Trace Evidence (The Heir Hunter Book 2)

by Diane Capri

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Red Maple Lake, California

  Six Years Ago

  Josh moved in the opposite direction, dragging Dan along as fast as they could manage. They made it another ten feet before Ruben stepped out from the woods on the other side of the driveway. He must have circled around the back of the house.

  Mark was still covered in mud and crusty dried blood. He had the sword in his left hand. He looked like a madman. Which he surely was. But his alarming appearance finally broke through whatever denial Dan had cloaked around himself. He hopped faster.

  If they could make it into the cover of the woods, they might have a chance.

  Josh looked around wildly for an opening between the trees wide enough for both he and Dan to slip through. Kevin and Ruben were too close. They seemed as normal as before, but given Mark’s presence, their normal-like behavior horrified him.

  Dan was breathing hard. Josh couldn’t move him any faster. Three against one, best case. And Mark was both armed and dangerous. Hell, maybe the others were, too. Maybe they were all insane.

  Josh stopped and turned to face Ruben as Kevin and Mark approached. Dan’s eyes widened and he tugged on Josh’s arm and hopped a couple more feet.

  Josh had been in many a bar fight with Dan and Skip in their college days. He knew what was coming. He recognized the signs. Dan must have seen it coming, too.

  And Josh knew he couldn’t win. Not three against one. Not with Mark armed with that sword he was capable of wielding to lethal effect.

  Yes. They were all crazy. For sure.

  Briefly, he wondered what, exactly, he and his friends had stumbled into. If he hadn’t seen the woman’s dismembered body in the woods, he would never have believed any of this.

  But he did see her. Denial was a deadly luxury.

  “Dan, you can’t be walking on that ankle,” Kevin said reasonably, as any doctor might say to his patient. “Let’s go back inside and let me take a look at it. You might have made it worse with all this. As soon as the helicopter can take off, we’ll get you and Skip airlifted out of here.”

  It was the mention of Skip that pushed Josh the short distance into panic. He’d thought Kevin, at least, could be counted on. He was a doctor. A healer. Not a killer.

  But Kevin must have known that Skip died. No way he didn’t know. Not a chance. Kevin was one of them, too.

  Josh felt his heart pounding like he’d run a marathon uphill. Fear caused heart attacks. He could die, right here, without anyone laying a finger on him.

  Ruben said, “Come on, Josh. It’s damn cold out here. Let’s go back inside. Get showers and breakfast and then Mark can fly you out to Tahoe. Just like we planned.”

  Josh tried a genuine smile and a friendly tone. “The weather seems to have passed. We’ll find our own way.”

  Kevin said, “What about Skip?”

  “We’ll come back for him,” Josh said.

  “What about Dan?” Ruben’s mouth split into a sneer. His tone snide. The pretending was over. “He’s already sweating. Weak. He’ll never make it hobbling on one leg. And you can’t carry him.”

  “We’ll be fine.” Josh reached under Dan’s arm again and grabbed his torso. Dan hopped once.

  Which was when Josh’s far peripheral vision picked up Mark raising his right arm and moving toward them. Mark was a big man. Powerful. Tall. He moved fast.

  Dan hopped two more times before Mark reached them, arm in the air, the sharp sword raised to slash downward.

  Josh jerked Dan away from the descending blade.

  He lost his balance.

  He hit the ground on his side and Dan landed on top of him. He rolled Dan off. They scrambled on their hands and knees in a desperate effort to get away.

  Ruben changed position. In one smooth, practiced arc, he pulled a pistol from his belt. He pointed at Dan. And shot him in the back.

  Dan screamed and fell face down onto the ground.

  Josh darted away from the assailants. The shelter of the woods was close.

  Dan continued to scream, but he didn’t move.

  Josh glanced over his shoulder just as Ruben shot Dan in the head.

  Dan’s screams stopped. His face fell into the mud. Blood spewed onto the ground. Dan remained silent.

