A Promise to Protect (Logan Point Book #2): A Novel

by Patricia Bradley

  “I, ah, I’m sorry for pressuring you that night. I’ve always thought what happened is why you broke up with me and then didn’t take my calls.”

  Even now her cheeks flamed in the darkness as she remembered waking the next morning, the shame and regret that washed over her. She’d always planned to save herself for the man she married, for her wedding night, and with one rash decision, she’d altered her life forever. But it hadn’t been all Ben’s fault. “I was as responsible for what happened as you were.”

  “Was it the reason?”

  If only she could tell him what really happened, but then he’d be angry at his father, and Tom Logan needed his son. “You never said what makes you so uncomfortable around kids,” she said. Beside her, he shifted, and Leigh felt his gaze on her.

  “I didn’t, did I,” he said. A few small rocks lay scattered on the pier, and he picked up one and skipped it across the inlet. Neither spoke as the water rippled in circles. “The way bad things happen when I’m around, it’s probably a good thing. Like Tommy Ray Gresham. Like tonight. First time I ever hang around, and Martin gets snake bit.”

  “That wasn’t your fault. And from what I’ve heard, neither was Tommy Ray’s death.”

  “If I hadn’t let go of Tom—”

  “You both could’ve died.”

  “I saved myself instead of him.” Ben had never shared the depth of his guilt with another living soul, and usually didn’t even let himself acknowledge it. But somehow tonight, here at the lake with Leigh, the words just came out. “I should have kept holding on to him, but I couldn’t breathe, and Tommy Ray was a big kid, a tackle for the junior football team. He pulled me deeper.”

  The memory of the water closing in on him, his lungs bursting, Tommy Ray fighting him, grabbing him and pulling him down . . . Sweat beaded his upper lip, and he curled his fingers into balls.

  “Do you think it would’ve been better if you’d drowned with him? Ben, it was an accident.”

  “Then why can’t I let it go? Why do I feel so guilty?”

  “Ian said Jonas Gresham keeps throwing it up to you. Maybe that’s why. Does anyone else in town blame you?”

  Electricity shot up his arm as she grabbed it and pulled him around until he was looking into her jade eyes. The moonlight bathed her in a soft glow. Why did he ever let Leigh get away?

  “Ben Logan, look at how you saved TJ. You are the strongest, bravest man I know. If you don’t believe me, you’re just plain stupid, and I can’t help you.”

  He licked his lips, wishing he could accept what she said. But all he could think of was how beautiful she was, how close her lips were to his. Her breath halted as he caught her gaze and held it. He leaned toward her.

  His cell rang, and he groaned. Maybe he should just let it ring. But the spell was broken, and he slipped the phone from his shirt pocket. “Logan.”

  “Ben!” Wade sounded breathless. “Somebody set fire to the jail.”

  He scrambled to his feet. “What? Never mind, I heard you. Did you get the prisoners out?”

  “They’re out. Logan Point PD is on the way to relocate them to the city jail. I hear the fire department sirens now.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “Just the roof right now, but as old as this building is, we might have a problem if the fire truck doesn’t hurry up and get here.”

  “I’ll be there in ten.” He pulled Leigh up. “The jail is on fire.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I wish. Can you jog? I have to get back to my truck, but I don’t want to leave you here alone.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Ben saw Leigh safely into the house before jumping into his truck and speeding to town. At least there hadn’t been any dangerous criminals in the cells. But who would want to set fire to the county jail?

  The same person who put snakes on the ball field, and burned Leigh’s house down, and shot at them, and maybe killed Tony. The same person who wanted to make him look incompetent. And he seemed to be doing a pretty good job of it.

  He gripped the steering wheel. But whoever it was would make a mistake, or someone would see him. Ben was going to catch him if he had to put every deputy he had on overtime and pay the cost out of his own pocket.

  When he pulled into the jail parking lot, two fire engines and a host of other vehicles filled it. Firemen appeared to have the blaze under control. “What do we have?” he asked as he neared his chief deputy.

