“Not sure what all she gave you. But he ditched his cell and his truck.”
“Guessing you had a bead on him?”
“Turned on his location for Snapchat,” I said sarcastically.
“Say what you will, but I find a lot of dumbasses like that,” Travis shrugged.
“Even on black market values, he got at a lot of cash in cattle before that last load. That cash has to be somewhere.”
“You’re assuming he kept it all.”
“He has spending habits of late that don’t match his salary. He blew a good portion of his payday already. Just say he got a third after paying off his partners, most of its gone already. But he’s not stupid, he would have a cash stash in case things went south. I imagine he took it already, he felt us closing in or else he wouldn’t have tried making such a reckless hit this morning.”
“We’re trying to find this girl that was there. Any clue who she is?”
“Destiny has an alias, nothing real. We’re going with con woman and a good one at that. She got away too?”
“Your boys didn’t take it down with a finesse of police protocol.”
“What about the cattle? Did they make it out with any?”
“One semi load. It must be stashed locally. We shut down the highways, we’ll find it.”
“Yeah,” I said and stepped into Brad’s bedroom.
It was shockingly neat. I didn’t take Brad for the kind of guy that had to have everything in its place and spotless except for his truck. Nothing here seemed out of line, it didn’t appear that Brad had packed this morning.
“Gloves,” Travis said tossing a pair at me. I obliged and pulled on the latex gloves and knelt next to the bed.
“What are you looking at?” Travis asked.
“Brad didn’t leave in a hurry this morning. He had every expectation of coming back until things went sideways with the herd. Look around, nothings packed. Brad’s on the run and he doesn’t have a lot of options. This isn’t organized. Brad gets spooked and Amelia dies.”
“We need answers.”
“No shit,” I grabbed the mattress and flipped it over a little too forcefully and sent it flying against the back wall.
“What the…” Travis started, and I knelt and snatched up the envelope that was left on the box springs.
“Not the first room I’ve tossed,” I said and pulled open the envelope. “Has this asshole not seen a TV show even? Under the beds the first place anyone looks.”
“Cash and IDs. Passports. Carter O’Riley. Shit’s fake,” I tossed them to Travis.
“Good fakes though.”
“If he plans on leaving the country still, he’s gonna need new documents. Who can make them passable and on the quick.”
“I was going to ask you,” Travis smarted off.
“I do know who we can ask…” I looked at Travis. “I’m calling her either way.”
Travis blew out a sigh. “Is it going on your tab or mine?”
***
“You two are going to be able to set me up for retirement at this rate,” Dez said when we called her.
“Every time I call you I hope it will be the last,” Travis told her.
“I know, I know Travis, that’s what you said last week,” we heard Dez’s fingers click on her keyboard. “I’m doing what I can Callaghan. I am. I haven’t gotten anything on my end yet though. Got a direction to point me?”
“Brad had fake papers under the name Carter O’Riley. Excellent papers, no one would take a second look.”
“I’m not a nark, boys,” Dez started but the typing never stopped.
“Dez,” I growled.
“Hold your damn horses pretty boy. Arkansas Dan. Don’t ask, it’s what he goes by online. Used be a damn good hacker. Couple years back he changed direction, started rebuilding identities. He’s crossed paths with this Felicity O’Dell before. Same town, same hotel, same time sort of shit. I suspect that he’s who made them.”
“Arkansas Dan got a name?”
“You didn’t get it from me but he’s a real prick and I’d like to see this Amelia back whole. I ain’t got the energy to get wrapped up in a Devil’s war… Leslie Tinker. He’s a slimy prick and a slimy prick whose signature code is streaming live from Laredo. Texting you an address now,” and Dez was gone.
“Let me go after Dan?” Travis asked.
“Fine,” I agreed. “I’m sending a few patches to scour the neighborhood just in case he makes a break for it.”
“Fine.” Travis looked at me as if he was confused by how easily I gave in but didn’t question it and headed for the door.