  Ruben looked toward Josh. His arm lifted, began the shooting arc again.

  Josh dashed into the woods and hid behind a mammoth pine.

  Ruben fired off two rounds. Somehow, he missed.

  Josh sank against the big pine before he ran zigzagging between the trees, using the thick trunks as shields, putting distance behind him.

  The three men came after him. They split up to cover more ground. Josh could hear them yelling to each other.

  Ruben yelled out. “You know who we are. You know we have limitless resources. Go ahead and run if you want. We will find you, Josh. I will find you. I will kill you. Just like Dan and Skip. You will never be safe. Never. You can count on that.”

  He ran deeper into the darkness of the forest, moving as fast as he could on the uneven terrain, hiding behind the tree trunks, pushing himself up when he stumbled.

  Adrenaline pumped through his body and increased his awareness of everything around him. The leaves had sharper edges. The tree bark was roughly etched. The muddy ground pebbled and squishy.

  He ran forever. His breath tore from his chest. Raggedly painful. His legs had never felt so fatigued.

  He kept going.

  He had no idea how far he’d traveled or in which direction. He ran blindly, seeking only to get far away.

  The three voices fell farther and farther behind until he could no longer distinguish their words.

  Ruben had stopped shooting a while back. Josh should’ve worried about that, but he just kept running.

  There was nothing he could do for his friends now.

  First, he had to get away. Then, he would try to make the police believe him. Even as he thought the words, he realized how unlikely his plan was. Boyd Wilcox was one of the most powerful men on the planet. Who would take Josh Hallman’s word against his?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Red Maple Lake, California

  Six Years Ago

  Josh ran for quite a while. He wasn’t sure how long. He was tired and stumbled too often. He had scratches and cuts on his hands and arms where he’d fallen several times. Once, he’d landed hard on his face and mashed his nose. He could feel blood mixed with sweat and grime on his skin.

  But he kept going. Maybe he’d covered ten miles or so. He wasn’t sure. All he knew was that Skip and Dan were dead and it was his fault and if he didn’t keep moving, he’d be dead too, and no one would ever know what happened to any of them.

  Maybe people would think they died in the plane crash. But surely when they were reported missing, someone would look for the plane. Red Maple Lake was deep and cold and spring-fed, but it wasn’t the ocean. Bodies should be findable. The plane should be findable, too. It wasn’t like a missing jetliner in a vast ocean.

  Search and rescue would be called. He wondered how Ruben and the others would deal with that. They had three bodies to dispose of already, including the woman. And if Josh died out here, that would be four. Surely even Wilcox’s money wouldn’t be enough to bury that news forever.

  If Josh didn’t die. If he escaped. He would bring down the wrath of God on them all. He’d go to the FBI and anybody else who would listen. Somebody would make those bastards pay. That somebody was Josh Hallman. No doubt about it.

  He was so tired. He wanted to stop. He wanted to just stay here for a while. It would be getting even darker soon. Last night’s temperature was below thirty degrees and tonight’s forecast was colder.

  He would survive because he had no choice. He owed it to Skip. To Dan. And their families.

  Brave words from a guy who also had no means of starting a fire.

  He patted the cell phone in his pocket. When he could get a signal, he could call for help. He
patted his pocket again, to be sure the phone was still there. Its presence was reassuringly normal.

  In fact, he remembered that cell phones could be tracked. Yes. Of course. Skip had a cell phone and so did Dan. They had families who loved them, even if Josh did not. People who would be looking for them.

  They could be tracked. They’d be found. His heart felt slightly lighter than it had for hours.

  Did cell phone tracking work even after the phones had been submerged in lake water? He didn’t know.

  His phone had been in his pocket when they paddled the life raft from the sinking plane to shore. He remembered that he’d been submerged while he pulled Dan into the life raft. But his phone was waterproof. It was rated for diving. He’d been worried about losing it when they went fishing. Surely, his phone would still work, right?

