by LENA DIAZ,
He scrubbed his jaw and studied both potential paths. “Northeast?”
“That’s the way I’d go. Seems firmer, drier. I’m surprised we haven’t seen anyone else out here. Leaving one man to guard a shed full of merchandise doesn’t seem very smart.”
“I agree. But you heard what they said about the hostages and cleaning up messes. Maybe whoever else is out here is helping with whatever is planned for the hostages.”
“Then we need to find them, fast. Let’s go.”
They continued along the path, looking out for bent or broken branches, or footprints, in the dirt. But with the sun almost completely set, their only light was from the rising moon. And it wasn’t even a full moon.
He suddenly held up a hand, signaling for her to stop, then pressed his finger against his mouth for her to be quiet. She paused beside him, listening, trying to hear whatever he’d heard. And then she heard it—the low murmur of voices, muted, as if coming from far away. It was hard to tell in the woods just how far because of the way sound carried out here.
He motioned again for silence, then crept forward. She followed, and together they made their way, getting closer and closer to the sounds they were hearing. After they had maneuvered around a particularly thick mass of fallen limbs and soggy ground to find solid ground again, the glow of lights had them ducking down. But the lights weren’t moving. They were steady, and coming from what appeared to be a large clearing at least half a football field away.
Colton reached back for her hand and tugged her with him behind an enormous, twisted cypress, its knobby knees pushing up out of the brackish water of the encroaching swamp on its southern side. She and Colton crouched behind the opposite side, blocking them from the light.
“There could be guards out here in the woods,” Colton whispered. “I’ll circle around, try to pinpoint how many there are and where they’re stationed. If I see the hostages, I’ll get a count and the lay of the land, see what we’re up against. Then we’ll brainstorm the best way to proceed.”
She grabbed his hand as he started to turn away. “Promise me you won’t try to take on these guys all by yourself. Promise me you’ll come back and we’ll do this, whatever we decide to do, together.”
He framed her face in his hands and pressed a fierce kiss against her lips. “Together,” he whispered.
And then he was gone.
* * *
COLTON CREPT THROUGH the woods, skirting around thick mud bogs and sharp palmettos, carefully making his way in a circle around the source of the light, which he presumed to be the drug dealers’ base camp.
He hated lying to Silver, but if the situation was as dangerous as he expected, no way was he going to come back and bring her with him. Not because he didn’t think she was capable. She was DEA and had probably faced worse before. But he’d bet everything he owned that she’d faced it with a team of agents at her side. Because no one in their right mind would try to take on a group of heavily armed mercenary types and thugs that typically made up drug-running operations. And that included him, at any other time. But tonight everything was different.
Because of Silver.
She was one of those rare people who believed in the inherent good in people, in spite of the job she had and the evil she must have seen on a nearly daily basis just as he did. And she’d already suffered such incredible loss when Eddie was killed. He couldn’t bear to see her hurting like that again if more innocents were killed. So, knowing it was virtually impossible for Drew to round up the troops to save the hostages in time, here he was, risking everything to try to do the impossible himself.
As he made his way around a large group of palmettos to finally get a clear view of what he was up against, his only real hope was that it wasn’t as bad as he’d feared.
Nope. It was worse, far worse.
A large tent sat at one side of the clearing, with at least ten feet of cleared space between it and any foliage, making it nearly impossible to approach without being seen. As Colton watched, three armed men stepped out of the woods and went into the tent. Four armed guards walked the perimeter of the clearing, each with a semiautomatic rifle strapped over his shoulder. And lighting all of it up were three clusters of bright lights, powered by generators.
At the other end of the clearing sat two combat-style heavy-duty Jeeps, their drivers armed with the same type of semiautomatic rifles. Arms crossed and looking bored, they appeared to be waiting for someone or something. Silver had been right. Something was definitely going on.
And he was pretty sure that “something” had to do with the four men bound and gagged in the middle of the clearing, inside a cage. Correction, one man, and three boys—Eddie’s age, around nineteen or twenty. Counting the drivers in the Jeeps, the hostages were guarded by at least nine heavily armed men, ten if he counted the other guard back at the shed, who could come running if needed.
Yeah, this was way worse than he’d hoped.
A whisper of sound from above had him diving to the side and whipping out his knife just as a man leaped down at him from a tree branch. He scrambled to roll away. Colton tackled him and jumped on his back, shoving the man’s face into the mud so he couldn’t cry out. He held his knife at the ready, grabbed a fistful of the man’s hair and yanked his head up to draw his knife across his throat. He’d just reached his blade around to end it when he heard a whimper.
Like what a child might make. Or a terrified teenager.
Colton held the knife against the man’s throat and leaned down to get a good look at his face. Charlie. Ah, hell. He lightened the pressure of the blade. “Give me one good reason not to kill you right now.”
“We...we could have...we could have killed you,” he blubbered, barely able to get coherent words past his lips. “But we didn’t.”
“We?” He pressed the knife harder against Charlie’s throat.