  “Looks like it’s only the roof and the two offices in the front part of the building,” Wade said. “Just lucky Andre pulled into the parking lot when he did and saw the fire when it first started. He radioed me, then moved the prisoners, and when I got here, I used a water hose to wet down the back side where the cells and our offices are.”

  “Anybody see anything?”

  Wade shook his head. “Jenkins was manning the dispatch and thought he heard something, then five or six 911 calls came in at once. All of them hang-ups.”

  “Did he get numbers?”

  “Said two were from a pay phone, the others were probably from throwaway phones.”

  “Ben!”

  He turned. Andre was walking toward him with old Mr. Gordon. The eighty-something store owner still opened and closed his hardware store every day.

  “Been canvassing the buildings,” Andre said. “Mr. Gordon here saw something.”

  “Yeah.” Gordon’s voice rasped the word out. “I was locking up and saw this flaming torch fly through the air, so I looked to see where it came from, and about that time another one flew over.” He lifted his arm and pointed. “It was right there—between the drugstore and that new lawyer’s office. And there was somebody standing there. I yelled, and they disappeared.”

  “Can you identify the person?”

  Mr. Gordon took out a handkerchief and mopped his face. “Naw.” He stuck the handkerchief in his back pocket. “It was too dark. Couldn’t even tell if it was a man or woman.”

  Ben turned to Wade. “Secure that area. We’ll see what we can find tonight, then in the morning when there’s light we’ll go over it again. Maybe the person left something behind.”

  Wade pulled him aside. “Ben, mind if I pass on this? I have a hunch, and I want to play it out.”

  “You want to share this hunch? And where were you earlier? I thought you were going to help Andre with that ball team.”

  Wade rested his hand on his Glock. “I got a tip that I wanted to follow up on.”

  Ben stared at his chief deputy. Wade liked to work alone, but right now, Ben needed his help. “Did you hear we killed five copperheads on the ball field tonight? After one bit Andre’s brother?”

  Wade’s head jerked up. “What? Is Martin okay?”

  “He will be, but thank goodness Leigh was there. She rode with him in the ambulance to the hospital.”

  “Why would anyone turn poisonous snakes loose on a ball field?”

  “So, your first reaction is someone deliberately did it?”

  “Copperheads wouldn’t go to an open place like that.”

  “Not even females about to give birth? All five snakes had babies ready to be born. And evidently they were under a black garbage bag. Martin just happened to be the one who picked up the bag and disturbed them.”

  Wade slid a square box from his pocket, took out a toothpick, and stuck it in his mouth. He chewed on it for a minute. “Copperheads go away from people, not toward them. They wouldn’t congregate where there was a crowd.”

  Ben nodded. “That’s what I was thinking. That’s why I think someone put them there. This place is busy from daylight to past dark with mowing, runners, kids playing.”

  Wade worked the toothpick back and forth in his mouth. “Maybe . . .”

  “Maybe what?”

  Wade flicked the toothpick to the ground. “The fire and the snakes were a diversion.”

  “From what?” Sometimes his chief deputy drove him batty with his Lone Ranger mentality. “All right, W
ade, spill it. What are you working on? And start at the beginning.”

  “Remember the dog we found?”

  “The one out by the Gresham place.”

  “Yeah. When I looked him over, I found at least twenty scars from where he’d been bitten before. And since that pup didn’t bite himself, I figure he was used as bait by dogfighters. And Jonas is callous enough to just discard an animal.”

  Ben’s jaw tightened. “You think Gresham is involved in the ring?”

  Wade nodded. “I was at Molly’s Diner this afternoon, heard him talking to Lester Cummings in the booth behind me. At first I thought they were talking about a dice game going down tonight, but as I listened, I figured out pretty quick it wasn’t. It sounded like something pretty big, though.”

  His chief deputy glanced toward the smoldering jail. “If you wanted to direct attention away from one part of the county, what would you do?”

  Ben followed his gaze. “Create a diversion. The snakes could even be part of the diversion. Did you hear the location?”

