by Kylie Brant
“Are you Gary Walter Price?” Beckett asked, re-holstering his weapon.
The man lowered his hands. “Who the hell wants to know?”
“Boone County Sheriff Beckett Maxwell. This is DCI agent Prescott. Answer the question.”
Sending a look in Cam’s direction the man smirked. “DCI. What’s that stand for? Dicks of Iowa?”
“Funny guy,” Beckett observed. “We haul in all the jokesters and give them all the time they need to work on their stand-up routine. Something about a cell seems to dampen the sense of humor, though.”
“Yeah, yeah, ok. I’m Gary Price. Now tell me what the hell you’re doing in my house.”
Cam eyed him. Price didn’t look like the type who could take on three inebriated bar patrons and emerge without a scratch. He was five ten, one–eighty, with longish dark hair, and sporting a day’s growth of beard. His sleeveless undershirt bore evidence of the meal they’d interrupted. His jeans and tennis shoes had seen better days. Cam’s gaze lingered on the prison tats on the man’s throat and knuckles. He’d done hard time. Which meant he was a whole lot more threatening than he appeared.
“Why didn’t you answer when you heard us calling?”
“Didn’t hear you. I went upstairs to put my damn pants on.” The man’s voice was a snarl. “I was sitting at the table trying to catch a breeze when I heard the dog raising hell. There’s no law saying a man’s got to answer the door in his boxers, is there?” He stopped, his gaze going between Beckett and Cam. “This about the fight last night? ’Cuz a deputy already took my statement. Got a bar full of witnesses who’ll tell you I didn’t throw the first punch.”
“I’ve read the statements.” Beckett’s voice was hard. “I was more interested in the part where you threatened the woman who was trying to brush you off.”
“Bullshit.” The word was released on a breath of disgust. “Bitch was probably exaggerating.”
“The bartender backed her up. You like to burn women, Price, is that your thing? Light up a cigar and hold it to their skin? You like to put your brand on them?”
Some of the man’s truculence seeped away. Now he just looked wary. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I smoke cigarettes, not cigars and I didn’t do nuthin’ to that bitch. She says different, she’s fucking lying.”
Cam looked at the man’s hands again. “You put down three men and don’t have a mark on you? That’s a trick. You have any ID?”
Price laced his fingers together and flexed them, popping the knuckles. “I got some skills. What’s a DCI agent doing here about a bar fight anyway?” He grinned, showing a chipped front incisor. “One of those pussies I put down work with you? Guess that’d make him a dick of Iowa pussy, wouldn’t it?”
“ID, Price.”
The man looked at Beckett. “Shit, you found me in my home with my pickup out front. What more do you need?”
“A driver’s license for starters.” When the man didn’t move, the sheriff took a step toward the stairs. “Maybe I’ll find it up there.”
“It’s in my pickup.” Price’s voice had gone sullen. “Just give me a second to get it.”
“Oh, it’s a nice night.” Cam stepped aside to give the man room to pass. “We’ll go with you.”
“Suit yourself,” the man muttered, brushing by him.
They followed Price through the kitchen and out the front door. The sun had sunk below the horizon, throwing the area into elongated shadows. Cam quickened his stride. His was the first hand to touch the vehicle’s door handle. He looked at Beckett over the other man’s head. “I’ll check it out first.”
“What the…” Cam ignored Price’s objection and opened the truck, leaning inside. He wasn’t about to stand there passively and give the ex-con a chance to pull a weapon from a hidey-hole inside to use on them. Something about the man was bad, and not just his record. Cam may not know this guy but he knew men like him. He’d spent his career bringing them to justice.
More, he’d lived in their midst when he’d done undercover narcotics, most recently for nearly two years working to shutdown the pipeline of cocaine leading to the Midwest from Mexico. He’d lived like them. Learned to think like them.
The trick was never giving them the advantage.
“Step back,” Beckett ordered the other man. “Take it easy.”
Cam did a quick but thorough check of the truck’s cab and the glove compartment. He didn’t find a weapon, but neither did he see signs of a wallet. Backing out of the vehicle, he said, “Don’t think your ID’s in there.”
