?” Damien asked, looking straight at Jody.

  Her face flushed with heat. “Yes.”

  “Sick bastard.” Damien pointed his gun at Peter.

  Peter threw his hands up. “My lawyer is working to get your brother out of jail. You kill me and what do you think he’ll do?”

  “Come on, man!” A yell came from outside.

  Damien’s hand flexed on the gun. “You’d better not renege on our deal or I’ll come after you, you sicko.”
He tossed his gun toward Peter and ran.

  Peter caught the gun and swung it toward Amelia.

  “No!” Adam threw the scissors like a javelin toward Peter.

  Boom! Boom!

  Peter fell to the floor, the scissors embedded deep in his neck. He gagged and clasped his hands around the wound, blood pouring through the gaps between his fingers. His knees drew up, blood darkening his pants where Amelia’s bullet had found its mark.

  He’d never hurt another little girl again.

  Jody whirled around toward Amelia. “Oh no! Mom!”

  Amelia blinked in confusion and looked down. Red bloomed on her breast above her heart and quickly spread, saturating her shirt. Peter’s bullet had found its mark, too.

  Jody ran to her, catching her just as Amelia’s knees buckled beneath her. She couldn’t hold her up and fell with her to the floor.

  “Mom, Mom. Oh no, please. Mom.” She pressed her hands against the wound, desperately trying to stop the bleeding.

  Adam dropped to the floor beside her, his phone in his hand. “We need an ambulance.” He rattled off the address that he’d found on the internet just last night while looking into Jody’s past. “Send the police, too,” he said. “I hear them in the subdivision. They’re probably at my home from a previous 911 call, but we’re here. We’re the ones who called them.”

  “Jody?” Amelia blinked up at her. “Are you there?”

  Tears flooded Jody’s eyes. “Yes. I’m here.”

  Adam yanked off his shirt and pushed Jody’s hands away. “I’ve got it.” He pressed his shirt hard against the wound.

  Amelia gasped, her lips turning white.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Ingram. I have to press hard to stop the bleeding.”

  Jody grabbed Amelia’s hand and held it tightly in her own as she gently wiped the hair out of Amelia’s face. “Hold on. Help is on the way.”

  Amelia blinked, and her vision seemed to clear, her hand tightening on Jody’s. “Sweet, sweet girl. I’m so sorry. I swear, I never knew. I didn’t.”

  “It’s okay,” Jody whispered, her tears dropping onto their joined hands. “It’s okay.”