“Elena, I’m bleeding everywhere. I can feel blood all over my shirt and my legs. Is it bad? Am I going to die?”
Studying his clothing, I frowned, avoiding his eyes. The liquid was definitely centered around the crotch area . . . more on his right side than his left.
“Well . . . your clothes are wet, but . . . it’s not blood.”
Logan closed his eyes and groaned, although it wasn’t in pain. Not physical pain, anyway.
“Fucking great. I fucking pissed myself, didn’t I?”
I took a deep breath.
“Let’s not worry about that right now. Can you move your arms and legs? Is anything broken? Ribs? Collar bone? Are you having any trouble breathing?”
“I’m fine,” he insisted. I watched him unfasten his seatbelt and carefully climb out of the driver’s seat.
“Sit down,” I ordered, taking off my jacket. Then I peeled off my tank top.
“I’m so confused right now,” he said, trying to avoid looking at the turquoise and lime green embroidered flowers that adorned my black bra. “I piss myself, and you start stripping. Don’t tell me you’re into watersports.”
“You didn’t piss yourself, dumbass,” I said, folding my tank top into a neat little square. I fished a piece of tree bark out of his head and pressed my shirt against the wound. “It’s Fanta. You had an open can sitting next to you when we crashed.”
I watched his entire body relax as he sighed in relief.
“You don’t know how happy I am to hear that.”
“Yeah, well, you might change your mind once it dries and your balls get stuck to your leg.” I tugged my jacket back up my arms and crawled inside the vehicle.
“What are you doing? It’s not safe in there. You better not be grabbing a motherfucking Fanta.”
I grinned to myself as I peeked under the passenger seat. It wasn’t the worst idea he’d come up with since we’d started working together.
“I’m looking for my gun. It’s custom made just for me. I can’t exactly walk into the nearest Walmart and buy another gold-plated Glock.” It took a few moments of digging through broken glass, leaves, twigs, and bits of tree bark. I heard a metallic groan as the car shifted a little.
“Elena? Get out of there!”
“Just a sec. I think I see it!” A little glint of gold flashed from beneath one of the cases of Fanta. “Yep! Found it!” I stretched my body, carefully lifting the twelve-pack off my gun. I’d switched off the safety before the crash, and I really didn’t feel like accidentally shooting myself in the face. Another metallic groan sounded, followed by a high-pitched squeal and some cracking.
“Elena!”
Ignoring my partner, I grasped the handle and put the safety back in place while the groaning squeal got louder.
A powerful pair of arms grabbed my waist and yanked me backwards right as the tree branch holding the car in place snapped. Together, Logan and I watched as the Navigator tumbled down the mountain slope, flipping over and over until it skidded to a halt and burst into flames. My jaw fell as the fireball rose high above us, blanketing us with unnatural heat.
“That was too close,” I heard him breathe into my ear. His arms were still wrapped around me, holding me tight against his body. I sank into them as I realized what he’d just done. If it hadn’t been for him, I’d be melting into the upholstery right about now.
“You sure you’re okay?” he panted while pulling me closer. He held me so tight it almost hurt, but I didn’t complain. Instead, I rested the back of my head against his shoulder and felt the rapid beat of his heart through our clothes. Finally, he lowered me to my feet, but he didn’t let go. For a long time, we just stood there together, watching in shock as the Navigator burned. Time withered away to nothing. Right then, all I wanted was to stay there feeling safe, but as I breathed in his smell and relished the feel of his warm, muscular arms, I kept remembering the image of the rusty truck and the sound of its revving engine.
“We should probably give McKinney a call and report this. The sheriff, not the nephew,” I said, turning around to face my partner. His suit was ruined, his hair was a mess, and blood was running down the side of his face, but his blue eyes only reflected concern for me.
“Elena? Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah. Just a few bumps and bruises. Nothing to worry about.” I backed out of his grasp and holstered my gun.
“Really?”
