David Wolf series Box Set 2

by Jeff Carson

  “Fuck your orders!” His chest tightened. “That’s a pretty big clue you were keeping from me, Luke.”

  She exhaled into his ear. “I’m sorry. But whether or not I told you about him is not important right now.”

  “Not important?”

  “No, it’s not. From what I’ve learned this morning, I think you just had a very dangerous element watching you. It wasn’t us. I know for certain, because I’ve been all over this case from the beginning, and the only two men we had up there watching you were Buntham and Vincent. That’s it.”

  Wolf paced in the dirt. “Then who? A dangerous element? Start using simpler words. I’m not in the mood.”

  “There was a dead family this morning down here, and then my partner said you were being framed and you’re innocent. Whatever the connection, this dead family spooked the shit out of him and he just drove away with squealing tires. He was freaked out, and he used to be partnered with Agent Smith.”

  “Who the hell’s Agent Smith?”

  “Carter Willis. Smith is his real name. Crap, Wolf, there’s a lot you don’t know. And you have less than two hours until we get there.”

  Wolf squeezed his upper thigh and his femur protested beneath his bruised muscle. “I’ll get a good lawyer. This is bullshit and everyone knows it.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

  “Why?”

  “Okay, let’s say you’re taken into custody and eventually charged. Tonight or tomorrow you’ll be put in with general population in Quad County. These guys just killed an entire family down here. They’ve got my partner spooked. By the looks of it, they’re responsible for Sarah’s death. Something is clearly going down. Some sort of plan. You think it’s a stretch that they might have someone on the inside at Quad County? Think about it. They’re framing you. After that, keeping you alive would be a major liability. Like you said, what if you get a good lawyer?”

  Wolf stared into nothing.

  “Wolf, I’m right. Get out of there, and then call me when you do.”

  He hung up and took the battery out of his phone, pried out the SIM card with his fingernail, and pocketed all of it.

  Special Agent Luke had his attention.

  Wolf had a lot of questions, and he would surely fail to get answers from behind bars. Justice for Sarah would be locked up right with him, he was sure of it. And with all the strange action happening lately, he was sure Luke was right in her assessment of the dangers of being locked up.

  His watch said 7:45.

  The gun that killed Sarah was here. Feet from him, tucked away somewhere inside his barn.

  MacLean’s laughing face flashed in his mind.

  He walked back inside the workshop and stepped along the plank floor to the dirt. His dirt bike, his father’s old tractor, some rusted farm equipment, a canoe, and an ill-working snowmobile slept unmoved and untouched, still blanketed in months of dust.

  No footprints anywhere.

  He stepped to the barn doors, unlatched them, and pulled them open, letting the morning light flood inside.

  He stepped out. A black tassel-eared squirrel stood staring at him on the path to his right. A tree trunk creaked as it swayed back and forth in the wind.

  He walked to the motorcycle and pushed it upright off its kickstand. The gas tank sloshed, still full.

  Swinging his leg over the dusty seat, he winced as his hip protested. Bending over, he swung out the kick-start lever and gave it a try.

  Nothing.

  He tried once more. The motion of loading his weight, jumping, and slamming down on his right leg was excruciating on his hip and it felt like his femur was about to crack again.

  Stepping off, he dug his thumb into cramped leg muscle. Leaving on foot in his condition was a ridiculous thought. The road south dead-ended two miles away in the middle of remote forest. And then what?

  That left one option.

  Wolf’s breath echoed in the canoe as he balanced it upside down on his head and walked down his dirt driveway.

  Reaching the bull-horned headgate, he stopped and dumped the fiberglass boat on the ground. It crashed hard and bounced, sounding like timpani in the still morning air.

  For the past month, the two FBI goons on Wolf-surveillance had parked a mile down the road. Thankfully, today was no different.

  Dropping the paddle inside, he grabbed the rope on the front of the boat, pulled it down the inclined drive to the dirt road, and then crossed, stopping at the steep drop-off on the other side.

