Agent Daddy

by Alice Sharpe

  There was a light on in the far corner. In the space between herself and that light, she saw an old car, and beside that, a beat-up truck. A third spot sat empty; presumably it usually held the truck Eddie drove to and from work.

  She shook her head. Think….

  She walked to the car and looked down at the tires. Something about the tires. Chains! Eddie was fitting chains onto his mother’s car.

  But this car had two flat tires. It didn’t look as though it had been driven in years. The windows were cracked, spiderwebs draped from the broken antenna to the hood.

  Beside it, the old truck was fitted with snow tires. Maybe she had it wrong, maybe she was confused. Maybe Eddie was going to drive them all in the old truck. Only where was he…What was taking so long?

  She looked around the barn, searching for him, walking vaguely toward the light at the back, rubbing her temples. Between the night before and this day, she was bruised and battered from stem to stern. There wasn’t a place on her body that didn’t hurt.

  A sound finally infiltrated her consciousness. It sounded like Noelle crying. How did Noelle get out here? Faith whirled around and realized the sound came from the bench in the back, the one over which the lamp was suspended.

  But there was nothing on the bench but a few tools and a white paper and a laundry marker. She picked up the paper. Names, all crossed off….

  Leola Tripper

  Susan Matthews

  Gina Cooke

  Marnie Pincer

  Faith Bishop

  Noelle Matthews

  She choked back a startled cry as every hair on her body bristled, every corpuscle suddenly woke up.

  Marnie’s name had been inserted between Gina’s name and Faith’s name as though she was an afterthought. Whatever Eddie’s plan was, it apparently included every woman on that list.

  The beginnings of a terrible fear began to swell in her breast. Then she heard the noise again, the hopeless crying, and tilting the suspended light with the marker, angled it into the barn, searching. Its light fell across an old green tarp.

  An old green tarp.

  She released the shade. The light swinging back and forth cast dizzying arcs as she made her way to the tarp. This one wasn’t rolled, thank heavens. Something underneath the tarp moved. Faith almost jumped out of her skin. She knelt slowly and with an unbelievable sense of dread, peeled back the tarp.

  A woman in her late thirties wearing a pink-and-white uniform lay on the floor. A heavy rope circling her neck was tied to an eye bolt set in a cement block sunk into the ground. Another rope tied her wrists to her ankles, and though she made feeble mewing noises, she seemed to be unconscious.

  A name tag on her shoulder read Marnie.

  A voice from the door froze the blood in Faith’s veins.

  “Faith? Are you in there? Come on out now. It’s almost your turn.”

  Eddie.

  She looked around for a weapon.

  “Faith? I’m standing between you and those kids. If you don’t come right now, then I’m going to go get the baby. And I promise you, Faith, I’ll kill him. He’s not important, do you understand?”

  Though Faith’s head was clear, she understood nothing he said except the part about killing Colin. That he was capable of doing such a thing was obvious from the poor woman lying near death at Faith’s side.

  Leaving the tarp rolled back a little to make it easier for the comatose waitress to breathe, Faith stood up. She walked toward the door where she could see Eddie’s round-shouldered frame highlighted in the entry.

  “What do you want?” she said.

  Now she could see he held a handgun. As she made her way through the cluttered barn her mind raced. They’d been away from the ranch for hours. Trip, by now, was either dead or coming to get them. The children had one of two chances—either Trip got to them or she stopped Eddie. Could she wrestle a gun away from a crazy man? She could try.

  She had to keep Eddie’s mind off the kids until Trip figured out where they were and came for them. He could follow the tracks; he was trained, he would get here.

  If he was still alive.

  “What do you want from me?” she asked again.

  She was close enough now that he could reach out and grab her arm, and he did this with unexpected vigor.

  “What do I want?” he growled in her ear. “I want Luke Tripper to lose every female he ever cared about. I’ve killed his mother and sister and that lovestruck babysitter. The waitress is almost dead and you’re next. Then the little girl.”

  “You pulled the plug on his mother,” she whispered. “You started the fire that killed Trip’s sister and her husband.”

