“Just that. She came on my side of the room and told me a man would be looking for her and to tell him that she was going to Mexico.”
Cole punched his fist into his palm. He’d allowed her to scam him. Had she remembered everything and decided she liked that life better than this one? Did she ever really have amnesia? She couldn’t have faked all those emotions...could she?
“That was after her phone call.”
Cole’s head jerked up. “Phone call?”
The old man pointed a crooked finger at Linda’s bed. “She was talking on the phone before she came over here. Crazy talk.”
“What kind of crazy talk?”
“Someone trying to kill her. Diamonds. The DEA. Crazy stuff. When she whipped back the curtain and told me to tell you she was going to Mexico, that confirmed it. Crazy.”
They’d gotten to her. Cole dragged his hands through his hair. But how had they convinced her to go with them? And where had they taken her?
“Did you hear anything else from the phone call? A place? A name?”
“The only name I remember is Johnny. That’s all I got out of it. I didn’t hear her mention the name of any place except Mexico, which she said to me after the phone call.”
Cole gripped the man’s frail hand. “Thanks. You don’t know how much you just helped me.”
“I hope she’s okay. Real pretty gal, but sad eyes.”
“She’ll be okay.”
And he’d go to hell and back to make sure of it.
He left the room and looked up and down the hallway. An exit sign glowed green next to a heavy door. He strode toward it and pushed against the metal bar. It opened onto a stairwell.
He should’ve checked out the floor before allowing her to go to Linda’s room herself. Cole jogged down the stairs until he reached the bottom floor and burst through the final door.
He found himself on a loading dock, and he approached a guy with a clipboard, doing inventory of some boxes.
“Did you see a woman come out this way recently?” As the man’s face began to close down, Cole pulled out his badge.
“I didn’t, but I just stepped out here.” He jerked his thumb to his right. “Try down there. Those two trucks are almost done unloading.”
“Thanks.” Cole moved to the next truck and flashed his badge at the man signing for a delivery. “Did you see a woman come out of that door in the past fifteen minutes? Average height, long brown hair, slim, black leather jacket and boots?”
The man eyed the badge, ripped off a copy of the form he was signing and handed it to the truck driver. “Yeah, I saw her.”
“What did she do? Where’d she go?”
“When she walked down the steps, a car flashed its lights at her and she got in.”
“What kind of car? Did you see who was in it?” Cole tipped his head back and scanned the overhang of the loading dock.
“Small, black compact. I didn’t see who was in it. Just noticed because usually people don’t come out of the hospital this way to get picked up.”
“Are there cameras out here?”
“Not yet, but the hospital’s working on it.”
“Did you see what direction the car went?”
“Can’t see from here which way he turned. Just went up to the alley that leads to the side street.”
“Thanks.” How was he going to track a small, black compact? No license plate. No description of the driver. Cole felt like punching something, or someone.
He made a turn to go back to the front of the hospital and the parking structure when someone yelled behind him. “Hey!”
He pivoted toward the voice, and a guy standing next to the first man he’d talked to waved his arms at him. Cole backtracked.
“Yeah?”
“You’re a cop or something?”
“DEA. Why?”
“Joey here told me you were asking about a woman down here in the last half hour.”
“That’s right. Did you see her get into the car? Do you have any information about the car?”
“I saw her come out of the hospital but I didn’t see no car.”
“Oh, okay, thanks.” Cole’s stomach sank. Back to square one.
“But you aren’t the only one looking for her.”
“Oh? Who else?”
“Some local boy, Jason Foster.”
“Jason Foster? Quileute? Dating that waitress at Sutter’s?”
“That’s the one. He was all agro down here, asking me if I saw some chick, where she went. Man, I told that dude if he was getting rid of Chloe to let me know ’cuz I always had a thing for her, you know?”
“What did he do after that?”
“Took off on his Harley.”
“Thanks. I appreciate the heads-up.”
What did Jason have to do with all this? He’d shown up at the emergency room with a broken hand the night Linda got sick. Cole had seen Jason earlier that same night hightailing it out of Sutter’s back entrance, worried and preoccupied.
Cole raced to his car and drove into town. He pulled across the street from Sutter’s and went into the restaurant, which was just getting ready for the dinner crowd.
He spied Chloe talking to Bud at the bar and wiping down menus, but better yet, he saw Jason nursing a beer at the end of the bar. As Cole walked toward him, Jason glanced up.
Then he left his half-full beer glass and headed for the back door.
“Jason!” Cole started moving faster, but the younger man took off at a sprint, bursting from the restaurant.
Cole caught him before he got to his bike, and tackled him. Panting heavily, he jerked Jason’s arm behind his back. “What do you know about Caroline Johnson? Why were you looking for her?”
“Oww.” Jason twisted in Cole’s grasp. “I was trying to save her, man.”
“Save her from whom? Where is she?”
“From Rocky Whitecotton. They have her at the Kennedy cabin. I—I think they’re gonna kill her, man.”