Charlie thumped one of his hands against the ground. Branches crackled overhead. Colton swore and yanked Charlie up out of the mud, pulling him in front of him as he scooted back against a tree, knife still held to the teenager’s throat. He whipped out his pistol, aiming it at the six other young men who’d just dropped from the sky and now crouched in front of him as if ready to pounce. But, in spite of Charlie’s claims about them killing him, the boys had no weapons, at least none that Colton saw.
“Back up, or he dies,” Colton ordered, leveling his pistol at the nearest boy while holding the knife steady against Charlie’s throat.
“Do as he says,” Charlie whispered, his voice hoarse, barely audible.
The boys slowly raised their hands in the air and backed up several steps. Moonlight slanted down through the branches overhead, illuminating some of their faces. And that was when Colton recognized them. They were the foster kids whom Mrs. Jones had sent to a neighbor’s house when he and Silver arrived to break the news about Eddie’s death. But how had they ended up here?
A quick glance up confirmed that there were vines hanging from the trees above, the vines these boys had used to swing from tree to tree and sneak up on him, then drop down like ninjas. He couldn’t help being impressed.
He slowly lowered his gun, pointing it at the ground, and eased the knife a few inches away from Charlie’s throat.
“All right.” He kept his voice low so the gunmen back by the tents wouldn’t hear him. “You’ve got my attention. Start talking.”
* * *
THERE SHOULD HAVE been a trench in the dirt by now for all the pacing that Silver had done. She strode back and forth between the same two trees with her pistol out, hanging down by her thigh toward the ground. How long had it been since Colton had left? Twenty minutes? Thirty? More? Certainly enough for him to have performed reconnaissance and returned.
Unless he’d lied about coming back for her and them rescuing the hostages together.
A whisper of air stirred her hair against her neck. But there didn’t seem to be a breeze. She lifted her gun, panning it back and forth, but she d
idn’t see anything.
“Colton?” she whispered. “Is that you?”
“Silver, put your gun away.”
She frowned. “Colton?” She turned around. “Where are you?”
“Look up.”
She lifted her head, and her mouth fell open in shock. “What are you...how did you—”
“The gun?”
“Oh, sorry.” She shoved it into her waistband and moved back.
He let go of the vine he was hanging from and dropped to the ground, rolled and then jumped to his feet. Before she could ask him what was going on, he grabbed her and pulled her back against the trunk of a tree.
Thump, thump, thump. Several more men dropped from the sky near where Colton had been a moment before. By the time he let her go, she counted six, no, seven young men, young being the operative word, standing there staring at her. She frowned as she studied their faces, and then it dawned on her who they were.
“You’re all Mrs. Jones’s kids. And...is that you, Charlie?”
The blond boy moved from the rear of the group to the front. “Yes, ma’am. I hope we didn’t scare you. We’re on your side. I mean, you and Detective Graham’s side.”
She pressed her hand against her chest where her heart seemed to want to burst through her ribs. She’d had quite a fright and wasn’t sure what to think. Obviously, these boys weren’t a threat or Colton wouldn’t have led them here. And he didn’t have his gun out. But, then, why were they here? And what did they want?
“Colton, what’s going on? Were these young men taken hostage?” She put her hands on her hips. “Did you risk your life and rescue them all on your own? You promised me you wouldn’t—”
“Whoa, whoa, now.” He held out his hands in a placating gesture. “One question at a time. No, I didn’t rescue anyone. And no, these young men weren’t hostages—not this week anyway.”
She frowned. “What do you mean, this week?”
“Charlie, tell her what you told me.”
She listened with growing horror as he recounted his tale, explaining how it had all started because Eddie and some others were being bullied by a kid at school who acted as if the fact that his parents were rich meant he was important and they were beneath him. One of the boys got a hold of some liquor from his older brother and passed it around as they griped about the snobby boy. Then, on a drunken dare, Eddie and some of the others decided to break into the kid’s house when no one was home and trash the place.
And that was exactly what they did. But they also found something at the house, a kilo of cocaine and a stash of money, thousands of dollars. If they’d been sober, they’d have thought it through. But they were high and mad and took the drugs and the money.
“Wait,” Silver said. “Are you saying the man you stole from was a drug dealer?”
“Yes, ma’am. But we didn’t realize it. I mean, we were kind of wasted or we’d have known that we should have hightailed it out of there as soon as we found the drugs.”
“Let me guess. He had you on surveillance video? And knew you were local high school kids?”
Charlie nodded. “He threatened to tell the police, show them the video of us breaking in. He said no one would believe us about the drugs being his. That our only chance was to do some favors for him.”
“The burglary ring,” she said, finally understanding how it had started.
“No,” Colton corrected her. “The robberies came later. The man they crossed was a low guy on the totem pole in the drug world. A lowlife who’s already been arrested on other charges. I recognized his name when Charlie gave me the details. But before his arrest, he told his boss about the break-in, and his boss sent some thugs to rough up the kids and said they had to work off their debt.”
She nodded. “Debt meaning they owed the dealer for double-crossing his organization, even though they didn’t realize they were doing it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Charlie said. “We gave him the kilo and cash, but he still said we owed him. He threatened to kill us, or the Joneses, if we didn’t do what he said.”
“Which was what? Running drugs for him?”
