Izzy inspected photos of a poor, but generally happy family—at least when the camera was pointed at them. Jeter’s hair was short in the family snaps. He’d obviously grown it out considerably since then.
“You won’t kill him?” the woman pleaded.
Izzy turned to look at her and shook her head. “No, ma’am. I just want the girl back.”
Izzy held out hope that the woman had some scrap of information, some idea of where her son had gotten the crazy idea for this spree and where it would all end. But the older woman’s face crumpled in despair and Izzy knew she was still just trying to make sense of it all. Izzy sighed and turned back to the photos. One caught her eye and she picked it up, swiping at a thin layer of dust over the glass. Jeter was much younger. Izzy would guess about 10 or 12. At least she assumed it was him. He had the same dark hair. His arm was crooked around the neck of a boy about the same age—a boy with sandy blond hair.
“He seems happy,” Izzy said, holding up the photo.
Mrs. Paul wiped her eyes and nodded. “That’s Jason. His cousin. Greg took him up for a visit every summer, to see his brother. Jason’s his boy. Thick as thieves, those two always were.”
“Jason,” Izzy repeated. “Paul?”
Mrs. Paul nodded.
Izzy looked down at the photo and swiped her thumb across the glass. Two young boys smiled back at her against the backdrop of a bright blue sky. And a sign that read “Badlands National Park.”
Chapter 6
Caleb pulled his sleek, black and chrome Harley into his former lieutenant’s circular driveway. Chris “Shooter” Sullivan had purchased the two-story log cabin for his wife, and they were slowly filling it up with kids. As he entered the house through the front door, he saw Shooter’s wife, Sarah, standing in the living room, the first of their brood perched on her hip.
“Hey, Slick,” he said, leaning down to kiss Sarah on top of her head. He ruffled baby Hope’s short, wispy hair. “Hey, kiddo.”
She looked up at him with her mama’s dark brown eyes and smiled. He grinned back at her. He nodded to Mark “Tex” Marsten who sat on the couch nursing a beer. Next to him, his girlfriend, Abby, had a martini. Caleb followed the squeals of what was certainly Daisy into the kitchen to snag a brew of his own. He wasn’t surprised to find Jimmy “Easy” Turnbull pressing the tiny, tattooed blonde against the counter and nuzzling her neck. Daisy gasped when she saw Caleb and tried to push her boyfriend away.
“At ease, Easy,” he said with a smirk and reached for the handle of the fridge. “What are you doing, anyway?”
Daisy giggled and Easy swung her around so that he faced the slightly older man.
“Body shots,” he replied.
Caleb snorted. “There’s no tequila.”
“Don’t need any,” Easy said and licked Daisy’s neck again. She squealed.
Caleb shook his head at the two of them and headed back to the living room. He flopped down into a chair—his chair—and waited for Slick to tell him to set the table. Thursday night was poker night. Slick fed them all first, and, if she was in the mood, beat them at cards afterward. She’d graciously taken to playing only occasionally these days so that everyone could pay their bills.
Shooter came down the stairs, fresh from a shower it appeared, while the front door opened. Caleb didn’t have to turn to know that Hawk and his wife, Tildy, had arrived. They’d taken the truck, for obvious reasons. Slick’s fluffy white attack cat bypassed the very pregnant Tildy and launched herself at the giant Sioux. Hawk scooped her up and cradled her to his chest. Tildy made her way to the loveseat, where she and Hawk always sat, while Abby and Sarah fussed over her. Sarah was something of a mother hen, and had been ever since she came to Rapid City. She’d had no name, no past, but was a hell of a cook and had started making dinner for the boys when she’d lived next door to Shooter. Now she was busy nurturing Tildy through her first pregnancy, not that Tildy really needed it. For a thin, wisp of a woman, she was holding up fairly well being married to a man more than twice her size.
Shooter sat in the other chair, across from Caleb. “They’re so busy with each other, they might leave us alone,” he remarked, glancing at the women.
Caleb took a sip of his beer and grinned. “Good. I could use the money.”
Shooter lifted an eyebrow at him. “Plan this weekend?” he asked casually.
Caleb nodded.