* * *
THE MAN WITH the tan, leathery skin prodded her in the back with his gun. “We don’t go through the front door.”
She tripped as she walked around the side of the rustic cabin set practically in the middle of the woods. Did she know this place? Images rushed at her from all sides. Different images from before—lush greenery replaced the arid desert. She didn’t have her family with her, but she wanted them.
The man, Vic, knocked on the door in some kind of code, and a lock clicked from inside.
A terrible fear descended on her and she stumbled backward. She didn’t want to go inside. She didn’t want to see the person on the other side of that door. It was happening again. He would take her, take her away from all her happiness.
The door opened and a dark eye appeared at the crack.
She covered her mouth. “No, no.”
Then the door swung open and Vic pushed her inside and she fell on her hands and knees at the feet of another man. She tipped her head back and stared into the lined face of Rocky Whitecotton.
The man who’d kidnapped her twenty-five years ago.
Chapter Eighteen
Rocky smirked. “You remember, don’t you? You even remember what you’d forgotten until last year, when you went snooping around and discovered the truth about your real identity.”
She got to her feet and faced him, squaring her shoulders. “That my real name is Heather Brice, and you kidnapped me and Kayla Rush and Stevie Carson...and others.”
“The three of you were young enough, especially you, that you forgot all about your old lives and old names. You were happy enough at the commune, weren’t you?”
“Until we found out about the drug dealing, the crime, the murders.”
&nbs
p; “We only murdered our enemies, and I was happy to let you all leave when you discovered our...business and disapproved. Your sister has a happy life in Mexico City with her husband and children.”
“Because she doesn’t know she’s really Kayla Rush, has a twin and was snatched from her real family when she was five years old.”
“And you wouldn’t know that either if you hadn’t gone poking around. You were studying to be a nurse. You gave up your lifelong dream to make some crazy journey to Timberline to find yourself. I couldn’t let you do it, Meadow.”
“My name’s Heather.”
“You’ve been Meadow Castillo longer than you’ve been Heather, and definitely longer than you’ve been Caroline Johnson.”
“Did you send Johnny Diamond to kill me?”
“Just to bring you back home. He was an idiot. He wasn’t supposed to use cyanide, just a little something to knock you out, and he ended up killing himself—and losing our drugs and money.” Rocky snapped his fingers. “Where’s the money?”
“I don’t have any money. The DEA played you when they released the information about all of Johnny’s money being missing. I took a small amount to make a start somewhere, and I don’t even have that.”
His dark eyes narrowed and glittered dangerously. “You’re quite cozy with the DEA now, aren’t you?”
She shrugged. “They don’t know anything because I didn’t know anything. They certainly don’t know you’re here.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better? I gathered children from five different states and the kidnappings were never linked. Escaped to Mexico with my new family to start my own tribe of people, and supported my family through my enterprises. I dropped off the radar. The FBI never had a clue where I went and neither did those idiot Quileute who’d banished me from the reservation.” He leveled a finger at her. “And you made me come back, put my commune in danger, just to search for a family who’s forgotten all about you.”
James Brice’s sad face flashed across her mind, and his comment that his parents never spoke of the kidnapping and couldn’t bring themselves to return to Timberline to sell the last of their property here echoed in her brain.
He was her brother. His instincts had been right. She had a family, and she wanted to get back to them.
She shrugged. “Then let’s just go. I suppose you snuck across the border, undetected, and we’ll have to return to Mexico the same way. I have no ID, no passport.”
“What happened to it? When reports first started coming back from Vic here that you had amnesia, I couldn’t figure out why you just didn’t look at your passport.”
“Johnny must’ve done something with my purse and everything in it. It was nowhere to be found. I had nothing.”
Rocky slapped Vic on the back. “I should’ve sent you to find Meadow. You did a better job than Johnny.”
She stepped back. “He murdered my therapist. He assaulted my friend.”
“Outsiders, Meadow. Come back with us now and forget this life. You have your brothers and sisters, your nursing studies.”
“Not River...or Stevie.” Her nose tingled and she swiped at it.
“River died in that motorcycle accident. Nothing we could do about it.”
“Is that really what happened, or did he discover that he was really Stevie Carson and had been ripped from his real family?”
“There you go again.” Rocky stroked his beard. “Are you going to come home to Mexico and forget all this, or...?”
“Or what? You’re going to kill me like you killed Stevie? How many of us are you going to kill? River and I won’t be the last to question and figure out how we came to be part of your isolated commune at the edge of Copper Canyon in Mexico.”
“I’m hoping the rest will turn out like Summer. She’s content with her little family.”
“That’s because you’ve always intimidated her, and she was lucky enough to get away from you when she fell in love with Gerardo.”
“I’ll forgive you everything, Meadow—our drugs and money that we lost, cozying up to the DEA and even dragging me back here from my compound. Come home now and don’t breathe a word of any of this to anyone again.”
