“Wait for us,” scolded Rash who’d been watching the loops of leash and was taken by surprise.
The two bikers sounded like elephants breaking branches as they lumbered forward clumsily in their heavy boots and leathers. Kelton wondered what their instructions were. Clearly, they had been detailed as he watched their briefing from the truck back at the Outlaw Saloon’s parking lot before driving to Braxton Greene’s. Shep was too far away to be heard, but his hand gestures in front of the entire crew displayed passion. There’d been some questions as well. Kelton guessed there was a couple of possibilities.
First, was shoot him in the back after he found the money. It would be easy to do with them behind him. His body might be there for a few months, or longer since no one would be looking for him. The best chance for discovery wouldn’t be until hunting season in the fall.
Second, was the possibility Shep might not be that attached to the cash after all, or at least not need him for it. If he’d picked up that Rebel guy they were now backtracking, then couldn’t he lead them back to the cash? Which meant these boys might move on him as soon as they were off the road. Not worrying about their bikes and keeping on the heavy legwear seemed to lean toward that possibility. This could be Shep’s simple way to eliminate him without a messy gunfight in his establishment. Which is why Kelton had suddenly sprinted off the starting blocks, after putting them asleep with slowly letting out the line then rushing forward while many coils were still in hand.
Kelton didn’t try and outrun them right away. They would quit chasing too near the road, and rapidly find themselves back to Shep. That wouldn’t help him rescue the two women. Instead he opted for a lively pace, that kept him too far in front to set up the sure shot in the back that Rash likely wanted, but one where they wouldn’t lose him and return to their bikes.
“Come on guys, keep up!” he encouraged them.
Rash and Squat, smokers and dressed in heavy leggings, were taxed by Kelton’s lively pace. While not at all hot, especially compared to the southern summer months that would follow, it was humid in the woods. That kind of thick humidity built from moist shaded soil which never dries out or is carried away on a breeze; that spikes with the approach of evening and the fading sun. Air so saturated, it surrounded them all like a sheet of plastic so that their perspiration couldn’t evaporate. Not a quarter of an hour passed, and the bikers were both red faced, heaving and dehydrated. It ground them to a doubled-over halt and a plea for mercy.
“Wait up a bit,” yelled Squat.
“Motherfucker,” said Rash in a low gasping voice.
Kelton noted the lack of crackling branches and knew they had slowed or stopped. In truth, behind him was where his attention was focused. It was an easy trail, and he didn’t need to help Azrael do his thing. And finding the money was secondary to him to being back in control.
“Come on you two. The dog’s almost there. His nose is down on the ground,” encouraged Kelton.
Which really only meant that Azrael was tracking with full attention. Kelton had no idea how long the trail would go. But the words spurred the exhausted men to action again to rob them of the last of their energy reserves. The sound of breaking twigs and roaring breaths resumed behind him. Then Kelton heard voices to the front.
“Platz,” he whispered and Azrael went flat to his tummy. Kelton kneeled down beside him and peered forward. Azrael’s body went rigid as his nose stretched forward, and then Kelton saw them too. A pair of men walking up forward. He lay still with his dog, trying to see and hear more. He wanted to call out to the guys behind to freeze, but worried he would be overheard by the strangers ahead.
Instead he began to stealthily crawl around to the right, relying on his brown clothes to blend into the forest floor. The bikers stumbled forward hurriedly, worried they might have lost him. They weren’t looking down for him, but rather their eyes were up and straining ahead. They didn’t pause to listen, and couldn’t hear much over the sound of themselves rattling branches and snapping twigs. The two groups of men were on a collision course. Kelton silently drew his gun, and then slipped on his own electronic ear muffs. He had time. It wasn’t urgent to shoot.
But shoot someone did. Kelton thought it might have been Rash, but wasn’t sure. Electronic ear muffs block damaging noise, and amplify small sounds, but don’t give the user much of an audible sense of direction. He continued lying flat, scanning back and forth trying to catch a glimpse of legs to locate everyone and make sense of the situation.