“I swear I’m fine. Just shaken up, obviously.” I motioned toward the burning wreckage below us. “Can you call this in though? I left my phone in the car. Pretty sure the police radio’s in there, too.”
“I’m on it.” He dialed the sheriff’s office and I watched as he paced alongside the road, keeping things as brief as possible.
“Sheriff’s out on a call but they’re sending over a firetruck and a deputy to pick us up. Should be about fifteen minutes.”
“Thanks.” I stooped down to grab my folded up tank top and pressed it against his head. “You’re bleeding like a stuck pig. Make sure to keep applying pressure until it stops, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, grinning at me.
“How can you be smiling when you just got bitch-slapped by an oak tree?”
Logan grinned even wider, then nodded at the burning vehicle.
“I was just thinking . . . now we don’t have to fight over the radio station anymore.”
“Good point,” I said, snickering at his comment. “We should ask for a sunroof on the next car we get.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
I went back to picking glass out of my hand. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, shit was getting real. I was quickly going from nonchalant near-death breeziness to fucking irate that someone had almost killed us.
“You know, the more I think about what just happened, the more it seems to me that this was no accident.”
Logan nodded, still holding my tank top against his head.
“Agreed. There’s only one reason I can think of. We’re too close to the truth. And someone around here doesn’t like that.”
I looked up into his face and pondered the weight of what he’d just said. Someone had attacked us because we knew too much? But who?
“It could be Davis,” I suggested. “He seems like the type of guy who’d have a mudding truck like that. Plus I’m gonna go out on a limb and say he’s not a fan ever since I kneed him in the crotch.”
“He’s definitely at the top of my list,” Logan said with a nod of agreement. “Regardless, it’s someone local. You don’t drive like that unless you know every curve and bend in the road. I’d say they live nearby.”
“What if someone’s pissed that there’s FBI here trying to solve the case and steal their thunder?” I suggested. “Whoever ran us off the road might not know what we’ve learned from Sylvia about those kids.”
“Or they know we’re closing in on them and they’re getting desperate,” he replied, staring into the flames of the burning wreckage. “There’s a lot of possibilities. Whoever they are, and whatever their reason, they wanted us dead.”
26
Logan
“Excuse me, ma’am, but about how much longer?”
“Almost done,” said the nurse who was tending to the cut on my head. She’d been saying that for almost ten minutes. She also happened to be the same nurse who’d looked after Elena when she’d fainted. “I’ve seen a lot worse. Especially in the summer. This is nothing compared to a good old-fashioned lawnmower accident. Compared to that, this is just a little scratch. Anything above the neck bleeds more because you have so many blood vessels there.”
I tried to stay still for her, but I kept glancing at my watch or my phone, checking the time and hoping to hear from Elena. We’d gone opposite directions after the wreck. I came here to Scruggsville urgent care clinic to have my head sewn up. She’d hitched a ride with a state trooper out of Knoxville to take care of rental car arrangements and get another phone. I wasn�
�t worried about the trooper. Yarbrough wasn’t her jurisdiction, so she had no skin in the game. She was simply there to help the sheriff’s department look for the missing kids. She was doing us a huge favor by driving Elena to Knoxville.
It was a little over two hours from there to Yarbrough. Add in a half hour to pick up the rental and another hour to get a new phone, and Elena wouldn’t be back until seven at the earliest.
After being run off the road, and after pulling her out of the car about five seconds before it blew up, I worried about her driving alone. I worried about her errands in Knoxville taking too long, forcing her to drive back in the dark. I probably didn’t need to worry at all—the girl had more grit and determination than just about anyone else I knew, but still.
A text would be nice.
“There you go,” the nurse said in a chipper voice as she tied off the last of my stitches. She took a step back to admire her handiwork before putting on a bandage. “You’re lucky I do quilting in my free time. I bet you won’t have much of a scar at all, if I do say so myself.”
“Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate the extra effort.”
