by Jay Nadal
“Hey. I don’t want no trouble, boys,” Cade said, lifting his hands off the wheel. “I’m just lost, that’s all.”
“Where are you headed?” asked the Oriental.
Cade got out of the truck and offered his phone. “Here. Got it on Maps.”
Oriental took the phone, getting no closer to Cade than he had to.
“One of your truck drivers told me I was on private property. That was the first I knew about it.”
“There was a locked gate down at the highway.”
“Didn’ see it.” Cade said, offering a look of confusion.
Oriental was scrutinizing the phone. “You’re on the wrong side of the river, pal,” he told Cade. “Mount Dexter is over there.” He pointed east.
“You heading for the Dexters’?” Square Head queried.
“Sure am,” Cade replied truthfully. He had been holding his hands up to this point, and as he half turned to address Square Head, his jacket lifted enough to show the gun in his jeans.
“Weapon, partner,” Oriental said, drawing his own gun. Square Head followed suit, edging around the back of Cade’s truck with small careful steps. His eyes never left Cade, his feet feeling their way in front of him. When he was close enough, he snatched the weapon from Cade and tossed it across the road.
“Yeah, same as you guys,” Cade said as though nothing had happened. “If I was going to use it, you two would be dead by now. You couldn’t have got your guns out before I took out at least one of you. I had two or three opportunities to take you down.”
He shook his head, dripping nonchalant contempt.
“Who you going over there to see?” Oriental asked. He didn’t react to the scorn. Real pro.
“French. Charles French. He’s the one paying me, anyway.”
“You a contractor?” Square Head asked.
Cade nodded. “Sure am. Same as you guys.”
A look passed between the two. “Military?” Square Head asked.
“Cop,” Cade replied.
Square Head nodded. “Had a feeling.”
Abruptly, he clicked the safety on his weapon and put it back in the holster. “Sure ain’t a protestor, that’s for damn sure.”
Cade laughed. “Got that right.”
Square Head jogged across the road and retrieved Cade’s gun.
“Technically, local muscle shouldn’t be on NorEl property. Janger wants no one making connections to the local boys over there on Mount Dexter. So stay on that side of the river and don’t say anything about NorEl to anyone. Understood?”
“Sure. Hey, no one explained anything to me. I just got a call from a friend of friend, y’know how it goes. Some guy called French needs contractors.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Oriental told him. “Everything around here is secret. You’d think they were digging uranium or something.”
“Better get going. Take the highway back to town and head south on the east side of the river this time,” Square Head told him. “Maps’ll get you there.”
They went back to their truck. Oriental gave Cade’s truck an amused look as he passed. “That’s if the truck gets him there,” Cade heard him say. Square Head laughed.
They reversed, turned, and roared off back up the track. Cade waved away the dust. Sweat drenched his back. So, there was a connection between NorEl and the Dexters. French was part of the operation, whatever it was. NorEl’s heavies knew about him.
Were the Dexters investing in the Shell’s Ridge mines? If the project would generate the income Brandon and Beth thought it would, it appeared a good investment. Property prices in the area would go up. He couldn’t understand the people spending their day chanting slogans outside the town hall. Okay, it might make the countryside dirtier. Mining was a dirty business. But given the choice between a town that was hemorrhaging jobs and money, and a thriving community where everyone had a job or the chance of a job… No-brainer.
There was something about the property bouncing around his head. He sat in the truck for a minute or two and watched the intermittent sunlight sparkle off the river. He let his mind wander. It was a trick he had learned as a cop. Hunches were subconscious things, instinct. You had to put your conscious mind into neutral sometimes to let things float to the surface from beneath. Nothing came now. There was something lurking there, though. Something in what he had heard and seen. A missing piece that would reveal a little more of the whole puzzle. But he couldn’t pinpoint it. He let it go.
After rejoining the highway, he headed south instead of north. He had no intention of heading back through town. Instead, he followed the winding Rockford road as it worked its way along the Grey Valley toward the next town along. He had seen another bridge, five miles downriver, the Golding Bridge. From there he could work his way back up on the east side and then to Mount Dexter. He hadn’t thought through what he was going to do when he got there. It was more a roll of the dice.
It took an hour to find the Golding Bridge. The winding of the road offset the distance. The bridge looked newer than the one in town. It was a suspension bridge that crossed the river on tall white concrete supports. Two pylons rose from the center of the bridge holding aloft steel cables anchored into concrete blocks on either side. On the east side of the river, the floodplain was narrower. Wooded hills jutted toward the water, and the road wove up and over them.
The afternoon sun cast broad bars across his face. Nearly two o’clock. The woods looked shady and inviting. The view west across the Grey Valley was spectacular. It would have been a pleasant drive but for where he was headed. The phone sat on the passenger seat, and he glanced at it from time to time. He rarely used satnav, and when he did, it was just the map. He couldn’t stand the glacial, transatlantic persona and hated being given directions almost as much.