“I said it was, didn’t I?” The man scrambled inside the truck and climbed over the console to bend over the glove compartment. When he popped it open to stick his hand inside, a small light came on. It threw his profile into stark relief. “Right where I left it.”
Cam read Price’s intent before he moved. “Cover the front!” he shouted to Beckett as he raced to round the back of the truck. Before he’d gotten past the tailgate Price was springing out of the passenger door and racing across gravel, rocks spewing behind him like tiny projectile missiles.
The dog was back, barking crazily as it chased the fleeing man. He was going in the opposite direction of the machine shed, toward the tumble down outbuildings. Cam put on a burst of speed, veering to the right. The first structure looked like an old corncrib. Wooden slat boards placed four inches apart comprised the sides. The buildings usually had no doors, open in the front and back. Cam would cover one entrance. With Maxwell on the man’s tail, they’d have Price cornered inside.
He turned to see the sheriff disappear around the front. Taking the corner wide, Cam slid on the loose gravel, went down to one knee. Muttering an obscenity, he righted himself and drew his weapon, sidling along the back of the leaning structure.
As he’d guessed, there was no door, just a yawning expanse of darkness that had swallowed Price. The wood slats that framed the entrance were rotted and broken, poking out at jagged angles like broken teeth. Cam could see nothing in the interior shadows. “You’ve got no way out of this, Price,” he called, his eyes straining to make out a shape inside the darkness. “Don’t make it harder yourself.”
“Going in,” he heard Beckett say.
It was on the tip of Cam’s tongue to shout a warning. Right now they had the man contained but once the sheriff entered there would be virtually no way for Cam to distinguish between two struggling shapes in the shadows inside.
But before he could say a word he saw a figure move in the darkness. There was a sickening crack of wood splintering against something solid. He swung around the corner, weapon trained, eyes straining in the darkness. “Maxwell?”
A shadowy figure leaped over a crumpled heap at the other end of the structure and streaked outside.
“Fuck.” The sheriff’s voice was slurred as he got to his feet. Swayed. “He’s loose.”
Cam spun on his heel and raced out of the building, around the corner. He saw Price run past the next decrepit building, get lost behind it. Putting on a burst of speed he sped by it, too. Caught sight of the man disappearing into the thick line of firs marking the perimeter of the property.
Gray shadows melded with black. In the twilight before full night, the moon wasn’t yet out. There was just a sprinkling of stars to light the area. Cam tried to recall what was beyond the tree line. More fields, probably. Which would be a wide-open space, a blessing for a foot pursuit.
His breathing settled into the practiced rhythm used when he jogged most nights. The dog’s barks were growing more infrequent and they were now behind him. Maybe the animal was giving up the chase. Cam raised his hands to protect his face as he burst into the grove. Needled branches clawed at his arms, his head. Ahead he could hear someone panting and knew it was Price. The man was tiring.
He burst from the trees and could make out the fleeing man fifteen yards ahead of him. Ten. Filled with a renewed spurt of adrenaline, Cam picked up speed.
The figure ahead
of him leaped through the air. It took a moment for comprehension to filter through. When it did, Cam tried to halt his forward impetus, slowing, but not managing to completely stop before slamming into the barbed wire fencing delineating the property from the adjoining field.
Brilliant explosions of pain radiated from a dozen different spots. Cursing vividly, he heard the wild cackle of laughter ahead of him as he paused to extricate himself from the wire. The sound torched something inside him. Solidified purpose. Gritting his teeth, he backed up several feet then ran forward, placing his bloody palm on a metal fence post to stabilize him as he vaulted over it.
Had Price chosen to lie motionless in the field he would have been nearly impossible to see in the darkness, at least from a distance. But the sound of his progress across the planted field was as good as a spotlight.
Cam had never been a sprinter. He ran for fitness only, and he’d never developed a runner’s love for the act. But right now his routine served him well as muscles pumped in familiar response, despite the stinging pain and the blood he could feel trickling down his skin in multiple spots.
