by Kelly Lane
“So, what do you think she’ll do now, without Dex? Surely, no one else is gonna pay her like he did. Do you think he was doing her on the side?” asked Spencer.
Slimeball.
“Who knows,” answered Wiggy. “But we need her for now, to get us through this. After that . . .”
Coop said, “I’m pretty sure they had something going . . . you know?”
“Really? When?” asked Spencer.
“Between Eva and Heather,” said Coop.
What?
The time between Eva and Heather? Heather is married to Coop! What are they talking about? Heather was never with Dex . . .
“He was a sly one, alright,” said Wiggy.
They laughed.
“Well, if Claudia can’t toe the line, then we’re gonna have to do something about it,” said Coop.
“You mean . . .”
“I mean something permanent. After we get all the files, codes, and passwords,” Coop said.
“Of course,” said Wiggy.
“She keeps blubbering about losing her job now that Dex is dead,” said Spencer.
Coop yawned before saying, “Wouldn’t make me sad to see her go.”
“Let’s head back. I’m getting tired. We’ve got a big day tomorrow. I need to scout a few more places,” Wiggy said. “There’s some kind of ‘hawk watch’ going on over near the river. That’s a place to start. I’ve discovered these bird-watching types are quite chatty, after they’ve been in the field for a few hours. They know all sort of details about the properties around here.”
“Wiggy, you remember the way?” asked Coop.
“Sure, just follow the path. It’s a couple of rows down, over there,” answered Wiggy.
“Okay, we’ll follow you. And keep your eyes open. I don’t want to run into any surprises.”
“Me, neither,” said Spencer.
“You guys are wussies.” Wiggy chortled.
“Well, I’d rather be a live wussy than a dead man!” said Coop.
The three men laughed.
CHAPTER 29
I heard Dolly bark. She was in the woods on the Greatwoods Plantation side of our property. After hearing the three men from Boston talking in the olive grove, I didn’t dare call out. And although I wanted to follow the men back to the big house and try to hear more, instead, I hid under the canopy of an olive tree until I was sure they’d left the orchard and were headed back down the wooded trail to the big house.
One thing was for sure: As I suspected all along, they were not in Abundance to watch birds. It seemed pretty obvious that they were on some sort of land-grabbing expedition. But, was it something to kill for? Certainly, they didn’t seem all-too-sorry that their old friend and cohort Dex was dead. Maybe the detective was actually right this time. Maybe one of them had murdered Dex. Or, like Precious had joked earlier, maybe they’d all done it.
Could Dex’s closest friends have killed him?
The thought gave me the creeps.
Was that why Buck had been asking me so many questions at the pond? Had he suspected right off that Dex had been murdered? Had Buck considered me a suspect when we’d first spoken?
I’ve got to figure out what happened to Dex before someone seriously thinks I had something to do with his death.
Still searching for Dolly, I was on a narrow trail, surrounded by wire grass, deep in the longleaf pine forest. Listening for my wayward pup, I tried to remember everything I’d heard the Bostoners say.
All merely suggestive. Nothing concrete.
I replayed what I’d heard in my head. Thinking about it all made me even more determined to find out why they were in town.
Ten minutes later, I hadn’t come up with any answers. And I hadn’t heard or seen a single sign from Dolly. I decided to continue following the trail that headed in the direction of Greatwoods Plantation. Compared to many of the paths in the longleaf pines, it was more of a “main” path, and Dolly and I followed it quite often during our daytime walks.
“Dolly!” I called. I was pretty sure the men had made it back to the big house and wouldn’t hear me calling.
I continued sorting through everything I’d heard the men discussing.
It all sounded so nefarious . . .
I jumped as something fluttered above me. Stopping to listen, all I could hear was wind high in the trees and the screeches and tweets of tree frogs and bugs. I pressed on, making my way through the wire grass under the pine trees on either side of the narrow trail.
