by Gayle Wilson
Eden glanced at Jake to gauge his reaction to the term, but his face reflected none of the anger she felt on his behalf. He looked as relaxed as if she and Dean were discussing the weather.
“Nobody’s convinced me of anything. I see enough similarities in these cases to bring the man in for questioning.”
“Well, I don’t believe it. I can tell you that.”
“Are you going with me?”
“Not on your life.”
She stabbed the intercom button. “Carl, I want you to call in Gibbons and Blake. Tell them to meet me at the intersection of Pugh Drive and County Road 79 in twenty minutes.” It would take her at least that long to get out there.
“Yes, ma’am.” The disembodied voice sounded shaken.
“And no sirens. You understand?” She didn’t wait for an answer as she rounded the desk, the shotgun held across her body.
“You run this all by the FBI?” Dean demanded.
“An arrest for assault? I don’t think they’d be interested.”
“You trying to grab the glory in finding Raine all for yourself?”
She stopped, looking back at him. “I thought you didn’t believe there was anything to this.”
“I don’t. But it’s pretty clear he’s convinced you there is. I’m thinking that after screwing around with this for a week, you’re trying to make folks think you know what you’re doing.”
She laughed. “I do know what I’m doing. And I’d like your help to do it, Dean.” She would, if for no other reason than that there was an element in town who had always believed she had been given this job because of who her father was, rather than because she deserved it. “We haven’t created this out of whole cloth. It fits.”
“You’ve lost your mind,” he said again.
“Okay, but I’m still going to arrest Porter.”
“We let him go, Eden. Told him it was over. The major there didn’t do what we asked him to do—”
“And now he’s changed his mind.”
“What mind?” Dean muttered.
“I’ll wait outside.” Jake brushed by her as he walked to the door.
When it closed behind him, Eden turned back to her deputy. “What happened to all that you said at the beginning of this? About all the respect you had for his service to his country?”
“I respect his service. And I think he paid a damned heavy price for it. But I’m not going to pin my reputation and the reputation of this department on his say-so.”
“Neither am I. But I am going to try and rescue a little girl who I believe Dave Porter abducted and is hiding out at his place.”
“She’s gone, Eden. Much as you and I would like to believe otherwise. The agents told you that before they left.”
“If she is, then I’ll have wasted some gas and some manpower tonight. And if she isn’t…” She looked at him, hoping that he would respond to that possibility.
She could read nothing in his eyes but contempt. After a moment she turned on her heel and left Dean alone in the office he had apparently always believed should be his.
THE MOONLIGHT THAT had gilded his grandmother’s rose garden mercilessly revealed the squalor that surrounded Dave Porter’s house and its adjacent shop. Between the hulks of rusting cars and scattered engine parts, empty oil cans and broken bottles gleamed among the overgrown weeds.
They had parked the squad cars at the bottom of the rise leading up to the Porter homestead, which was located at the end of a long dirt road. Eden had led the way up the hill, followed by her two deputies.
Jake had brought up the rear, every sense alert to the possibility of an ambush. There seemed no way Porter could have warning of their approach, but his training to expect the unexpected was too ingrained to ignore.
The house they stood looking down on was dark, as was the outbuilding, topped by a fading sign that read Porter’s Auto Repair and Service. The clearing on which the two buildings stood was surrounded by a thick pine forest. Large enough, Jake judged, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, to hide a battalion.
He knew from the explanation she’d given the two deputies that Eden had intended to knock on the front door and make the arrest, just as if they had no other reason for being out here. Everything after that depended on how Porter reacted.
Before he’d gotten into the cruiser with Eden, he’d retrieved his Kimber 1911 from the glove compartment of his truck. Although he had seen the deputies look at one another when he’d gotten out of the patrol car to accompany them to the top of the rise, neither had openly questioned his right to be there.
“If he’s asleep,” the deputy Eden had introduced as Billy Gibbons whispered, “we could kick down the door and take him before he’s had a chance to get good awake.”
“What would you do, Billy, if somebody kicked down your door in the middle of the night?” Her eyes remained on the buildings below.
“Shoot first and ask questions later,” the other deputy, Marty Blake, supplied. “Anybody would.”
“I’m not looking to get somebody shot,” Eden said. “We’re here to arrest a man for simple assault.”
“I don’t think he’s down there,” Gibbons said.
Eden turned to him then, eyes questioning.
“Dave drives that black, souped-up Z. You see it anywhere down there?”
There was a brief silence as they visually searched the compound below.
“He could be anywhere.”
Jake read the despair in Eden’s voice. She had hoped, as he had, that this would be the end of it. One way or another.
“He moved her,” he reminded her. “Something that wasn’t without risk. He did that because he wants her closer to him. Wherever he’s keeping her, it’s not far from here.”
“Even if it’s close, how do we find her? Look out there.”