  The Chautauqua was flowing high on the banks, fed by the recent rain.

  Pulling until the boat teetered over the edge, he gave it a shove and then grabbed the side to prevent it from going over too fast.

  His footing gave out and he slipped onto his ass and slid down the embankment alongside the boat, scraping his back what felt like to the bone, all the while the booming vessel bouncing against him.

  The bow jabbed into the water and started drifting down current fast. The keel slid and connected with his back, pushing him toward the water.

  “Shit,” he said, realizing he was now leaning out over the water and about to go in.

  With the most athletic move he’d accomplished in over three months, he twisted and grabbed the boat and jumped up. It slid underneath him, and he landed inside, belly down.

  He landed on his thighs on the bow seat, crashing head and elbow first into the floor of the canoe.

  Rocking back and forth, the boat scraped along the rocky edge and was then adrift.

  Wolf blocked out the pain of the sledgehammer blow to his femur and rolled onto his back. After a wrestling match with himself, he managed to pull his legs in, roll back over, and balance on his knees in the wobbling boat.

  He was flying down the river, bouncing up and down on the rapids.

  With a thud, the canoe slammed into a rock and stopped, and Wolf went face first into the stern thwart, the cross beam that kept the hull sturdy in front. With barely an inch to spare, Wolf put his hand up just in time to soften the blow.

  He righted himself, grabbed the paddle, sat on the bow seat and started steering.

  Thinking two, three, four moves ahead, he picked his lines, moving the boat side to side with the aid of adrenaline-charged muscles.

  Looking up to his right, he could see nothing but the steep embankment, and then suddenly the slope dropped away and he was looking all the way to the mountains to his right.

  Mountains, and the dirt road.

  Thankfully, the FBI vehicle was not parked along the visible stretch.

  Again, he slammed into a rock, and he cursed himself for taking his eye off the water for too long.

  Crouching low in the canoe, he felt alive for the first time in months. The pain in his hip screamed, but barely registered in his mind. His femur throbbed, but he didn’t care.

  As he rounded a bend to the right, the unmarked came into view and he saw the two familiar agents Luke had called Vincent and Buntham milling around next to it. A puff of cigarette smoke blew from one of their mouths, and the other was stretching his arms above his head.

  Wolf crouched but knew that simply getting lower in the boat would be of no use. In fact, to do so would probably bring more suspicion on him.

  The only consolation was that the two men were parked on the crest of a hill, and there was an embankment blocking their view of the river below.

  Maybe he could pass completely unnoticed. His only chance was to hug the right-side of the shore as closely as possible.

  He paddled and got into position in the right-hand rapids, and just as he’d hoped, the slope grew higher and the vehicle disappeared above.

  The last he saw of the two agents, they looked preoccupied in the downriver direction. They were anxiously awaiting their colleagues.

  Wolf’s stomach dropped as he looked further ahead.

  The road descended back down to only a few feet above the river, and Wolf was going to be in plain view until the next
bend, which meant roughly a hundred yards of the two agents looking right at him.

  Shit.

  He searched the shore for a place to land. Maybe he could stop now and try to create a diversion, and then slip by unnoticed.

  Before the options had finished running through his mind, he was out in the open.

  With slow, deliberate paddles, he pumped twice on the starboard side, then once on the port. He sat straight, high on the seat, a man out for a leisurely morning paddle. No hurry.

  “Yeah, this’ll work,” he said under his breath, dodging another rock with a precise swing of the stern.

  He could feel the eyes of the Bureau agents on his back. He could imagine their conversation, deciding what to do about the man in the boat. Should they come after him? Should they keep their posts?

  Had they even noticed him?

  Of course they had.

  Wolf passed around the next bend and exhaled, and then he paddled hard.

  Chapter 8

  Deputy Tom Rachette fired six rounds in quick succession, hitting the grayed area he’d aimed for.

  The red cease-fire light flashed and the horn sounded for good measure.

