Passion's Fury (The Doms of Passion Lake Book 2)

by Julie Shelton

Caleb and Ash had just finished unloading the Gulfstream when the silver Escalade they’d sent Simon to rent drove toward them across the tarmac. The minute Simon emerged from the driver’s seat, Ash tossed a heavy duffle bag toward him, startling a loud “Oof!” out of him as he caught it, staggering backward a couple of steps. “Jesus Christ, Caleb! What did you go shopping for? Cannon balls?”

  “Just stow it in the back,” was all Caleb said, lifting another duffle bag and tossing it to Ash, who waited until Simon had opened the back lift gate before passing it on to him. In this way they loaded all five duffle bags full of the stuff that Caleb had secured both from his office and from the private arsenal they had in their home. Simon closed the gate and they all turned to look as a Pennsylvania State Police cruiser pulled up to them and rolled to a stop. A good-looking man in his mid-thirties emerged and approached Caleb with his hand out.

  “Hank!” Caleb’s smile was beaming as he took the outstretched hand and pulled the other man in for a quick hug. He pulled back and swept his arm out indicating Simon and Ash. “These are my brothers, Simon and Ash. Guys, this is Hank Graham, an old buddy of mine. He was San Diego PD durin’ my SEAL trainin’ days. We met at a cop bar.”

  Hank Graham just stood there staring at the three Rafferty brothers, scratching the back of his head. “My God, Caleb, when you said identical, you weren’t just blowing smoke up my ass, were you? Simon. Ash.” He shook both their hands as a second, younger trooper emerged from the patrol car and approached. “This is my partner, Lou Giordano,” Hank said, introducing him to the three Raffertys. As they all exchanged greetings, Hank looked back at Caleb. “Any sign of your guy yet?”

  “Not yet. But he’ll show, sooner or later,” Caleb said, his voice filled with a confidence he was far from feeling. What if he was wrong? What if John Bullard decided to just kill Kylie and dump her body by the side of the road some place out in the middle of nowhere, where they’d never find her. The thought filled him with an icy dread so heavy and painful, he was afraid he was having a coronary. For a long moment he simply couldn’t breathe. Finally able to draw in enough air to support his voice, he said, “We’ve got eyes in the sky that will tell us the minute he arrives at one place or another. Personally, my money is on the cabin in the Tuscarora State Forest. The other property belongs to his wife, and considering the upheaval she must be experiencing in her life right now, she might want to escape to some secluded place far away from the prying eyes of the media. Her grandparents’ house would be ideal. I doubt that Bullard would risk the chance of running into her.”

  But what if you’re wrong? That niggling little voice in the back of his mind taunted him. The fear in his gut gnawed at him. He forced himself to ignore both. He couldn’t afford to be wrong. Kylie’s life and their entire future depended on his being right. The vision of life without her was a bleak one that didn’t bear contemplating. He had to be right. For all their sakes. The alternative was just too horrible to think about.

  Hank Graham eyed all the duffle bags piled in the rear of the Escalade. “You expecting World War III?” he joked.

  “Just prepared for it in case it decides to break out.”

  “How’re you planning to get inside?”

  Caleb grimaced. “As fast as possible.”

  “You’ve got, what, armor, det cord, flash bangs, NVG’s?”

  “Something like that, yeah.”

  “Well.” Hank held out his hand, an object dangling from his fingertips. “Bet you don’t have any of this.”

  Caleb laughed, a short, mirthless bark. “Duct tape? Fuckin’ duct tape?”

  Hank just shrugged and grinned. “Sometimes low-tech is best for the job. What if you have to break a window for a silent entry?”

  Caleb took the roll of tape, shaking his head ruefully. “Can’t believe I didn’t think of it.”

  Another car drove up, a black Ford Excursion. Tom Dwyer and Roscoe Sweeney, wearing armored vests and navy blue windbreakers with FBI in big yellow letters on the back, got out and approached them. Everyone shook hands. Then Dwyer said, “Since Bullard will be violating federal law by bringing Ms. Ferrell across state lines we will make the arrest. He’ll be arraigned in Federal court for kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment, as well as all the RICO charges against him. The state of Pennsylvania will get him next, and finally you can have him, Rafferty.”

  “I don’t care who gets him,” Caleb said. “I’ll be happy if he never sees the light of day again.”

  “C’mon,” Hank said, “There’s a nice little Italian restaurant just up the road. We have time to grab a bite to eat and come up with a plan before you hear from your friend. The cabin you think he’s going to is around forty-seven miles from here, give or take, and we’ll give you an escort. Shouldn’t take more than around 20 minutes or so. We’ll hold back while you infiltrate and come in at your signal.”

  Caleb grinned. “You mean, you’ll let us do all the work while you get all the glory.”

  Hank just tugged at his ear, his grin matching Caleb’s. “Something like that.”

  * * * *

  Goddamn fucking bitch! She’s trying to kick out the fucking taillights! Grinding his teeth so hard it was a wonder they hadn’t crumbled to dust, John Bullard shoved the Camry into Park and slammed out of the door, heading around to the trunk. Pressing the button on the fob, he released the latch and stood, legs apart, holding his Glock in a standard two-handed grip.

  As soon as Kylie heard the click of the latch, she rose up on her hands, preparing to launch herself out of the trunk well. But at the sight of that ugly black gun pointing directly at her, she froze.

