by H. P. Bayne
“Cop?”
“Yeah. We met in police college. How’d you know?”
“Most cops carry themselves the same way. You get to recognizing it after a while. Don’t worry, I’ve got no problem with police. Don’t be fooled by the talk. I was pretty drunk myself when that whole mess happened, and I regretted it after.”
The story came back to Dez. “Lachlan Fields. He’s a private investigator now. I’m actually working with him.”
“Guy’s an asshole,” Rosie said. “But he didn’t deserve the lickin’ I hung on him. Pass along my apologies, will ya?”
Rosie led the way through the woods, leaving Dez and Eva to follow behind. “I didn’t hear you calling your brother’s name. Sounded like you were saying something else.”
Dez explained Sully’s use of the false name and the reason for it. No point keeping anything from Rosie, not now that she had seen Sully.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d keep all of this to yourself,” Dez said. “No one can know.”
“Hey,” Rosie said, turning to face him with a smirk as she spread out her arms to indicate the woods around them. “Who am I going to tell?” She turned back around, continuing the search. “Hey, listen, I know all about needing to get out of Dodge and start over. His secret’s safe with me. Don’t worry.”
“Thanks.”
The conversation ended there while each focused on calling out. Another half hour went by with no success.
“Sully said he was out here looking for that missing kid,” Rosie said. “Any word on him yet?”
“He’s still missing,” Eva said. “Search party is combing through the townsite this morning, and they’ll likely be searching the woods later, if they don’t find anything in town.”
“Great,” Rosie said. “Another day of hide and seek for me, then.”
She pulled up short, causing Dez and Eva to do the same. Any questions Dez had were prevented by the hand Rosie raised as a command for silence.
Dez listened. He could hear it, too, now, the sound of movement ahead. He risked calling out once more. “Oliver?”
The sounds intensified, whatever it was no longer walking, but running toward them.
“Shit,” Rosie said. “Sounds like an animal. And it’s big.” She drew a bowie knife from the waistband of her pants and held it before her, knife-fighting style, as she placed herself in front of Dez and Eva. “Get ready.”
Dez was looking around for anything he could use as a weapon when the animal burst through the brush ahead.
“Pax!” Dez pushed past Rosie, meeting the dog’s enthusiastic greeting. Only Dez’s size saved him from being knocked to the ground as Pax leapt on him, paws against his chest as he tried and failed to reach Dez’s chin with his tongue.
The reunion brought with it a rush of relief, and Dez allowed himself a laugh as he roughhoused with Pax. But the joy didn’t last long. He expected to see Sully following just a few steps behind his dog. When that didn’t happen, Dez’s anxiety returned full-force.
“Sully?” he called out. Then louder, “Sully?”
“Ssh,” Eva said. “Don’t forget, we’re using the name Oliver. We don’t know who else is out here.”
“Right,” Dez said. “I forgot. Damn it. He wouldn’t have left Pax out here by himself—and Pax wouldn’t have left him. Where is he?”
“We’ll find him, all right?”
Rosie stepped forward to examine Pax, and it said something for her character that the dog let her. One thing about Pax: He had his people-reading skills down. Anyone he deemed even remotely untrustworthy was met with a growl or full-on barking.
Rosie stood from her quick study. “No blood on him that I can see—his own or anyone else’s.”
That was something, at least. Of course, it didn’t mean Sully wasn’t hurt or worse. Not all serious injuries resulted in external bleeding. It didn’t pay to get too comfortable, not until they had ample reason.
Dez’s memory flashed back to Sully’s recent kidnapping. Pax had found his way back to Dez’s that day, and he’d later led Dez to the spot where Sully had been taken. Pax was more than a loyal companion—he was also as smart as a whip. If Dez could get Pax to repeat what he’d done that day, it was possible he’d lead them right to Sully.
“Pax, where’s Sully?” he asked, keeping his voice upbeat, trying to treat this as a game for the dog. “Where’s Sully, Pax? Huh? Find Sully. Find Sully, Pax.”