Fifteen or twenty minutes later, still with my light on, I came to see a barbed wire fence. It was the Greatwoods Plantation boundary line. The trail I’d been following turned sharply to the left, running alongside the fence line for a bit, before the trail and fence parted ways when the trail went left and the fence veered to the right and disappeared in a thicket. Somewhere in the distance from the other side of the fence, I heard a low coo-coo-coo.
Probably a screech owl.
Then, from somewhere in the woods on the other side of the fence, I heard barking.
“Dolly!”
I held up my smartphone, trying to shine the light into the dark wilderness on the Greatwoods side of the barbed wire barrier.
“Dolly!”
The light app was handy for seeing close-up, but it was impossible to see anything more than several feet away. I flicked off my light, hoping my eyes would quickly adjust to the darkness. I stared. I listened. Nothing. All at once, the night had become eerily silent.
“Dolly?”
Still nothing.
Precious had mentioned once that there was a “secret” way to get to Greatwoods Plantation from the woods at our place. Except after she’d blurted something about it and I’d asked her to explain, she denied saying anything in the first place. She was weird that way. Always protecting her boss, Ian Collier.
What was all the mystery about?
Regardless, if there was a “secret” way to get to Greatwoods, so far I hadn’t found it. Still, I knew that Ian Collier had been able to get over to our place on horseback . . . more than once. So, there must be a passage, somewhere, I thought. And it had to be of significant size; after all, Ian’s big mare fit through it. Dolly’d surely discovered the secret passage. Still, it remained elusive to me. If I was going to find Dolly, I was going to have to scale the blasted barbed wire fence.
“Dolly!”
I abandoned the trail on the Knox side of the fence and thrashed through the briars and wire grass, following the fence, hoping to find a place that was easy to cross. After several minutes, I saw a huge live oak tree, right in the middle of the forest. One massive limb hung over the Greatwoods side of the barbed wire fence. I figured that if I climbed up the tree, I could make my way down the big limb across to the Greatwoods side and then jump down.
Perfect.
I tucked my smartphone into a back pocket on my skort. I dragged an old, dead log to the base of the tree. Then another. And another. I piled them up so I could get as high a start up the tree as possible. I couldn’t think of any other way to reach the first branch. I only hoped there wasn’t any poison ivy or poison oak nearby.
It wasn’t pretty, but after several tries, I managed to scramble up and hoist my way up into a crook of the gnarled oak tree. Then I climbed up to the biggest limb. It wasn’t nearly as easy as I remembered it being when I was a teenager—it’d been easy to climb up and down the tree near my bedroom window when I’d sneak out at night and go on long walks with my boyfriend . . . Buck.
I shook my head.
From the trunk, the massive branch was bigger around than my thigh. I lay down on the branch and shimmied my way out toward the end, heading over the barbed wire to the Greatwoods property. By the time I’d wriggled to a point above the barbed wire, the limb had narrowed. I felt it bounce a little with my weight.
About ten or twelve feet in the air, I kept slithering toward the end of the branch, trying to get all of me clear above the barbed wire fence below.
Of course, when I heard the crack beneath me, it was too late to do anything about it.
The limb snapped clean off.
CHAPTER 30
As the limb from the great oak cracked off the tree, I plummeted straight to the ground.
Despite the ten- or twelve-foot drop, I managed to tumble just the way I’d practiced in the jujitsu class Daphne’d insisted I attend every Monday evening. It worked. The soft forest floor, covered with years of decayed growth and leaves, made for a gentle cushion. For once, I thought, I’d managed to fall and land relatively unscathed. Better still, I’d made it to the Greatwoods side of the fence.
Bark. Bark. Bark.
It was Dolly. Still, she sounded to be quite a distance away. I imagined that she was quite close to Ian Collier’s mansion. Once I caught up with Dolly, it’d take me nearly an hour to walk back home in the woods from Greatwoods, and that was assuming that I could even find Dolly. How we’d get back over the fence together would be another matter altogether.