  But what about Dan and Skip? He hadn’t seen their phones after the crash. He didn’t know whether they still worked. Maybe their phones were at the bottom of the lake, with the Cessna.

  Which was when he realized that Wilcox and the others would have taken care to eliminate any cell phone tracking. Boyd Wilcox was a tech genius. He knew what to do. When they disposed of the bodies, they would dispose of the phones as well. They’d probably done it already.

  He pulled out his phone and fired it up as he ran. It still had battery life left but there was no cell signal. He couldn’t connect to anyone in the outside world. At least, not yet.

  He kept running, his feet pounding, heart beating hard in his chest, lungs gulping air faster than he could breathe.

  His thinking was fuzzy. He was tired, hungry, cold. Not to mention horrified. He didn’t have the luxury of treating himself for shock, although he’d be a cold bastard if he wasn’t suffering from it.

  He ran. He stumbled. He fell. He pushed himself up. He kept the phone in his hand for a few more steps before something he should have known all along reached his foggy thinking.

  His phone could be tracked.

  Once it reconnected to a cell tower somewhere, it could be found.

  By anyone with the technology and the smarts to find it.

  Which included Boyd Wilcox. StellarSoft was a tech company. StellarSoft had all kinds of tech equipment. Finding his phone would be no problem at all.

  And as long as he had the phone on his body, finding him would be easy, too.

  He stopped running. He put both hands on his thighs and bent his knees. He leaned over to rest and more clarity came.

  That’s why Ruben stopped following him. They could find him anytime. Using his cell phone to track him.

  They didn’t expect him to make it out of these woods alive. They had explained how far they were from the nearest neighbor to persuade him not to try.

  But if he tried. If he made it out. If he found anyone who might help him. If he found any place where he could use his phone.

  Wilcox could track it. Wilcox would find the phone and then they would find him. And it wouldn’t take long because they were probably already looking and they knew where to look.

  Josh removed the phone from the waterproof case. He bent down and found two large rocks amid the decaying undergrowth. Frantically, he pounded the case into pieces. Then he savagely destroyed the phone the same way.

  He took a handful of pieces and tossed them into the woods to the east. A second handful he tossed west. He divided the remainder into three more handfuls and started jogging again. He flung the bits of technology as wide as he could throw.

  When he’d tossed the last of the pieces, he swiped his palms together and kept running until the sun had crested and begun its slow westward descent.

  He kept going. He was barely trotting now, but he felt he might have a chance as long as he didn’t stop.

  When he stopped, they would find him.

  They would kill him.

  Like they killed that woman.

  Like they killed Dan.

  And probably Skip, too.

  His mind conjured disaster scenarios along the entire journey, to keep himself motivated when he would otherwise have stopped.

  He was so tired. Adrenaline alone had fueled him for several hours, but now the full weight of his situation had begun to settle on his shoulders.

  He was alone. He was on the run. He was responsible. He was the pilot. It was his job to fly and land safely. He had failed. His friends had died. The only reason he should live through this was to face their families.

  He kept going.

  When darkness fell and running became too treacherous, he found a big tree and collapsed at its foot. Exhausted in body and spirit.

  If he made it through the night, he would run again tomorrow. But if he died, so be it.

  He should have died back at that house, with Skip and Dan and that woman, whoever she was.

  He’d sleep now for a few hours. If he didn’t freeze to death, he’d wake up tomorrow to run again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Houston, Texas

  Wednesday

  Flint reached the offices of Scarlett Investigations in downtown Houston shortly after seven o’clock. The building was locked. When he approached the front entrance, his face was captured on cameras at the door, which triggered the security system. The door clicked and he pushed it open. After he walked through, the door locked behind him.

  His boots pounded the marble floors as he took the stairs to the fourth floor, two at a time. When he reached her office, he stepped through the open doorway without knocking.