Pax’s front feet left the ground as he gave a little jump. Then he was off, and it was all Dez could do to keep up. Eva and Rosie thundered along behind him as he raced after the dog, shouting warnings to the women along the way about logs or rocks in the path. Twice he had to call Pax back when the dog got too far ahead, but both times Pax returned to his course once his companions had caught up.
Less than five minutes passed, by Dez’s estimation, before they came to a large fallen tree in their path. Pax was large enough to leap it, yet he circled it instead, causing Dez to do the same. Only then did he see what Pax had obviously known to be there: a gaping crevice in the earth.
“Is someone there?” came a familiar voice from its depths.
Relief flooded Dez as he recognized his brother’s voice. He reached down to ruffle Pax’s ears. “Atta boy, Paxie.” Then he knelt along the edge of the crevice, peering down into the darkness as he was joined by Eva and Rosie.
Dez fished out his cellphone, fumbling for his flashlight app. He reminded himself to use his brother’s fake name, just in case. “Olly? You okay?”
“Dez? Thank God. I’m fine. I’m with Emory. His leg’s badly broken, but he’s alive.”
Dez found the app and shone it downward, locating his brother in the gloom. Sully’s dimly lit face squinted up at him, dirty and grinning and very much okay. Dez felt his anxiety leave him, and he sealed it with a wild laugh. “You look like hell.”
“Been a long night. Who’s with you?”
“Eva and Rosie.”
“Hi, guys.”
“Hi, Oliver,” Eva said. “You’re in some trouble when we get you out of there. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, don’t worry, you can yell at me all you want later.”
“My cabin’s probably about a twenty-minute hike from here,” Rosie said. “I’ve got some rope we can use to pull our boy out, but I’d rather not be moving the other kid with an injury like that.”
“Me neither,” Eva said. “Listen, if you can get the rope, we’ll get Oliver out, and you can lower me down there. Dez can go get the search party. They’ll have access to rescue equipment to stabilize the leg and get Emory out safely. That will help Emory and keep anyone from seeing either you or Oliver.”
“Works for me,” Rosie said, before taking off at a jog through the woods, calling over her shoulder, “Wait here.”
“What else are we going to do?” Dez asked her departing figure. He returned his attention to the two men in the hole, asking the question to which he wasn’t sure he wanted an answer. “How’d the two of you end up down there?”
“Same way,” Sully said. “It was Flo. We both saw her, and we both followed her. She led us here—on purpose, I guess.”
His brother had used the name Flo rather than Sadie. Sully must be keeping the Sadie info from Emory. It made sense. Her still-living family members didn’t want her name maligned, after all. The fewer people who made the connection, the better.
“You mean she trapped you down there deliberately?” he asked.
“That’s the only thing that makes sense,” Sully said. “Both of us jumped a tree up there and found nothing but an empty space on the other side.”
“How’d you not get hurt?” Eva asked. “It’s a long way down.”
“I’m getting to be a pro at avoiding serious injury,” Sully said. “I caught myself and managed to minimize the extent of the fall. I’m a little scraped up, but nothing bad.”
“I’d say you were lucky, but past experience would make a mockery of me,” Dez said. “Ho
w you doing, Emory?”
“Hurts,” came a plaintive voice from below.
“It’s been a rough night,” Sully said.
True to her word, Rosie returned in just a little more than half an hour. She’d brought a length of rope, a bottle of water, and what looked to be a couple of pieces of jerky.
“It’s deer meat,” she explained, tossing a bag down with the food and drink. “It’s not much, but it’ll put something in your bellies.”
“Thanks,” came Sully’s voice from the hole as Rosie went about fashioning a stirrup on one end of the rope.
Dez turned to Eva. “You sure you’re okay with us leaving you down there with him for a bit? Rosie and Olly are going to have to leave. They can’t be here when I get back with help.”
Eva gave him a smile best described as patient. “I’m pretty sure I’ll be fine, thanks. Just don’t you go chasing strange women in the woods.”
