by Nicole Helm
“We’ll be out in just a second,” Dev said.
Jamison disappeared and Dev let go of her hand. Next steps. What could they possibly do next except hunker down?
“Sarah. You want to panic, that’s just fine.”
“I don’t want to panic. I’m not panicking!”
She caught the way he pressed his lips together, as though he was trying not to laugh or point out she sounded a heck of a lot like someone panicking.
“Oh, shut up,” she muttered. She let him help her out of the bed and they walked into the kitchen where, once again, everyone was huddled around the table. Except Grandma Pauline and Liza, who Sarah assumed were upstairs with the girls.
“I called the officer who was out in the car at the entrance. He did a quick search and found the gun that shot at us,” Jamison said. “It was lying in the snow. There are footprints. He’s called in some backup and they’ll take the gun to see if they can lift a print. They’re following the footprints too, best they can, though I suspect the wind will erase the trail before they get anything out of it. With all of us out of commission while we’re under threat, they’re stretched thin as it is.” Four of the six Wyatt brothers worked for Valiant County, and though it was a big county with a big department, losing four officers from active duty probably was pretty stressful.
“I should help.”
Sarah opened her mouth to argue, to demand everyone stay put, but Dev gave a dismissive wave her way.
“I’ll be back in time to go with you to your appointment.”
The smart aleck response died before she could say it as she realized there were questioning looks around the room. Confusion. Except from Duke.
In all the craziness, Sarah hadn’t fully thought about the fact Dev wanting to be a father to the baby would mean telling everyone. No one knew yet and it would be a whole...thing, in the midst of this other thing.
“I think you should go see your doctor too,” Cody said to Nina, dragging people’s attention away from Sarah and Dev. “It’s just a little bit earlier than your normal appointment time. I don’t see the harm in getting checked out. You can take Brianna and—”
“Separating us isn’t going to do any good. If he wants me to get to you, then I’m a target too.”
Sarah shook her head. There was a pattern, and maybe Anth could deviate from it, but why would he have a pattern if he wasn’t using it for some reason? “Gage would be next,” she said. “Anth sent a note to Jamison, then shot at Liza. Or had someone shoot at Liza. Then there was a note to Cody, and he shot at you guys. That’s a pattern, and it means the next thing to happen would be for Gage to get a note, since he was the next one to have a run-in with Ace.”
“Lucky me,” Gage muttered as Felicity wrapped her arm around his.
“This is a North Star gun,” Cody said, placing his phone in the middle of the table. On the screen was a picture of a gun in the snow. “The gun he used—it’s from North Star. Or at least it’s the kind we were issued. He could get his hands on it easy enough without going through North Star, but doesn’t that feel...”
“Pointed?” Sarah supplied. “It connects to your note. Just like shooting at Liza connected to all the uses of kin in Jamison’s note.”
“But neither attempt succeeded at killing their target,” Dev said thoughtfully, staring down at the picture of the gun.
“Maybe he doesn’t want to succeed. Maybe this is the game.”
“The paper says we’re sentenced to death. Why would he sentence us to death, then play a game?”
“I don’t know, but why take a shot at Liza? That doesn’t kill you. Metaphorically, maybe. But are we dealing in metaphors? Maybe the letters and the attempts to hurt us aren’t connected in the way we’re thinking,” Sarah insisted. “First it was Jamison, then Cody. If they’re going in involvement with Ace order, like I said, Gage would be next. Some kind of attempt that connects to the note. Then a note for Brady.”
“What Cecilia and I dealt with was Elijah, not Ace,” Brady said. But Sarah could tell even though they were voicing arguments, what they were really doing was thinking it through. Working out the angles.
“Elijah was a protégé of Ace,” Sarah continued. “Besides, you were involved with saving Gage from Ace even before that. So, either way, you’d be after Gage.” Sarah looked at Tucker. “Ace didn’t have too much to do with your showdown with the Sons, but he died while you were fighting them.”