Headlights speared the darkness to the left, a vehicle moving fast down the gravel road. It swung around the corner, the slash of light spotlighting the area and the man Cam was pursuing. He was closer than Cam had thought. About thirty yards separated them. Price was half stumbling with exhaustion, but he was still moving fast, his legs eating up distance across the ground.
The vehicle was racing along the road in front of them, headlights perpendicular to the field but still giving enough light for Cam to see Price ahead. The man tripped, nearly went down. He righted himself, but the action cost him, allowing Cam to narrow the gap between them. Ten yards away now. Five.
When Price stumbled again Cam dove forward, hitting the man in the back with the weight of his body. They fell hard and rolled, each grappling for the upper hand. Price swung a clenched fist and Cam threw up an arm, absorbing the blow with his bicep while he drew his weapon and pointed it at the man’s temple.
The fight drained out of Price like steam escaping a boiling pot. Cam could make out the figure of someone jogging in the field toward them. Realized it was the sheriff. The vehicle he’d driven, headlights still cutting through the darkness was parked along the road beyond the field.
“You’re making a mistake here,” Price wheezed from beneath him.
Cam eased his weight off the man, yanked him to his feet, weapon still trained on him. “The mistake isn’t mine. Gary Walter Price, you’re under arrest for assault on a law enforcement officer and a host of other shit I’ll think of on the way back to the vehicle.”
Beckett stepped forward and grabbed the man’s arms, cuffing them in back of him.
“Okay, just wait a minute, will you? Wait…Jesus, not so tight.”
“I’m sorry, you find these cuffs uncomfortable?” The sheriff turned him around and gave him a push to start him toward the Jeep. “Compared to say, a board to the head, I don’t think you have much to complain about.”
“The thing is…” Price looked over his shoulder from one of them to the other. “I was lying back there. I’m not Gary Price. I’m his brother, Jerry.”
“So where were you when this was all going down earlier?”
The real Gary Price stood just outside the screen door on the front porch of the farmhouse, backlit by the light in the kitchen. He bore an unmistakable likeness to his brother. Unlike Jerry, though, he bore evidence of the fight the night before. The knuckles on his big hands were battered, and one eye was nearly swollen shut, ringed with shades of purple and blue. The two were the same general height, but he had a weightlifter’s build, thick through the shoulders and chest.
“Been here all night. Must’ve been out in the shed. I do auto repair. Got a car out there I’m working on.” Despite the mild temperatures the man wore jeans, a torn t-shirt that strained across his torso and a watch cap. Price craned his neck to look at the darkened sheriff’s Jeep. Beckett was leaning against the vehicle talking on a cell. “You got Jerry out there?”
“I do.” Cam gave a slow nod. “Made some calls once he stopped claiming to be you. Your brother’s in violation of his parole by being out of Nebraska.”
A roll of the man’s shoulders passed for a shrug. “Not my problem. Can’t help what he does. And you had no call to be on my property in the first place. Got half a dozen witnesses last night who’ll swear I didn’t start that fight.”
“Got a couple witnesses who will swear you threatened to brand a woman with your cigarette,” Cam countered. Now that adrenaline had faded, dozens of spots that had encountered the barbed wire were sending up a chorus of pain. “That something you make a habit of? You like to burn women?”
The man’s mouth quirked for a moment in fleeting humor. “Bitch needed an attitude adjustment. Might’ve wanted to give her one, but I didn’t, so again, you got no call to be on my property.”
“Oh, we weren’t just on the property,” Cam responded, testing him. “We were inside your house.” He watched the stillness come over the man’s features and knew he’d scored a hit. “That jacket hanging in the kitchen? The gun in its pocket gave us cause to enter. Your possession of a firearm is a felony. You’ll get another ten years for that charge.”