“Basically. He needed a location where the cops wouldn’t be looking for a drug operation and thought he could use Mystic Glades with us guiding them through the canals and covering for him, warning him if things got hot.”
Another boy stepped forward. “We didn’t know what to do, so we told Mr. Jones. But we were being watched and didn’t know it. Two men busted in the door and took him away, along with me and Todd.” He waved at the boy beside him.
“But, what, you escaped? Both of you? But Mr. Jones is still a hostage?”
“No, ma’am. They knew social services might get involved if we went missing. So he let us go but kept Mr. Jones. But then Eddie got the idea that he could buy us out of this mess. That’s when he started the burglary ring. We were trying to get enough money that the dealer would leave us alone and let Mr. Jones go.”
“Remember Ron Dukes?” Colton asked her.
She nodded.
“He was the brains of that operation, a genius with security alarms. So they enlisted him to help.”
“Wait, then Ron was...he wasn’t working with the dealer?”
“No. He wanted to help Eddie and the others buy their freedom.”
“Oh, my God. And he paid for it with his life.”
“No, ma’am. Ron is one of the hostages.”
She blinked in confusion.
Colton took her hands in his and gave her a sympathetic grin. “It’s a lot to take in all at once. That bleach we saw at the garbage facility was just that, bleach. It had nothing to do with Ron or anyone else, as far we know. But, basically, what happened is that Eddie and the others got mixed up in the drugs by accident. And they tried to buy their way out of it by stealing things and selling them on the black market. What they didn’t realize was that once you’re in—”
“There’s no way out,” she said. “Believe me, I’ve seen that lesson over and over in my years as a DEA agent. So then Eddie, what, took the proceeds and tried to buy everyone’s freedom?”
Colton nodded. “And he paid for it with his life.”
She nodded, fighting back tears. “And the hostages are, what, insurance to make sure no one else pulls a stunt like Eddie did?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Who killed him? I have to know.”
“To answer that, we have to know who’s running the whole operation.”
She looked at Charlie. “I don’t understand. All of you have to know who’s calling the shots here.”
“Cato’s the head guy’s right hand. We think he’s the one who killed Eddie, too. But only because his boss told him to.”
“Then who’s his boss?”
Colton looked at the other boys and they all shrugged.
“We don’t know. We’ve never seen him.”
Silver shook her head in frustration.
“Silver,” Colton said, “The hostages are in a small camp not far from here. It looks like they’re about to be taken somewhere else. There’s no reason to move them unless—”
“They’re cleaning up,” she whispered.
He nodded. “We can’t wait any longer. We have to get them out of there.”
“You said there was a camp. There are other gunmen there?”
“Ten, or more. With semiautomatic weapons.”
She looked down at her pistol shoved into her waistband. Two guns, hers and Colton’s—no, three, counting the handgun that Colton had taken off the guy in the shed. But that wasn’t enough to take down ten armed men.
His hand gently pushed her chin up to look at him. “Hey. Don’t give up already. This isn’t over.” He grinned and held up the key to the padlock. “The boys and I have a plan.”
Chapter Fifteen
Colton held the keys to his Mustang out to Charlie, then hesitated. “Are you sure you know how to drive a stick?”
“Grew up on one. But I’ve neve
r driven a ’Stang. That’s gonna be sweet.”
“Colton, we don’t have time for this,” Silver reminded him.
He winced as he dropped the keys in Charlie’s hand. “All right, go. Be as quiet as you can. Assume Cato or his boss could have someone else out here in the woods looking for you. Don’t take any chances. Once you get back to town, don’t stop. We need real backup, cops, a SWAT team, not Freddie and her senior squad heading up here and getting themselves killed.” He handed Charlie his phone. “Get to the interstate and press Send. The call is ready to go through to my boss. Tell him to send the cavalry.”
“Got it.”
“Go.”
Charlie whirled around and disappeared into the woods.
“All right, to the shed. Come on.” Colton took off at a run, with Silver and the boys trying to keep up with his long stride.
When they reached the shed, everyone stopped and Colton waved two of the boys forward.
“Okay, Ned—you’re the one with the cigarette lighter, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. You and Robert know what to do. Wait fifteen minutes to give us enough time to get in position. Then light it up. And, Ned? After this, you’re giving up smoking. It’s bad for you. Understood?”
Ned grinned and gave Colton a salute. “Yes, sir.”
“As soon as the fire catches, you climb a tree and make like Tarzan and get out of here. Got it?”
“Got it,” they said in unison.
Colton returned Ned’s salute and then eyed the rest of the group. “Okay, which of you juvenile delinquents has a pocketknife?”
Silver lightly punched him in the arm and he winked at her.
All three remaining boys raised their hands.
Colton cocked an eyebrow at Silver.
She rolled her eyes.
“All right. Special Agent Westbrook and I will do our part. Remember, only slash the tires on the rear Jeep. We’ll need the other one to transport the hostages. Everyone ready?”
At their eager nods, he leaned down close to Silver. “Are you ready? If this doesn’t go as planned, we’ll be in a firefight for our lives, not to mention their lives.” He motioned toward the boys.