I stepped out the back door of the foreman house and headed across the yard as I dialed Dez back in. “Tell me you got something else. On the truck or that Felicity O’Dell bitch.”
“Truck’s signal went off the grid, however, I’m scanning for it constantly. This Felicity bitch, Josẽ was able to get me a decent enough picture to run facial recognition but if she has had plastic surgery I might not get a hit. I got eyes on the room she kept at the hotel, she’s not checked out yet but that don’t mean shit. Speedy dropped some equipment, I’m remote accessing the camera’s in the lobby and her room. I can’t keep eyes on it constantly, but I did put a silent alarm on her door. That key card gets swiped my place is lighting up like a fuckin’ carnival.”
“Stay with it.”
“Yup.”
Tate came out of the back porch towards me. “I can’t sit here and not do anything! Not in that house with … with Mom.”
“Right now, our best bet is finding the cattle truck.”
“Cattle can stay on a trailer twenty-four-hour easily. Double that if you don’t give a shit. That truck can go as long as they have fuel,” Tate said, and I headed back inside towards the kitchen table.
“Except within thirty minutes highway patrol was on the lookout for a cattle trailer. Travis thinks they holed up somewhere along the way,” I grabbed a map and drew a circle around the Homeland.
“That cattle truck is within that circle. We need to find where they would be hiding out. Cattle aren’t quiet, and that truck isn’t easy to hide.”
“There’s a warehouse, used to be a trucking depot, about nine miles East of the ranch line. Back on Sweetgrass road. It’s been abandoned for years,” George stood at the kitchen doorway.
“Tate take a team,” I ordered, and my VP opened the door to yell for men.
“I’m going with him,” Fabio kissed his wife. “Be safe, keep him in check.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too Mrs. Ames.”
“I’m going with you too,” George said, he stood a little taller as he said it.
“No Gramps. You need to be here with Mom and Grams,” Tate told him.
“This is my mess. My ranch caused this. I raised Brad when your uncle split. Had I done a better job of it… now he has Amelia. I don’t think he could bring himself to hurt her…” George trailed off. “Get me my rifle, Tate. Your sister had the .30-.30, bring me my .223, the Remington.”
I looked at the window. Tate didn’t jump on his bike, he climbed in the cab of his Gramps’ old pickup on the passenger side.
“How are you doing?” Destiny asked from where she stood behind him.
“I’m numb. I should have stayed, shouldn’t have left her side.”
“You couldn’t have talked her out of going down there anymore than I could have.”
“But I would have tried!” I shouted and slammed my fist into the wall, knocking off a chunk of the old plaster. “I should have been there. I promised to end this with her. To keep her safe! When he took her, she should at least have had the comfort of knowing I was coming for her.”
“And you still are! You know I understand the hell you are going through!”
“Fabio laid in a hospital bed. You knew he was getting the best care that there was. You knew where he was! You knew no more harm would come to him! I don’t know where she is Destiny! I don�
��t know if she’s even… if she’s even…” I collapsed into the kitchen chair and covered my face with my hands.
I felt so damn old. I was twenty-nine. When had time slipped away? Amelia… she was just a girl. Twenty-three. She shouldn’t have been out there wielding that rifle in the first place. Was she safe? Was she scared?
I felt my sister wrap her arms around my shoulder. “Come on. We can’t fall apart now. We still got work to do.”
“I know. I know...”
Chapter Thirty-One
Amelia
I could feel before I could hear or see. And all I felt was pain. A throbbing that had engulfed my head from the back of my skull and wrapped around me in waves. It took several minutes of straining, blinking, attempting to force myself through the agony and the initial terror before I could make out what was going on around me. Before I could remember just what had happened.
Rustlers. A fight. Brad.
I moaned miserably. I hadn’t meant to, it kind of escaped. I was sitting up in a chair. If that’s what you could call it. Glancing around the only light that currently illuminated the dim and damp place I was being held was coming from below the at least four-foot-high windows.