  Rachette exhaled and put down his pistol.

  “Getting better?”

  He turned at the feminine voice. It was her again. He pulled off his ear protectors, pretending like he hadn’t heard. “What?”

  She gave him that cute, bashful smile act she seemed to think worked on men. “I just wondered how you were progressing. You going to be ready for the test tomorrow?”

  Rachette turned his back to her and pushed the button. The motor on the pulley whirred and the target sped towards him from twenty-five yards away.

  He had always been a good shot. Growing up on a farm in eastern Nebraska, it was something that happened naturally. That, and he was a Rachette. The Rachettes had always been good shots.

  Throughout his childhood he’d picked off birds, squirrels, and groundhogs with his pellet gun, and then he’d graduated to shotguns and rifles, hunting bigger game with his father and grandfather as he grew up.

  It had been one of the only things the Rachettes ever did with their fathers—shooting and killing things out in the wild.

  “You’ll never be a perfect man, but you can always make the perfect shot.”

  His father used to tell him that out in the bitter chill of autumn as they followed the dogs up the corn line. It made zero sense to him today, just as it had back then.

  Assholes rarely made much sense, otherwise they wouldn’t be assholes. But, he had to admit, his old man had taught him how to shoot.

  In his first run through the police academy in Lincoln, Nebraska, he’d scored a perfect hundred percent on his proficiency test, and then scored the same when he was hired into the Sluice County Sheriff’s Department in Rocky Points.

  He’d never felt nerves when shooting until now.

  The target zipped all the way in and fluttered to a stop in front of his face.

  Three of the shots had missed the grayed target area.

  “Oh, no. Well, you’ll do better when it counts, outside on the course. I’m sure of it.”

  Rachette turned. “I didn’t ask you. Now are you here to clean up my brass or something? Or what?”

  The girl smiled and raised her eyebrows. “No. Did you need help cleaning up your brass?”

  “Yeah, please. Thanks, honey.” Rachette unloaded his weapon and placed it inside his case.

  Still deemed unfit to carry the weapon on his duty belt until he passed the test tomorrow morning at ten a.m., he already felt like an inadequate fool walking around the station with no piece or badge. Now he was missing targets, standing still, at twenty-five yards.

  It was his damn shoulder. It just wouldn’t hold his arm steady like it had before he’d been shot.

  And on top of that he had to deal with this chick pretending to hit on him? He was tired of being the butt of that joke.

  She showed up with the hand broom and scoop, and pushed Rachette’s brass into a tinkling pile.

  “Hey, what are you doing? Give me that.” He grabbed the broom and finished cleaning up after himself.

  The woman watched quietly.

  “Seriously. Don’t you have somewhere else to be, Deputy,”—he read her name patch—“oh yeah, Munford?”

  He finished gathering up his stuff and froze. With a jolt of realization, he sagged his shoulders. “You?”

  “Hello, Deputy Rachette.”

  “You.”

  “Yes, me. Besides Sheriff MacLean, I’m currently the only Law Enforcement Standards Board-certified instructor in this department, so I’ll be administering your test tomorrow.”

  “Sorry I called you …”

  “Called me what?”

  In slow-motion horror, Rachette felt his gun case slip from his fingers. It tumbled onto his foot, and with a muscle spasm he kicked it into Munford’s leg.

  “Sorry.” He scooped it up and stood.

  She stared, clearly enjoying herself.

  Her manicured eyebrow lifted, creasing the taut, tanned youthful skin of her forehead. Her lipstick-free lips widened, displaying perfect rows of ivory teeth and a good dose of gum on top. Her blonde hair bobbed side to side as she shook her head.

  He looked down at her name patch again, and perused the rest of her body with an undetectable peripheral-vision assessment. Just as stunning as the first time he’d met her a few weeks ago.

  She was even more intimidating than Patterson, because this woman was downright irresistible.

  She probably had a six-five husband or boyfriend with mountainous muscles. Would probably have a heyday laughing about this with her fellow Byron County cronies.

