by Cindy Dees
“That would be helpful. Thanks, man,” Joe said pleasantly.
Brett half listened as Vinny rattled off the number he already knew by heart, the rest of his attention on his search. Dammit. He reached the end of the left half of the storeroom without spotting anyplace Vinny could be hiding her.
“When’s the last time you saw Anna?” Joe asked.
Vinny hemmed and hawed for a shade too long and then said, “Oh. Yeah. I remember now. She came in a few days ago looking for a piece of glass for a broken window. I told her I’d be on the lookout for it. Antique glass, you know. Hard to find. Has to be matched carefully.” He added in a bragging tone, “In fact, I just found her the right piece of it yesterday. It’s right over here.”
He was lying. He’d called Anna and told her three days ago that he had the glass.
“How well do you know Anna?” Joe asked a little less casually.
“Why?” Vinny retorted, sounding a bit defensive.
“Would you say you’re close friends?”
“Why do you care how close we are?” Vinny was sounding a lot defensive now.
Joe leaned on the guy even harder. “How close does she think you two are?”
“She thinks we’re plenty close!” Vinny was definitely ticked off.
“That’s not the way I hear it. I hear she thinks you’re creepy. A stalker, even.”
“Get out of my store and don’t come back unless you have a search warrant!” Vinny shouted.
Joe’s voice was silky smooth. “Where are you going, Vinny? That’s a big bag of gear you’ve got there. Mind if I take a look at it?”
“Yes, I damned well mind! Get out of here. You’re not even supposed to be in the back room anyway. I’ll call your boss!”
Joe snorted gratifyingly. “I am the boss. I’m the county sheriff. But feel free to call the governor of Montana if you don’t like how I’m doing my job.”
Brett heard Joe start to move and took the cue, darting back to the front of the storeroom and slipping out into the showroom. He moved silently out the front door and raced over to Joe’s SUV, easing inside just as Joe was escorted off the premises by one very red-faced Vinny.
Joe climbed into the SUV thoughtfully. “He got awfully mad as soon as I asked him about his relationship with Anna.”
“He’s lying,” Brett declared hotly.
“Caught that, did you? Why do you suppose he did that?”
“Why don’t you march back in there, put him in a headlock and ask him?”
“Patience, Brett. We’re going to head on down the street a little ways, park the car, and see what develops.”
“What did you see?” Brett demanded. He sensed that Joe wasn’t telling him everything.
“Our friend Vinny was packing a bag. Looked like the kind of stuff someone might take on a camping trip. Food, jugs of water. Lantern fuel. Blankets. Rope. Lots of rope, in fact.”
“And?”
Joe stared at him. “Wow. You really are off your game, aren’t you?”
He answered raggedly, “I love her, man.”
Joe shot him a sympathetic look. “Think about it, Brett. If you were holding a prisoner in some isolated location, what kind of supplies would you need?”
He lurched in his seat. “Son of a—”
“Slow down, there. You can’t barge in and confront him. He’ll refuse to tell you a thing. If he thinks we’re on to him, ole Vinny may not show up to feed Annie or give her water. We have to let him go and hope he leads us to her.”
“What if the bastard’s just going out camping, and we waste a bunch of time following him?”
“First thing tomorrow morning, I can officially declare Anna missing and call up every reserve deputy in the county. I’ll have dozens of men and women out looking for her by noon tomorrow. But in the meantime, I smell a rat with this guy.”
“What about Mona Billingham?” Brett asked.
“My guy saw her roll in about two thirty last night. He probably should have arrested her for driving drunk based on his description of how she wove down the street in her car and staggered into her house, but I told him to back off for the same reason we’re backing off Vinny. I can’t spook whoever’s got her. I’ve got two deputies staking out the Billingham house. If either Jimbo or Mona leaves, one of my guys will follow them.”
At least Joe wasn’t disputing the fact that Anna had fallen victim to foul play. Brett was grateful for that, at least.