  “The husband was collateral damage, just like the baby will be.”

  “But you didn’t kill Gina right away, and Marnie is still alive—”

  “The babysitter was going to be my last, but she tried to get away.”

  “So you killed her.”

  “It was time. I have to say, you’ve been harder than the others. I was going to take you the day I flattened your tires, but that bodybuilder got to you first, so I settled on the waitress. Then last night, that same bodybuilder got in the way again.”

  “You were the one my landlady thought was going to rent my apartment if I cleared it out.”

  His smile gave her the creeps. “There’s no one to get in the way this time, little Faith. It’s just you and me.”

  “And that mess at the ranch? You did that?”

  “I just started the fire. My plan was to nab you while Mr. Hero put out the flames. That escaped felon coming along when he did was bad luck, but I turned it around, didn’t I? I got both you and the little girl at the same time.”

  “Eddie, listen to me. Trip will find you—he’ll know we’re here.”

  “He thinks I took you the other direction,” Eddie said.

  “But he’ll catch on. He’ll suspect you, he’ll figure it out—”

  “Don’t you get it,” he said softly. “I don’t care. I just want Luke Tripper to suffer.”

  “But why, Eddie?”

  Her question brought tears to his eyes, tears that made glistening tracks down his doughy cheeks. His nose began to run and his plump lips crumbled. As childlike as he might appear, however, the cruel strength of his grip as he twisted her arm behind her back and pulled her outside was anything but innocent.

  The snow had stopped, there was even the occasional glimpse of moonlight. Still it was cold. Faith hadn’t put on a coat before leaving Eddie’s house, but the frigid temperature wasn’t what made her heart seize.

  “Eddie, this is madness. We’re friends. Noelle likes you. How can you even think of hurting her?”

  “For my mother,” he mumbled. “It’s for Mama….” His voice was swallowed by a gulping sob. For a second his grip loosened as he ran his gun arm across his face.

  Faith took the opportunity to wrench her arm from his grasp. Her action had the side benefit of knocking the gun out of his hand. It fell into the snow and in the dark she didn’t dare take time to try to find it. She moved toward the house, but he quickly blocked her way, seeming to swell in size, twice as crazed as before.

  Okay, if she couldn’t get past him to the house, she would decoy him away from it. She turned and ran into the night.

  His laugh echoed around her as she scampered into the overgrown maze of the Christmas trees. “You can’t hide from me for long,” he bellowed. “I know every square inch of this place. I’ll find you.”

  “Come and get me,” she gulped as she dodged prickly branches and plowed through the snow, knowing she was leaving a wake a blind man could follow. She had to get deep within the trees, down under the branches where there wasn’t a lot of snow, and that meant she had to crawl on her belly.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The ranch swarmed with emergency vehicles. Red lights bounced off the snow as fire trucks finished dousing embers.

  George Plum and another ranch hand were on their
way to the hospital, Paul Avery and the man guarding the gate were dead, as was Gene Edwards. Neil Roberts had been blown into little pieces when he hid behind the truck and Trip shot the fuel tank.

  The ranch house had suffered smoke damage, two barns were history, as were scattered outbuildings. Trip’s leg was wrapped in bandages and the ambulance crew were waiting for him to get into their vehicle. They were in for a long wait because Trip wasn’t going anywhere until he figured out where the hell Faith, Noelle and Colin were. He stood talking to Fire Chief Gallows and Sheriff Torrence—the FBI was still in transit.

  “Eddie said he’d take them to the Peters place—it’s less than a mile away, our closest thing to a neighbor,” Trip said.

  “The Peters are the ones who called in the fire,” Gallows remarked.

  “I checked with them—my family didn’t arrive. There must have been trouble between here and there.”

  “We have deputies out looking for them,” Torrence reminded him.

  Behind Trip, Buttercup whinnied and he looked up hopefully. It was one of the deputies, returning on snowshoes from the direction of the Peters place. Snowshoes, Trip had learned, were how Edwards and Roberts had managed to get to the ranch without being heard. They’d left their van outside the ranch, shot the guard at the gate and hiked in on snowshoes stolen from Edwards’s dead uncle.

