by Paula Graves
Chapter Seventeen
“We’ve got a perimeter set up in the county—every law enforcement agency available. The feds are already on their way from Mobile, and they’re sending agents from Birmingham, too—”
J.D. whirled on Massey, his eyes wild. “It’s been at least a half an hour! If they hit I-10, they could be in another state!”
Natalie put her hand on his arm, but he shrugged off her touch. The look of terror in his face made her stomach ache.
“We’ve contacted the contiguous states as well, plus—”
A ringing sound interrupted Massey’s attempt at further reassurance. “That’s my phone,” J.D. said, looking around wildly.
Natalie spotted it on the ground a few feet behind the truck and bent to pick it up.
“Don’t touch it—it’s evidence,” Massey called.
J.D. gave the deputy a black look and grabbed the phone. His brow furrowed. “My brother Luke.”
“The one Cordero’s really after?” Natalie murmured.
He nodded and engaged the phone. “What is it?” He listened a second, then his gaze shot up and locked with Natalie’s, dread shining like black ice behind his eyes. “I’m putting you on speaker. There are people here who need to hear this.”
A second later, Natalie heard the roar of what sounded like a loud engine and a man’s voice, shouting to be heard over the noise. “Cordero called maybe thirty minutes ago. It was Cordero himself, not one of his goons, and he put Mike on the phone.”
Natalie felt as if her heart had twisted into a knot right in the center of her chest, making it nearly impossible to breathe.
“He wants to trade Mike for me. I’m on my way down there.”
“I’m not trading you for Mike,” J.D. insisted, starting to pace. “I’m going to find that drug-running son of a bitch and kill him myself.”
Natalie glanced at Massey for her colleague’s reaction. To her surprise—and relief—Massey didn’t seem bothered by J.D.’s rant. She wished she could be as sanguine about the return of J.D.’s bloodlust. She’d been relieved when the showdown at the restaurant had ended without any further felonies.
“No, you’re not,” Luke said. “He wants me. He won’t kill Mike because I told him I’m not doing a damned thing he tells me until I talk to Mike again. Mike’s a tool, not a goal.”
“He wants to kill us all, Luke!” The despair in J.D.’s voice was raw and affecting. Natalie tried to touch his arm again. This time, he let her hand remain, though understandably, he noticed it no more than he’d notice a fly landing on his shoulder.
“I know that, but he won’t kill Mike until he’s no longer useful,” Luke responded. “And we’ve got about an hour to figure out how to find him before that happens.”
“You’re in a bird?” J.D. asked.
“Billy at the heliport’s flying us for free. You know he thinks the world of Mike, and he has combat training.” Luke’s voice darkened. “We may need it.”
“Who else is with you?” J.D. asked.
“Gabe, Jake and Sam. The others stayed back in Gossamer Ridge—they’re gathering the family at the lake house and getting as much local LEO support as they can on short notice, in case this is a diversionary tactic and they’re the real target.”
“I hope that’ll be enough,” J.D. said grimly.
“Uncle Roy’s kids are coming over from Maybridge to help set up the perimeter. All except Rick. He’s down in your neck of the woods on a case for Cooper Security. He should be calling you soon to figure out a rendezvous point.”
“What’s your ETA?”
“Around fourteen hundred,” Luke answered, his call starting to break up. “We’ve hit a bad coverage spot—I’ll call back—” The line went dead.
J.D. growled with frustration. “How the hell did Cordero find Mike out here in the middle of nowhere? I didn’t even know my son was here until thirty minutes ago.”
“Oh my God,” Natalie whispered, a terrible idea beginning to take hold in her mind.
Both Massey and J.D. turned to look at her. “What?”
“Hamilton,” she said. “I couldn’t figure out why he was holding Mike in the first place. But if he’d made a deal—”
J.D. frowned. “With Cordero? Why? For that matter—how?”
“Gray Global Partners has a huge import/export operation headquartered in Tesoro.” For Massey’s sake, she added, “Sanselmo’s capital city.”