“Here we go,” Joe said tightly.
Brett looked up and saw a silver pickup truck pull out of the parking lot beside Vinny’s store. “That looks a lot like the truck that forced Anna off the road.”
“Funny that,” Joe commented. “Take these binoculars and keep an eye on him while I drive.”
“Gladly.” Brett plastered the field glasses to his eyes. “Take us to her, you son of a bitch.”
* * *
It took Ann nearly as long to turn around so her hands faced the wall as it did to cross the entire space. She felt around with her floor-side hand until she found a jagged shard of sharp rock. She fumbled with it and dropped it a few times but eventually managed to pick it up so the sharp edge was facing backward toward her wrists. She started to saw at the tough nylon rope.
Unlike the movies, she didn’t make fast progress. Crud. This was going to take a while. Tears of fear and frustration ran down her face, but she kept at it, rubbing the stone doggedly across her ropes.
But at least she wasn’t just sitting here waiting to die. She would do whatever it took to get out of here alive. She had to live for Brett, darn it.
* * *
Vinny drove into the mountains above Hillsdale, and Joe was forced to drop back a long ways on the deserted roads so Vinny wouldn’t spot them. The pavement gave out, and they were able to follow Vinny for a little while just from the plume of dust his truck left behind. But then they hit the snow line and quickly lost sight of him on the narrow, winding road through skinny pine trees.
They came to an intersection and Joe stopped, swearing. “Did you see which way he went?”
Brett swore even more vehemently. “No. The trees blocked him. He could have gone any direction.”
“The good news is none of these roads go more than a few miles in any direction. We need to go back to town. Organize a search party.”
Panic threatened to overtake Brett. Flashes of vast expanses of barren, foreign mountains distracted him, but he fought like hell to stay present. To keep thinking. For Anna.
“It could take days or weeks to search miles of these mountains. The bastard will finish playing with her and kill her long before then.”
“Let’s not think the worst, Brett—”
“He kidnapped her! He’s going to take out his sick fantasies on her and then he’ll have no choice but to silence her for good.”
Joe didn’t refute the claim. While Brett appreciated his cousin’s honesty with him, his gut clenched so hard he could barely stay upright at the thought of that sick bastard laying hands on her.
Joe turned the SUV around and pointed it back toward Sunny Creek, and Brett gave in to panic. The flashbacks came faster now, more insistent. He couldn’t hold them off any longer. Images of that night came roaring back. They’d left base camp not long after full dark to patrol a road through a mountain pass. The local insurgents used it to cross from one valley to the next, and a coalition medical convoy needed to use the pass the following day to get badly needed medical supplies to a forward operating location.
They’d driven to the base of the mountain, but then they’d proceeded on foot. Rico—the dog handler—and Reggie had gone first. Zimmerman, the one who’d found the whiskey, had moved up beside Rico. Brett caught only snatches of the conversation, but Zimm thought his girlfriend was cheating on him and was bitching about it to Rico.
They didn�
��t expect opposition until they neared the summit. Which was why, when Reggie started acting jumpy, no one had paid particular attention. He’d been a little twitchy recently anyway. The veterinarian back at base camp said Reggie was showing signs of battle fatigue and was about due to be retired. But he was beloved by the squad, and they’d all argued to keep him out there a little longer.
Brett sat bolt upright in his seat. “Take me to the ranch right now!”
“What?” Joe bit out.
“Reggie. He’s a military working dog. He can track a scent like nobody’s business.”
Joe nodded and guided the SUV toward the ranch. “Call ahead and tell Uncle John to gather all the men he’s got and arm them like it’s World War Three.”
Brett made the call.
“Dad, it’s Brett. We have a lead on where Anna may be. It’s possible that Vinny Benson kidnapped her and is hiding her in the McMinn Range. I need you to get all the guys and guns you can, load up Reggie and meet us at the western base of the McMinn road as fast as you can.”
Joe added, “Have him bring an article of clothing Anna has worn recently.”