  She was behind the desk, staring at the computer screen. Black curly hair swirled wildly around her shoulders. Readers perched on her nose magnified her brown eyes to the size of the boulder marbles he’d owned as a kid. The ones she’d stolen from him because she liked them. The ones he’d fought to get back, and still had the scars to prove she’d won.

  He grinned and plopped down in one of her client chairs and picked up the square paperweight of brown boulders encased in glass from her desk. “Well?”

  “Your missing guy, Joshua Hallman, is a dead man.” She didn’t look up.

  “You found a death certificate?”

  “No.”

  “Cremation records?”

  “No.”

  “Cemetery plot?”

  “No.”

  “A visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past?”

  That made her laugh. She looked at him for the first time since he’d entered the room. “You look like hell. Where have you been?”

  “Thanks. Nice to see you, too.” But he felt weary and he wasn’t surprised that she’d noticed. He could never get anything past her and he’d long ago stopped trying.

  She nodded. “Okay. Keep things to yourself, then.”

  “Why do you say Hallman is dead?” She hadn’t mentioned the bank account, which meant she hadn’t found it. If Scarlett hadn’t found it, then there was a chance no one else had found it, either.

  “Because I can’t find any paper trail anywhere on the guy. It’s like he fell through a hole in the earth six years ago. Normally, I’d think witness protection in a case like that.” She lifted her coffee cup and pointed to the pot on the sidebar. He walked over to fill a mug of the thick black sludge for himself. “But I checked. No dice.”

  He raised his mug in a toast and drank the bitter brew. “That’ll put hair on your chest.”

  She grinned again, looked down at her chest, and shook her head. “Not yet.”

  He dumped the coffee and refilled the mug with water to wash the bitter taste from his mouth. He left the mug in the sink and paced the room to stretch his legs. He’d been sitting too much. He felt stiff and creaky.

  “So the official story is that Hallman piloted a Cessna T206 into the cold waters of Red Maple Lake over in the California mountains six years ago. He had two buddies with him. They were headed for a fishing trip.” She reported the facts like a robot would. “A week later, they didn’t come back, and the families began looking for them. The plane was found. The men
were not.”

  “Never?” He wasn’t testing her. He wanted her to confirm his conclusions and to be sure she was up to speed.

  “Well, this is where it gets interesting. Over the years, technology improved, and underwater search-and-rescue techniques improved, too. Hallman had no family. But the other two guys did. Someone hired a pricey crew to go down there with even pricier equipment. Like the stuff the navy uses for underwater research. Two of the men were found.”

  All of this dovetailed with the information Flint had already uncovered. Nothing new, which was reassuring. He nodded. “And?”

  “The bodies were well preserved. They think it was the cold water that kept them almost intact. They were snagged on the rocks on the lake bottom and tethered by junk down there. It was a struggle to bring them up, but when they resurfaced, autopsies were done.”

  He knew what was coming, so he nodded and kept quiet. When he said nothing, she kept talking, which was what she usually did. She could talk for hours without stopping. It was a gift.

  “One guy had a serious leg fracture. The fish had gnawed away most of his right leg. Which was pretty grisly. But that’s not what killed him, according to the autopsy report. It was a morphine overdose.”

  He nodded again. “And the other guy?”

  “Even more curious. He was shot. Twice. Once in the back. That bullet pierced his lung and would have killed him eventually. But the second shot to the back of the head did the job faster.”

  “So Hallman crashed the plane, killed his buddies, and hightailed it out of there?”

  “That’s one possibility.” She drained her cup. “Another is that he died, too, and they just haven’t found his body yet.”

  “Seems unlikely, but it’s been known to happen.” Flint nodded again. Her answers made his conclusions unassailable. “They might find him years from now, like that guy they found seventeen years later in that inland lake in northern Michigan.”

  Scarlett folded her hands on her desk. “I don’t think that’s it, though. Do you?”

  He cocked his head and watched her for a few moments. “I don’t know.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because of some other weird things that have been going on.”