“It doesn’t make sense, though,” Dev said gruffly. “If it was about Ace, I would have been first. It would have gone back to me. It doesn’t make sense to leave me for last.”
“Maybe it doesn’t have to make sense to us,” Nina said quietly. “It makes sense to him.”
Sarah couldn’t help but think there was something they were missing. Some piece of the puzzle that would allow them to make sense of things.
“I’m going to go help them follow the trail. I’ll notice things they won’t.”
“Not alone,” Jamison said sharply. “Under no circumstances are any of us going anywhere alone.”
“I’ll go,” Duke said, standing. “May not be as young as you lot, but I know how to shoot a gun and follow a trail. It’s my land too.”
Dev nodded and they both headed for the mudroom to get bundled up. When she stood, Duke gave her a censoring look. “Stay put.” Then they headed outside into the snowy, cold morning.
Sarah scowled after them. She was very tempted not to stay put, but she was nine months pregnant. She couldn’t go waddling around trying to track a killer. But what she could do was try to get to the bottom of the pattern. “I want to see the letters again. We need to compare them.”
* * *
DEV FOLLOWED THE trail of boot prints in the snow that led from where the county cops had parked their car, to the place they’d found the gun. It had since been processed and taken in as evidence with the hope of lifting a print.
Dev had his doubts. Why would Anth—or someone Anth had hired—drop a weapon that might have fingerprints on it? Didn’t make any sense.
Still, there could be something left behind. Some clue—either from the direction the trail went or something accidentally left behind. Something the cops might not know to look for.
“He isn’t headed back to my house, and he isn’t headed to the highway,” Duke said from behind Dev. They were walking close together, eyes sweeping the wide-open spread of land between them.
“If the trail is headed to where he’s going. Not sure he’s that dumb.”
“One way or another, we need this done before that baby comes along. You’re running out of time.”
Dev kept his sarcastic no kidding to himself. In an effort to not mess up the path the shooter had left, the police officers had ruined any secondary evidence Dev might have been able to pick up on. Necessary for them, but a shame for Dev.
He tried to focus on that. The footprints, what the path meant, and what he was looking for, but he could practically feel Duke’s disapproval waving over him.
He shouldn’t care. Duke’s approval didn’t matter. Maybe it had once upon a time, but Dev had given up on seeking approval after he’d ended up in the hospital, his law enforcement career over, and knowing he was a failure.
Utterly, in every way that mattered.
He’d eventually pulled himself out of that dark, self-pitying place. Or maybe more accurately, Sarah had poked him out of that place.
On purpose, he realized with a start. He’d always thought she was just annoying, but no. She’d gone about dragging him back into the land of the living since he’d been able to walk again.
She’d never given up on him, and never tipped her hand. She’d always known exactly what she was doing, but she’d never let him know. Probably because she knew he’d balk at it.
His chest felt too tight and now was not the time for aft
er-the-fact realizations or emotions he didn’t want to analyze. But he owed Duke something, because through Sarah’s badgering and Grandma Pauline’s calm presence and his own stubbornness, he’d pulled himself out of that ugly place. He wasn’t perfect or maybe any good, but he’d put some pride in this ranch and his hard work here.
He’d made progress. Not just in the years, but maybe even in the months of Sarah’s pregnancy. “I’m not going to...shirk my responsibilities with her. Well, with the baby,” he said, half hoping the words died in the wind.
“Please tell me you didn’t say it like that when you told her,” Duke replied. “Well, you don’t have a black eye so you must have phrased it better.”
“Yeah, I phrased it better,” Dev muttered. “I said I’d be a father. That I wanted to be. I... Someone who’d protect my kid no matter what. I guess you don’t have to be perfect to do that.”
“No, son. You don’t. But it isn’t just about protecting. Being a parent is so much bigger than that.”
