Forbidden (Southern Comfort)

by O'Neill, Lisa Clark

  Right.

  No wonder it didn’t add up. As he listened to Kim deal with the computer crisis, he opened up the tissue again and examined it. He’d have to get it to a lab to say for sure, but he’d stake his life on the fact that he was looking at liquid skin. Liquid skin that had been partially melted by hot tea.

  Little old lady, his ass.

  He flipped open his phone and hit redial, knowing Kathleen needed to correct the erroneous info on the Amber alert.

  Clay was very nearly certain Max had been abducted by a man.

  And he was going to tear the bastard limb from limb.

  Kathleen answered on the first ring, asking about the computer, but Clay quickly cut her off. “The computer virus is the least of our problems.” Anger laced his words. He’d been three feet away from Max’s abductor. “I have some very strong reasons to suspect that our infamous little old lady is in reality a very clever man.”

  “What? Damn, that is not good news.”

  “Tell me about it.” Clay watched the computer die, Kim giving up CPR on a string of curses. And Maureen, pacing a hole in the Oriental rug, stopped and gaped at him in horror. “We’re dealing with a cool, experienced offender. And since there’s been no demand for ransom, you know what’s left.”

  “Oh God.”

  “If you have His ear, you might want to bend it. But otherwise, give me everything you have. I don’t think I need to tell you that time is the enemy.”

  “Okay. The parking garage came up empty because their surveillance camera apparently malfunctioned this morning, and the slacker who was working the gate forgot to report it. In the better news department, there’s a bank across the street, and we have a very distant and grainy photo of the suspected get-away vehicle, which, after our imaging guru did his hocus pocus, appears to be a dark-colored pickup truck. Maybe blue, maybe green – it doesn’t look to be totally one solid color. Like it has some rusted parts, or maybe some spots of primer. Unfortunately that’s the best we can do with black and white.”

  “Do I dare hope that any part of the license plate might have been visible?”

  “The guru’s still working on it. But at least the truck itself is pretty distinct.”

  “In what way?” Kim and Maureen were both watching him now. Apparently the words man and experienced offender had caught their attention. Yes ladies, this situation was even shittier than they’d previously imagined.

  “Well, it’s one of those old-fashioned Ford pickups. You know the kind that you see at classic car shows after people’ve restored them?”

  Something inside Clay clicked. And his mind began reeling. “Kathleen, tell your guru we need that license plate number now.”

  JR caught the movement out of the corner of his eye.

  He was in the process of changing the sheets because the girl had soiled them during the night, and it wouldn’t do to have his prize virgin delivered covered in her own vomit and urine. Technically, he guessed he should be thankful that she hadn’t asphyxiated while she was drugged. But with Billy Wayne out of the picture it was simply a chance he’d been forced to take.

  He’d taken a lot of chances lately, but look how they’d paid off.

  The girl huddled near the window, dressed in the clothes she’d been wearing when Billy Wayne abducted her, handcuffed to the old radiator. It was difficult to say whether her hollow, half-there look was due to the GHB or the situation. He’d seen it before in the girls they’d taken, but usually not until after they made the video with Billy Wayne.

  This one didn’t know how lucky she was to have avoided that particular fate.

  Of course, there was no guarantee that she was headed to anything better. In fact, it could very well be worse.

  Not that it really mattered.

  He was just the broker. What happened to the commodity after he’d provided it wasn’t up to him.

  As he looked at the girl, and at the unconscious boy lying next to her, he saw the flash of tan outside of the window.

  Cautiously approaching from the side, he moved one slat of the blinds.

  “What the hell?” Outside the house, about to go snooping in the barn, was that stupid, pretty-boy deputy. The one who’d used his fancy art skills to draw the composite of Billy Wayne. As if he hadn’t already been a big enough pain in the ass, he was about to discover the vehicles.

  JR leaned close to the girl. “If you so much as breathe the wrong way, I’ll blow your pretty little head off.” He tipped her chin with the barrel of the pistol. “Understand?”