“Believe me, if I see anything even remotely resembling a lone female, I’m running the other way.”
“Ready?” Rosie asked.
Dez scanned the loop the woman had tied in the rope. It seemed solid, but he had two close family members to worry about. “You sure that’ll hold?”
“Shut it, Red. Of course it’ll hold. I know what I’m doing. Now, let’s get cracking, shall we?”
Eva chuckled and Dez scowled as he took up a grip on the rope next to Rosie.
In less than five minutes, Eva and Sully had exchanged places, allowing her to use the first aid she’d learned on the job to look after Emory while Dez saw to Sully. His back and hands were indeed scraped up, and he was complaining of a sore shoulder, but he had no obvious injuries requiring immediate medical attention.
Sully tugged his hoodie back into place and slipped into the overcoat he’d retrieved from Emory. “We can walk to the road together,” he told Dez. “I’ll take Emily’s car and bail before anyone notices me. Does that work?”
“Sounds good to me.” Dez took a quick moment first, shining his cellphone light down the hole one final time. “You okay, babe?”
Eva blinked up at him. “I’ll be better once you get that light out of my face.”
“Sorry.”
“Just get help back here ASAP. Emory needs to get out of here soon.”
“I won’t dawdle, believe me.”
He turned to where Rosie had been standing, but she had already walked off, rope in hand. Dez spotted her disappearing into the trees to the south. “Thanks for your help!” he called.
She raised a hand in a backward wave and was gone.
Dez turned back to Sully. “You okay to run, or do you need to take it slow?”
“I don’t know if I can manage a run, but we can try a jog.”
Dez set a medium pace, leading the two of them back in the direction of the road. They’d been going for about five minutes when Sully called for a break.
“Your shoulder?” Dez asked.
“Feels like needles poking through it every time I put a foot down. We can keep walking, though.”
Dez kept moving forward, slower now. “I checked it. No sign of a break or dislocation, but I suppose it could be a hairline fracture. I’m guessing it’s more likely a sprain. It’s a bit swollen, but not too bad. We need to seriously think about finding someone who could do up some fake ID for you. I dread the day you end up with an injury I can’t fix by myself.” He thought about Lowell’s wife Kendra. She was a forensic pathologist, but that still made her a trained doctor. She could help with things like X-rays and other medical tests, and knew her way around a needle and thread. “You know, Aunt Kendra—”
“No.”
“Sully, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if—”
“No one else can know, Dez. No one.”
“I wasn’t going to tell anyone. That’s your call. It’s always been your call.”
“If she knows, then Lowell will know. And he can’t.”
“I get it, okay?” Dez said. “I won’t tell her. We’ll figure something else out.”
Sully changed the subject. “When you shined the light down there, did you see Emory’s face?”
“Not in any great detail. Why? He disfigure himself in the fall or something?”
“No. He’s the spitting image of his father.”
Dez peered over at Sully. “Who’s his father?”
“Larson Hackman.”
“Bloody hell. Are you serious? Emory didn’t ever see you at Lockwood, did he?”
Sully shook his head. “No. He doesn’t like his father, so he wasn’t around there often. Makes me feel a little better about Emory, actually. When he did go to Lockwood, he didn’t go past the reception area. Unfortunately, the last time he saw Hackman actually ended in his meeting Ara.”
“They met while she was visiting you?”
“Yeah. But there was nothing in it, he said. They talked, got to be friends. He said she wouldn’t involve herself with anyone else until after I’d supposedly gotten killed.”
“She’s not the disloyal type,” Dez agreed. “That had to be weird for you, though, huh? Being down there with that guy all night and not punching him in the face—especially once you found out who his father is.”
“It didn’t take long to figure out he’s nothing like his dad. Emory’s actually a good guy. It would be easier if I could hate him.”
“You’re not exactly big on hate, Sull.”
“It doesn’t happen often, but I do hate a few people.”