As Jake considered the wilderness that surrounded the place, he felt the same sense of hopelessness her voice had revealed. If only he’d done what she’d asked him to do, Porter would still be the Waverly jail. Instead…
“We start by searching the house and the grounds for anything that might tell us where he’s hiding her. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
EDEN HAD TAKEN Billy Gibbons to the house, where she intended to follow through on their original plan. She would knock on the door. If there was no answer, they’d break it down and search the premises for anything that might indicate where Raine was being held.
There had been some argument from Blake, who she’d assigned to search the shop with Jake, about the fact that they didn’t have a warrant, which would compromise any evidence they might find. Although Jake hadn’t taken part in the discussion, the final consensus seemed to be that their first priority had to be finding the child. If they did that, then they’d worry about proving Porter’s guilt later.
The moon seemed less bright as he and the deputy approached the outbuilding. Although both had drawn their weapons, Jake’s anxiety was centered on Eden, who was far more likely to encounter Porter in the main house than they were out here. He had wanted to protest her decision to split them up, but had resisted because he didn’t want to undermine her authority in front of her men.
The deputy he’d been assigned motioned him to the other side of the double doors, which stood slightly ajar. When Jake was in place, the other man placed his hand on the door nearest him. He mouthed the word, “Ready?”
At Jake’s nod, Blake flung the door open and stepped inside, his weapon leveled at the interior. As Jake moved in behind him, they waited for their eyes to adjust to the increased darkness inside the building.
The smells of the shop drifted out into the night air. Gas and oil primarily, underlaid by mold and rot. Shards of moonlight knifed through hundreds of cracks and broken places in the rough wooden walls. Even in that dim illumination, it was clear the shop was empty.
“We need to check for a basement. Something underground,” Jake whispered to his companion.
The deputy nodded,
using the muzzle of his firearm to motion Jake to the far side of the garage. Working toward the middle of the cavernous space, they began checking the oil-stained boards.
“Hey,” Blake whispered.
Jake turned, expecting him to be examining a suspicious configuration of the floor. Instead he was looking up at the automobile that was suspended above his head on the hydraulic rack. “What kind of car was it Billy said Porter drives?”
EDEN HAD HELD Billy back as long as she could, but when the minutes stretched with no response from inside the house, she nodded at him. The burly deputy put his shoulder against the front door, using his considerable strength to break its lock. He stepped inside immediately, leaving her to follow him into the darkness.
As her eyes adjusted, she saw Billy, his weapon leading the way, was checking out the living room. Before he’d secured the area, a scrambling noise from the kitchen sent him rushing in that direction. A shotgun blast, visible in the darkness, cut him down in midstride.
As Billy fell forward onto the linoleum floor, Eden took advantage of the protection offered by the door frame. She immediately turned her head to speak into her shoulder radio. “Officer down out at Dave Porter’s house. We need reinforcements and paramedics here now.”
Without waiting for the dispatcher’s response, she inched forward until she could see into the moonlit kitchen. No further sound had emanated from the room after Billy’s body hit the floor.
Eden told herself there was nothing she could do for her deputy now, but as she’d watched the blood spread like black ink across the pale floor, she knew she had to try.
She eased forward in a low squat, her Glock sweeping the area around her. The room was empty. Whoever had brought Billy down was no longer there.
As her fingers found the carotid artery at the side of the deputy’s neck, her eyes continued to scan her surroundings. To her right was a door she assumed led outside. To the left—
The blow to the back of her skull seemed to destroy her ability to think. At least about anything other than the agony it had caused.
Somehow, despite its paralyzing force, she managed to hold on to consciousness. She tumbled forward, unable to get her hands up in time to prevent her sprawl across Billy’s body.
As she fell, she lost her hold on the Glock. Almost detached from the implications of what was happening, she watched as it skittered away into the shadows.
The fingers that fastened over her upper arms bit hard into her flesh, as the man who had circled around behind her to deliver that devastating blow pulled her roughly to her feet. She struggled to keep the encroaching fog of unconsciousness at bay as he dragged her toward the door she’d noticed on the right.
As they went through it, she tried to grab at the frame, only to be struck savagely once more, this time on her temple. And then, at last, everything faded to blackness.
AS SOON AS HE’D identified the make of the car on the rack, Jake had turned to run through the opened door of the workshop. Before he was halfway to the house, gunfire had erupted inside it, shattering the rural stillness. Behind him he could hear the deputy’s footsteps following him across the hard-packed earth of the path that connected the two buildings.
When he reached the house, the front door was partially open. A glance at its broken lock told him that Billy had gotten his wish.
Jake put his shoulder against it, his weapon held in both hands. He turned to watch the deputy slide into place behind him.
When Blake nodded, Jake pushed the door wide and barreled through, leading with the Kimber. On some level, as he visually searched the cluttered front room, he was aware of the smell here, too. The same miasma of must and rot they’d encountered in the shop, compounded by the stench of unwashed humanity.
