Captured in Surrender

by Liliana Hart

  “I need to get back to work at noon,” she said. “I’ve got to catch Coltraine while he’s weak and not expecting me.”

  “It’s too dangerous with the water levels the way they are.”

  “That’s why I’ve got to go. Gotta catch the bad guys and put them away.”

  She went limp in his arms and he kissed her forehead while she slept. “You’d have made a hell of a cop, love.”

  Her breathing was even with sleep but she answered. “I wasn’t a good cop. Good cops don’t let people die.”

  And then she didn’t say anything else as sleep claimed her fully, but the words she’d spoken echoed over and over in his mind. Had she really been a cop? And if so, who had she let die? His mind wasn’t going to be at ease until he knew the answers.

  Chapter Six

  Lane dozed off and on for an hour before finally giving up and rolling out of bed.

  Naya was dead to the world, but he still moved quietly as he pulled a work shirt out of his closet along with a pair of clean jeans. He laced his boots and strapped on his weapon and then went into the other room to get his heavier raincoat.

  He saw the file lying on the table next to her bag and he didn’t worry about overstepping the boundaries of privacy one bit as he flipped it open to the papers inside. He studied the picture of Jackson Coltraine and read through the particulars of his crimes and arrest. He was considered armed and dangerous, and the thought of Naya going up against someone like that didn’t sit well with him. It wouldn’t hurt to start his own search and see what he came up with.

  He left her a note so she’d know he was downstairs at the station, and then flicked the lock as he closed his front door behind him. The awning that covered his doorway wasn’t built to keep off the driving horizontal rain, and he pulled his hood up as it immediately battered against him.

  The rain sliced at his face as he hurried down the stairs and slipped in the back door. He heard Cooper’s irritated voice on the phone as he walked toward the front room. He hung his jacket on the peg and waited until Coop got off the phone.

  “Damn, boy. You look like you’ve been rode hard and put away wet,” Cooper said with a grin. “I thought I told you to take some time to sleep.”

  Lane felt the flush of embarrassment in his cheeks. He’d never been one to share the details of his private life with his friends.

  “I got enough sleep to last me a while,” he said. “Who was that on the phone?”

  “That was Wally Wilkins telling me he was going to take his boat and round up some extra deputies.” Cooper rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair, propping a booted foot on the corner of the desk. “Damned fool is going to end up swamping the boat and then we’ll have to stop what we’re doing and go rescue the whole lot of them. He says we need more help and wants to know what to do if people start looting.”

  “Jesus,” Lane said, imagining the worst outcome.

  “That was pretty much my thought too. I assured him there was no reason for him to leave his house. He has a generator and plenty of food and water. But he told me if Rory Jenkins from down the road tried to come steal some of his provisions—”

  Cooper glared at him when Lane couldn’t quite hold back a snicker. “I shit you not the man said provisions, as if we’re in the middle of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. He said if Rory tried to steal from him, then he was going to shoot him dead as a doornail.”

  “He just wants an excuse to shoot Rory because Rory Jr. got Wally’s daughter, Jo Beth, in trouble and didn’t offer to marry her. Rory Jr. ran off to join the Army instead, and I’ve heard it’s because his father told him to take the first train out of town and take it fast.”

  Cooper winced and Lane nodded in agreement. If Rory Jr. ever came back to Surrender, they could have a real problem on their hands.

  “I can’t tell you how comforting it is to know that of the thousand people in this town, that over half of them are registered firearms users,” Lane said, shaking his head at the horror.

  “I wouldn’t feel too comfortable with those statistics, because you know the other half are unregistered users. This is the middle of nowhere. Everyone and their dog has a gun. Hell, even my wife keeps a gun in her desk at the library.”

  “That’s city property. Is that allowed?”

  “I gave her a special permit. Considering the drug trade that was happening only a few months ago around this area, I felt it was better to be safe than sorry.”

  “Speaking of better safe than sorry, I got a look at the paperwork on the skip Naya is tracing. Jackson Coltraine. He’s Caucasian. Brown and blue. About six foot. He comes from money, so he’s not going to be used to roughing it, and he caught the flu a few days back in South Dakota. He held a small-town doctor hostage and then bashed him over the head after he gave him some samples to treat the symptoms. It’s slowed him down quite a bit. And with the rain and flooding—”

  “You think he’s going to hide somewhere he can get easy access to food and stay dry,” Cooper said, finishing his thought.

  “Yeah. And with no way in and out around Mill Pond, I was thinking he might try to hit either the Coleman or Newton barns, or maybe those empty hunting cabins. It might be worth checking out.”

  “Agreed. But for God’s sake, don’t let it slip to anyone we’ve got a fugitive on the loose.”

  “Too late.” Lane scrubbed his hands over his face and wished he’d been able to get more sleep. “Naya showed his picture to Gladys when she stopped in the diner for lunch yesterday. Every person I ran into last night while trying to clear the roads and area mentioned it to me.”

  “Great. Now Wally will want to get his boat and gather a posse to hunt down Coltraine. Damned fool man makes me wonder how he keeps getting elected to the city council.”

  “His mother is one of the vote counters.”