“With good cause. If it makes you feel any better, I hate them too.”
Sully smiled. “I think I’m good to try another jog.”
They found the road and the vehicles, encountering no other problems along the way—something of a miracle as far as Dez was concerned.
“Head home and switch up heat and ice on that shoulder,” Dez said. “There’s a hot/cold pack in the cupboard above the fridge. Then get some rest. I’ll get this Emory rescue done and come check in on you.”
Sully let Pax into the backseat of Emily’s now-fully-defrosted car and was about to get in himself when Dez caught his good arm. “Hey, you made sure to tell Emory to forget you were there, right?”
“Yeah, and he said he wouldn’t tell anyone about me. But I gave him the fake name anyway, just in case. The last thing I want is him blurting out to his father that Sullivan Gray looked after him. Probably not the best thing for Ara to find out about that either.”
“Had you been thinking about telling her?”
“Maybe,” Sully said. “One day, once the danger had passed. Now, things are different. She’s moved on. I guess I’m going to have to too.”
“Maybe it won’t last between them.”
“I don’t know. He’s talking pretty seriously about her. Marriage and everything. I don’t want to see that happen—I really don’t want it. But what the hell am I supposed to do? I can’t give her a life, Dez. I can’t even make one for myself.”
“You’ll get there, Sull. I promise you, we’ll sort this out. We’ll nail Gerhardt and Hackman to the wall, and we’ll figure out who really killed Betty. And we’ll find a way to deal with the Dules while we’re at it. I’ve got your back on this. You’re not in it alone.”
“I know,” Sully said. “And you have no idea how much that means to me. If it wasn’t for you, I’d have lost it by now.”
Dez ruffled Sully’s hair. It was already a mess, hanging free of any bun or ponytail, likely in an attempt to hide his full features from Emory. Sully didn’t bother pushing Dez’s hand away.
“I’ll see you soon,” Dez said.
Sully nodded and got into the car, but Dez held him up once more.
“By the way, Sull? I owe you an ass-kicking for chasing a ghostly killing machine into the woods on your own.”
Sully smiled. “I wouldn’t expect anything less of you.”
Then he closed the door, started the car and used the shallow ditch and the road to turn around.
Dez watche
d the car disappear behind a cloud of dust before getting into his own SUV and driving off toward Loons Hollow and the search team.
16
The search was going full bore when Dez drove into the old townsite. Locating Clark wasn’t going to be easy, not with even more carloads of searchers having shown up.
It seemed the search was to focus for now on the town itself. Exiting his SUV, Dez could see people beating the long grass, entering and exiting crumbling buildings and emerging from between trees.
He’d tried phoning Clark several times, but the calls had failed to connect. It was possible Clark was simply busy coordinating the search, but it was just as likely it had to do with the spotty phone reception around here. Both Emory and Sully had talked about issues with their phone connections; Dez’s own was fluctuating between one and two bars. It could be the problems were ghost-created rather than technology-based, but Dez didn’t want to focus for too long on that sort of explanation.
When another attempted call to Clark went unanswered, Dez settled for scanning the area once again, this time looking for someone who might be able to point him toward the officer in charge.
Unfortunately, what Dez got was Larson Hackman.
The two of them spotted each other as Hackman emerged from the old hardware store, his weary eyes bearing the bloodshot appearance of a man who’d spent more time crying than sleeping.
Anyone who didn’t know Hackman would sympathize with the worried father. Dez wasn’t one of those people.
When his attempts to un-ball his fists failed, he shoved his hands deep into his jeans pockets where they could do no damage. It would be far too tempting to close the thirty feet of distance separating them and bury his knuckles in the flesh and bone of whatever part of Hackman’s face was most accessible.
But no one else here would know the true story, the reason for Dez’s fury. All they would see was a large, raging man beating the crap out of the anxious father of a missing person. Dez might feel good for a moment, but any joy in triumph would end, leaving him with little more than a sore hand, an assault charge and a ghost town full of people hating him.
Hackman walked over.