“One weekend a month,” Easy replied as he entered from the kitchen, referring to Caleb’s monthly excursion to Sioux Falls on the other side of the state. “Are you hiding something from us?”
Caleb schooled his features to appear passive. “Like what?”
“Are you in the reserves?” the younger man asked, taking a seat next to Tex.
Caleb snorted. “Hardly.”
Caleb had left the Army along with the rest of them, right after the bomb had taken out most of their unit. The man sitting across from him now had lost a leg in that ambush. Caleb had known from the moment he’d cut off Easy’s fatigues that he didn’t have the medical skill to save it. He had only been a combat medic, not a battlefield surgeon. He might have been a paramedic after his discharge, but he’d seen enough of that kind of trauma to last him a lifetime. He had another mission now that was just as satisfying.
Slick stopped her fussing over Tildy and turned to look at him. Caleb froze with his beer halfway to his lips. He knew that look. It was the same look she’d gotten when Tildy and Hawk found out they were having a boy. Sarah had already been scheming to pair up Hope and their son.
“Are you going to Sioux Falls?” she asked.
Caleb grimaced. “Might be,” he replied, because although it was really none of her business, he didn’t want to lie to her.
“Can’t she come here?”
In the years that Caleb had been living in Rapid City, Sioux Falls had merged with “Sioux Falls,” the person and the city becoming one and the same. The guys left it mostly alone. The women, however, were a different story. It seemed Slick had set her sights on him as the last bachelor in the group and she was determined to set her little makeshift family to rights. But Caleb didn’t do relationships.
“Shooter,” he grumbled. “Tell your woman to stand down.”
Shooter shrugged. “I can’t. She never listens to me.”
“Why can’t we meet her?” Sarah prodded.
“There’s no one to meet,” Caleb told her.
“You go there all the time!”
“Let it go, Slick.”
“But—”
“Sarah. That’s enough,” Caleb snapped. He regretted having to put his foot down with her. She really was an amazing woman and he couldn’t fault her that her quest for happiness had extended to everyone around her. “I’m not the marrying kind,” he told her more gently.
“But—”
“Neither is Sioux Falls.”
“Let it go, babe,” Shooter said quietly.
The game wrapped up at just after midnight. Caleb took his modest winnings and stuffed them into the pocket of his leather jacket.
“Don’t spend it all in one place,” Tex told him with a wink.
Caleb shrugged it off. Sometimes he wondered about the cowboy and his ability to read people. Tex had certainly made the most of his psychology degree. Outside, the air had turned chilly and Caleb zipped up his jacket to guard against the cold. Hawk helped Tildy into the front seat of the truck and Caleb let them take off first down the winding road that led to the highway below. After the sun set, it was chilly in the fall this far northeast, but it was the same in Caleb’s native California. Rapid City had its wind while Stockton had the fog that settled during the winter and never seemed to leave. Even with South Dakota’s harsh winters, Caleb didn’t miss California or anyone in it.
He gunned the Harley and headed for home, which was a tidy one-story house on the east end of town. Caleb rented it from an elderly couple. Tex would say it was a testament to Caleb’s insistence on impermanence. Cal
eb just wrote it off as a practicality. Why did he need to own a house? To whom would he leave it when he died? He owned his Harley and his Ford pickup and he didn’t need anything else.
He stopped at the curb and opened the mailbox. He tucked the mail under his arm and pulled the bike into the small garage and lowered the door. Entering his house through the kitchen, he tossed his keys onto the counter along with the stack of mail that he didn’t bother to look at. He swept the stark, white envelope that lay on top immediately into the trash, closing the lid on the harsh, black lettering that read: Folsom State Prison. Nope. There was nothing in California that he gave a single fuck about.
The next afternoon he mowed the lawn, probably for the last time that season, and put the mower away in the corner of the garage. After he showered, he picked up his cell phone. Busy tonight? he typed and waited for a reply, which never took long. Never too busy for you. See you at 9?
Caleb confirmed and slid the phone into his pocket. He’d have to leave now to make it on time. He chose the Ford over the Harley, though it pained him to do so. He’d never ridden a motorcycle before the Army, but now he could honestly say he couldn’t imagine his life without one. The feel and the freedom of the road were addictive. Winter always came too soon. He swung up into the cab of the Ford and fired up the engine. Sioux Falls was just under four hours away.
