Down the Darkest Road

by Kylie Brant

  But if T was working with Forrester, the faster Dylan could get cops here, the better.

  His temples still throbbed, and for the first time, he was glad there was no electricity in the place. He knew from experience that lights would make his head explode.

  “I grew up in this place, believe that? My dad and whoever he was living with at the time had the bedroom. Kids slept out here. On the furniture or floor, whatever there was. You think you have it so fucking tough now. You don’t got a clue what tough is.”

  Dylan could barely make out the man’s shape in the recliner across the room. Which meant that T couldn’t see Dylan well, either. His hands crept toward his pocket. Toward the cell. “That must have been crazy, all those people in this house.”

  “Damn straight. And no one gave a shit about us, either. Long as we stayed out of their way, we could have danced naked down the street, and they wouldn’t have batted an eye. You got lucky with your mom. She took care of you boys. Far better than what she got from her ma or me from my dad.”

  “I know.” He had Grace’s cell in one hand but now what? Call 911? It wasn’t like he could talk. His heart was a wild thing in his chest. His palms so wet, the cell was slippery in his hand. “She’s a hard worker too.”

  “Always has been.”

  Dylan searched his memory but couldn’t recall the number for SBI. He’d seen the marshal’s far more recently. She’d left him that message. He’d noted it again then. Fighting back the cold spike of fear that threatened to drive through him, he tried to visualize the number.

  “I’ve been thinkin’. You’re still a kid, but you’ve had to grow up fast. Maybe you’re old enough to understand some complicated stuff.”

  He nearly laughed at that. The man wanted to talk complicated? Dylan had lived with complications ever since he’d made that ill-fated decision to talk Trevor into going to the creek that night. He’d touched off a domino effect of human tragedy, an explosive chain reaction he’d been helpless to stop. Dylan searched for the keys on the phone. He thought he recalled the numbers, but keying them in correctly when he wasn’t looking at the cell was tricky. “I’m going to be sixteen,” he said. He got the sequence pressed in. But he had no idea if it was the correct one. And he couldn’t check to be sure. At least the sound was off. He always kept it that way so no one would hear Grace texting or calling.

  “That’s right. Nowhere near an adult, but sometimes you have to handle adult shit anyway.”

  There was a glow coming from his pocket. Dylan shoved the cell farther inside it so T wouldn’t notice.

  “I get that.” Keep the man talking and hope like hell he had dialed correctly. And that the marshal would pick up. His stomach sank. No one answered calls from unfamiliar numbers. Especially not cops. Defeat swept through him. Maybe the cell wasn’t going to do him any good after all. But he had to give it a shot. T went silent, and Dylan searched for a way to keep him talking. “Were you named after your dad? Was he John Teeter too?”

  “Yep, I’m a Junior, so they just called me T.”

  “How old were you when you got out of here? When you left Marion?”

  “Couldn’t leave fast enough,” the man said. “Joined the army on my eighteenth birthday. That’s when I learned however bad a place is, there’s always someplace worse, you know what I mean?”

  Dylan looked at his pocket. He couldn’t see the glow from the cell. Had no idea if he’d even made a connection. His mind kept returning to the green pickup in the garage. There was no good explanation for it being in T’s possession. Sweat slicked down his spine, considering it. The not knowing was a special kind of hell.

  “You remember that book I found in your room? The Mockingbird one?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I’m your Boo Radley, son. I’ve been protecting you right along. You just didn’t know it.”

  Protecting him by helping Forrester find him? A flare of fury fired through Dylan. “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.”

  “It means you guys was in deep shit when you left Hope Mills. Your mom shoulda come away with me then, but instead she went to Tami.” He gave a disgusted laugh. “What’s that bitch gonna do, pray the trouble away? But moving didn’t help nothing. And one thing we both knew, things wasn’t gonna get better until that bastard was caught. I had to think of something. Some way to keep your family safe. That’s why I gave your mom an extra phone. So her and me could talk without SBI finding out if they got nosy.”