  Her brown eyes, still hazy with the drug, widened into pools of terror. No doubt she recalled, vividly, what had happened to Billy Wayne.

  JR eased up and unlocked the window. It was a little farther shot than he would have liked, but he really had no choice. He had to take the deputy out before he could radio in to the station. And since it was almost certain that others knew he was here, they’d come looking for him after a bit.

  Which meant he would have to move quickly.

  Releasing the safety on his nine mil, he aimed for the deputy’s chest. One shot to take the man down and another to finish him off.

  He’d have to hide the body. And get rid of the car.

  Then he remembered the old fishing hole down the road, and thought two birds with one stone. Just lock the deputy’s body in his trunk, and let him and his cruiser commune with the fishes.

  JR smiled as he squeezed the trigger.

  Laughed as the deputy went down.

  And just because he was having so much fun, fired off two more rounds.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CLAY couldn’t simply stand around with his head up his ass, waiting for something to happen. Despite the fact that Kathleen’s computer guy couldn’t yet offer anything conclusive, he had a hunch that he’d seen that truck before.

  And that yet again, he’d been only a matter of feet from Max’s abductor.

  Just let him near the guy once more. The third time would definitely be a charm.

  “Call Josh Harding,” he told Kim after he’d gotten off the phone with Kathleen. “Tell him to drop what he’s doing, and go over to the UPS store on Main Street. We need to know the identity of that man I almost hit yesterday morning, ASAP. The vehicle used to abduct Max was a classic Ford pickup, circa 1940’s, with rust deterioration and two-tone paint.”

  “Well crap,” Kim said, even as she flipped her phone open and dialed. “You think this has something to do with that man? What are the chances? I mean, that is either one hell of a weird coincidence, or this guy’s carried road rage to a whole new level.”

  “No,” Clay said as she waited for Harding to answer. “There’s a bigger picture here that we’re missing. This is just one pine out of the forest, and I think we need to step back and try to bring the whole thing into view.” But the hell of it was that he was too damn close to the case to do anything other than stare blankly at the tree in front of him.

  “Harding’s not answering,” she told Clay after a moment, looking up from her position behind Tate’s desk. “He was going out to canvass one of the quadrants near the Collier crime scene, and he might be tangled up in that. I’ll try Sheriff Callahan and see if he can send someone else.”

  From across the room, Maureen held up her cell phone and waggled it back and forth. “Do you want me to see if I have any luck getting hold of Aunt Maggie? She’s bound to remember the woman’s name.”

  “Sure. That’d be great.” Although he wasn’t sure how much it would help. Obviously, the woman’s name was a pseudonym. But at least it gave Tate’s cousin something positive to do, so that she didn’t just stand around feeling useless.

  Like he was doing right now.

  He walked over and looked out the window, finding it entirely too sunny and blue-sky gorgeous to suit how he felt inside. The cheerful array of rainbow colors decorating the buildings across the street made him want to scream.

  “Callahan’s down in Beaufort,” Kim informed
him after she concluded her brief conversation. “Wrapping up some of the loose ends from the William Wayne murder. Deputy Jones is busy tracking down some of the records for the offenders that came up as possible matches for that partial print, and the other deputies are otherwise engaged. Apparently, even the dispatcher called in sick. We want to talk to the lady at the UPS Store, we’re going to have to do it ourselves. Did she strike you as the kind of woman who’d be willing to dole out that information over the phone?”

  “As long as she can call ten friends and tell them all about it, she’ll tell us anything we want to know.”

  “All hail the small town gossip.”

  Clay got the store’s number from information, and tried to remember the woman’s name as it connected. Something with a “J”, he thought. Like Jenny or Jane or…

  “Julie?” It rolled off his tongue when she answered, scoring, no doubt, big brownie points for him. “This is Special Agent Clay Copeland, with the FBI. I spoke with you the other day? That’s right.” He rolled his eyes at Kim. “The profiler.”

