by Dana Fraser
Marie’s head bobbed and tears threatened to overrun the brown gaze. “He was running a load up to Wisconsin when this happened. Please, can you help me look?”
“You think she was heading this way?” Samson asked.
“It’s the wrong direction to find the road, but she doesn’t know that and Jace saw her enter this part of the woods when he was watching out the window.”
Marie Lodge looked ready to wail.
“I shouldn’t have gone back for the rifle!”
Genevieve grabbed Marie firmly by the shoulders. “We’re going to spread out, keep each other in sight, but we’ll cover more ground that way.”
Her head jerked at Samson and Tonya. “Call her name, but not too loud.”
“Right,” Marie agreed. “We’ve had trespassers.”
She almost broke down again but pulled it together at the last second.
“Don’t worry,” Samson said, moving to the right of where the women clustered together. “We’ll find her.”
Some fifteen minutes later, Samson sat down on a tree stump, his lungs locking up and his vision graying. He leaned forward, hoping gravity would loosen the clump of phlegm in his chest.
When he lifted his head, he was looking at his second gun barrel of the day.
Familiar green eyes stared narrowly at his face. It wasn’t that he could even remember what color eyes Gabby Lodge had, but he would always remember her father’s.
“I’m Samson,” he softly offered as he held himself rigid. “Remember me?”
The little girl’s finger stroked carefully at the trigger.
“Your mom is looking for you,” he went on, keeping his voice as soothing as he could despite the body-wracking cough working its way up his chest and the way his bladder threatened to let loose at any second. “She didn’t say you had a gun.”
“For protection,” the girl whispered.
He nodded then asked, “You don’t know who I am?”
“You’re why daddy had to die,” the girl answered bluntly, her finger still resting on the trigger.
Damn! Samson thought. Move over, Elsa. There’s a new snow queen on the ice block.
“Your father was a hero, Gabby. He saved a lot of kids’ lives.”
Her face pinched and he could see her eyes begin to water.
“Can’t save mine. Can’t save Jay-Jay.” Lowering the gun, she clicked the safety on as tears flowed down her plump cheeks. “That’s why I have to find Uncle Cash.”
Chapter Three
Six levels below ground at the SHWG research facility, Major Larry Fields paused outside the door of Colonel Stephen Billows’ office and adjusted his tie while he brought his breathing under control.
It wouldn’t do to go into the Colonel’s office with bad news delivered while hyperventilating.
Lifting his hand to knock, Fields jerked it away as the door opened inward, Colonel Billows calmly standing before him.
Did the Old Man have cameras set up in the hall?
Stupid question. Every inch of the subterranean levels were monitored.
“Why are you standing outside my office like Christ with a four-by-four shoved up his ass?”
Fields’ mouth quivered as the image washed through him. Billows had unique ways of disciplining the soldiers under his command, but, as far as the Major knew, that particular scenario had yet to be enacted.
“We’ve received word regarding Dr. Carter,” he spit out.
With a flap of his fingers as he returned to his desk, Billows gestured for the major to enter.
“Any time now,” Billows rumbled as Fields waited for the colonel to sit down.
Right, Fields’ predecessor — his very much deceased predecessor — had told him to always be quick in reporting to the colonel.
Quick, but not hasty. His predecessor had taught him that, as well, but by example in the unfortunate incident that had led to the man’s court martial.
“We received positive confirmation that Dr. Carter returned to her family home in Evansville.”
“So she’s in custody…” reading the major’s terrified expression, Billows pulled a sheet of paper from his notepad and ordered Fields to start from the beginning.
“We…I mean, Major Charles…” saying the dead man’s name, Fields swallowed roughly before continuing. “Well, he put a team on the Evansville location and sent another to the reform school her brother was attending.”
He watched, a cold chill running down his spine as Billows wrote down Charles’ name then crossed it out with a sharp, unwavering line.
“It took a while for us…I mean…for Lieutenant Paisley to pin down which school the boy was at. It’s in Bon—”
“I know where it’s at,” Billows growled, writing down Paisley’s name then drawing a circle next to it.
From what Fields had witnessed, the circle was half of the completed symbol. Another fuck-up in the eyes and mind of Colonel Billows and a plus sign would fill the center of the circle to form the crosshairs on a rifle scope. Then Lieutenant Paisley would be taking a trip to Basement Level One where Specialist Owens burned the bodies.
“Anyone who had looked in Dr. Carter’s private file would have known where the boy was at.”
Not knowing if the Colonel was right, Fields bobbed his head anyway.
“They left one survivor at the school, a boy Dr. Carter ran over with her car. Broke his neck…he was still where she had dropped him in the middle of the drive when our team arrived and questioned him.”
Billows lifted an appreciative brow. “I had heard she was a fighter. Never saw any evidence until she gave Clary the slip. I hope the team didn’t waste any resources on the boy.”
Fields took another rough swallow. “No, sir.”
“What fuck up occurred in Evansville?” Billows prodded, his tone almost disinterested.
Fields knew better — the Colonel’s pen was hovering over the notepad ready to record another name.