  “Anything?” Trip asked anxiously.

  “Nothing, sir. No tracks, no accident, no nothing.”

  Trip swore. “Where the hell did Eddie take them?”

  “Who is this Eddie?” Gallows asked.

  “Eddie Reed. The son of the woman on the bus, right, Trip?” Sheriff Torrence said.

  Trip turned around slowly. “What are you talking about?”

  “The woman on the bus, the one you couldn’t get out in time. Eddie Reed is her son.”

  “Her name was Emily Dorsett.”

  “That’s because Eddie was her son from a previous marriage. I thought you knew. When I heard you hired him, I just assumed.”

  “No, wait,” Trip said, unable to make sense of this. “I went to Emily Dorsett’s funeral.”

  “I know,” Gallows said. “I saw you and your sister’s picture in the newspaper.”

  “Yeah, Susan went with me, but I didn’t see Eddie there.”

  “He was a lot heavier then. I bet he’s dropped fifty, maybe sixty pounds since summer. Grew himself a mustache, too. I thought maybe he had a girlfriend.”

  “He was here after the fire that killed Susan and Sam, offered to help. Nice kid,” the fire chief remarked.

  “He and his Mom were tight,” Torrence added. “He couldn’t even bring himself to go to the graveyard after her funeral. I think he spent most his life out on that Christmas tree farm, even though it went belly-up when his stepfather ran off.”

  Trip had stopped listening. Why hadn’t Eddie told him who he was? Why had he kept it a secret? Why hadn’t he mentioned being here after the fire?

  “Maybe he took them to his house,” Torrence said. “He lives west of here, on the other side of the hill.”

  “You’ve got to get someone out there to look,” Trip said, because his gut instincts were making leaps his head could barely keep up with. Eddie working across the street from where Gina’s car was found abandoned. Eddie just happening to be there when Faith had four flat tires David Lee swore he didn’t flatten. Eddie in the restaurant, his pale eyes taking in everything. Eddie showing up at the ranch the day Duke was arrested. For that matter, a “soft-spoken man” had called in Duke’s DUI. Another “nice guy” had bought Duke all the liquor he could hold.

  “Call Eddie’s house,” he said.

  But there was no phone number, listed or unlisted, for Eddie Reed or his mother. Torrence, sensing Trip’s growing concern, ordered his men to drive over to the Reed house and take a look. There was no Laxton police department.

  Trip couldn’t stand waiting a second longer. Anything was better than standing there, wondering.

  He’d been lucky to recue Buttercup from the burning barn—no way a saddle had survived the fire, and he wasn’t going to take time to go searching for one in the livestock barn. He grabbed a handful of mane and swung up on the gold horse’s back, coming close to sliding off again when his injured leg struck the other side.

  The EMTs both jumped to their feet. “Hey, Mister!”

  “Trip, what the hell are you doing?” Torrence asked.

  “Give me a flashlight,” Trip demanded through a gasp of blinding pain. He checked his pockets for ammunition. He had extra.

  “We’ll take care of—”

  “It’s too windy for a helicopter. Your deputies have to go the long way around the hill…Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Eddie is just a nice guy, maybe they had an accident on the way there, maybe they’re all sitting around drinking a damn cup of cocoa. Whatever, I’m going to follow what’s left of their trail and find out. Now give me a flashlight. Please.”

  Torrence took a xenon gas–filled flashlight off his belt and handed it up to Trip.

  Trip nodded once and took off, rounding the house to the garden shed where Eddie had said he found a snowmobile. Sure enough, he could just make out the parallel tracks in the pale moonlight, leading away from the open shed. Leading west.

  He leaned over Buttercup’s neck. “Let’s go, old girl.”

  THE OVERGROWN TREE FARM was a nightmare of branches. They caught in Faith’s hair, tore her clothes, scratched her skin. Faith moved fast, trying only to bury herself inside all the trees so Eddie would have to work to find her. She had to keep him away from the house. She wouldn’t even think about the possibility he’d forget about her and hurt Noelle. She was on the list for next. It was her turn.