I decided that I’d deal with all that after I found Dolly.
I picked myself up, brushing off the dirt and pine needles. Pulling briars out of the fabric of my skort, I listened for Dolly, trying to pinpoint her location. Then I headed in the direction where I thought Dolly and the Greatwoods mansion would be. It was only a minute or so later when I stumbled onto a narrow trail that wound through the trees.
“Thank goodness!”
Relieved to have found a path, I followed it for several minutes.
Then, off in the distance behind me, I heard a low rumble. I realized that it was a helicopter.
I wondered if there’d been an accident. Abundance was such a rural place, often helicopters were used to transport accident victims to the hospital in the next county. I turned my head and listened again. It was headed in my direction. I waited to see it. Except, this bird sounded different than the helicopter used to transport patients and accident victims. The drone was louder. Lower in pitch. In fact, it sounded just like the big chopper that had passed overhead when Precious and I’d been on the road.
Military?
I looked up to the sky to see the chopper’s lights as it approached, but there was nothing. The big bird was coming closer, but it remained cloaked in darkness. Then suddenly, when it got to about five hundred feet from where I stood, a bright spotlight blazed from the chopper, lighting up the forest. Instinctively, I jumped into the wire grass and made my way to a huge pine tree trunk, pressing myself against the bark on the far side from the chopper’s approach, trying to hide under the pine boughs.
At least I wore black, I thought. What the hell is going on?
The ground shook and the woods filled with the deafening engine noise as the chopper flew closer, skimming just atop the tall pines. The bright spotlight seemed to follow the general direction of the little path that I’d been on, and it lit up the woods as if it were daylight. Sheltered under the tree boughs as they twisted and twirled in the wild chopper wind, I pressed myself against the far side of the tree and held my hands to my ears as the noisy bird approached. It was a big military-style helicopter, for sure. With two rotors. The kind that transported troops.
A Chinook.
I shrank from the brain-rattling noise and my whole being throbbed as the chopper hovered momentarily overhead.
Are they looking for someone? Something? I couldn’t imagine what was going on.
Like a tornado, dirt and detritus filled the air around me as I pressed myself into the tree trunk.
Then, as suddenly as it’d appeared, the monster bird moved on, traveling to my left. I waited a moment or two after it disappeared, before racing back onto the path, trying to follow the shining light illuminating the ground up ahead. I was able to follow it only briefly; all at once, the noisy aircraft jutted farther to the left and quickly disappeared from view.
Too many trees.
The droning engine and blade noise continued for several minutes, got quieter, then got louder again. Briefly, I saw the spotlight light up the sky to the left before it and the big, dark bird disappeared from sight. The noise diminished as the helicopter moved away into the night. Eventually, maybe three or four minutes or so later . . . I couldn’t hear the Chinook anymore.
The aircraft had come and gone all inside of just a couple minutes.
Then I had a sickening thought. What if they were looking for an escaped prisoner? After all, there was a prison on the other side of the county, past the chemical plant. But then, would they use a big Chinook for that? Maybe not . . .
Really, I was scared. Maybe it’d been the noise. Maybe just being alone on the unfamiliar Greatwoods property. Maybe I was just tired from all the stress and lack of sleep. Whatever the reason, I wanted to turn back and go home. Yet, I was actually closer to Ian’s mansion than I was to my own place. And I’d come so far . . . I was determined to find Dolly.
I shrieked as a bat flew toward me and nearly hit me in the face.
“Ugh.”
With my heart racing, I switched on my flashlight app and hurried down a narrow, twisty trail to who-knows-where. Then, a few minutes later, I realized that I’d lost the dinky trail. I tried to go back and find it. But it just made matters worse. Thrashing around in the briars and wire grass, I’d been out more than an hour, perhaps closer to two hours, since I’d left home. Really, I had no idea anymore where I was. It was about time to have a good cry . . .