“The field commander sent one of the Muslim details in. It seems there was some miscommunication as to what they were supposed to do.”
Putting down his pen, Billows made the rare gesture of getting up from his desk and coming face to face once more with his subordinate. “If she’s dead—”
“Sir, no…the Muslims are.”
“So you lost her?”
“N—” Fields sucked the answer back into his mouth. He’d seen Major Charles go down that road and knew where it ended. If he, Major Fields, did not have the girl in custody or under direct observation, she was lost. To respond otherwise was to lie to one’s commanding officer, at least when it came to Billows’ twisted rules.
“We picked her up on a drone,” Fields corrected. “We didn’t spot her brother, but there was another male with her. The picture isn’t clear because…”
He trailed off as the Colonel’s face began to purple with a familiar rage.
Right, Fields reminded himself. No excuses even if he wasn’t responsible for the quality of the drone’s camera or the light levels at the time the image was captured.
Always offer solutions, not excuses.
“We’re running his picture through the system now in case they are moving on to his home base,” Fields elaborated. “All the federal databases are online and at our disposal. The state databases are coming online more slowly. If he got so much as a dog license in the last five years, we will get a match.”
“A dog license?”
Fields’ tongue stuck to the roof of his suddenly dry mouth. Billows despised hyperbole, exaggeration, color commentary.
“That will be all,” Billows ordered as he sank into his chair and picked up the pen.
With a sharp salute, Fields backed from the room, his gaze fixed on the notepad as Billows began to write down another name.
Chapter Four
Waking on the hard ground, Cash shifted onto his side. Above him were two Mylar bla
nkets with a pocket of air between them. Above that was a proper lean-to made out of fallen brushes and branch, the entire structure meant to shield the heat signature of everyone inside it.
That was three humans and one fast growing Golden Retriever.
Feeling the scope on the AR-15 poking at his spine, Cash reached behind him and rotated the rifle. Next to him, Hannah stirred but didn’t wake.
The three of them formed a tight row of bodies, Cash on the outer edge of the shelter, Hannah in the middle and Ellis squeezed up against a tree trunk. Grub was by the kid, his head propped on Ellis’s neck like it was a pillow of the finest down.
There was just enough daylight filtering in for him to see the dog’s content face and Hannah’s.
Cash knew he shouldn’t stare at her, but the light was so soft and subdued. It made a perfect pairing with her expression.
Her lips were lightly parted. The small glimpse of the pearl white teeth and the gentle respiration escaping her did weird things to Cash’s body. It wasn’t simple attraction. Or it was far more than simple attraction.
She made him hard, he couldn’t lie about that, not to himself, at least. But she was beautiful enough to arouse any red-blooded male. For Cash, it was something more than her looks. It was the way she had covered more than a hundred miles on her own, having to stop every dozen or so miles to repair her vehicle so she could make it another dozen and then another dozen.
It was how she had walked into a den of junior psychopaths because that was what she needed to do to find her baby brother. It was how she loved her mother so much, a woman who was distant and cold based on Ellis’s assessment, that Hannah was willing to risk death to see if her mother was still alive.
All the while, she could have stayed at the research facility with armed guards who ostensibly wanted to protect her.
Of course, Cash could guess how that would have worked out. Even if she’d been forced to keep working, the brass in charge could have let the guards use her at times to keep the men from getting too restless. The threat of even worse abuse would be used as a heavy stick to keep her motivated in the lab.
Interrupting Cash’s thoughts as they turned dark, Hannah rolled, then stretched. The pert bottom wiggled as her hip sought to scratch out a few inches of dirt slightly less hard than concrete.
The wiggling brought her in contact with the base of Cash’s torso and he had to choke down a groan.
Lightly, he tapped her shoulder.
“I need out,” he rasped. “Can you get Sleeping Beauty to move his ass?”
Waking from the contact, Hannah smiled then ran the tip of her finger just below Ellis’s ear. A quiver ran through his body as he came awake.
“I hate when you do that,” he grumbled.
“Liar,” she teased. “At least you loved it when you were a little boy. Now get up. Cash has to go and so do I.”
“Naw,” Ellis answered, hoping to extract a little revenge. “I’m staying right here.”
“Then I’m going to pee on you,” she threatened.
The kid might have called her bluff, but Grub joined Hannah’s team with a soft whine and Ellis relented.
They crept out one by one, crouching or outright crawling while they listened for the sound of another drone.
“Do you think they’re gone?” Hannah asked, her voice subdued once they were out of the shelter.
The “they” she referred to was a conglomeration of danger that had tracked them from the bridge. The men who had died on the opposite bank of the river were not a part of “they,” or so Cash believed. But those men, all three dead by the time Cash’s party cleared the bridge, had likely been that first drone’s initial target.
Hearing the remotely piloted aircraft, Cash and the others had raced through the trees, trying to find the densest overhead canopy in case there was infrared.
But they couldn’t stop when they ran out of trees because the sound of Humvees could be heard a few hours after the drone had spotted them.
