The Legend of Smuggler's Cave

by Paula Graves

  “You should,” Dalton said. “Rethink it, I mean.”

  Bevill’s eyes narrowed. “You want me to run against you?”

  “I’m not running,” he said, giving voice to something he’d been thinking about off and on for the past couple of days.

  Bevill looked stunned. “You’ve been planning to run for my job since you first signed on with the prosecutor’s office. What happened?”

  Dalton’s gaze wandered back to Briar and her son. “I’m thinking of making changes in my life. I don’t need to add an election to that mix.”

  “I always figured you’d end up in the governor’s office one day. Hell, maybe even the White House in time.”

  That would never happen, Dalton thought, thanks to his family’s scandals. But he’d come to realize the dream of political service had always been more important to his father and grandfather than it had been to him. He liked being a prosecutor, finding justice for people who’d been wronged. And he hated politics. “I like the work I’m doing now.”

  Bevill’s eyes narrowed, but he simply nodded. “I guess I should make an announcement canceling my plans for retirement. Maybe I’ll announce it at this morning’s press conference. You’ll be there? Give me your support?”

  “Sure.” Dalton supposed there was no way to avoid politics altogether in his line of work.

  “Good man.” Bevill clapped his shoulder. “We’ll be meeting in a couple of hours to plan the press conference about this bust. You’ll be there, too?”

  In any other circumstances, he’d say yes, despite feeling as if a whole beach’s worth of sand had set up gritty shop in his eyes. But he had other matters he needed to deal with first. More important, even, than a press conference announcing a major arrest.

  “The police want me to stick around a little while longer,” he told his boss. At least, he hoped one particular police officer wanted him to stick around for a lot longer.

  But his hope of talking to Briar alone anytime soon evaporated even as Tom Bevill headed off in search of a phone. Walker Nix had taken a seat next to Briar, his head close to hers in tense conversation.

  Dalton crossed to where they sat. “Has something happened?”

  Nix looked up. “We finally reached the gate guard who was on duty this morning. We’ve identified who visited you.” The man’s look of sympathy made Dalton’s gut tighten.

  “Who?” he asked.

  Briar touched his arm. “It was Janet.”

  He stared at her a moment. “Janet Trainor? My secretary Janet?”

  Nix nodded. “She signed in with a false name, but the gate guard’s description was clear and detailed. On a hunch, Doyle called Laney and gave her the description. She said it sounded just like Janet Trainor.”

  Dalton felt sick. “Janet’s been with me for years. She’s a good woman. I would have trusted her with any of my secrets.”

  “She’s been picked up for questioning. We’re about to talk to her. If you’d like to observe the interview, we can arrange it.”

  He nodded. “I’d like to hear what she has to say.”

  He half hoped Briar would come with him, but while her hand tightened around his arm before he rose from his chair, she remained where she was. Swallowing a sigh of disappointment, he went with Nix through the detective’s office and into Doyle’s corner lair.

  Doyle was there already, along with Laney and Dana. Sympathy shined in all three pairs of eyes. “Nix briefed you?” Doyle asked.

  “Yeah. Who’s doing the interview?”

  “Delilah Brand,” Doyle answered. “She and Janet were schoolmates back in the day.”

  They’d set up the chief’s laptop computer to pick up the feed from the interview room. The picture was a little grainy, but the audio was clean. The tremble in Janet Trainor’s voice came through loud and clear.

  “You know, don’t you?” she said before Delilah asked the first question.

  “What do you think we know?” Delilah asked.

  Janet began to cry, tears trickling down her pale cheeks. “Please, you have to understand—if they find out you know, they’ll kill him.”

  Dalton leaned toward the screen.

  “Kill who?” Dana murmured a second before Delilah asked the same thing in the interview room.

  “Hunter,” Janet answered in a soft whimper.

  “Who’s Hunter?” Doyle asked.

  “Her brother,” Dalton answered, the situation beginning to make a terrible sort of sense. “Hunter Bragg. Former Army infantry soldier. He was injured in an IED explosion in Afghanistan about a year ago. Army deemed him unfit for retention, and apparently he’s pretty depressed about it.”

  “She’s been worried about him,” Laney said quietly. “Everybody knows how she worries about him.”

  “Who’s going to kill him?” Delilah asked Janet in a gentle tone.

  “Blake Culpepper.” Janet took the tissue Delilah offered her, wiping her eyes. Her voice was a little stronger now, as if admitting her fear had given back the strength her secret had stolen. “I got a message this morning at the office. It was waiting for me in my chair. It said there was a bottle in my desk drawer. The one I keep locked. The note told me they’d been watching Hunter and that if I didn’t do what they told me to do with the contents of that bottle, they would kill him before I could reach him. There was a photo—”

  “Do you have the note and the photo?”

  Janet nodded unhappily. “I locked it in the glove compartment of my car.”

  “Get me a search warrant for that car,” Doyle said.

  Nix nodded and headed out of the office.

  “What did the photo show?” Delilah asked.

  “Hunter. Tied up and gagged. They will kill him if they know I’m here.”