  “Huh,” Cooper grunted. “I reminded Wally that he voted down hiring the extra deputies we need. We’re all running thin around here and they’re going to throw a fit at the overtime we’ll be putting in because of it. I’m going to force the issue and hire more deputies whether the city council approves or not. I don’t care if I have to get my whole damned family to apply the pressure. Being a MacKenzie still means something in these parts. So keep your eyes and ears open if you know of anyone who’d like a job in law and order where they’re grossly underpaid.”

  “You paint a hell of a picture,” Lane said, mouth quirking in a grin. “I can see now how you persuaded me to join the ranks.” The thought of hiring new deputies made him think of Naya and what she’d said in her sleep.

  “I need to ask you something,” he finally said to Cooper. If you couldn’t trust your closest friend, who else could you trust?

  “Is this about the bounty hunter?” Cooper asked, waggling his eyebrows. “You seem a little old to need pointers, but I’ll give it my best shot.”

  “I’m amazed every day that you managed to find the one woman on this earth who can put up with your juvenile sense of humor.”

  “Pretty great, isn’t it?” Cooper said with the smile of a man who was newly and happily married. “I’m just messing around. Don’t be so serious.”

  “That’s the second time I’ve been told that this morning. I find it an annoying assessment of my character.”

  “Greyson, you’re the best man I know next to my own brothers. You’re solid all the way through, and I know I can trust you no matter what the circumstances because you see through the bullshit and you’ll always do what’s right. You’re the person I’d call to watch my back if I needed it. And after everything you’ve been through, I’m surprised you’re not more serious than you are. Now tell me what’s bothering you about your bounty hunter.”

  Lane blew out a breath, feeling a little uncomfortable at Cooper’s praise—and it was high praise indeed. Cooper wouldn’t let just anyone cover his back.

  “Last year when Naya came into town looking for her brother, did you run a make on he
r?”

  Cooper’s eyebrows rose. “You’re asking me that after you come down here with that bite mark on your neck?”

  Lane stared at his friend without squirming under his scrutiny, and Cooper finally let out a sigh and dropped his feet from the desk to the floor.

  “Give me a second,” he said and went back into his office for a minute. When he came back out, he had a thick file in his hand and he passed it over. “I ran a make on her because that’s the kind of trusting guy I am. And you can bet she knows I ran her because she’s just that good. But I’m going to give you a little advice because I’m newly married and I clearly understand women.”

  Laughter burst from Lane’s chest before he could control it. “I’m sorry. Wasn’t it you who spent three days sleeping on the cot in the back room a couple of months ago because of how well you understand women?”

  “That was a slight—setback,” Cooper said with a wry smile. “I’ve also learned all about compromise, and I’m going to tell you straight out not to look in that file if you care for her as much as I think you do.”

  Lane let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. “I think I have to look. She mentioned something earlier. That she was a cop. That she’d let people die.”

  “Ask her about it,” Coop repeated.

  “You told me that I cut through the bullshit and that you always know I’m going to do what’s right. I do care about her. But I need to know if my instincts are off on this one and she’s not the woman I think and hope she is.”

  Cooper sighed and handed him the file, and Lane weighed it in his hands, knowing what he found inside could change everything. Or nothing. He flipped it open without regrets and was greeted by the sight of her picture taken at the academy. She looked much the same as she did now, only there was a naivety in her eyes in the photograph that had long since been lost.

  He read the overview of her short career and how it had ended, and his heart broke for her because obviously she was still suffering from the loss of her partner and the victim. She’d had no family left to lean on, and he couldn’t imagine that her line of work let her have time for close friends or lovers.

  “You should have listened to MacKenzie’s advice,” Naya said in a voice cold enough to give him frostbite. “If I’d wanted you to poke through my personal life, I would’ve given you the file myself.”

  Chapter Seven

  Lane and Cooper both looked up sharply because Naya had managed to get past both of their guards. She hadn’t made a sound coming through the back door, and there was no telling how much of their conversation she’d overheard.

  Cooper felt bad for his friend. If looks could’ve killed, Lane would be six feet under. One of the things he’d always appreciated most about Lane was his ability to never let others see what he was feeling or thinking. If the death rays Naya was shooting from her eyes bothered Lane in any way, he wasn’t showing it.

  “I saw a couple of boats hitched up to pickup trucks out back,” she said¸ turning her attention to Cooper. “Any chance I could borrow one so I can start tracking my skip? I’m thinking he’s probably hiding in a barn or an empty house. And he would’ve tried to get as far outside of town as possible before the storm hit to reduce his chances of being seen.”

  Cooper looked between Lane and Naya, both of them working so hard at trying to hide what they were feeling that they were missing what was staring them in the face. He let out a breath and decided he was too old for this. He’d found his woman. Everyone else was on their own.

  “Yeah, that’s the same conclusion we came up with.” Cooper moved to the maps tacked onto the wall and pointed to a spot with his finger. “These are your two most likely areas. He would’ve had a lot of miles to cover before the storm hit. Surrender is bigger in square miles than it looks, and the ranches cover hundreds of acres. The next town over is Myrna Springs, but it’s another two-hour drive with nothing in between, so I doubt he’d have kept going before the storm hit.”