  He went through the whole little chit-chat routine, sensing that this woman would respond better to honey than to vinegar, although he had to strain the meaningless pleasantries through his teeth. Then he got around to the point of the conversation, asking about the dark-haired man and his truck.

  “Rob Johns, you say?” He gestured for Kim to grab a piece of paper and write it down. “No, he’s not in any trouble,” yet, “but we think he might have some information that we need. I don’t guess you’d happen to have his address?”

  He waited a beat while she answered. “No, I understand all about your privacy policy regarding customers, and I certainly wouldn’t ask you to violate it.” And he couldn’t demand it, without the proper court order. “But listen, Julie, just in case Rob comes in, I need you to do me a favor. Don’t say anything about our conversation to him, but give me a call at this number.”

  He looked over at Kim, who was already on her own phone with the local RA. Hopefully, within a few minutes they’d know everything there was to know about Rob Johns.

  Snapping his phone shut, he started to walk away from the window, but something under the desk caught his eye and stopped him cold.

  He bent down, pulled it out, in all its ugly glory.

  And very nearly wept over a stupid purple bear.

  IT was the vibrations on his hip that woke Josh up.

  Actually, the vibrations were technically under his hip, as he was lying face down in the dirt. The hard rectangle that was his phone dug deep into his flesh, and in reality should have been uncomfortable. But given the fact that both his shoulder and thigh were on fire, he figured the cell phone problem was pretty minor.

  And when he said on fire, he meant ON FIRE. Like someone had gored him with a poker dipped in molten lead.

  “Ugh.” Even his eyelids hurt. Way too much for him to attempt to pry them open. But shit, something was very wrong with this picture, and he knew he had to check things out.

  Mustering every bit of energy, Josh willed himself to ignore the pain, concentrating on the facial muscles involved in operating his eyelids. He twitched and pulled and got the left one open a crack, but the right remained caked together.

  What exactly had he done? Bathed in honey and fallen into a mound of fire ants?

  No. Shit. This was far worse than that. Maybe he’d crashed his car.

  He tried, really tried, to remember where he was and what he was doing. And to facilitate that goal, he needed to get his face out of the dirt.

  He lifted his head – very slightly – and spat the dust away from his lips, but when he tried to turn it the right side nearly exploded.

  “Ah, hell.” He dropped his face again, because in the grand scheme of things he figured dirt-eating amnesia was better than exploding. Then stuck his tongue out, very tentatively, and tasted the stickiness on the right side of his face.

  Which tasted nothing at all like honey, but an awful lot like blood.

  His head ached, his leg throbbed, his shoulder redefined pain. And he’d definitely just established that he was bleeding. Profusely. Like a stuck pig.

  Or more specifically, like someone who’d just been shot.

  Ah, hell, he thought again, because it hurt too much to say it. And because he was now absolutely, positively certain that was what had happened.

  Apparently, the saggy front porch had been the least of his worries.

  The fact that he’d been shot meant he needed to be able to move his arm, so that he could both radio in for backup and reach his sidearm.

  Of course the real ah, hell moment here was that his arm was attached to his shoulder, which was quickly progressing from hell’s seventh to eighth level. Damn, it hurt. His hot poker analogy hadn’t been far off, because he’d definitely been pumped full of molten lead.

  Prying his right eyelid open through sheer force of will, he realized the sticky substance caking it was blood, and came to the equally unsettling conclusion that he’d been shot in the head. Or rather, grazed, more than likely. He’d been grazed by a damn bullet.

  After, of course, two others had torn through his shoulder and leg.

  And because he was still bleeding profusely and was at serious risk of dying in the dirt, he knew that he had to make his arm work without help from his shoulder.

  If he could just get to his radio…

  But his cell phone was closer to his hand. And at this point, closer seemed like a good plan.

  Sliding fingers slick with his own blood toward the phone clipped onto his belt, Josh cursed, quite baldly, as the ripping pain nearly destroyed him. Grinding his teeth together, he called up every reserve of strength he could manage to push a button.