It was a working class town, same as Rapid City, but more than double the size. Sioux Falls was closer to Stockton in size and in some ways Caleb preferred it. Or at least its anonymity. He could come and go as he pleased, pun intended, he supposed, and no one registered his presence. He wound his way through the downtown area and turned north to a neighborhood that was much like his own. Small, one-story houses lined the street with well-kept lawns and mid-sized SUVs. No one owned a Lexus here, but neither were there junkers on blocks. Caleb turned into the driveway of the last house on the street and killed the engine. The porch light was on.
He barely knocked when the door swung open. Five feet of curves and blonde hair found their way into his arms. “Hey!” she said giddily and he pushed her inside, closing the door behind him. He knew where the bedroom was and wasted no time in getting them there. She was already in a bathrobe, hair dry but freshly washed. Caleb stripped out of his jeans and T-shirt as she crawled on the bed.
As he moved over her, she playfully grabbed at his hips and tried in vain to bring him closer. She licked her lips seductively. He smiled but ignored it; he never asked her to do that. Instead, he slid the condom on and then slid inside her. She was ready for him, as usual. He buried his face between her neck and shoulder and rocked into her slowly. She groaned and wrapped her legs around him.
Caleb rarely took matters into his own hands at home. He got it regularly, if not sparingly here, and never saw a need. But his years of discipline both in the Army and after had proved useful. He never, ever came until she did. He not only felt the typical male sense of pride in a job well done when she creamed on his cock, but he also figured it was the least he could do for her. It only took a few minutes of thrusting before he felt her pussy begin to squeeze his shaft. She came in a rush, and Caleb soon after. When the high wore off, he slid off the bed and tossed the condom into the nearby trash, which was always empty every time he visited. She sprawled over the bed, looking dreamily up at him and he didn’t think that part was ever fake or forced. She seemed to genuinely enjoy his visits, as much as she probably could, anyway.
He dressed again, zipped up his jeans. He was tired and needed a drink and some sleep, in that order. So he headed out of the bedroom after shooting her a winning smile. In her kitchen, he stood over the table. She had a small stack of books—college textbooks. The corner of his mouth quirked up. It had taken him almost a year to cotton on to the fact that the books never changed. Nor did they move from their spots on the small table. He shrugged it off as he reached behind himself. He supposed a lot of people were pretending to be something they weren’t. Hell, he was pretending to be a cop but the shiny badge might as well have come from a dime store. Caleb was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a cop—not really.
He opened his wallet, fished out a stack of bills, and tucked them underneath a book on microbiology before heading out the front door.
Chapter 7
Izzy neared the city limits and slowed a bit for her next turn. Rapid City was quite a bit smaller than Denver, and though there were hills, they were nothing like Denver’s soaring Rocky Mountains. She supposed she should eat and find some temporary digs, but she was here for a job. Plus, after she got the lay of the land, she’d have a better idea of where to drop anchor. She continued on to the home address of Jason Paul, that Jeter’s mother had given her. Izzy had requested that the woman not call ahead and give a warning to anyone in South Dakota that she was on the hunt. Under normal circumstances, Izzy wouldn’t hold out much hope that her request would be granted, but then again, Mrs. Paul seemed desperate to get her son back alive, so maybe she saw the wisdom of not alerting him and causing him to go to ground again- if he was here at all.
She turned into yet another shitty neighborhood. Izzy had seen many over the course of her life. Hell, she and Pop had even lived in a few while she was growing up and money was tight. She rolled past the tiny houses with postage-stamp yards and bars on the windows and came to a stop at the end of the street. Her Charger was a bit nicer than the rusted pickups and assorted junkers that lined the street. It was late afternoon, and she was unlikely to have any run-ins, but she kept the windows rolled up just to be safe. She frowned at the house that Mrs. Paul had sent her to. It was tiny, missing a shutter on the front. A pickup truck took up most of the driveway and obscured the view of a motorcycle parked on the other side of it.