Trailed by the deputy, he moved forward, stepping over and around piles of dishes, food wrappers and scattered clothing. Despite the missing slats in the old-fashioned Venetian blinds, the moonlight made little headway against the grime-covered windowpanes.
Glancing over his shoulder, he motioned the other man toward the dining room and kitchen. Without questioning his right to direct the operation, the deputy stepped around him to move carefully into the other room.
Jake considered the dimness of the hall that stretched in front of him. He could discern at least three doors leading off it, but all of them were dark, as well.
Where the hell are you, Eden?
After the initial burst of gunfire, there had been nothing. No shouted commands. No sounds at all since they’d entered the house.
Anxiety tightening his throat, he stepped forward. The farther he moved down the hallway, the darker his surroundings became.
The first room—a bedroom judging by the width of the shape against the far wall—seemed to be the source of the sour odor of perspiration. He moved across it toward the sprawl of pale sheets. “Major?”
The whispered question held a quality of panic he’d heard too many times to mistake. The deputy had encountered something in his search that he didn’t know how to handle.
Taking a final glance around the room he was in, Jake turned and, still leading with the Kimber, headed back down the hall. The deputy stood at its end, silhouetted against the faint moonlight coming into the living room.
As Jake approached, he could see the guy was shaken. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Billy. I think he’s dead.”
“Where?”
“Kitchen. There’s blood all over the floor.”
“And the chief?”
“I don’t know. There’s nobody else in there.”
Jake pushed by him, unworried now about alerting the man they’d come to find. The possibilities ran through his head as he made his way across the dining room.
Maybe Eden had been wounded and was afraid now to call out and reveal her location. She might be hiding from whoever had killed Billy. Or she might be under the control of that person, who he had to assume at this point was David Porter.
Jake reached the kitchen as he enumerated the last of those scenarios. Although he bent to verify, there was little doubt, given the size of the dark puddle under the body of the man lying on the cracked linoleum, that the deputy’s assessment had been correct. Billy Gibbons was dead.
And there was no sign of what had happened to Eden.
Chapter Eighteen
When she came to, Eden was being dragged backward through palmetto and needlerush. She turned her head to vomit, but that didn’t deter her attacker.
Hands locked under her breasts, he pulled her ruthlessly over the uneven ground, her heels bumping as if she were a rag doll carried by a careless child. Above her head, she could hear his breath sawing in and out as he struggled to draw her ever deeper into the vegetation.
She swallowed, trying to get enough saliva into her mouth to call out. The sound she managed was little more than a croak, but it evoked a response.
“Shut up,” her captor hissed into her ear. “You shut the hell up, or I swear you’ll be sorry you were born.”
As if to emphasize the threat, one hand tightened painfully around her breast and twisted it. For a moment that unexpected agony overcame the chorus of pain throbbing at the back of her head.
She bit her bottom lip to control the urge to scream. Hot tears leaked from under her lids.
Dean had been right. She had botched this from the beginning. Billy was dead. And the man who’d shot him—
She realized that she had no idea what her captor intended to do with her. Or why he hadn’t already killed her as he had Billy.
Porter didn’t need a hostage. He had a far more valuable bargaining chip in the child. Unless…
Had they figured this out too late? Had he already disposed of the little girl? That would fit with what he had done in the other two cases Jake had found.
Jake.
Nothing had been said between them. No promises made. Other than the one she had felt so strongly in the few minutes he’d held her tonight. And
now none of those possibilities would come to pass.
Not if she let Porter do whatever he wanted to her.
Even if she didn’t understand his purpose in bringing her with him, she knew that eventually he would kill her. Just as he had killed Billy and other little girls.
And Raine? Dear God, had he already killed Raine?
As she enumerated the toll David Porter’s bloodlust had taken, the thought that he might get away with it all fueled her sense of desperation.
She had no doubt Jake and Marty would come after them. They would have heard the blast that killed Billy, and they would come to find her. If she could slow Porter down, just long enough…
She turned her head again, pretending to wretch. With the shadows, she prayed that her captor wouldn’t be able to tell she was faking.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please, just… Just give me a minute. Please.”
The response she expected was more pain. A blow to her aching head or some other sadistic attempt to shut her up. Instead, the hands that had been holding her upright released. She didn’t have to fake her collapse onto the ground.
Behind her she could hear Porter fighting to control his ragged breathing. He was a strong man, but even for someone acclimated to the heat and humidity, dragging over a hundred pounds of essentially dead weight was physically exhausting.
Now, while he was at his most vulnerable, was the time to strike. She rolled to her side, trying to force her unresponsive limbs to obey. Ignoring the continuing agony in her head, she finally managed to get a knee under her.
“Stay down,” Porter ordered, putting his booted foot on her back to push her to the ground. “You just stay still, you hear me.”
She nodded, knowing that in her condition she posed no threat to him. The most she could hope for was to delay him long enough for Jake and whoever answered her radio call to catch up with them. And she had no idea how much of a head start they had.