A pounding at the back door made all of them jump, and her heart did a somersault. Had Cole found her somehow? She knew she could never return to Mexico with Rocky. Those children at the compound, her brothers and sisters, all had blood brothers and sisters and parents who were devastated by their loss.
She had to make everyone whole again, had to make herself whole.
Rocky gestured for Vic to investigate the knock, and Vic crawled across the floor and peeked up through the blinds. “It’s Jason.”
She folded her arms across her midsection. Why was Chloe’s boyfriend here?
Rocky was wondering the same thing. “What is that loser doing here?” He nodded. “Get the door.”
During her entire conversation with Rocky, Vic had kept his gun pointed at her. Now he held it in front of him as he opened the door for Jason, and she shuffled a few steps toward the front door. Maybe she could make a run for it while he was occupied with him.
Vic growled. “What the hell do you want? We don’t need no more supplies. We’re heading out tomorrow.”
“Jason?” She hugged herself. “What are you doing here?”
“I—I’ve been helping Rocky. I’m the one who tried to poison you in Sutter’s that night. Sorry, but Rocky’s like family to me.” Jason pulled the door closed behind him and walked across the room toward Rocky. “My uncle Danny worked with him.”
Rocky snorted. “Danny turned out to be worthless, just like you. Sent him here to do a job and he ended up blowing the whole cover off my connection with the Lords of Chaos. It’s Danny’s fault the FBI fingered me as the catalyst behind the Timberline Trio. Now, what do you want?”
“I’m here to warn you. I heard the FBI knows you’re here. You’d better make a move tonight.” He reached for the front doorknob, and Vic lunged for him.
“What are you doing?”
The back door crashed open and Cole filled the frame, pointing his weapon right at Rocky’s head. “Drop the gun, Vic, or your boss dies.”
Vic grabbed Jason around the neck. “I’ll shoot this little weasel right here and now.”
“Get down, Caroline.”
She dropped to the floor and scooted out of the way of the two weapons at cross purposes.
“It’s over. I called the FBI and the sheriff’s department on my way here. You’re going to be surrounded in a matter of minutes.”
Rocky reached for his waistband and she screamed. “He has a gun.”
Before Cole could get a shot off, Rocky thrust the gun beneath his chin and blew his brains out.
He fell to the floor in front of her, and it all ended the way it had begun.
She was staring into the eyes of another dead man.
Epilogue
The press conference ended, and Heather retreated to the hotel banquet room that had served as a refuge for the families. Her eyes misted over as she surveyed the room filled with joyous children and their parents.
Her own parents, Patty and Charlie, and her brother, James, hovered around her as if they thought she’d suddenly disappear again.
Her mother hugged her for the thousandth time since they’d reunited. “I just can’t believe how this all worked out. It’s an incredible story.”
“What’s incredible is how James recognized me after all these years.”
“I can’t tell you how shocked I was when I found out you were Linda Gunderson’s cousin and not my sister. I was so sure.”
“And you were right. Now I really feel guilty for slamming you against the car.” Cole slapped James on the back as he shook his hand.
H
er father gripped Cole’s shoulder. “In the end, you’re the one who rescued Heather, so we can forgive anything that came before.”
Linda, fully recovered from the beating, squeezed Heather’s arm. “You should’ve told me the whole story, Heather. Maybe I could’ve helped you figure out who you were sooner.”
“You did enough, Linda. Covering for me resulted in a beating and a poisoning. You need to go away with Louise the next time she takes a cruise.”
The host of the TV show Cold Case Chronicles joined their group with her FBI boyfriend, Duke Harper, in tow. “Mr. and Mrs. Brice? I’m Beth St. Regis.”
Mom smiled and nodded. “I watch your show.”
“Did your daughter tell you that I’m going to be doing a special on the Timberline Trio? Happily, it won’t be a cold case anymore.”
Dad put his arm around Mom. “She told us, Ms. St. Regis, but we’re not interested in the spotlight.”
“I understand completely. You don’t even have to appear on camera, but could I get some contact information for you?”
“Beth.” Agent Harper rolled his eyes. “You need to respect their privacy.”
“What do you think, Heather?” Her father hugged her close.
“I think it’s an important story, and I’m sure Beth will do a great job. I’ve already been talking to her.”
Beth mouthed a thank-you.
“I don’t see the harm, Dad.” James smiled at Beth. “Are you at that table over there?”
Her family wandered away with Beth, and Heather grinned at Cole. “She can get anyone talking.”
A man with black hair and an intense stare limped across the room toward them, a beautiful Native American woman hanging on to his arm.
“Heather? I’m Jim Kennedy, and this is Scarlett Easton. I just wanted to personally apologize to you for the role my father played in the kidnappings.”
“Oh, please. No apology is necessary.” She gestured to Cole. “This is Cole Pierson with the DEA.”
Cole shook Jim’s hand. “I heard the story about how you and Scarlett dug into the case and made the connection between Rocky and the Lords of Chaos. You’re the ones who put the FBI on Rocky’s trail and got him on our radar.”
In the Arms of the Enemy Page 19