With a warm smile, she headed towards the door before pausing as though she’d recalled something.
“Oh, I’ve just remembered. Sheriff McKinney is waiting to see you. Should I send him in?”
“Sure. Thanks again.”
She sauntered out with a grin and a few seconds later was replaced by Sheriff McKinney’s lumbering body.
“Agent Hawthorne!” he declared, blustering into the small exam room. He took one look at my orange soda stained, bloody, cat-scratched suit and nearly fell over. The bandage on my head must’ve been what put him over the top. “Good god, son! Are you alright?”
“Just a little scratch,” I said, pointing to the bandage on my head. “Apart from that, I’m as good as new.”
He lurched towards me, and for a second, I was worried he was going to wrap me up in a big sweaty bear hug. Instead, he gently ruffled my hair like a concerned grandpa.
“I was so worried about y’all when I heard what happened!”
“No need to worry,” I assured him. “Me and Agent Rivera are both fine.”
“And I assume you’ve had the whole rigamarole of tests. You know, x-rays and whatnot?”
“No. That’s not necessary.”
“Of course it’s necessary!”
“Really, we’re okay. If we hadn’t been buckled in it would be a completely different story, but we’re fine. The car took the brunt of the impact.”
McKinney shook his head and began wandering up and down the cramped room, taking two steps one way, then spinning on his heel and taking two steps back the other.
“It’s disgraceful,” he mumbled through his mustache. “Absolutely disgraceful. You’re a federal agent for cryin’ out loud! Not only that, but you’re guests of this town. I’m so sorry, Agent Hawthorne. Really, I am. We’ll find whoever did it. I promise we’ll find them.”
“They shouldn’t be hard to find,” I said, getting up from the exam table and collecting my jacket. “The truck was loud as shit. And it looked like shit too. Rivera got a picture—”
“She did?”
“Yeah.” I ran my fingers along the edge of the bandage on the side of my head. “But her phone blew up in the car. I’d be surprised if it went to the cloud. I’ll know more once she gets her new phone.”
McKinney’s eyes narrowed.
“You kids and your clouds.” He wagged a finger furiously into the air. “We’ll find out who’s responsible. You have my word, Agent Hawthorne. We’ll find those sons of bitches and we’ll bring them to justice.”
I felt relieved seeing him so eager to track down our attackers, but I also wanted him to shut up for five seconds so I could describe them.
“The truck was brown,” I said. “I’m assuming it was red at some point, and . . . ”
“Ah, so you didn’t see it too clearly?”
“No, I could see it fine. It’s just that it was all rusted and beat up and—”
“Sounds like it could be one of those Malones who lives out way, way past Sylvia’s place. Weird family out there. Off the grid prepper types. Don’t like outsiders much. Did you see a face?”
He finally stopped pacing and wagging his finger and looked dead into my eyes.
“No . . . I didn’t see a face. Just the truck.”
“Well now, that’s . . . that’s a damn shame. I’d be able to find them easier if got a description of his face. Anyway, I’m on it.”
He urgently made for the door as though his ass had caught fire and he tore at the handle.
“Sheriff, don’t you want some kind of statement or . . . ”
He was gone, storming down the hall with the squeak of his boots disappearing into the distance.
“Knock knock,” came a nervous voice. The deputy who’d been kind enough to bring me to Scruggsville urgent care appeared in the doorway holding two cups of coffee.
“What happened to Sheriff McKinney?” she asked. “He had a face like thunder.”
“Yeah, he seems pretty stressed out right now. Is that normal for him?” I said, taking a coffee from the woman.
“He’s probably embarrassed,” the deputy said. “He asked you here to help solve these kidnapping cases, and now the locals are going after you.”
I took a drink of the coffee. It was terrible but at least it was hot.
“Hmm . . . He didn’t seem embarrassed. He seemed . . . I don’t know how to put it. Just . . . odd, I suppose.”