  “I saw Forrester driving that pickup out there, Teeter.” The words burst out of him. “I saw him. Someone had to tell him where we were.” And he was pretty damn sure that someone was sitting in the chair across from him.

  “You thought you seen him. Because I made myself look as much like him as I could.”

  Everything inside Dylan froze. Organs. Blood. Brain. No. He recoiled from the man’s words. There was no way it could be . . .

  “You guys wasn’t gonna be safe while Forrester was on the loose. Them cops weren’t doing a thing to catch him. What they needed was for someone to light a fire under ’em. Get them sparked up enough for a real manhunt. I took his truck. I stole a gun he’d used at the range. And I came up with a plan to save you all.”

  Chapter 80

  “Gabe.” Cady took a quick guilty look at the clock on the wall. “It’s Cady. Sorry about the hour.”

  “What time is it?” the man asked sleepily.

  “John Teeter.” She spoke quickly. “He worked at the gun range where the weapon went missing. You checked his house in Fayetteville.”

  “Yeah.” The agent sounded more alert now. “I’ve also had deputies going by daily to see if he’s around. So far nothing.”

  “Any other properties in his name?”

  “No.” Her heart plummeted as their possible lead shattered. It rebounded when the man went on. “His dad had a place, though. He died last summer. I had the local PD check his home. It was deserted.”

  “Where was it located?”

  “Uh . . . let me get up and check my notes.”

  Her phone buzzed with an incoming call. She didn’t recognize the number so was prepared to ignore it. Until she recalled that Suzanne Fielding had given Forrester Cady’s number. It was a long shot but . . . She answered the call but didn’t speak. There was a murmur of voices, but she couldn’t make out the words. Cady nearly hung up until she could make out a voice she recognized.

  “I saw Forrester driving that pickup out there, Teeter. I saw him. Someone had to tell him where we were.”

  Her blood iced. Cady switched the call to speakerphone. “Dylan?” she said, feeling Ryder’s surprised gaze. But a moment later, she fell silent again. The conversation taking place on the other end didn’t include her.

  At Ryder’s murmured, “Dylan Castle?” Miguel and Rebedeau went still.

  “You thought you seen him. Because I made myself look as much like him as I could.”

  Two realizations occurred simultaneously. Dylan had dialed her on purpose. And given what Teeter had admitted, the boy could be in immediate danger.

  Gabe was ringing back in. She switched over to answer the call. “Where is John Teeter’s father’s property?” she asked urgently.

  “Just outside the Marion city limits. Why?”

  She switched back to Dylan’s call in time to hear him say, “You killed those kids just to get the cops’ attention?”

  Rebedeau surged to her feet, color riding high in her cheeks, both her fists curled. Cady seconded the reaction. Everything inside her was fixated on the answer.

  “See, that’s where it’s hard for you to understand, being a teenager and all. But it was the only way, Dylan. I was protecting you. You and your family.”

  “Fuck that fucker,” Ryder muttered savagely.

  “They’re in Marion,” Cady said, hurrying to the hospital exit. The team followed closely behind her. The call was still open, but the phone had gone silent for the moment. As they ran down th
e quiet hallway, she couldn’t shake the thought that a man who’d just confessed to two murders might figure he couldn’t afford to allow the boy to live to tell anyone.

  Chapter 81

  Cady had Ryder drive her Jeep with dash strobes flashing, with Miguel in the back and the other team members on their tail. But the call from Dylan went dead before they’d been on the road five minutes. Worry for the boy uppermost in her mind, she contacted the McDowell County sheriff’s office via the VIPER law enforcement channel on the radio and asked for a deputy to surveil the Teeter house. She’d no more disconnected than the pilot updated her over the radio that he was stopping to refuel.

  The miles whipped by, shadows racing outside her window. Soft snores were coming from the back seat. Miguel had fallen asleep minutes after they’d pulled out of the hospital parking lot. He had a unique knack for catnaps that she sometimes envied. But sleep was the furthest thing from her mind right now. Her brain was a racetrack, with thoughts whizzing around it.