A louder gun, perhaps a .357 magnum, replied to the initial shot. There was yelling, and then several quick shots from an automatic. Kelton slipped off his pack and rolled over to a stouter tree. He took one last scan at ground level, but couldn’t see much in the undergrowth. He rose to a kneeling position, using the tree for cover as he extended the Glock, while Azrael maintained his last command of down. Not seeing much again, he stood, still using the tree for cover and holding his gun at the ready.
There were four of them, including the two bikers, and all were gophering. They would pop up above the brush, fire a shot, and then duck back down only to do it again a few seconds later. Kelton decided to concentrate on the unknown new comers, staying up in a steady shooting position and hovering the glowing green triangle of his reflex sight where one of them had been popping up. He was rewarded a couple of seconds later, pulling the trigger smoothly, and watched the figure jerk backward as he fell.
Before the gun came down out of recoil, he was already pivoting toward the second man who rose to run. Kelton placed the triangle on the target’s back and pressed the trigger again, sending him tumbling forward. Just as quickly, in the time it took him to let his trigger finger forward so the sear reset, he brought the gun back to the left.
The bikers rose in a victory roar, charging forward with their guns spewing a celebratory volley over where the opposition had been. Squat ran his .380 auto dry, spraying rounds in his excitement until the slide locked back. Rash canted his wrist as the revolver’s hammer fell without the recoil of a report. Kelton instantly shot Squat, and then Rash a fifth of a second later. The woods were suddenly eerily quiet, the thick blueish smoke wafting in the thick air. Kelton’s gun still held eleven rounds, but he used the pause to change to a fresh magazine anyway while still behind the cover of the large tree.
He continued to wait but heard nothing but the bugs, resuming their spring songs after being stunned into silence by the gunfire. There must be a marshy stream nearby thought Kelton. He reached down and removed the tracking lead, but decided to leave Azrael there and make his way around to the unknowns to the right first. The first man, wearing overalls and who had tried to run for it, had been hit between the shoulder blades. Kelton rolled him over and saw the bloody stomach on the oil stained denim. The man’s nose was swollen, and his face was covered in small scratches. Red streaks trickled from his bearded mouth and his eyes were glassy. He didn’t seem to have a gun, or at least not that Kelton saw.
The second was dressed in ill-fitting navy dungarees, also stained, with a white circle name patch on the front reading “Rebel.” But the man wasn’t Rebel, for the simple reason he was Buck Garner. Buck lay on his back, hand above the oddly cocked head holding his service revolver. The Glock’s 10mm bullet had torn into the voice box area before ripping out the side of the neck, punctured cardioid and juggler, letting his vitality empty. His protective vest would have barely come up high enough to help him, but whether it was trying to make the change of clothes work or he had been concerned about the uncomfortable hike ahead, Buck had made the ill-fated decision to leave standard police equipment behind.
Of the bikers, Rash was also gone from a round that entered below his sternum and deflected enough to miss the spine as it exited his back. Squat however lay paralyzed, with eyes following Kelton’s cautious approach. The man’s bloody chest quivered in rapid micro breaths. Squat’s automatic, slide locked back on the empty magazine’s follower, lay upon the mat of brown leav
es nearby. Clutched tightly in his left hand was a second magazine, fresh rounds that had been awaiting their turn.
“Can you speak?” demanded Kelton.
The man’s lips trembled slightly but there was nothing but a soft whistling sound. Kelton holstered and rolled him on to his right shoulder by lifting his left. There was no exit wound evident. He let him go, Squat collapsing onto his back again with a thud. Kelton walked back to his dog, removed doggles and muffs, and lay down with elevated feet to consider things. Azrael put his paws on his chest.
In the quarter hour it took for the shakes to rattle him about and his body begin to recover, it was rapidly growing dark. The temperature was beginning to drop, too. It put pressure on him to decide. To call or not call. To try and stay legitimate and explain oneself, or to slip away with no one realizing he was here.
He couldn’t call. Kelton was no innocent this time. This hadn’t been self-defense, but a fight he could have easily retreated from. A fight, not to prevent harm to himself, but over a bundle of cash. And that meant trying to cover up that he’d ever been here. And he had a cell phone in his pocket. It was currently off, but that didn’t mean Apple didn’t know he was here. Hopefully no one would suspect him enough to ask the question.