  “Any empty buildings in that area?” she asked.

  “A few. Mostly old hunting cabins and a couple of abandoned barns. The people around here know flooding is a possibility during the rainy season so houses are built up on higher ground. The barns too. It’s just the overflow from the lakes that make the roads flood like this.”

  “What was he driving?” Lane asked, moving to stand beside them so he could see the maps.

  Naya kept her gaze on the map, trying to run scenarios in her head while not letting how close Lane was standing to her make her uncomfortable. “He stole a dark blue Tahoe in South Dakota. I found a gas station attendant who remembered seeing it once we crossed the border into Montana, and Gladys from the diner remembered seeing a dark SUV driving through town yesterday morning. There aren’t a lot of places to stop out here for him to boost another, so I have to assume he’s still driving the Tahoe.”

  “Any word of an abandoned vehicle sighting?” he asked Cooper, since he’d been on call all morning.

  “Nothing yet. But sometimes those back roads don’t have a car on them for days. There are hunting cabins here and here,” Cooper said, circling the spots on the map. “One of them is in the flood zone, so unless he’s an idiot, he’s probably not camped out there. But the other one has possibilities. You’ll definitely need a boat to get there though.”

  “I’ll take her,” Lane said. ‘You’ve got Wally and his posse to deal with.”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” Cooper said dryly. “Maybe I’ll just get them all to meet me at Duffey’s and get them drunk so I can arrest them.”

  “You always have the best ideas. I guess that’s why you make the big bucks.”

  Cooper grinned and slapped Lane on the shoulder.

  “I don’t mean to interrupt your male-bonding time, but I don’t need a guide. I can take the boat and be back before it gets dark.”

  “Sorry, sweetheart. Those vehicles are police property. So that means you’re stuck with me.”

  Her smile was sharp as a blade, and Lane felt the cut from where he stood. “Let’s get moving then. If we’re lucky, I can be back in New York by this time tomorrow.” The words were meant to slice, as if what they’d shared between them had been nothing.

  “Let’s get moving then. I’d hate to get in your way.” Lane grabbed his rain jacket and tossed a spare to Naya, and then he dug around in the closet for rain boots that came up to the knee. “You’ll need these or you’ll be looking for your shoes in the muck.”

  “You guys don’t mind me,” Cooper said, taking a seat in Lane’s desk chair. “I’m just going to sit back and enjoy the show.”

  “I’m certainly glad it’s not illegal for me to do this,” Naya said, flipping up her middle finger at Cooper. He cracked out a laugh as she tossed the door open and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  “I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Lane said, following her out into the storm.

  * * * *

  Water and mud slushed up from the tires of his Bronco and the wipers swished frantically in the thankless task of clearing the windshield.

  The trek from downtown Surrender to the country roads was a slow and painstaking process. Limbs had fallen across the roads, and debris, like trashcans and other items found in yards, had been carried some distance from their homes.

  “Why did you say you hadn’t been a good cop?” Lane asked, breaking the silence since it looked like they were going to be stuck together for a while. “I know you’re pissed that Cooper ran a background check on you and that I read it, but I didn’t see anything in that paperwork that said you’d been anything other than good at your job.”

  “You had no right looking into my private life. And I know what kind of cop I was better than anything written in those papers. But it’s done, Lane. And I don’t want to talk about it or rehash the past.”

  She turned her head and looked out the side window, and Lane gripped the steering wheel a little tighter in frustration. Also in trepidatio
n, because what he was about to say hadn’t been spoken before. Not even to Cooper.

  “I was career military,” he said softly, his voice barely audible over the rain. “I’m thirty-six, by the way. I enlisted just after 9/11 and hit the ground running. I was a Ranger, so my unit was put in some pretty sticky situations. Over and over again we’d be deployed and come back as a whole unit. When my commanding officer took retirement, his job was offered to me.”

  Naya had turned some in her seat so her attention was focused on him. Lane kept his eyes on the road, sticking toward the high ground and looking for a good place to unhitch the boat. They wouldn’t be dry and warm for much longer.

  “It’s harder when you’re in command,” he said. “The sense of responsibility weighs on you. Your only thought going in and out is to make sure your men survive and to leave no one behind. Three years ago my unit was deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan. There were eight of us doing a routine sweep when we heard yells—terrified screams of women and children and shouting from men. Militant leaders had set a trap for us, using children as bait, though we didn’t know at the time that the children were their own—ones they were already training to join their ranks.”

  He felt the sympathy—the pity—in her stare, but she remained silent.

  “The terrorists had gathered the children in the middle of the street, holding guns to their heads while they yelled for us to come out and see what we had caused. My men followed procedure and surrounded them. My sharpshooters were in place, and I’d called for an extra unit to come back us up. But one of my rookies didn’t cover himself as he should have—a simple mistake he’d never get the chance to correct. They’d placed shooters at the top of the buildings to pick us off, and they took the shot as soon as they saw him.”

  Lane would’ve given anything for a drink—something to wet his throat so the words came out easier, and something to burn on the way down so it reminded him he was still alive. But there was nothing, so he forged ahead.