The sun was sinking. How could that even be? It was evening? Sunset was just before eight now. And by the looks of it, it was after seven. I tried hard to think of a timeline. It had been just about noon when Destiny and I came across the rustlers and everything had happened so quickly.
Seven, I had been out cold for almost seven hours. I felt lucky to know who I was and what was going on if I took a blow to the head like that. A person should have brain trauma after being knocked out for that long. Though, one could argue I had more than a few brain cells screwed up before going into the day.
Taking on twelve cattle rustlers. What was I thinking? What was Destiny thinking? Houston had told me no amount of cattle were worth our and my men’s lives. What did I do? Take his sister and go in at six to one odds. Destiny had been a solider, she had seen action in the desert and in the Texas streets, she could handle herself. Me? I might be good with that rifle, but I had no idea what I was doing in a gun fight.
I sucked in a deep breath as the memory shook through me. I hadn’t been scared at the time, damn adrenalin. I don’t know why I thought I was invincible. To stubborn, to many John Wayne westerns, too much time with the Bastards. A wave of agony ripped through me as I thought of the Bastards. I wondered if Destiny and the rest of my boys had made it out okay? My boys. Prior to a few days ago the only one in that crew I knew had been my brother Tate. Funny how quick people can become so important.
I sucked in a deep breath and coughed. My chest ached, and my mouth was past the cotton phase and into cement dust phase now. I licked my lips, a busted bottom lip but it appeared my teeth were all in place.
My hands were bound behind my back, no real surprise there, and my feet to the legs of the chair. Bailing twine. It would burn my wrist like hell, but it wasn’t overly strong if I needed to fight out of it. God, I hoped I didn’t need to fight at this point, the fight was all drained out of me.
I squeezed my eyes tightly. Maybe, just maybe when I opened them it would be all okay. The cops would show up, something, anything positive would happen. Perhaps this was all a nightmare. Maybe I hit my head and was in a coma. That could explain a lot. Anything besides being kidnapped by my asshole cousin.
After what seemed like the longest few minutes of my life, I opened my eyes slowly, even that amount of movement giving me a small dizzy spell.
Help might come, but I needed to hold my own and not be entirely useless. I was in a decent sized building, based on the specs and the door on the end I would guess it was a warehouse or maybe even one of the old semi- garages as the smell of old rubber tires and fuel lingered in the air.
I strained to listen. Maybe we were near a highway or main road. No car sounds. But I heard cows. Their bellows were soft sounding and the faint banging that came with them told me they were still trailered. They weren’t in my part of the building, but they were close. The first semi-truck they had been loading, the one that got away, it must be the one that was here.
They couldn’t have gotten far from Homeland. No matter how the MC ran things, they would have had to call the cops and the cops would have shut down the roads. Brad and his crew would have stashed the cattle, at least long enough to come up with an escape plan.
The door in front of her banged open and closed and I recognized the stride of my cousin’s boots striking the old concrete floor before I was able to see him clearly in the dimming light.
“See the tranquilizer wore off,” Brad’s voice was the same as it has always been but somehow it seemed even more emotionless than it had with the herd. As if all his humanity were suddenly gone.
I processed what he said. Tranquilizers. We had kept dosages at the ranch before, loaded up to use to shoot at injured or enraged cattle and subdue horse’s if needed. Just wonderful. If he had used one dosage on me, Brad likely had another ready to go. If he kept me doped up, my chances of survival, let alone escape grew slimmer and slimmer.
Tate will be looking for you by now. Destiny and Fabio too. They will come, for you… HE will come for you.
I let the thoughts of being rescued run wildly through my head. Everything I knew about the Bastards told me they wouldn’t stop fighting until they found me. Tate and Destiny wouldn’t at least. Destiny had an army at her disposal… my thoughts glinted towards Houston for a moment.
Would he come? Would he rescue me?