Kelton decided to try and find his brass first. He took out the marosnacks so Azrael knew he was really serious. Then he stood where he had shot from, which wasn’t hard to find since he’d lay down there when he returned to his dog. He un-holstered his pistol, locked the slide to the rear and presented the ejection port to the shepherd’s nose.
“Such,” he said, watching with his tactical flashlight on its low setting.
Azrael started sniffing about, but there was no trail to pick up. When he strayed beyond the reasonable ejection distance, Kelton encouraged him back in. After a few minutes, Azrael looked at him with narrow eyes and a single ear cocked back.
“Yeah this is for real. Find it,” he encouraged, “closer to me. Good boy,”
Then his dog lay down. Kelton stepped forward, really just three long strides, and under the glow of the tactical light was a shiny brass 10mm Auto casing.
“Yes!” he proclaimed and promptly forked over two of the snacks.
It took twenty minutes to find two more, but the fourth and final casing eluded them. After an hour, his dog was tired and losing interest. Maybe it landed up high in the nook of a tree branch, thought Kelton. Maybe he’d accidently stepped on it when he went to examine the bodies, pushing it deep into the forest floor. There was no telling. His only hope was that if he couldn’t find it, that no one else did either. But their search would be hours long, in the daylight, with many people. It didn’t leave him with a good feeling.
The other task was much more unpleasant, but also had to be done. His bullet was in Squat somewhere. He didn’t have an exit wound like the others. Rigor would be starting soon, so he needed to get to it. Kelton pulled off the jacket and then turned him over and lifted up the shirt to examine Squat’s back along the spine and opposite the entry wound. It wasn’t too hard to find, a protrusion just off of center. He dug in with his knife, flaying the shattered vertebrae to free the jacketed bullet. Arteries along the spine, severed from his effort, seeped blood. There was no doubt in his mind he’d gotten it everywhere, even without the man’s heart pumping to spray it.
He considered replacing the man’s jacket, and then decided to take it with instead. His hands were covered in blood. He might leave a finger print that survived the elements for several days, or longer if his skin secretions scorched some pattern into the leather. No forensic examiner would likely overlook the body had been tampered with. The best he could do was put him back like he had died, and hope Mother Nature was his friend.
Which left the money. Decision time again, Kelton Jager. Are you going or staying? The money had to be close, else they wouldn’t have converged upon each other. With a deputy sheriff missing, a search would be mounted soon. And when the bodies were discovered, they would comb the area in meticulous precision and find the cash too. It would provide plenty of motive, a motive that he wasn’t attached to like Shep, Rebel and Buck.
But Baylee Ann and Bambi were hostage. Or were they, really? This was the life they chose. Or was it? Remember those trembling eyes, Kelton, he told himself. They were weak and to be protected. Kelton didn’t know how that would all go down when he returned to Shep. But somehow, someway, the cash would be a factor.
“Azrael,” he said holding out the rag again with his bloody hands, “such.”
Azrael was dutiful, although Kelton could tell he’d had his fill of nose work for the day. They had one false start, when Azrael ran over toward Rebel’s body. After this, Kelton took him back to their trail coming in, having to put his tactical light on high to do so. But they found success, Azrael tracking to a fallen Birch tree which had been taken down by a storm. Under the root ball, covered superficially with leaves was the plastic bundle.
“Good job, Buddy. We better get the hell out of here.”
CHAPTER—27
Shep Primrose fretted at his chipped up desk, staring at the burner and willing it to ring. He gripped the knife, and let go again not wanting to do further damage to the furniture. What had started as a macho nervous habit had become destructive. His instructions to his crew had been specific: if Dog-Boy wanted to run off, with or without the money, to let him go. Other than a chance at a bundle of cash, there was nothing to be gained from him sticking around. There was a chance, Shep had told them, that Rebel would return. If there was a fight between Dog-Boy and Rebel over the cash, don’t take sides and run away. If Rebel won, he was leaving. If Dog-Boy won, he might leave after being in another shooting. And in all those cases, he should have heard back from his boys by now.