It felt like all my FBI training had failed me right then. I was trained to monitor behaviors and speech patterns and derive intention from them, but McKinney just seemed like a jumbled mass of contradictions to me. I had no idea what he was thinking.
“Well, he’s always been a little different,” the deputy said with a faint grin. “Like how he has all those books about ghost stories in his office, or how he’s going to retire and live off of that treehouse he built as an Airbnb. Maybe that’s normal in places like New York and San Francisco, but around here, that’s a little weird.”
“Fair enough.” I slung my jacket over my shoulder and the two of us headed out the door.
I looked down the hall in the direction McKinney had gone, mulling over what he’d told me about the Malones . . . preppers who didn’t like outsiders.
There were dangerous locals who didn’t like people like me and Elena. This town was small, and if Sheriff McKinney was related to other officers, chances were likely that he was related to other people in the area. Roots ran deep in little places like this. Alliances were forged through generations and seldom broken. Was this potentially dangerous Malone family related to the McKinneys?
It was a possibility. Sometimes these small towns felt like a law unto themselves. All I could hope for was that the town wouldn’t close ranks against us.
27
Elena
I pulled into the McKinney’s empty driveway and parked our new rental car, then headed for the backyard after chatting with Martha for a few minutes. It was around eight-thirty, and the sunset had been so gorgeous that I’d taken the most roundabout way to get back to Yarbrough. It was hard to believe something so beautiful could exist in this world when there was so much ugly to contend with. Most of all, I thought about how lucky I was to be alive to see it. I’d be a smoldering pile of ash right now if it weren’t for the football star up in that treehouse. Some people called it fate or destiny.
I called it Thursday.
I’d cried a little in the car on the way back to town and gotten it out of my system. Given my line of work, I’d almost been killed at least half a dozen times—maybe more. I’d just never had someone else save me. I felt stuck between being grateful and feeling like I owed my partner big time. Given our line of work, it wouldn’t be the last time one of us saved each other’s life. That was the whole point of having a partner—you didn’t have to do everything yourself. You had help.<
br />
The wooden shutters of the treehouse windows were propped open when I climbed up the stairs. Logan was sitting on the bed, staring at his laptop in an old Quantico t-shirt and what looked like swimming trunks. He looked up at me from under the brim of a worn-out Washington Nationals baseball hat, and I just about died.
I could see it all over his earnest, adorable face. He was worried about me. He set aside his laptop and scooted to the edge of the mattress.
“You’re back later than I expected. Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, tossing aside my purse and keys. “I took the long way back. Thought I’d watch the sunset.”
“Damn. I missed the whole thing. I’ve been researching stuff online all night,” he said, reaching for a bottle of water. He took a gulp and then gave me an expectant look. “So? What did you get us? Please tell me it’s something with decent legroom.”
“Chevy Tahoe,” I gloated while jutting out my jaw in satisfaction. “With satellite radio and a sunroof.”
“Nice. I’d say that deserves an award.” Logan motioned towards a shallow cardboard box sitting on the bench next to his rolled-up sleeping bag. “Open it.”
I took the three steps required to cross the little room and pulled the cardboard flaps apart. My eyes widened when I saw the haphazard mess of lumpy rainbow swirls and uneven clusters of glitter sprinkles.
“Unicorn cupcakes with homemade buttercream frosting,” he announced. “The deputy who drove me to urgent care said her kids are raising money for a puppy. They’ve been running a lemonade stand every weekend since summer vacation started. When she told me they’re expanding into bake sales, I couldn’t resist.”
“You mean, these are edible?” I asked, not looking away from the box of sparkling rainbow cupcakes. I felt like a tiger shark, and he’d chummed the waters a little too well. If he wasn’t sitting right there, I’d already have shoved half of these in my mouth. Gathering all the restraint I could muster, I brought the box over and sat down on the bed next to him.
Wiretaps & Whiskers (The Faerie Files Book 1) Page 25