Up ahead, he saw another set of gates. These were of rough-hewn logs and definitely closed. A sign on the gates read Private Property with no hint as to whose private property it was. Cade continued past the gates, looking for a good place to stop and double back. He supposed the locals didn’t need to be told whose house lay beyond those gates. Cade found a spot a hundred yards up the road where a fallen tree had been dragged to the shoulder. He passed the tree and then reversed behind it, placing its bulk between the truck and the road. The body of the tree was big enough to screen the truck. Beyond the tree, the ground fell away in a gentle slope that ended in an abrupt drop. There was no undergrowth to speak of beneath the sunlight-hogging pines, and each tree stood in its own island of space.
Keeping to the trees, he retraced his steps toward the gate. He could see the bulk of Mount Dexter looming ahead of him. The road had gone uphill after passing the Dexters’ gate, and the terrain offroad was much steeper. Cade slid through a carpet of pine needles and moss, bracing himself against tree trunks that grew out of the hillside at acute angles.
The gate was on his left. A steep-sided gully cut across his path, carrying a small stream down the hill toward the river on his right. The pines petered out here, replaced by smaller, more tangled trees and thicker undergrowth. He leapt the gully, crashing into the bushes on the opposite. There was no fencing to delineate the Dexter property, just the gate. Who would dare trespass anyway? Cade moved as quickly as the undergrowth allowed, upward and away from the road. He kept low and stopped a few times, listening for cars on the road.
He took the gun from the back of his jeans, weighing it in his hands. Dangerous to walk in there without it. Even more dangerous to walk in with it. There was already an arrest warrant out for him. If they caught him trespassing and armed with an unlicensed weapon, there would be no chance of helping Beth. He’d be judged too high a risk for bail and locked up for months until a trial date. He took out the clip and hurled the gun and clip both away from him into the trees.
Cade continued through the woods for another half an hour until the house appeared up ahead. He crouched behind the cover of a deadfall that rose twice his height. Through the trees ahead, he could make
out the gray walls of the house and open ground in front. Two cars were pulled up there. Off to the side of the house, he could see a lawn ending at a white-painted fence on the edge of a precipice. A woman stood at the fence, smoking. In front of the house, two men were getting out of one of the cars. One of them was the suited man from the station house. Chief Joseph had called him Charles—Charles French, then. The other was Joseph himself. He looked uncomfortable in a pressed blazer and slacks but waved jovially to someone over at the house.
Time to roll those dice. Cade took his phone out of his back pocket and dialed Rissa. This time he chose the camera icon for a video call.
“Hey…” Rissa began. She was holding the phone up for a more flattering angle. Cade could see she was in a coffee shop. She was slim and dark-haired, with delicate Asian features.
“Shut up and listen,” Cade whispered. “You want a story, you’re about to get one. I’m about to do something really dumb, and you being on the other end of this call is probably the only thing that will stop me getting killed here.”
She pulled the phone closer, frowning down at Cade. “I’m listening.”
“Can you record this?”
“Sure I can. I’m a reporter. I record all my calls.”
“Whatever happens, don’t hang up. Don’t ask any questions; just stay visible.”
She nodded once. He could see she had picked up a pen in her right hand and turned over to a clean page of the ever-present notebook.
“I’ve got your back, Tommy.”
“Sure hope so.”
Cade moved out from the cover of the deadfall, headed toward the road. He made no attempt to move quietly, and after half a dozen steps, there was a shout from the direction of the house. Cade stepped out onto the road and into the full visibility of the Dexter house.
17
“Freeze!”
Cade could have laughed. He didn’t. The two men pointing guns at him looked too serious. How many times had he shouted that as a cop? He stood still. There were two men in front of him, neither of whom were part of the crew Jimmy Dexter had brought to the Collins Autos shop to shake down Brandon. They looked like locals. Jeans, plaid shirt on one, T-shirt on the other, heavy boots. Both handled their firearms with practiced proficiency.
There was none of the posturing he was used to seeing from young gangbangers back in Houston. No holding the gun sideways or making big hand movements that took the gun off target for whole seconds, long enough to get shot by the person they were trying to hold their gun on. But they stood too close together, making it easier to shoot them both in quick succession if that had been his intention. They also looked away, back over their shoulders, checking for orders. Locals given training. He wondered if it came from NorEl’s security consultants.
A man with gray hair stood on the porch of the house with a hunting rifle in one hand, held barrel-up on his hip.
“This is private property,” he called out. “Mind telling me what you’re doing sneaking around in my woods?”
“Thought if I just walked up the road, I might not get this far.”
“You wouldn’t. Why do you want to?”
“I want to talk to Billy Dexter. That you?”
One bodyguard with a gun growled and muttered words below his breath. His teeth showed, and his fingers flexed on the gun grip.
“I’m William Dexter. That’s Mr. Dexter to you.”
“I don’t know you well enough to pay that kinda respect, Billy.”
“Watch your mouth,” came another growl from one of the guards.
Cade didn’t bother to look at the man. He lifted the phone a little higher.
“Introduce yourself, Rissa,” he said.
All eyes moved to the face on the screen.
“Hi. I will not tell you my name, because I don’t think that would be smart. But I’m a freelance journalist currently based in Houston, but with the name of every editor in the Houston, LA, San Francisco, and Dallas metropolitan areas in my contacts list. And I can get stories into the biggest dailies in all of those cities. And have. I’m also making notes. Enough said?”