  “Not exactly. About that time Ginny Peters came in with that wild bunch of hers and drowned out everything else. That’s why I was patrolling up around the Tennessee line. If I was going to do something illegal, it’d be in that part of the county. Saw some traffic around the Edwards farm, but then Andre called, and I hightailed it back to town.”

  Ben tried to place the Edwards property, and a vague memory surfaced. “Didn’t someone from up north buy his land?”

  “Yeah. And stopped everyone from hunting on it. Made a lot of folks mad.”

  “I’ll check at the courthouse tomorrow and see who owns it,” Ben said.

  “Good idea. It’d be the perfect location for dogfighting. The Tennessee line splits it, and you can access it from either state. It’s remote, and it’s rugged—I’ve hunted that land and helped cut the timber on it back before I went into the army. Last time I hunted there, the logging roads were passable, so we could walk in easily enough.”

  “Tonight?”

  Wade eyed him. “Why not?”

  “Sounds good, but first, let’s get Andre and Randy scouring that alley.”

  Wade glanced down at Ben’s feet. “You better get some shoes you can hike in, and make sure they’re tall enough to keep you from getting snake bit.”

  Moonlight guided their path through a break in the canopy of trees overhead. So far Ben hadn’t seen anything or heard anything except buzzing around his head. He used the back of his hand to wipe his forehead as sweat stung his eyes. Another mosquito bit his neck, and he slapped it as quietly as he could.

  He shifted the lightweight backpack that carried binoculars, water, and extra ammo. They had hiked at least two miles after they parked Wade’s pickup in a wooded area near the farm. Now they were following Caney River, walking the bank upriver toward Tennessee. Should they get lost, they could follow the river to where it intersected the highway. If Wade didn’t argue with the compass, they shouldn’t get lost, though. His chief deputy seemed comfortable enough, taking the lead as they slipped quietly through the woods. Maybe Ben ought to get into the woods more often. Faint barking reached his ears, and he almost bumped into Wade when his deputy abruptly stopped.

  “I think I know where they are. When I was hunting here, I came up on a basin. It’s ringed with bluffs, but there’s a road into it. ’Bout as good a place to do something illegal as any place I know.”

  Ben had never hunted these woods, and he deferred to Wade’s judgment, but when his chief deputy veered away from the river to the right, he questioned him. “The barking sounds like it’s straight up the river.”

  Wade grunted. “The river winds and twists, fooling you. That road ought to be nearby—those dogfighters aren’t hiking in here.”

  “When we get back under the trees, how will we see where we’re going?”

  “We’ll have to depend on what moonlight we get. Can’t risk a flashlight.”

  As they picked their way through the dense grove of sycamore saplings, Ben tried to put the memory of the five copperheads slithering on the ballpark field out of his mind. Fifteen minutes later they broke through the underbrush onto a road. One that was well-traveled.

  Wade checked his compass. “We’ve probably crossed over into Tennessee.”

  “How do you know?”

  “When I was hunting here, the only road this good came out on the Tennessee side over on Highway 312. I had forgotten that was the way we took the logs out.”

  Ben pulled his sweat-soaked T-shirt away from his body. “Why didn’t we just go in on the Tennessee side, instead of hiking through the woods? Never mind,” he muttered. Like they could just drive right up to the dogfight. “You know a way to get to that basin besides this road? Sure wouldn’t want to run into any of their guards.”

  Wade’s teeth gleamed in the moonlight. “Yeah. We’ll skirt to the south, climb the ridge, and follow it to the bluff overlooking the basin.”

  Ben figured there’d be more hiking. He followed Wade, branches slapping his face, and mosquitoes buzzing his ears, and no telling what beneath his feet. When they came to the base of the ridge, the terrain went from flat to straight up.

  “Dig your toe into the dirt and grab a hold of the saplings and pull yourself up,” Wade said. “Unless you want to feel around on the ground for vines.”