Dev stopped and rubbed at his aching leg. The cold exacerbated the pain and Duke’s words had a clutching, crushing sensation rocketing through his chest. So much bigger. You really think you can handle that?
Too late to rethink. He’d said he’d be a father to the baby, and he wouldn’t go back on his word. Besides, there was no time to panic about the future when the present was just as ominous.
“Then there’s being a partner to think about. You’ll both have different ideas of how to raise the boy. Then there’s your own relationship, which... Well, it’s hard enough to make those decisions when you’re settled and married. It’s a balancing act. It’s—”
“Is now really the time to lecture me on all the ways I’m going to screw it up?”
“No time like the present,” Duke said. He almost sounded cheerful, but Dev supposed that’s because he was distracting himself by trying to scare the bejesus out of Dev. “Besides, you’ll both screw it up. That’s the beauty of life if you think about it. Everybody makes mistakes, so it hardly makes yours the end of the world like you’re so prone to do.”
“I’m not prone to do that,” Dev muttered. “Much.” But before he could analyze how right Duke might be, his attention was drawn to a difference in the snow. There were still footprints here, but the snow was packed differently. He could see where the cops had gone on, following the prints.
But there was something off here, even if he couldn’t figure out what. “Do you see this?”
Duke studied the snow too. “Something isn’t right. Is it packed in?”
“Seems to be. But that’s a heck of a lot of packing.”
“Unless...” Duke trailed off, but he lifted a gloved hand and pointed a little ways off. After an area of packed snow, there were two indentations. Like snowmobile tracks.
“Let’s be careful where we walk,” Dev said, starting to head that way and trying to avoid marring any tracks. After just a few steps, he saw a dark stain of red between the indentations. It was a narrow trickle following the path of the mobile.
Dev looked at Duke, who already had his phone to his ear. “Jamison. We found something. Don’t know how far your deputy friends are ahead of us, but can you radio them back? They’ll be able to see our trail and follow us.”
Duke hung up and they kept walking.
“Better watch out for an ambush, boy.”
Dev looked around. It was an open field. Though the land rolled a bit here and there, with the snow it would be almost impossible to hide.
The snowmobile tracks curved around a swell of land. Duke and Dev slowed in unison as they rounded the tiny hill. The red dribble of blood stopped behind the swell, where Dev could spot hair.
He held out an arm and stopped Duke, but Duke shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a live one.”
Dev let out a breath and then they walked closer, the body coming more into view. He didn’t recognize the man, though he was clearly dead. A giant arrow was coming out of his chest, and he didn’t move. His unseeing eyes just stared at the bright sun above.
Attached to the body, via the arrow, was another piece of paper. Duke swore. Dev moved closer to read the note, being careful not to disrupt any more of the scene.
Craig Timothy
Crimes:
Armed robbery, rape, first and second-degree murder, but most of all—failure.
Sentencing:
Death by lethal injection.
—AW
“Seems to me a man with all these notes, who can disappear or send other people to do his dirty work, would choose people less likely to fail.”
Dev would agree, but he thought about what Sarah had said. That this was just a game. Or maybe unrelated to the Wyatts. Maybe Anth simply wanted to get rid of these men for whatever reason, and this was the way to do it. Maybe he wanted to confuse them, or just scare them by showing them what he could do.
Too many options, but so much failure didn’t make sense. It had to be planned. It had to be purposeful. Which put Dev even more on edge than he already was.
“Dev.” Duke’s voice was especially grave, and when Dev looked back at the man, Duke nodded toward the corpse’s hand.
There was a folded up piece of paper, but clearly printed on the part Dev could see was his brother’s name. Gage Wyatt. Just like Sarah had predicted.
“Let’s go find the cops,” Dev said grimly.
Chapter Twelve
By the time Dev and Duke returned to the house, Sarah had read and reread the notes left for Jamison and Cody. Now she had a third note to read. Gage, just as she’d predicted.