I had run him off the ranch, told him I didn’t need him anymore. That I was fine. But I gotten myself kidnapped not three hours later. Surely, he knew by now, but would he care? Tate was good, Destiny was better, especially when paired with her husband, but I knew my best chance at surviving was Houston Callaghan. And I desperately needed him.
“Got anything to say for yourself?” Brad asked as he stood directly in front of my, arms crossed, staring down at me. He was doing his best to appear imposing, to strike the fear into me he hadn’t been able to his entire life.
“Just wondering if you made peace with what you’ve done,” I croaked out. My voice barely audible as I forced the words.
“Made peace with what I’ve done? There’s no one to stop me little girl! You think your brother and those big bad bikers will come save you? You’re nothing but leverage until I can get out of here. The second I’m in the clear, you become just a piece of meat they’ll dump in a body bag. If they find you at all.”
I half-grinned. Brad was always an idiot. He made rash decisions, never seemed to think things through. Rushing the cattle rustling in broad daylight, kidnapping me. Brad was into instant gratification. What little planning he had done went out the window when he put the gun to my head and pushed me in the back of his truck.
“Here’s the thing Brad. You’re nothing but a half bit rancher. This ain’t the wild west anymore. You’ve never had blood on your hands. Houston, Destiny, Tate, you won’t be the first body they drop. You kill me, and I guarantee you, they will come for you. Think Houston Callaghan will let you live? I’m his old lady, he’ll skin you alive just for starters.”
I had no idea where the guts to put up such a farce came from. But it earned me a hard-open slap across the face. I laughed through the sting. Brad couldn’t even get up the balls to punch me in the jaw. He had no stomach for torture, for fighting. He had always just been a coward with a big mouth and nothing to back it up with.
“You think I’m just going to let you walk out of here?”
“No. You never were that smart. I think you’re scared. You can’t go home. Homeland, it’s gone. All of it. Gramps, Grams, they won’t forgive you for this. Hell, no one knows where your folks are. What about that pretty-little thing you shacked up with? Felicity, right? Yeah, I know about her. You think she bailed? You’re just a con for her. Felicity O’Dell doesn’t exist. She’s just a fraud.
“Maybe she was com
ing for you when they found her. Rumor has it the new Mr. and Mrs. Ames are quite the masters with a blade. Wonder how many pokes and prods she took before she gave you up.”
Well, Brad grew a pair of balls. The blood taste was an unwelcome familiarity. I spat towards my cousin and was happy to find no teeth came out.
“You’re a smartass bitch. I’m actually going to be happy to put an end to you.”
“Gramps should have smothered you in your crib. Turn your back on your flesh and blood for money!”
“You have no clue what I’m doing this for!”
Brad stalked away and yanked a cell phone from his pocket. Had to be a burner, it wasn’t the Samsung he typically carried. I watched him punch in a number as he headed for the door. He was calling Felicity and he didn’t want me to know when she didn’t answer.
I took the moment to twist my wrists. The small loosely twisted fibers of the bailing twine I could probably saw through with my thumb nail if I had the time. It would hurt like hell, but it would work.
I got a few pieces of the fiber in between my fingers and started twisting, ripping, pulling and sawing. Brad would be back soon enough, and I would feel much better if I had a fighting chance.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Houston
“Yo!” Destiny yelled and banged on the kitchen wall. I was standing and talking to Alec. They had rolled in not ten minutes before and we were going through a quick download. Eight hours now Amelia was missing and every minute that passed, the chances of me seeing her alive grew slimmer and slimmer.
“Travis just called, Arkansas Dan says that O’Dell reached out not long after shit went sideways this morning. Wanted new documents drawn up for Brad. He told her he couldn’t do it in a clinch. Said he’s got a friend who can get them across the border, no questions asked though.”
“Fuckin’ coyotes.”
“Exactly. Dan said he would make the arrangements as soon as Felicity paid him his finder’s fee.”
“That’s all Travis had?” Alec asked her.
Houston Callaghan: The Devil's Bastards MC Page 22