  “Like I said, sorry.” He stepped past her to the plastic chair, grabbed his jacket, and began walking.

  “Bye, honey. See you tomorrow. Ten a.m. sharp,” she said with a chuckle.

  Rachette’s face went hot as he ducked past a deputy in the next shooting stall watching the whole thing.

  Lost in dreadful thoughts about his abysmal aim and luck with women, he stepped out the doorway to the hallway outside, where he heard sounds of excited chatter echoing off the walls.

  Curiosity piqued, he walked toward the commotion, which seemed to be coming from the squad room. He stepped down the hallway and entered the cathedral-like space where the bulk of the SBCSD deputies had desks. Unlike the old HQ building, the new county building’s squad room was airy and natural light flowed in the floor-to-ceiling windows on the west and east sides. The two dozen desks were empty, because their occupants were lining up and pushing into the situation room.

  He searched for Patterson, Baine, Wilson, or Yates. Anyone he recognized.

  “Hey, Deputy,” he called after the nearest passing uniform, “what’s going on?”

  The man stopped and pointed at his name patch, and then the chevron on his uniform. “Deputy Sergeant Barker.”

  “Yes sir, Sergeant. I’m Deputy Rachette. What’s happening?”

  Barker stepped close, eying Rachette up and down, assessing him like a piece of meat. “Not yet.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re not a deputy yet.”

  Rachette blinked and stood straight when he saw Barker’s lip curl.

  “Not yet, correct sir. I have my shooting proficiency test tomorrow. I’ve been in the Sluice County department for four years now, though.”

  “And if you pass then you’ll be involved with official department business of the Sluice–Byron SD. But until then, you won’t be.”

  Dick. Rachette backed away. “See you around.”

  Barker raised his eyebrows, as if Rachette had meant it as a challenge. A threat. Maybe he had. Serious dick.

  “Hey,” a feminine voice said behind him.

  Rachette twisted around and saw Patterson.

  “Hey, what’s going on?”

  Patterson was ghostly white, and she was rubbing her hands together.r />
  “What is it?”

  “They found Gail Olson this morning. Last night.”

  “They did? ’Bout time that chick showed up.”

  “Dead.”

  “Oh.”

  “Someone called in an anonymous tip. The phone number was encrypted, the voice garbled, but whoever it was said exactly where to find Gail Olson, and then said Wolf had the weapon stashed in his barn.”

  “What? Wolf?”

  “Tammy took the call. She said the person signed off as a disgruntled partner of Wolf’s. I guess Lorber’s got her body now, and we’re waiting for the FBI before we move.”

  “Move on Wolf?”

  She nodded.

  “Why are we waiting on the FBI?”

  Patterson shrugged. “Above our pay grade.”

  Sergeant Deputy Barker stood on his toes and then marched over. “Hey, I thought I made myself clear.”

  Rachette ignored him. “Keep me posted.”

  “I will.”

  “Hey!”

  “Yeah, asshole, I get it.”

  Barker stepped close to Rachette again.

  Rachette held firm, pressing his pectorals into the man’s ribs.

  “Easy there, boys.”

  A different feminine voice materialized next to Rachette and then a firm hand clamped onto Barker’s bicep, pulling him away.

  It was Deputy Munford again. “Come on, Barker. Deputy Patterson, right? Let’s get going.”

  Barker backed away, using a psychotic glare aimed at him, then he reluctantly turned away and marched toward the dwindling line of deputies.

  “Dick.”

  “Whatever. Forget him,” Patterson said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

  He nodded. “All right. Guess I’ll go get a cup of coffee or something.”

  Patterson pulled her lips into a line and turned away.

  “Call me.”

  “I will.”

  Rachette waved to Patterson and found Deputy Munford in the crowd. She was walking away, and then before she entered the situation room she looked back at him and smiled with one side of her mouth.

  He stood, thinking of that gesture until the door clacked shut and he was the only one standing in an empty room.