Brett nodded and relayed the instruction.
His old man hadn’t been a Green Beret for nothing. John replied tersely, “Roger. I’ll have the whole damned cavalry there in thirty minutes.”
Given that it was a solid twenty-minute drive from the ranch to the road, Brett was impressed. Still, he couldn’t resist saying, “Hurry, Dad.”
* * *
Anna thought she heard a noise and froze, listening hard. She heard blood pounding in her ears, but nothing else. She’d made some progress after she got the hang of using a jagged spot on the rock to pick at the nylon fibers, rather than just sawing at them. She guessed she was halfway through the rope, but she couldn’t really see it from her awkward position on the floor.
“Well, well, well. Haven’t we been a resourceful prisoner while I was gone?” a familiar voice said from behind her.
Vinny.
“So. You’re as sick and twisted as I thought you might be,” she said scornfully. No way in hell was she showing this guy fear. She’d learned early from Eddie that predators fed on it.
“You’ll change your tune soon enough. When you have to beg me for your life.”
She didn’t have an answer for that. She supposed she would beg if that was what it took to get back to Brett alive. She frantically tried to palm the shard of rock as Vinny came over and righted her chair.
Must distract him. Keep him from noticing the partially shredded rope.
“Well, lookee at that. You’ve been trying to free yourself.”
Dammit.
“That’s okay. I’m going to untie you anyway. I have other plans for you and me tonight.” He leaned down and licked her face, his wet tongue running all the way from her jaw to her temple. Oh, God. Disgust rolled through her. She held herself rigid and didn’t pull away, but it was hard to stay still.
“I like the taste of your tears. You’ll cry for me tonight, won’t you?”
A shudder of revulsion passed through her. She took a deep breath, plucked up her courage and said gamely enough, “I’m not going to do anything but pee all over you if you don’t let me go to the bathroom.”
“Oh. Yeah. Right. Didn’t think about that.” He untied her wrists and stepped back all the way to the other side of the cave, perhaps twenty feet away. “Untie your feet. You can use that bucket over there.”
She bent down to untie her own ankles and heard the snick of shotgun shells being chambered behind her. “Don’t go getting any bright ideas, now. I’d hate to have to shoot you before I’m done with you.”
Her mind went into a strange survival overdrive. He planned to rape her, did he? Surely, at some point during that process, he would make himself vulnerable to her. He would have to come in close proximity to her to do the deed. That would be when she would make her move.
Until then, she would do her best to lull him into a false sense of security. God knew, she knew all about acting cowed and submissive. If Eddie had taught her nothing else, it was how to act like a mouse.
She ignored her humiliation at having to drop her pants and pee in front of him. It was all part of the game now. A life-and-death game of cat and mouse. Except Vinny didn’t realize that she wasn’t the mouse at all.
* * *
Joe led the convoy of trucks filled with angry ranch hands up to the intersection where they’d lost Anna. Brett jumped out and lifted Reggie down from his father’s truck. Even Miranda had come along, a shotgun across her lap and a look in her eye that promised hell to pay for whoever had messed with her family.
Brett had never been Reggie’s handler, but he’d seen Rico work the black Lab more times than he could count. Now, he could only pray the dog would recognize commands from a handler he’d never been trained to work with.
He set Reggie down in the middle of the intersection and unclipped the leash from his collar. Brett held out Anna’s mittens and hat that Miranda had brought along under Reggie’s nose and then looked the dog in the eye. “Search, Reggie. Search.”
The dog looked up at him intently for a moment, his brown eyes soft and wise. And then the dog did an odd thing. He took another long sniff at the hat and mittens, as if he was cementing the scent in his mind. And then his nose went to the ground.
Praise the Lord and pass the potatoes. Reggie seemed to know what Brett wanted of him. He held his breath as the dog moved in a slow circle around the intersection. All of a sudden, Reggie took off down one of the side roads, moving with confidence.