“Stop worrying. It will work out fine,” advised Baylee Ann from the bed in the corner, where she lay on her side holding a sheet over her naked form. Bambi was downstairs helping out in the kitchen again.
It was possible, Shep supposed without conviction, that his boys had done in Dog-Boy when the money was found and took off themselves. It wasn’t enough cash for Shep to want to risk his establishment by having to go on the run, or gain the unwanted attention of various health and safety authorities that could cripple his side business if government investigators of any sort wound up asking questions on his doorstep. But it would be a lot of money to a pair of younger guys, a big score worth betraying allegiance for and driving off for new adventures. And frankly, if that’s what happened, Shep was perfectly okay with that too. He began to relax, slouching in his chair and stole a glance toward Baylee Ann in acknowledgment that she was right.
In the corner of his eye, he saw the headlights on the off ramp out his office window. Not bike headlights, but a car. That wasn’t unheard of, but it definitely wasn’t normal. It certainly wasn’t one of the garage wreckers or a farm truck. Sometimes, even though there were no blue services signs on the interstate, a driver looking to turn around would spot them and consider stopping in even though they didn’t belong. In those cases, his men would gently but assertively suggest to the driver that he would have a better experience up the road at Ed’s or to wait until in North Carolina. He rose from his chair and walked over to the metal plated light switch by the stairs.
“Who’s that?” said Baylee Ann getting up and peering out over the parking lot. She didn’t bother to take the sheet with her.
He turned off the lights so the reflection didn’t interfere with their observations and joined her at the window. There weren’t many cars that came down Azalea Estates Lane, especially this direction at this time of night. But then Shep remembered he’d seen the same car at about the same time yesterday evening. Perhaps someone new had moved into the area or had found a new job and this would be their routine. He was turning away from the window when he saw the car actually turn in to his parking lot.
“Did someone hitch a ride to do laundry or some shopping?” asked Shep.
&n
bsp; Baylee Ann crouched lower at the window, her nose leaving a smudge on the glass like a kid outside a toy store window. But despite the intensive peering, the darkness and on-coming lights didn’t allow them to see any more than it was a dark colored four-door sedan. It circled once, and then retreated turning right to the east. This in itself was peculiar, as someone pulling in to turn around would have turned left to head back the way they’d come.
“Did someone just try and check us out?” asked Baylee Ann excitedly with a sly smile.
It annoyed him that she was turning on the charm so thick, like she could care less whether that Kelton character returned for her and Bambi or not. That she wanted him to confide in her, like she was a partner to his enterprises. But he was under no illusions. She wanted to be taken care of, and her loyalty would rapidly shift to any who was willing to do it. And no one wanted to take care of her for more than a few days at a time. Including him. It was time to trade them both to the next band passing through with their own pair of bitches to trade. He would even throw in some drugs.
“Why don’t you go give Bambi a hand? I’ve some paperwork to look over,” he shrugged.
Her shoulders and smiling cheeks fell in unison and she rubbed her tongue over the front of her teeth with a closed mouth. But then she found her jeans and new shirt and dressed quickly. She then walked gracefully to the door, the stout timbers of the floor thudding sharply with each step of her shoe’s heels. After the door closed he opened the inside shudders and walked out to his perch over the floor below. A moment later Baylee Ann sauntered below him toward the kitchen, her voice lost in the murmurs of the crowd. He noted a mud dauber wasp working hard on a new nest on one of the rafters, too far away for him to squash without venturing out onto the timbers.
It wasn’t a bad crowd, a mix of transient bikers and his own, buying burgers and beer from the company store. He was proud of how the business had developed over the years, even if it wasn’t real. It allowed him to play at being real. It gave a rallying point for his gang. It allowed him to pretend that he could have been a business man. But it was the money from moving drugs and cash up the interstate that kept them going. Someday though, he’d like to go completely legit.
K-9 Outlaw: A Kelton Jager Adventure Book 1 Page 23