“Thanks, Rissa.” Cade looked up at Dexter, then at the two bodyguards. “Understood?”
“Of course. I take my privacy seriously. I’m a businessman. And this is private property. You were never in any danger unless you posed a threat. Put your guns away.” He directed the order at the two gunmen. They tucked their firearms away behind waistbands. One of them cracked his knuckles as though, deprived of his gun, he was readying himself for hand-to-hand combat, which amused Cade.
“And who are you, and why are you on my property?” Dexter asked, leaning the rifle on the railing of the porch. The barrel came to rest pointing a few degrees to Cade’s left. It wouldn’t take much adjustment to be pointed at him.
“My name is Tommy Cade.”
“Never heard of you.”
“Your sons have.”
“My sons. You have business with them? In that case, you’re in the wrong place. They don’t live here any longer, and I’m retired.”
“That a fact?”
“Yes. That is a fact.”
“Well, your boys have been carrying on the family business. And that’s why I’m here. My sister is Beth Collins.”
“Ah, so you’re the man who beat Jimmy’s friends.”
“Defending my sister who they were about to horsewhip.”
“Horsewhip? Come on now, Mr. Cade. My boys can be a little wild—boys will be boys—but they wouldn’t go that far.”
“I was there. I saw what their goons did on your orders.”
“You’re mistaken. I don’t give orders to anyone. And I don’t have… goons. You make me sound like the mafia. My family are American, not Italian.”
A burly figure emerged from the house, holding a bottle of beer. It was Chief Joseph.
“Everything all right out here, Mr. Dexter?”
Cade noted the title and the deferential tone. Despite his rank, the chief was not an equal to Billy Dexter.
“Just the man. Chief Joseph, perhaps you could send for a squad car. We seem to have a gatecrasher.”
“Nothing would give me greater pleasure.” He reached into a back pocket and pulled out a phone.
“You can use the phone in the house,” Dexter blurted.
Chief Joseph hesitated over the apparent dismissal. Dexter turned and looked at him.
“Yeah, right. I’ll call from the house.”
Dexter turned back to Cade.
“I’m intrigued as to why you would come here. You must have realized it would be dangerous for you.”
“Why’s that?”
“You hurt friends of mine. And friends of my friends.”
“You put my brother-in-law in the hospital.”
“I did nothing.”
“You were extorting money from them. Bleeding them dry until all they had left was their business. Then you can hand it over to Charles French and the SwiftSure Savings and Loan.”
Dexter didn’t reply to begin with. His face was expressionless and his eyes like stones. He started walked down the porch steps, rifle held casually at his side. He held it around the stock just behind the trigger, barrel pointing ahead of him.
“You say that, I suspect, because you thought it would produce a reaction. I can’t think why. Charles French is my attorney.”
“And SwiftSure owns several properties which you lease from them, or rather Green Eagle does.”
“Green Eagle? Never heard of it.”
“That a fact?”
The front doors flew open and the sharp-suited man from the station house appeared. He clattered down the steps in his expensive shoes, wiping his mouth. He looked from Cade to the phone he held up.
“William. You don’t have to say anything.”
The look he drew from Dexter should have sliced his throat from ear to ear. “I don’t need legal advice, Charles. Go back inside.”
“Evening, counselor,�
� Cade said amiably. He hadn’t known the man was a lawyer, but took his lead from Dexter’s words. The first name slotted into place. Charles French, owner of SwiftSure Savings and Loan.
“Mr. Dexter and I were just talking about tax evasion,” Cade continued. He hadn’t been about to say that. Not just yet. But he realized that this was likely the Charles French who Rissa had discovered. French looked alarmed, his eyes darting from Dexter to Cade.
“Neither I nor my client are or have been, involved in any illegal activity.”
Dexter rounded on him. “Charles, I’ve told you once, don’t make me tell you a second time—get back into the house.” Now the gun pointed unequivocally at the lawyer, and Dexter’s finger was on the trigger. “I decide when I’m paying you for your legal opinion. Jake, escort Mr. French back inside and make sure he stays there.”
One of the bodyguards turned and grabbed French by his right arm, hauling him back up to the house.
“One more thing, Mr. French,” Cade called out. He was enjoying himself.
French turned at the name.
“Nothing,” Cade said, grinning. “Thank you.”
“Get him outta here!” Dexter bawled. “And you, Mr. Cade. You trespass on my property. You accuse me of money laundering and extortion. You attack my son and his friends. My grandfather would have killed you for just one of those things.”
“Your grandpa was a crook like you. I’ve met men like him.”
“He was a strong man. He took what he needed. In this life, if you don’t take what you want, you get nothing.”
“Sure don’t. And I’ve been hearing shit like that for fifteen years. From every scum dealer, rapist, and murderer.”
Color flushed through Dexter’s cheeks. He shouldered his way past the remaining bodyguard to stand nose to nose with Cade.
Cade stood his ground. “Brandon Collins is a strong man. He works no matter how hard it gets. And he doesn’t quit because a no-good leech like you bleeds him.”