Of course, with his crippled hips, he wasn’t fast, and Brett and others had no trouble jogging along behind the dog and keeping up with him. Now and then Reggie would crisscross back and forth across the road, and then he would proceed straight ahead again.
Miranda drove along slowly behind the search party in a pickup truck for as long as they kept to the road.
But then Reggie veered off into the trees, and it became a lot harder to keep up with the dog, who followed the trail without any regard for low branches and brush that conspired to slow down and confound the humans behind him.
Brett followed the black tail that stood up like a flag in front of him and blinked hard as memory of Reggie’s tail standing up just like that flashed into his mind’s eye. The road had narrowed, and a landslide had blocked it partially. They had to climb up and over a tall pile of debris, exposing themselves to anyone above them. Reggie had hesitated, and Rico had muttered something under his breath about the rocks cutting Reggie’s feet and picked up the dog.
He blinked hard. Montana. Anna. The trees thinned as the dog led them higher up the mountainside. Barren rocks surrounded him, and reality blended with memory until Brett couldn’t tell one from the other. Details of the ambush were coming back to him thick and fast now. Stuff he hadn’t remembered about that night.
He’d forgotten that Reggie had wriggled to get down, unhappy at being held. Brett remembered signaling Zimmerman to fall back and let Rico and Reggie clear the far side of the landslide, but that Zimm had ignored him. Zimm had spotted something ahead in the darkness and wanted to check it out.
Reggie disappeared over the edge of the rock pile, then Rico and Zimm had dropped out of sight. He raised his hand to call a halt. Signaled for his guys to fan out on their bellies across the summit of the mound of dirt and rock, but they never got there. Zimmerman cried out, and they’d all rushed forward, ignoring his order to take up protected firing positions. Brett went on ahead to check on Rico and Zimm and let his guys cover him from behind. He’d topped the rise—
His mind went blank, and abruptly, he was on a Montana mountain with the woman he loved out here somewhere. Reggie paused, panting, and Brett caught up to the elderly dog.
“You’re doing great, buddy.” He gave the dog a brief ear scratch, let h
im catch his breath and then held out Anna’s mittens and hat again. “Search, Reggie.”
He could swear the dog nodded at him. Reggie did a tight three-sixty, reacquired the scent and pressed on gamely, his limp more pronounced. But that dog didn’t have any quit in him. Brett suspected Reggie would drop dead before he stopped tracking Anna.
Please, God, let this work.
* * *
Anna schooled her face to pleased surprise as Vinny laid out a picnic on a boulder not far from where he’d tied her up again. At least she was sitting on the ground now and not stuck in that damned chair. Unfortunately, he’d tied her wrists together behind her back, so her shoulders were still screaming at her. She felt the wall at her back and located a little jut in the rocks, and was already working her wrist ropes against it. The job was going faster this time, now that she had the knack of fraying the twisted fibers once she sawed through the woven nylon rope casing.
Vinny started to eat and drink, leaning over from time to time to feed her a morsel of food and grope her chest. Frankly, she didn’t care what he did as long as he believed she was at his mercy. He did feed her a bottle of water, which she guzzled gratefully. Her headache abated slightly.
“How did you pull it off? Kidnapping me, I mean?”
“Easy. I followed you from your house, and when you were on a deserted stretch of street, I snuck up behind you and hit you with a brick. Then I dragged you into an alley, tied and gagged you, and covered you with a tarp. I went and got my truck and gave you a shot of dog tranquilizer. That was the tricky part. I didn’t want to kill you, but I didn’t know how much to give you. I got it right, obviously.”
She batted her eyes and tried to look terribly impressed. “That took a lot of planning. I suppose I should be flattered that you went to all this trouble to be alone with me.”
He nodded. “You should be flattered.”
Jerk. “What is this place? An old sapphire mine? It’s really cool.”
She tuned out as he launched into a lengthy history of sapphire mining in the region and how old this mine was. She did note that it was in the McMinn Range, though. At least she wasn’t too far from civilization and help.