  Yeah, well, the first time he couldn’t get you, he snatched Marnie Pincer.

  But she couldn’t allow herself to think like that because it would immobilize her. She had the gut feeling he would give chase and she had to stick by it.

  A few minutes later, her gut feeling proved right as she heard the loud whine of the snowmobile. A bright light flashed over her head. She didn’t know if Eddie caught sight of her ducking under a tree, only that the engine went off. She dug down in the snow and sharp pine needles, shaking so hard she was afraid her clattering teeth would give her away. Her clothes were wet from the snow, her hands and knees cold beyond endurance.

  “I know you’re around here somewhere, Faith.”

  She kept her face down, hoping her blue jeans and black sweater would camouflage her as she huddled under the lowest dark branches of the trees. Her blond hair was a concern, so she did her best to keep the wind from whipping it around her face. It had either started snowing again or the wind was knocking the snow out of the trees; either way, she hoped it hindered visibility.

  As long as Eddie was talking to her, he wasn’t hurting Noelle or Colin. Come on, Trip. Figure it out.

  “You want to know why,” Eddie said, and she could hear him tromping through the snow. It sounded as though he was whacking and prodding the overgrown trees with a machete. He seemed to be twenty or so feet away from her and she all but stopped breathing.

  “Your boyfriend, Mr. Hero, killed my mother,” Eddie said. He didn’t seem to be crying anymore. “He left her on that bus to die.”

  His mother was the woman Trip hadn’t been able to save, the woman he couldn’t get out.

  “She was the best woman in the world. Well, you saw the things she made. Rugs and dolls and pillows. Always busy, that was Mama. Knew her bible from start to finish.”

  And kept Eddie sane as long as she was alive…

  “But Mr. Hero decided she wasn’t worth saving,” Eddie said, his voice bitter and ragged with exertion. “He got everyone else off that bus, even sinners and whores, but he left my mother to burn to death. He murdered her.”

  Maybe it was because Faith’s head was pressed so close to the earth that she detected another sound, coming fast, a rhythmic thumping, a sound she could almost
place.

  A horse running. She was hearing the pounding of horse hooves, and it was getting closer.

  And then it stopped.

  The lights flashed over her head again; Eddie was within ten feet of her. One more tree and he’d step on her hand. She closed her eyes lest the whites give her away. She tried to stop shaking.

  “Hey, listen, I got a deal for you,” Eddie said, veering off in the other direction. “How about you give yourself up and I don’t kill the baby. It might be fun to have a baby.”

  She heard him slashing and whacking for a few minutes as she did her best to be as small and invisible as possible.

  And then she heard another rustle in the trees, the sound of a branch cracking. Someone else was lurking out here and she knew who. It was Trip. He’d ridden a horse to the rescue. It had to be him. And Eddie was headed in his direction.

  She had to do something to give Trip the time he needed. Could she still move or had she frozen to the ground? She tried flexing strained muscles and rolled from her hiding spot. Getting to her feet was a slow and painstaking process. Halfway there she said, “Eddie?” Her voice wasn’t much more than a whisper, easily lost in the noise of the swaying trees. She tried again. “Eddie?”

  The light immediately swerved her way, blinding her. Throwing her arm over her eyes, she yelled, “You win. I’ll do what you want if you’ll leave the children alone.”

  “Not the girl,” Eddie said, advancing. “I have plans for the girl.”

  “Then the baby,” Faith said. “You’ll spare Colin?”

  “Sure,” he said, almost upon her. She gritted her teeth, more angry than afraid. Angry that his insanity had cost so many people their lives, that he could so calmly discuss killing Noelle.

  Another cracking noise and Eddie turned quickly, his flashlight swinging with him. Had he heard Trip?

  Was Trip even there, or was it just a manifestation of her wishful thinking?

  Eddie’s back was to her. Without giving it another thought, she bent at the waist and plowed into him. They both fell into the snow and his gun fired. He threw her around until he was on top of her. One hand still held the gun, the other tightened around her throat, fingers pressing into her soft flesh.