  Doyle gave Dalton a troubled look. “Blake Culpepper has already invoked his Fifth Amendment rights. He’s lawyered up. He won’t talk.”

  “Ask her for permission to see the photo. Tell her we have Culpepper in custody and we need to try to find her brother,” Dalton said. “She’ll cooperate.”

  Before Doyle could move, Delilah did just that. “We can get a search warrant for your car, but if you’ll give us permission—”

  “Of course,” Janet said quickly. “Anything.”

  Dalton turned away from the computer screen, his gut roiling. Janet must have come by his house on some pretext. He’d have let her in, without a doubt. Maybe he’d made them some coffee and she’d slipped the GHB into his cup, as ordered.

  Good God, he thought, the poor woman.

  “I wanted to call the police,” she was saying, her voice clear over the computer. “Please tell me that Dalton’s okay. Please, please tell me that.”

  “He’s okay,” Delilah said.

  No, Dalton thought as he walked out of the office, he’s not. Dalton is definitely not okay.

  * * *

  BRIAR REALIZED SHE was being overly cautious, clinging to her son instead of letting someone find him a soft sofa somewhere in the cop shop to finish off his slumber. She just didn’t want to let him go yet.

  But when Dana came downstairs with news of a wrinkle in their formerly wrapped-up case, she realized she had to put her cop hat back on and let someone else watch her son.

  Blake wouldn’t be coming after him now. There was nothing he needed from her anymore.

  “Laney’s agreed to watch him,” Dana told her, the look in her green eyes full of apology. “I know it’s too soon, but you and Nix know Cherokee Cove better than anyone else. He wants you in on this investigation. Time could be running out for Hunter Bragg.”

  Briar felt as if she’d been run over by a fleet of trucks, but one look at the photo Nix had found in Janet Trainor’s car gave her a double shot of refreshed energy. The man in the
photo still bore the scars of his war injury, along with new scrapes and bruises he’d no doubt earned during his more recent capture.

  The thought of Blake Culpepper’s band of ruthless thieves and killers using a war hero as leverage against a decent woman almost made her wish she’d blasted a hole in her cousin the way she’d wanted to back in his cabin.

  She dragged her gaze away from the battered face and focused instead on the background of the photo, trying to figure out if anything looked familiar. “It looks like a cabin, not a house,” she said after a moment. “There’s something...” She paused, peering a little closer at the grainy out-of-focus background of the photograph. Her stomach gave a small lurch as she realized what it was. “See that black blur there, behind his shoulder?”

  Dana nodded. “Can you tell what it is?”

  She could be wrong, but if she was right—

  If she was right, she realized with a sinking heart, then a whole lot of what she’d assumed about the world around her could be dead wrong.

  “I think,” she said finally, reluctantly, “it might be a black-bear skin.”

  “Does that mean anything?” Dana asked.

  “I think it does.” Her stomach knotting, she pushed to her feet. Logan shifted in her arms, clinging a little more tightly to her neck even in his sleep. The urge to keep him wrapped in her arms forever was so strong she almost sat back down. But the image of that bound and gagged soldier gave her the strength to keep going. She was beginning to believe she knew exactly where she’d seen that bearskin before, as much as she wanted to believe otherwise. And if she was right, Hunter Bragg was in a hell of a lot of danger.

  They all were.

  “Do you know where Dalton is?” she asked Dana as they hurried through the empty corridor toward the detectives’ communal office.

  “He was in Doyle’s office with us watching the interview with Janet Trainor earlier,” Dana answered. “You can imagine how shocked he was to learn who’d drugged him and took Logan.”

  “Is he still there?”

  “No. He left the office after learning why Janet had drugged him. I don’t even know if he’s still here in the station.”

  Damn. She really wanted to see him before she left. Ask him, maybe, to stay with Laney and make sure Logan was okay. But she didn’t have time to hunt him down. Hunter Bragg might be in a hell of a lot of trouble, even more than they thought.

  “If you see Dalton, will you tell him where I went?” She wasn’t sure he was in any hurry to talk to her, given how close she’d come to blowing him away along with her cousin earlier that night, but she needed to try, at least, to explain. To find out if it was possible to get past all of the craziness of the past few days and see if the attraction between them had any legs.

  For her, she knew, it did. She’d been in love before. She knew what it felt like. And if she wasn’t already there with Dalton, it wouldn’t take much to get her to that point.

  She just needed to know if she was fooling herself. Could he ever feel that way about her, too? Could they get past the obvious differences in their lives, in their pasts, and build something good and lasting for the future?

  * * *

  DALTON STARED AT his sister in dismay. “She’s going on a raid?”

  “Nix wanted her with him,” she said flatly.

  Nix, he thought with a grimace. “Your boyfriend does realize she’s been awake for nearly twenty-four hours and she has a little boy who needs her with him?”

  “She agreed to go,” Dana answered, clearly trying not to bristle at his tone when he spoke of her fiancé. “She knows the area better than anyone but Nix. And there’s a man’s life at stake. A war hero, for God’s sake.”

  Dalton rubbed his hand over his gritty eyes. “Have they located where he’s being held?”

  “Nix just called in with an affirmative. Doyle’s about to send backup before they try to go in and get him.”