  He thought it was redial – hoped, prayed – but given the blood in his eyes and the pain waving his vision, he could have hit nothing at all. But he hit it again, hoping against hope that it would go through. Given his incapacitation and the spotty coverage in the area, he figured his chances were fifty/fifty.

  He also figured that his chances of whoever shot him coming out from the house and adding a nice little tap to the head for insurance were considerably higher.

  Super.

  He could have the ignominious distinction of being the only deputy in the history of the Bentonville sheriff’s department to ever be killed in the line of duty. Maybe they could build a monument to that absurdity in the form of a nice bronze statue in the town square.

  Distantly, through a haze of pain, Josh heard his phone make the connection. Hope bloomed, even as he gave into the darkness once more.

  CLAY was on the phone with Sheriff Callahan, asking him what, if anything, he knew about Rob Johns, when his phone alerted him to a call waiting. A quick glance determined it came from Kathleen, and he excused himself to take it. “You have a license plate number?” he asked in lieu of a greeting.

  “We have a partial. There was dirt or something obscuring the last two digits on the plate, but the rest of it looks to be South Carolina tag 801-D…”

  “CK,” Clay completed for her, running his fingers through his hair as he paced. “I remember it because… well, for obvious and juvenile reasons, it caught my attention. Shit. I didn’t want to send you off on a wild goose chase in case I was wrong, but I saw that truck in Bentonville. In fact, I almost ran over the driver as he crossed the street. His name is Rob Johns, and I just got an address on him from the sheriff.” He rattled it off to Kathleen. “The entire Bentonville sheriff’s department is currently unaccounted for or unavailable, so we need to get somebody over there quick. If you want to issue a BOLO, the man’s about six foot, dark brown hair, overweight… although I wouldn’t put much stock in that description. He’s obviously proficient with disguises. Shit.”

  Across the room, Kim’s cell phone jangled, and she pounced on it and looked at the number. “It’s Harding.”

  “Kathleen, I’ll call you right back.” Clay hung up on Tate’s cousin, because
he really wanted to talk with Josh.

  “Hello,” Kim said for the second time. “Deputy Harding, are you there?” A beat passed, and then another, and then she looked at the message window on her phone to see whether the call had been dropped. “The line’s still open,” she told Clay, looking up from her position at the desk. “But he’s not answering.”

  Clay held out his hand and she passed him the phone. There was the distinct, slightly fuzzy sound of an open connection, but no human noises to be detected.

  Until Clay heard a soft moan.

  He tossed his own phone to Kim. “See if you can get them to triangulate Harding’s location through his phone. Whatever happened, I’m pretty sure he’s hurt.” And wasn’t that just great? This day was definitely going down in the record books as the shittiest ever.

  Then he pressed his mouth back to the receiver. “Harding, this is Clay Copeland. Can you hear me? Are you able to tell us where you are and what your status is?”

  Silence followed again, and Clay listened to it echo as Kim placed the call he’d asked her to make. Then he looked at Maureen and quickly crossed the room. “Listen to this,” he handed her Kim’s cell, “and let me know if you hear anything.” Then he asked to borrow her phone, dialing Kathleen’s number at the station.

  “Maureen?” she answered it as a question.

  “Nope. Clay. We’re playing pass the cell phone. A call came in on Agent O’Connell’s cell from one of the deputies over in Bentonville, and it looks like he might be in some kind of distress. Did you get anything on the plates?”

  “Yes, but it didn’t match either the name or the address you gave. It came back as registered to one Alma W. Walker, Bentonville address. Could be either the vehicle or the plates were stolen.”

  Something about that just didn’t fit. “Our man’s too careful to be driving around with stolen anything. Alma Walker might be the pseudonym for his old lady identity. Although if he was out around town as Rob Johns, being seen driving that truck, he had to have a plausible explanation for it in case he was ever pulled over. Sheriff Callahan said that he was some kind of property manager or caretaker, so that might be it.”