Price jerked around to stare hard inside the open doorway. The jacket was still hanging on the knob where it’d been earlier. Cam could see the glint of the firearm in the pocket. “Dumbass,” the man muttered. Then he turned to face Cam again. “It’s not my coat. Or gun.” He shrugged again. “You’re welcome to take it. You’ll see the jacket isn’t my size. Won’t find my prints on the weapon, either. Doubt you’ll get a warrant once the judge knows that, but even if you do, you won’t find nothing in my house. I’ve stayed out of trouble for four years. I’m not going back inside.”
“Maybe not,” Cam responded, watching the man closely. “But your brother is.”
There wasn’t a hint of emotion in the other man’s expression. “That’s his problem.”
Cam looked up from the laptop he was manning at Beckett’s desk as the sheriff re-entered the office. “Got the younger Price brother booked?”
“He’s not going anywhere for a while.” He held up an evidence bag with the weapon they’d taken out of the pocket of the jacket found in the Price home. “Figured I’d send this with you to drop off at the lab.”
Cam nodded. The jacket had turned out to be a least a size smaller than Gary Price could comfortably wear. Which didn’t mean the gun didn’t belong to him but Cam knew what a judge would say. Unless they found the man’s prints on the weapon, they were out of luck. “We don’t have a prayer at this point of getting a warrant, which is too damn bad because I’d like to get a look inside that machine shed.” He picked up the thick packet of paper he’d printed off and offered it to the sheriff. “Here’s some light reading on your newest guest. Unlike his brother, Jerry Price does have a record of sexual assault. A lengthy one. He’s currently on parole after serving ten years of a sixteen-year stretch for rape. His dirt-bag lawyer got him off on the kidnapping charge, even though he held the woman for three days in the basement of his house. Choked her unconscious several times, just to revive her and rape her again. A mailman heard her screams for help on his delivery and called 911. She was rescued before Price could kill her.”
Beckett stared at him, the sheaf of papers in his hand forgotten for the moment. “So we’ve got one brother beating women half to death in order to steal their cars and another who’s a sexual deviant.”
“Throw in a property isolated from prying eyes, and Gary Price interests me enough to keep him under surveillance for a while.”
“So happens that I’ve got a deputy with a broken foot who isn’t up for much else.” The sheriff grinned. “Teach him to stay off ladders anyway.”
Relief flickered. Cam knew he couldn’t spare anyone from the task force to watch the Price place long term. Not without something solid linking
the brothers to his case. “Glad to hear it. You might want the name of your deputy’s doctor, though. That lump on your head probably needs looked at.”
The other man touched his head gingerly. Managed not to wince. “I’m fine. Probably lucky the damn board was half rotted. And that my head’s as hard as it is. Maybe you should follow your own advice.” He raked Cam with a look. Smirked. “I’m guessing that suit’s a goner. Too bad. You can never go wrong with pinstripes.”
For the first time Cam looked himself over to assess the damage. “Shit,” he muttered, taking in the multitude of small tears in the gray fabric. Even his white shirt bore a couple holes. And both sleeves of his suit coat looked like he’d been on the wrong end of a tug of war with a roving band of Chihuahuas. “This means I have to shop. You know how much I hate shopping? I should have taken that snake down harder.”
Beckett grinned. “Don’t forget about a tetanus shot. No telling how old that barbed wire was. In the meantime, I’m going home to get some ice for my head and a cold beer. I know you’ve got to drive back, but you’re welcome to join me for one before you go.”
Tempted, Cam considered for a moment. It was late and he hadn’t eaten since lunch. Still, nothing about his apartment was the least bit tempting. Since Sophie had put a stop to things—just as they’d gotten interesting—his apartment seemed emptier than usual. Which was troubling for a man who’d always valued his privacy. His only pressing tasks of the evening included giving this suit a decent burial and tending the dozen or more cuts he’d sustained from his first close encounter with barbed wire. Neither was particularly appealing.
“Throw in a side trip to grab a sandwich and you’re on.” He rose, having made up his mind. The suit and the cuts would wait for a little bit.
And the tetanus shot could wait even longer.
Chapter Three
“I’m…stunned.” Sophia looked from the full plate before her to Cam and then back again before giving her head a little shake.