There were a lot of ways to play this, none of which had any long-lasting appeal to her. To identify herself was to send Jeter running for the hills, most likely. And if he wasn’t already paranoid enough, the idea of a bounty hunter coming after him might cause him to panic and kill the girl—if she was still alive at this point. Izzy had to hold out hope that she was. Either way, Jeter needed to be collared. She yanked the rubber band off the end of her long braid and fanned out her long, dark hair. She reached into her glove compartment, passed her hand over the Glock, and instead went for the only tube of lipstick she owned. It was bright red. Probably a bit of overkill, but she wasn’t used to wearing a lot of makeup, and usually the only time she did it was because she was on the hunt—either for a skip or a quickie. She checked her lips in the mirror and tugged down the front of her red, fitted T-shirt, just to the line of her black bra.
She fobbed the Charger’s alarm and shoved the keys into her jacket pocket. Her boots were a bit too practical for the job, but she hoped whoever answered the door wouldn’t really notice them. She headed up the front steps and rang the doorbell. A few seconds later, a grizzled older man, shirtless, opened it. Izzy fought the urge to gag. It was probably best that he wasn’t wearing a shirt, she decided as she smiled at him. She wasn’t sure his enormous beer belly would fit in anything but a circus tent. His frown immediately faded as he took in the sight of her. His gaze finally settled onto her tits and he wiped his mouth.
“Well, hello there, little lady,” he drawled. He had an open beer can in one hand and a TV remote in the other.
“Hi,” Izzy schmoozed. “I’m looking for Jase.”
“Jase?” he asked, mouthing the word at though it were foreign. Izzy had chosen it because it had an air of familiarity to it, like a pet name.
“Yeah, we met the other day. I was just wondering if he was around.”
The man looked slightly disappointed and rubbed his face with the back of the hand that was holding the remote. “Well, Jason don’t spend too much time here,” he replied. “He’s usually at the clubhouse.”
Izzy pictured the world headquarters of the He-Man Woman Haters club, of which this man was probably president.
“Oh,” she said, and stuck out her bottom
lip to emphasize her apparent disappointment.
The man grinned at her. “Aw, don’t get too upset, sugar. I’ve got some time ‘fore I have to be in to work. You could stay—and see where Jason learned all his smooth moves.”
Izzy felt like shooting him, but it would only slow her down.
“What’s your name?”
“Cindy Lou.”
“Who?”
She bit the inside of her cheek so she wouldn’t laugh. “Cindy Lou. I met Jason the other day. But I didn’t get his number,” she said vaguely.
“Well, he might be at Maria’s later tonight. Or at the clubhouse, you never know.”
She nodded as she peered behind him and into his kitchen. He had a black leather cut slung over a chair. Izzy couldn’t make out the club name on it, though. Just a few z’s. “Well, bye,” she said, turned, and quickly walked away.
“See you around, Cindy Lou!” he cackled and Izzy just knew the old bastard was looking at her ass as she headed back toward her car. It was an annoying, but necessary, part of the job.
She slid into the front seat of the Charger and searched for Maria’s on her phone. It was on the other side of town, near the railroad tracks. She gunned the engine and took a sharp left. The crappy neighborhood gave way to a nice downtown area, tree-lined with older low-slung buildings that were freshly painted. It had more of a small-town feel than Denver’s skyscrapers, but it didn’t seem claustrophobic. She found Maria’s bar on the south side and rolled slowly past. A few Harleys were lined up out front of the dark building. A few pickups were scattered in the gravel lot. A biker bar. If it was anything like the bars in Denver, it catered to a roughneck crowd that was loud and boisterous.
She cruised down the street and spotted a motel that had certainly seen better days. But it was only a short drive from there to the bar and so Izzy decided it would have to do. Plus, she was keeping a tight rein on her funds and this place couldn’t charge more than a quarter a night—not if they had any integrity at all. She pulled up to the shuttered main office and headed inside. The lobby smelled like acrid cigarette smoke. In the middle of a cloud of noxious fumes sat a withered old lady, Marlboro in the corner of her mouth, fixated on The Price is Right. Izzy only hope was that the price of a room was the same.
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