  “Who has him?”

  “They haven’t told me,” she admitted. “I get the feeling it’s a situational security thing. They don’t want to be overheard.”

  Odd, he thought. Then again, the police station had been the locus of a recent not-quite-completed corruption investigation. “Have they left yet?”

  Dana shook her head. “They’re gearing up now. Why?”

  Dalton started moving toward the police station’s weapons-and-gear lockers, leaving her to catch up. “Because I’m going with them.”

  * * *

  NIX’S DARK EYES bored into Briar’s from the back corner of the mountain cabin. He nodded twice. The signal to go.

  She was the only one not wearing protective gear, though her Glock was snugly tucked into a pancake holster snapped to the back of her jeans. She hadn’t bothered freshening up before leaving the station. The more her weariness and strain showed, the better.

  She rounded the corner of the cabin and climbed the porch steps, not bothering to be quiet. She wasn’t there in stealth mode, after all.

  She was the distraction.

  The front door was made of solid pine slabs stained to a dark oak color. Knocking three times, she braced herself for whatever came next. It took a lot of control not to reach behind her to check on the presence of the Glock, but her job was to appear as normal and nonthreatening as a police officer could manage.

  The door opened a few inches, making her nerves jangle all the way to her toes. She struggled not to show it, struggled not to react to the face she saw staring back at her in the open doorway, even though nausea rippled through her at the familiar sight.

  “Good God, Blackwood,” Thurman Gowdy growled, his voice gravelly with sleep. “Do you realize it’s four in the morning?”

  “Can I come in?” she asked.

  Her patrol partner peered at her through narrowed eyes. His salt-and-pepper crew cut managed to look mussed despite its short, crisp length, as if he’d just rolled out of bed. Maybe he had, she thought. He had no reason to think his cabin was about to be raided. He probably didn’t even know Blake was in custody yet.

  “What’s happened?” he asked.

  “Logan was kidnapped,” she answered, phrasing it so she didn’t give away whether or not he was still missing. Just in case she was wrong and he had already heard the news.

  “I know. I’m so sorry.” He looked so sincere, she thought, her stomach cramping with dismay. “I asked if I could be in on the hunt for him, but they said at the station they were trying to go low profile on it. Is there anything new on it?”

  She wasn’t sure if he didn’t know or if he knew and was trying to trap her. Her weary mind couldn’t figure out his meaning, so she just got to the point of her visit.

  “Can I come in?” she repeated.

  He hesitated, and the last of her doubts disappeared, leaving only disillusionment coiling like a snake in her chest. If Hunter Bragg weren’t hidden somewhere in the cabin, her partner would have let her in without a thought.

  “My brother’s here, and he’s a light sleeper,” Thurman said. “Maybe I could meet you in a few minutes at Ledbetter’s for some coffee and an early breakfast?” He glanced back toward the darkness behind him.

  It gave her the distraction she needed.

  She whipped the Glock from her holster. By the time he turned back around to face her, the pistol was pointed straight at his chest.

  The shock on his face was real, she realized. “Good God, Blackwood, what are you doing?”

  “Is there anyone in your cabin besides your prisoner?” she asked.

  He feigned confusion. “Prisoner? What the hell are you talking about? Put down the gun, Blackwood. Have you lost your mind?”

  She felt more than heard Nix coming up the porch steps behind her. “It’s over, Gowdy. You made a mistake when you took that picture of Hunte
r Bragg. You forgot to move the bearskin off the wall behind him.”

  Thurman’s expression shifted to dismay. Slowly, he raised his hands and twined them behind the back of his head. “I want a lawyer.”

  “Is there anyone in the cabin besides Bragg?” she asked.

  Gowdy just stared at her, silent.

  Nix led two deputies from the county sheriff’s department’s SWAT team into the cabin. Briar kept her weapon trained on Gowdy, lowering it only when Delilah Brand and another Ridge County deputy took him into custody. “Good work, Briar,” Delilah said, sparing her a brief sympathetic smile.

  She lowered her gun, trying to squelch the urge to sit in the nearby porch rocker and cry like a baby.

  “He’s here,” Nix’s voice called from the back of the cabin. “He’s safe.”

  More deputies moved past her into the house. She didn’t follow, instead trudging slowly down the porch steps and out toward the tree line at the edge of the yard. Sunrise was still at least a couple of hours away, but a faint lightening in the eastern sky over the mountains eased enough of the darkness for her to make out the shapes of trees and bushes in the mist-draped woods.

  Suddenly, someone glided out of the gloom to stand in front of her. Dalton Hale, her mind registered with numb surprise. She blinked her eyes a couple of times, expecting the sight to disappear like the fatigue-induced fantasy it must surely be.

  But he didn’t disappear. He moved closer through the gray predawn light, his gaze locked with hers. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She wanted to tell him she was fine. But she couldn’t push the words past her aching throat.

  His eyes softening, he opened his arms and waited.

  She didn’t mean to run, but she must have, for one second he was a couple of yards away and the next she was pressed tightly against his body, wrapped up in a fierce, comforting embrace.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I would never have suspected Thurman Gowdy of being part of this mess.”