“I guess to do business there, you have to rub elbows with a lot of shady people,” Massey commented.
“Hard to avoid,” Natalie agreed. She turned to J.D. “And what if that shooting at the motel was meant for you instead of me? Hamilton may have called Cordero in as soon as he found out you were hanging around town asking questions— what if it was a dry run to send you a message or maybe even an outright attempt on your life? What if I just got in the way?”
For the first time since he’d discovered his son missing, J.D. seemed to really see Natalie. He lifted his hand as if he were about to touch her face. But he dropped his arm to his side and turned away. She could feel him distancing himself, inch by inch. “Did he make any calls while you were there?”
“No, but he had Mike before I ever went in the restaurant. He could have made a call at any point before that.”
“We can find out,” Massey said.
She and J.D. both looked at the deputy.
“We have Gray in custody,” he reminded them. “That means we have his phone.”
J.D. RODE WITH NATALIE to the police station, since the sheriff’s department considered his truck a crime scene. It was the first chance he’d had to be alone with her since those brief, stolen moments crouched behind the stove in the restaurant kitchen. But hell if he knew what to say.
He could see her growing sense of insecurity as he kept up the silent treatment, and a part of him hated himself for doing something that obviously hurt her, after all that she’d done to help him and his son.
But if this recent, horrific turn of events proved anything, it was that it could be very dangerous to be involved with a Cooper as long as Eladio Cordero was alive. His brothers and sister had somehow made peace with the threats, pushed, no doubt, by their headstrong partners.
But J.D. had lost too much in his life already. He’d be damned if he let Natalie Becker get killed for no reason other than her relationship with him.
“If we can prove Hamilton called Eladio Cordero or one of his associates,” Natalie murmured, “it may not matter that we can’t yet prove his connection to the serial killings.”
“It should be enough to keep him in jail a good, long time, even with his money and connections,” J.D. agreed, but only halfheartedly, because he was beginning to wonder if Gray would ever really get what was coming to him.
“One way or the other, I’ll connect him to these cases,” Natalie vowed, her voice low and fervent. “If I don’t do anything else in my life but that, it will have been a worthwhile life.”
J.D.’s cell phone rang. When he saw the unfamiliar number, his heart began to race. He answered. “Cooper.”
“Same here,” came a low voice he hadn’t heard in years.
“Rick.”
“You hanging in there, J.D.?” his cousin asked.
“Yeah, for the moment. Luke said you were in the area and wanted to help?”
“I’m nearly in Terrebonne—tell me where to meet you.” His cousin sounded calm and unperturbed, something J.D. might have found annoying if he didn’t know Rick had spent the last six years as a security consultant in every hell hole in South America, Africa, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. There probably wasn’t a thing that would make him blink at this point in his life.
“I’m heading to the Ridley County Sheriff’s Department. Know where that is?”
“On my way.” Rick hung up.
“Was that the cousin your brother mentioned?”
J.D. nodded. “He’ll be good in a fight.”
Natali
e let him off at the door and went to find a parking place, apparently aware he wouldn’t want to waste a minute. J.D. went inside and found a deputy waiting for him. “Deputy Massey said to bring you straight back.”
Massey was in a small room off the deputies’ bullpen, where he watched as another deputy slit open a bag containing what J.D. presumed were Hamilton Gray’s personal effects. Massey looked up at J.D.’s arrival. “Good—just in time. Where’s Natalie?”
“Parking,” J.D. answered. “Don’t wait. She’ll catch up.”
Massey nodded to the other deputy, who opened Gray’s cell phone. “We dragged a judge away from lunch at The Magnolia to sign the warrant, but we got it.”
J.D. knew he should care—building a case against Gray was vital—but even without a warrant, he wouldn’t have left this room until he knew what was on that phone.
“There was a call placed to a number about an hour ago.”
That would track with the time Mike was at the restaurant, J.D. thought.
After the deputy checked the number on a nearby computer, he looked up at Massey glumly. “Disposable cell.”
Massey glanced at J.D. “Could be a coincidence.”