  Dylan. Teeter. Forrester. Tina Bandy.

  The scene with her mom Saturday.

  She had managed to shunt her mom’s revelation aside as she dealt with the developments in the case. It was front and center in her mind now, however. Demanding answers. Eliciting more questions.

  At four years old, she’d been coached in how to fire a weapon. The certainty throbbed in her brain. She knew her mother well enough to realize she could never have shot her husband. Lonny Maddix had had a hold on her. Still did, in a way. Butch Talbot would have recognized that. And—with her mother’s tacit approval—had constructed a fail-safe. If Hannah couldn’t defend them from Lonny, with the right instruction, maybe Cady could.

  The thought was traumatic. But far better than believing that using Cady had been calculated. Self-defense could be a messy claim without witnesses. But no one would blame a child. That was a tragic accident.

  Squeeze the trigger nice and slow. Only point it at bad guys. You don’t like bad guys, do you, Cady?

  Bad guys who hurt her mom. Made her cry, made her bleed. The callous manipulation of a child still cut deep. She knew it always would.

  Cady wondered at the mind’s power of self-preservation that had shielded her all these years. Draped her earliest memories from all but the most cryptic snippets that had slithered out around the edges. Until her mom’s outburst had shredded that shroud and provided context for those random scraps. And her life would never be quite the same.

  “McDowell County deputy Lance Walls here, Marshal.” The voice came from the radio. Cady picked up the transmitter. “I’m in front of the old Teeter place in Marion right now. Place is dark. But there is a car in the drive. Looks like a light-colored Impala from here. You want me to go up to the door?”

  “Wait for us. We’re only fifteen minutes out. Make sure your car remains out of sight from anyone inside looking out.”

  “You planning an entry?”

  “That’s SBI’s call at the moment.” Her warrants were limited to Loomer and Forrester. Disconnecting, she radioed Rebedeau and relayed the information.

  “I’ve got a judge on standby,” the agent said. “We’ll finish the paperwork and send it in. Should have a warrant by the time we get there.”

  “We good to go?” Ryder asked when she hung up. Cady was aware of Miguel leaning forward to catch her response.

  “Sounds like it.” She just hoped that the house stayed dark and quiet until they got there. Her hope was dashed ten minutes later when the deputy outside the Teeter home radioed back. “We’ve got movement.”

  Cady and Ryder exchanged a glance. “Are they leaving?”

  “No. Another car just pulled into the drive. No headlights. Can’t be certain of make and model except it’s a dark-colored compact sedan.”

  Ice bumped in Cady’s veins. That description would fit a brown Toyota Corolla.

  Chapter 82

  The man could sleep through a zombie attack.

  Dylan listened to Teeter snore. He didn’t know if it was the beer, lack of sleep, or muscle relaxants still in the man’s system. There was no way he could follow suit, so he focused on loosening the bonds the man had tied around his wrists and ankles. If he could get free, he’d get the hell out of here. He’d be safer with the cops than with this batshit-crazy loon. That’s what he should have done before, but then he’d seen that truck and . . . His mind blanked on the thought. He couldn’t think about what the man had revealed. Not if he wanted to escape.

  He’d disconnected the call he’d made to the marshal. There was no way to tell if he’d even dialed the right number. Dylan couldn’t depend on the law to save him. The cavalry probably wasn’t coming. He was going to have to escape on his own. Get away from the killer sleeping like a baby across the room from him.

  He worked his wrists repeatedly, flexing and relaxing them over and over. One piece of twine had snapped, but he still hadn’t been able to free himself from the other bonds. Tying people up must be the one thing Teeter is actually good at, Dylan thought bitterly. But he could finally feel the twine on his wrists slackening. He redoubled his efforts. A moment later, he loosened it enough to work one wrist out.