And if Cash had any original doubts that the drones were equipped with infrared, his theory they were using the technology was confirmed after he shot one down.
For three full nights and two days, his small trio had been running hard, taking only small breaks until they had built the lean-to at dusk the night before, its construction designed to throw off any infrared devices, whether they were in the air or on the ground in the hands of a soldier trying to track them on foot.
“We have to assume they are still around,” Cash answered, cautiously standing and peering at the surrounding trees. “The drone at least. It’s easiest for them to cover a lot of distance with those, scanning for anyone who might be hiding away from the towns.”
“Don’t even need the drones for that,” Ellis mused as he unzipped and pointed himself in the direction of a nearby tree trunk. “Infrared satellites will show them camps, especially if people are starting fires to cook or stay warm.”
“What about that Dakota fire pit?” Hannah asked before she disappeared around the other side of the same tree trunk.
“Not worth risking,” Cash said.
“Yeah,” Ellis answered, turning and smirking at Cash. “We’ll definitely have to make do huddling up together, as bothersome as that is.”
He finished with a waggle of his eyebrows, his face instantly sobering as Hannah returned to the shelter.
“Can we actually sit and eat before we get moving again?” she asked, her head tilted upward as she looked at Cash.
Throat too tight for words, he nodded.
Chapter Five
Stopping to wipe the sweat from his face, Banker Lee Petty eyeballed the train car he’d just loaded.
Hermes Garcia, El Jefe from the prison breakout, slapped him on the back.
“Stupid gabachos,” the man laughed, landing another slap on Banker Lee’s flesh. “Soy beans for weed, cocaine for corn! If strawberries were in season, I bet I could get those rich bunker sluts to give me a blow job.”
Garcia giggled, the pitch high and feminine despite his considerable size.
“Sorry about that bro, didn’t mean to mention blow jobs in front of you.”
Banker Lee filed the insult away as a four-man team of soldiers approached, their assault rifles carried at the ready. Stopping, they eyed Garcia. As far as Banker Lee had pieced together, the Mexican was some kind of lieutenant within the cartel. The cartel was helping supply the military — or to whomever the military was reporting — in exchange for drugs that had been seized by the DEA.
Everything on the train car had been stolen from a silo the night before. His prison uniform still stained with the farmer’s blood, Banker Lee had helped in the raid. It was the third raid in as many days, his body having no time to heal since Garcia had his men cart Banker Lee out of the cell and into one of their vehicles.
Apparently, when Garcia had said he would set Banker Lee free for killing Suarez, he had meant no more than an exchange of jailers and a little fresh air.
One of the soldiers jumped into the car, his rucksack hitting Banker Lee’s shoulder. The other three waited in a tightly knit circle and whispered at one another.
Two words strung together caught the convict’s attention.
Kentucky dam.
The soldier inside the train car jumped down, slid the door shut and reached into his pocket to pull out a combination lock. It had closed inside his pocket, forcing him to turn the dial, hitting in turn the three numbers that would open the lock.
15…23…7…
Banker Lee stopped listening to the soldiers as he kept running the numbers over and over in his head.
15…23…7…
The soldier slapped the lock on the train car’s door then nodded at his team. One reached into the rucksack of the other man and pulled out three tightly wrapped bricks that he placed in Garcia’s hands.
“Thanks for the corn.”
“Hey, maricón,” a soft, oily voice called
as Banker Lee spun the dials on the freight car’s combination lock half an hour after night fall.
Freezing, the convict looked at the man. It was the slim Latino with the cartel tattoos all over his face. His name was Fino, or maybe that was his nickname.
Banker Lee didn’t give a damn what his name really was.
“What? You don’t say nothing when somebody talks to you, marícon?”
Moving closer to the Mexican, the convict shrugged. His lips rolled then stopped in a tight line. The first two days, he had thought Fino was slurring “American,” but that didn’t explain the laughter that followed whenever he said it to Banker Lee.
When he found out Fino was calling him a fag, Banker Lee put him at the top of the list for whom he would kill the first chance he had.
There in front of the train car wasn’t a good time. He didn’t have a weapon on him, either. Garcia wouldn’t allow it, had him patted down whenever he was coming or going. He had kept an eye out for something sharp, no matter how small, after leaving the train car filled with corn. All the potential weapons he had spotted were too high risk to try to grab.
He was going to have to kill Fino the old fashioned way — with his hands.
“What are you doing out here?” Fino asked, pulling a flashlight out of his pocket and checking the lock. “Trying to pick it? Hermes will have your ass if you do — and not the way you want him to have it.”
Fino was a knife man. Banker Lee had learned that over the last three days. Fino didn’t like the loud noises firearms made, so he had become as deadly within short distances as any handgun.
Or so the cocky Mexican liked to believe.
“It’s not like that.” Banker Lee moved in close again, his much larger body blocking the Mexican’s right arm so he’d have trouble drawing the blade he kept holstered like a pistol against his left side.
Up the line, he could hear the squeal and whine of the train preparing to pull out. It had been fully loaded for almost two hours, but a diesel tanker had arrived less than an hour ago to finish fueling.