“No.” J.D. pulled out his own phone and called Luke.
Luke answered, his voice still raised over the helicopter engine. “J.D., we’re just over Ridley County now. We’ve been cleared to land at the Sheriff’s Department—”
“That’s where I am now,” J.D. interrupted. “Listen—did you track the number Eladio Cordero used to call you?”
“It’s got to be a disposable—”
“I know, but do you have the number?”
“Let me look.” After a second, Luke rattled off a number.
J.D. looked at the deputy at the computer. He looked away from the screen and nodded.
“Son of a bitch,” J.D. growled.
“What is it?” Luke asked.
“We know who tipped Cordero off.”
“Who?”
“The man who killed Brenda.”
THE NEXT HOUR WAS A whirlwind, filled with Coopers descending on the sheriff’s department helipad within seconds of the arrival of J.D.’s cousin Rick, a tall, dark-haired man with coffee-brown eyes who looked enough like J.D. and his brothers that Natalie knew he was a Cooper before he ever stepped out of the big black Ford Expedition he drove.
The Coopers didn’t linger, staying long enough for Natalie to meet them all and for J.D. to tell her about the phone call from Hamilton to Eladio Cordero. They piled into the Expedition and headed off, leaving Natalie to shove her feelings into her pocket and do the only thing she could.
Talk Massey into letting her speak to Hamilton Gray alone.
Gray had the audacity to smile at her when she entered the interrogation room. She swallowed her nausea and sat across from him, taking comfort—and a little bit of mean pleasure—at the sight of shackles on his wrists and ankles.
“I really shouldn’t be talking to you without my lawyer.”
“He can be here if you like. I’m still going to ask you questions.” Natalie didn’t like the light in Hamilton’s eyes at her response, but she pushed on. “Here’s what we know. Less than an hour before Mike Cooper was abducted by Eladio Cordero’s thugs, you made a phone call to his disposable cell phone from yours.”
“I called a golfing buddy who doesn’t like cell con tracts.”
“Eladio Cordero called Luke Cooper from the same disposable cell number and put Mike on the phone to speak to his uncle.”
Hamilton’s eyes twitched.
“You were going to give Mike to them. That was why you were calling. That’s why they were out in the woods waiting. When he ran away, they grabbed him.” She leaned closer to him. “What was the trade-off? You give them Mike, they kill J.D. for you?”
Hamilton pressed his mouth to a tight line.
“You must really hate him for taking Brenda away. So unworthy of her. So inferior to you.” Natalie choked the words out through a haze of loathing. “Right?”
“He’s certainly inferior,” Hamilton agreed coolly.
“You spent a year flying back and forth to Sanselmo as a liaison for your father’s company eight years ago.” Natalie made a mental note to see if there were any unsolved murders in Tesoro fitting the profile of his other murders. “Did you have to make deals with El Cambio? With the cartels?”
“You think your daddy’s never made any deals with the devil?”
“I know he has,” she answered flatly. “When did you call them to come here?”
“You think Eladio Cordero doesn’t have eyes and ears everywhere?” Hamilton asked. “Even here?”
His tone set off alarm bells in Natalie’s head. He wasn’t talking generally about Terrebonne. He was talking about the Sheriff’s Department. “Who?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. It has nothing to do with me, as I continue to explain to you.”
There was a knock on the door behind her. She got up and went outside, where she found Massey frowning at her. “He’s saying we’ve got a Cordero plant here at the department?”
She started to nod, then looked up at Massey, trying to look at him with as objective an eye as she could. What did she really know about him, anyway? He’d suddenly started being friendly after he’d interviewed J.D. about the trespassing charge. Was he playing nice to keep a closer eye on J.D.?
He’d been the first to respond to the drive-by shooting. He knew where J.D. was most of the time, because he’d had good reason to keep tabs on them both after the shooting attempt.