  Shit. He rubbed at it with his other hand. Dylan could feel the indentation where the damn rope had been. Quickly, he went to work getting the twine off his other wrist and turning his attention to the bonds at his ankles. It wasn’t easy in the dark, but his fingers finally found the knot the man had made and started untying it.

  After several minutes, he stopped, his eyes on the darkened windows. There were curtains there, but slivers of light shone around the edges. Shadows flashed by those slivers, back and forth. The familiar itch started at the back of his neck, but Dylan squelched the paranoia that wanted to rear. He didn’t have time to be scared. He needed to get the hell away.

  Finally, he got the bonds unwrapped from his ankles, keeping his gaze on T the entire time. The keys to the car would be in the man’s jeans pocket. No way to get to them without waking him up.

  No way to get at the gun that was probably still lying on his lap.

  Dylan stood silently and crept toward the kitchen door. This time he’d focus on finding the exit in the garage. And then getting through it. He eased the door open and tiptoed onto the top step. Searched for the next one with his foot before descending. He stumbled a little when he reached the floor. There wasn’t even a splinter of light inside the structure. He reached into his pocket. He used the lit cell phone screen as he picked his way to the front. His heart plummeted. The only exit was the garage’s wooden double doors. A long two-by-four needed to be removed before he could open them.

  But first he paused next to the hulk of the pickup. Maybe T had left the keys in it. He’d never driven before, but unless it was a stick, he could handle it. He’d find help a lot faster driving than he could on foot. He opened the driver’s door and leaned in, checking the ignition for the keys. When he didn’t find them, he searched under the seat. Closing the door, he rounded the truck bed and went to the other side to check the glove box. Nothing.

  Dylan stifled a surge of disappointment and went to the old garage doors. The bar lifted out of the metal holder easily enough, but it was long and unwieldy. It took a few minutes to extract it and set it aside in one corner. Then he pressed a palm against the seam in the center. The doors creaked open a foot. He heard a slight sound and threw a panicked look over his shoulder. Had T wakened and come after him? But in the next moment, the noise was repeated, and Dylan realized it was coming from the driveway. He peered out but could see nothing in the darkness. Long moments stretched as he waited, scarcely daring to breathe. When he heard nothing else, he turned sidewise to sidle through the opening in the doors. Before he was halfway through, he saw a shape in the drive. A car? In the next instant, a shadow loomed over him. Close. Threatening. He was crowded back through the opening, and something slammed against his temple. He fell to the dirt floor, his head spinning.

  “Been a long
time, kid.” Rough hands yanked him by the sweatshirt to pull him to his feet. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  Chapter 83

  Cady and the team donned tactical gear as McDowell County deputy Lance Walls updated the group. “I saw a figure, a man I think, get out of the car and head toward the house. He went through the garage.”

  “How long ago?” she asked.

  “A few minutes before you arrived.”

  “You only saw one person? Not two?” At the deputy’s affirmation, she took a moment to wonder about Tina Bandy. She must have given up Dylan’s location. If Forrester had no other use for her, she may already be dead.

  “She could still be in the car,” Ryder said beside her as he fastened his vest and put his coat back on.

  “We’ll bring a crowbar.” If the woman wasn’t inside the vehicle, they’d try the trunk. Miguel rejoined the group, holding up something in his hand. The Range-R device. Cady nodded to him, and he jogged away from the staging area toward the house. To the others, Cady said, “Miguel will determine the number of people inside and their location. We’ll fire flashbangs into the home, followed by an entry team.” She looked at Walls. “No sound of gunfire?”

  “No.”

  Given how dangerous Forrester was with his bare hands, Cady thought grimly, the answer did nothing to relieve her tension.

  Chapter 84

  Dylan was shoved back inside the house and across the room. From there, the man pushed him to the floor. Not just any man, he thought dimly, trying to still the spinning in his head. Forrester. It might be dark, but he’d recognize the voice anywhere. A paralyzing terror gripped him.