  “I’ll use the trees.” Ten minutes later, he caught his breath at the top of the ridge. The barking had become louder and frenzied. “That’s not coon dogs,” Ben said.

  “Nope. From here on out, no talking. I doubt they’ll have a guard on the ridge, but you never can tell.”

  As Ben followed Wade toward the river, curses and whooping blended with the barking. They crawled on their hands and knees to the edge of the bluff and stared down at the scene. Portable spotlights ringed a small enclosure. A man stood in the middle of a circle with a dog on either side of him. One lunged toward him, but his handler jerked him back.

  The dogfighters sent a hot rage through Ben. He fumbled in his backpack for the binoculars and raised them to his eyes, scanning the crowd. Where did these people come from? “You recognize anybody?” he whispered.

  “Chester Eaton. Over to your right,” Wade whispered back. “There with Lester Cummings and Rafe Carter.”

  Ben shifted his binoculars. The burly logger had his thumbs hooked in his overalls and a wad of snuff in his lip. Seeing Eaton didn’t surprise Ben. He never figured all those blue barrels at Eaton’s housed anything as innocuous as breeding roosters, but he’d never been able to pin cockfighting on him. Maybe he’d moved on to dogfighting.

  He was surprised about Lester and Rafe. Lester was a family man with boys the age of his nephews. Ben shifted the binoculars to the left to the man standing next to Eaton. Jonas Gresham. From the soured expression on his face, he was losing. He trained the glasses on the father of Tommy Ray and Billy Wayne as Gresham counted out something to Eaton. Money, he was sure, and lots of it. No wonder Jonas didn’t look happy.

  He crawled back out of the line of sight and checked his cell phone. Just as he’d expected. No service. A logistical nightmare. Not to mention they were badly outnumbered.

  Wade joined him. “I only made out Mississippi and Tennessee license plates—I don’t think this is a big fight. I did recognize a few more men that I know. Coon hunted with some of them in the past, even bought a coon dog from one of them. I might even be able to infiltrate the ring. Make them think I want to buy another dog—a pit bull this time.”

  “I don’t know. Won’t it bother them that you’re my chief deputy?”

  “Nah.” Wade chuckled. “Those boys I coon hunted with think all cops are on the take, anyway.”

  Ben eyed him. “And you did nothing to discourage their thinking. Let’s get back to town, and first thing in the morning I’ll contact the FBI and Highway Patrol.”

  “I just wish we could do something tonight.”

  Ben gritted his teeth. “Me too.”

>   TJ slipped his pajama top over his head and hopped into bed. “Mom, can we stay here forever?”

  “You mean Logan Point?” Leigh’s heart rate slowed. She didn’t have the energy to tell her son that they would be leaving town in six weeks.

  “No, here at Pops and Granna’s house.”

  Pops and Granna. If Ian had just given her a price for the house on Webster Street, she’d move into it tomorrow. Might anyway. Then in a week or so, she could break the news to TJ that they were moving to Baltimore. “No. We’ll be moving out as soon as we find a place to stay. And that might be pretty soon.”

  “Aw, I like it here. I can play with the twins.”

  “Even if we move, you can still hang out with them. How would you feel about going back to Miss Jenny’s?”

  His shoulder drooped. “I like it here with Granna.”

  “Well, just think about it.” She turned at a rustling in the doorway. “Oh, look, it’s Miss Sarah.”

  “How was your practice today, TJ?” the older woman asked.

  “I hit a home run, but then my friend got bit by a snake. Mom, why were those snakes on the field? Are you sure Martin is going to be okay?”

  She didn’t know which question to answer first. “I don’t know about the snakes, TJ, but I’m pretty sure your friend is going to be fine. I expect he’ll be there Saturday night to cheer you on. Maybe even Miss Sarah will come.”

  “Since I’m not leaving until Sunday afternoon, I’ll be there. So, you hit a home run?” Sarah high-fived him. “Who was pitching?”

  “Ben. And Mom got to see it, didn’t you, Mom? Why didn’t you come with us? Why did Mr. Ian bring you?”