“If you think it’s me, take a look at my records jacket,” Massey said grimly. “My brother, David, worked as a relief worker in Sanselmo during the cartel riots seven years ago. Cordero and his monsters wiped out the whole camp. They found David in pieces. All the kid wanted to do was help people, and they slaughtered him like a dog.” His jaw clenched. “If you think I’d do anything but shoot the bastard dead if I saw him, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
She studied his reaction, gauged his sincerity. The rage and pain in his eyes couldn’t be faked. “Okay. But who else has been connected to this case? Could it be Travis Rayburn?”
“Maybe,” Massey said.
“Who were the deputies who picked up J.D. at the restaurant that time I called in the tip?”
“Dusty and Joy.”
Natalie dismissed the idea of Joy Allen being the contact— Cordero and his ilk were notoriously chauvinistic. They’d never trust an American woman as an informant. Nor could she see what might tempt Joy, who was a newlywed with a good-looking husband who worked a high-paying job at a Mobile investment bank.
“Dusty’s kid is sick,” Massey murmured. “Some autoimmune thing. His insurance covers a lot, but there are a lot of things it doesn’t.” Massey frowned. “That’s why he took the security job at the charity fundraiser at your folks’ house.”
“He was with you when you responded to the drive-by, wasn’t he?” At Massey’s nod, her heart sank. “I need to know where Cordero would take Mike to hide him. And if Dusty knows—”
“We’ll find out,” Massey said grimly.
J.D. REALIZED IT HAD been nearly six years since he’d last seen his cousin Rick at a Christmas family get-together. The years between had taken a toll on his younger cousin, adding lines and hollows to his boyish face and a permanent watchfulness to his dark eyes. He’d worked for a security company called MacLear, a formerly well-respected company that, unbeknownst to most of its legitimate employees, had been running a hidden division that had acted as the personal army for a corrupt and dangerous State Department official.
J.D. had long suspected MacLear had a seamy underbelly, but Rick hadn’t listened to his warning. One of the first things he did when J.D. slid into the front passenger seat of the Expedition was apologize. “I should’ve listened to you about MacLear.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong. A few criminals in your company did.”
&nb
sp; “Maybe you could tell that to Jesse,” Rick murmured.
“He’s your big brother. Busting your chops is his job.”
“Yeah, just ask J.D.” Gabe slid into the SUV behind them, Jake on his heels. They took the back bench seat, leaving the middle seats for Luke and Sam.
J.D. looked over his shoulder at his brothers, overwhelmed by the sudden sense of strength that came from just having them here. For the first time since seeing the mark of Los Tiburones on his windshield, J.D. felt as if they’d get Mike back alive.
“When Luke called me, I started calling some people I dealt with during my security jobs in Sanselmo. I got a call just before I arrived confirming that Cordero left Sanselmo about four or five days ago.”
Just before the shots fired at his motel. J.D. told the others about the incident. “It was a pretty anemic attack.”
“You’re not his primary target,” Luke reminded him. “It may have been more like a shot across the bow to let you know they’re in town and they’re watching. Maybe they hoped to leave a bigger message but your friend Natalie got in the way.”
“Girlfriend Natalie?” Jake asked hopefully.
J.D. ignored him. “Mike was running around here for days and they didn’t bother him.”
“If Gray called them, it might have been too perfect an opportunity to ignore,” Luke said. “If Cordero knows anything about me after all this time, it’s that I’ll go the distance to protect my family.”
“Where to?” Rick asked.
“Right now, I want to go back to the woods where he disappeared,” J.D. answered. “The locals will be there processing the scene around my truck, but I was thinking—Mike knows as much about leaving a bread-crumb trail in the woods as any of us did as kids, and we knew a hell of a lot.”
“Think he may lead us to him?” Sam asked.
“It’s worth a shot,” J.D. answered. Mike had grown up in the woods around Gossamer Lake, playing for hours with his sister and other kids who lived in houses on the lake. Jake and Gabe had taken him on mountain hikes and taught him what they knew about tracking and survival.
Mike knew how to leave a trail so he could find his way back home, no matter how far he roamed. And from what Natalie had told him about his son’s escape from Hamilton Gray, his kid was pretty tough and focused even when things were falling apart around him.