I heard a twig snap.
“Dolly?”
Like lightning, someone behind me wrapped a strong arm around my chest. Then a hand clamped over my mouth.
CHAPTER 31
My heart raced as I struggled and fought hard to get free. I tried biting his hand. Kicking him in the shins. The groin. Grabbing for his ears, his neck . . . face . . . But he was strong as a bull, and his grip around me was ironclad. He’d been so quick and forceful that I wasn’t able to use any of my jujitsu moves. I tried. More than once. It was futile. He’d snuck up and grabbed me before I even knew he was there. And he was able to counter every move I made. Like he knew jujitsu himself. Still, something was familiar . . .
“Shhh, Babydoll,” whispered Buck in my ear. “Shut off that light! Of all the times to remember your damn phone,” he mumbled. He took his hand away from my mouth.
“Let go!” I screamed.
He clamped my mouth with his hand. “Shhh! Dammit, Eva, I’m not kidding. This is serious. Give me that light.”
Just then, the light on the smartphone in my hand went out. The battery had died.
Buck whispered, “If I take my hand away from your mouth, will you promise not to make noise?”
I nodded. He took his hand away. Still, he kept his other arm wrapped tight around me.
“What are you doing?” I asked angrily. “You nearly scared me to death!”
“Shhh!” he whispered again. “C’mon, I’ve got to get you out of here. Oh, Christ, you’re shaking. Are you alright?”
“What are you talking about? I’ve got to find Dolly.”
I shoved my phone into my back skort pocket.
“She’s at Greatwoods,” Buck whispered, finally releasing his arm from around me. He grabbed my hand and pulled me up and behind him as he started running through the brush. “How do you think I found you? Hurry. This way.”
He led me through solid wire grass and pine trees.
“Greatwoods? Dolly’s at Greatwoods? Ow!” I cried. The grass and prickers scratched my bare legs.
“Shhh!”
“What . . . is . . . going . . . on?” I asked, trying to talk and breathe as we raced through the brush. “Ouch! Why . . . are . . . you . . . here? Stop!”
Buck looked back at me and hissed, “Hu
rry up!”
“Ow!”
“Shhh!”
“My skort is caught . . .”
I pulled back with all my weight, my sneakers skidding into the dirt, prickers tearing at my skort. I wasn’t going anywhere like that. Buck hustled forward and nearly pulled me over. Our hands jerked free.
“Babydoll, no!”
I stood my ground. Buck walked back to me, and as he looked over my shoulder he started to say something, but I interrupted.
“I’m not going another step until you tell me what the hell is going on out here,” I said, hands on my hips. “And why were you so crappy to me at the Roadhouse?”
That’s when, like a powerful cat, Buck sprang into the air and took me down. We landed in a thicket of prickers. Before I could move or utter a word, he pressed his body on top of me, his hand clamped over my mouth again.
CHAPTER 32
We lay in silence for a minute or two--it seemed like forever--Buck on top of me, his hand covering my mouth, in the pitch-black brush of the Greatwoods forest. Honestly, I was so stunned at first that I froze, my face in the dirt. Then I felt Buck nudge me. He raised up a bit to let me lift my chin. Not far from where we lay, I saw men in military fatigues moving stealthily through the forest.
I just got a glimpse before they stepped out of my sight. There were two, moving together. Then a minute or so later, there was another pair. Then maybe three or four more teams of two. With Buck still on top of me, I couldn’t see well enough through the scrubby brush to know for sure. The men had hats and camouflage-painted faces, and they carried large weapons that looked like some kind of rifles as they moved silently through the forest, just about fifty feet from where we hid. They were completely silent; only their equipment jingled and clattered as they passed by. They signaled one another with their hands, cautiously surveying the woods around them. How they missed us—other than the fact that Buck and I were both dressed in black, doing a face-plant in a thicket of briars—I’ll never know.