“Oh, allow me,” Gage said when Dev said he was going to read it to everyone.
“It’s just a picture. The cops took the original to see if they could lift some prints off it.” Dev handed his phone to Gage. Felicity sat down, Claire squirming in her lap.
Sarah thought the way Claire was cheerfully babbling at Felicity helped ease some of Felicity’s tension now that her husband received the specific threat.
“‘Gage Wyatt. Crimes: The subject has been the perpetrator of a wide variety of crimes since childhood. Manslaughter. Battery. Treason. Escape from custody and sentencing. Attempted patricide.’” Gage smirked. “Hard to argue with that one.”
“What’s the sentencing?” Sarah encouraged him. They’d all followed the same lines, and the sentencing was always the clue to how they were going to be attacked.
“‘Sentencing: For these acts, I do hereby sentence Gage Wyatt to death. This will be meted out at the judge’s discretion through the method G. Wyatt saw fit to use on his own father.’ Signed AW.” Gage handed Dev his phone back. “Well, unless he plans on dragging me off to a cave somewhere, I think I’m safe.”
“Don’t say that,” Felicity said. She’d gone more and more pale as Gage had read the note and his last little quip hadn’t helped. But Felicity had been there when Ace had tied Gage up in a cave in the Badlands. She’d been the one to save Gage from Ace.
“It doesn’t make sense anyway. I didn’t try to kill him. He tried to kill me. Felicity is the one who shot him.”
“We keep running into a lot of things not making sense,” Dev said grimly. “I imagine we’ll meet a few more before this is all over. We need to keep being diligent, but the current challenge is going to be getting Sarah to her doctor’s appointment.”
“The cops could take her. We could hide her, you know? Sneak her out to the cop car so no one who might be watching would even know.”
“No,” Dev said. “I’ll be going.”
The room went silent, those speculative glances they’d gotten earlier increasing with real interest. Sarah knew there was no way to avoid this. No matter the danger. Her family deserved to know and unless Anth Wyatt had planted some kind of listening device...
“You don’t think we’re being listened to, do
you?” she asked Cody.
Cody shook his head. “I’ve swept this room in particular up and down and sideways. I can’t find any evidence he can hear us. Him knowing which bedrooms we’re in would have been easy enough to determine by watching through the camera he had pointed in the hallway window upstairs. I think if he could hear us, we would have been ambushed any of the times we’ve gone outside.”
Sarah nodded, then shared a look with Dev. She didn’t have to say anything for him to incline his head. A silent go ahead. “I’m going with Sarah because I’m the father.”
There was nothing but silence at first. Even Duke was silent though he already knew. Everyone looked downright shocked, except maybe Grandma Pauline who’d always had an excellent poker face. Surely even she couldn’t have predicted this news.
“As in...” Nina cleared her throat. “Like you’re actually the father, or you’re stepping in to play—”
“I’m actually the father.”
Cecilia let out a gasping noise. “Oh my... You had sex at our wedding.”
Sarah didn’t consider herself someone who embarrassed easily or almost ever, but heat stole over her cheeks and she got the feeling she was bright red.
“I don’t think we need to go into the details,” Dev said dryly. “Now. It shouldn’t be just the two of us. Nina, did you want to go in and get checked out?”
Nina shook her head as if needing the physical movement to change topics. She cleared her throat again. “Right. Yes. Cody made an appointment for me, though it’s later than yours.” She shot her husband a disapproving look, but she’d placed a protective hand over her still-flat stomach. “But Cody should come too.”
“I agree,” Sarah said before Cody or Dev could argue. “We’re all in this house because we believe there’s safety in numbers. We should go to town and back in more than just a duo or a trio. Four is good.”
“And a police escort,” Jamison said authoritatively. “I’ve already talked to the department. The weather is stretching them even thinner, but they’ve called in some road help from neighboring departments. They’ve agreed the best course of action was to have a marked police car following you guys.”