  “On your belly, hands behind your back!” he snarled. She barely had time to do so before Bullard surged forward and yanked her head up by her hair. When she opened her mouth to shriek with pain, he shoved an old cloth inside, making her gag. He secured it with a strip of duct tape that caught the eyelashes of her left eye, forcing her to keep it closed or risk ripping her lashes out. He also wrapped strips of duct tape around her wrists and ankles, rendering her immobile.

  “Now you listen to me and you listen to me good. If I have to come back here again, you’re going to be one sorry-ass bitch. So settle back and enjoy the ride.” His grin was pure evil. “I guarantee it’s going to be the last thing you enjoy.” He slammed the lid and stalked back to the driver’s seat, peeling out with a squeal of tires that left two rubber strips on the concrete parking pad behind whatever store this was in this little strip mall he’d pulled behind. He’d taken so many back roads in his torturous, circuitous route through the mountains of Virginia, West Virginia and western Pennsylvania, that what should have been a three-and-a-half-hour trip, tops, had already taken five hours. It would be getting dark soon. And he still had another good hour left to go. Then he could take his time with little Miss Kylie Fuckin’ Ferrell. Until it was time to put an end to both their lives.

  * * * *

  “Caleb!” Jason’s excited voice came over the speaker before Caleb could even say hello. “He’s at the Hanover house! A car just pulled into the driveway!”

  “Are you shittin’ me?” Caleb was stunned. He’d felt sure Bullard would have gone to the other, more secluded house. “Can you tell the make or model of the car?”

  “Looks like it might be an SUV, but I’m not sure. Okay. Hold on, it’s pulling up in front of the house. Door’s opening. Shit. It’s a woman. Wait, she’s going around to the passenger door. She just picked up a paper sack full of groceries. No one else in the car. Sorry, man. Must be the wife.”

  “Hey, don’t be sorry, Jason. Now that we know where he’s not goin’, we might be able to beat him to where he is goin’. Might even have enough time to do a little recon before he arrives. Should take us around forty minutes to get there, so call the minute he turns down the road leading to the cabin.”

  “Roger that, Lieutenant. Wish I was there with you.”

  “We need you right where you are.” Caleb smiled down at J
ason’s image on screen. “Caleb out.” He glanced around the conference table where he, his brothers, the two state troopers and the two FBI agents were seated. “He loves this shit.” Everyone nodded with knowing smiles. They loved this shit, too.

  Like Caleb, all of them were now dressed in black, trousers, shirts, boots, gloves, and Kevlar vests. They also had Kevlar helmets with night vision goggles and com units. Flash bangs hung from their utility belts which were stuffed with ammo, and all kinds of handy tools and gadgets. The roll of duct tape was tucked into Ash’s vest, since he’d been assigned to break in through the bedroom window. Every man wore a holstered automatic pistol strapped to his thigh.

  Caleb slipped his phone into a pocket. “Okay, guys. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Twenty minutes later they were just barely clearing the suburbs of Harrisburg when Jason’s excited voice came over their headphones. “Guys, guys, a car just turned into the driveway and stopped. Lemme see if I can zoom in a little closer. Ummm, oops, not that one. This one. Okay. Here we go.” Jason seemed to have forgotten he was talking to anybody but himself. “Okay, okay. Ummm...guys?”

  Caleb stiffened, instantly alert. “What? What do you see?”

  “This place is like a fuckin’ fortress! Eight-foot steel gate, six-foot barbed wire fence—uh-oh.”

  “Uh-oh! What uh-oh?” Simon demanded.

  “Uh…looks like the fence might be electrified.”

  “Great.” Simon’s heart sank. How the fuck were they ever going to get to Kylie without getting all of them killed? “Any more good news?”

  “Actually…yeah. Looks like only the top and middle wires are live. So you can cut the bottom three wires. That should give you about a foot and a half of clearance.”

  “Crap!” This from Simon. “We’ll have to take off all our gear to get through that! We’ll lose time!”

  “Sorry, Simon. There’s no other way in. Heads up, gentlemen, he just passed through the opening, heading toward the house. Who’s driving your car, Caleb?”

  “I am,” Hank Graham said. “Hank Graham, Pennsylvania State Police.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Hank. How far away are you?”

  “At least twenty minutes,” Hank Graham answered. “Plus another twenty minutes—at least—to cut through the fence, gear up again, and run the three klicks to the house.”

  “Jesus! That gives him over forty minutes to do God knows what with Kylie!”

  As soon as Jason’s words were out, the car being driven by Thomas Dwyer swung around them and shot off down the road, lights and sirens blazing. Caleb lowered his window, took the “cherry”, a red strobe light on a magnetic mount, and placed it on the car’s roof, above his head as Hank sent the car leaping forward. With any luck they could shave a good ten to fifteen minutes off their time.

  “What’s he doing now, Jason?” Caleb asked.

  “He’s pulling up in front of the house. Okay. He’s getting out, going around to the trunk. Jesus, she’s been in the trunk for the last six hours!”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “God, Caleb, I don’t think I should—”

  “Tell me!” Caleb roared.

  The reluctance in Jason’s voice was palpable. “He-he just ripped a strip of duct tape off her face. Now he’s pulling something out of her mouth.”

  Caleb’s blood froze. “Jesus Christ! He gagged her? She has trouble breathin’ through her nose! Being gagged could suffocate her!”

  “He’s slapping her face, trying to bring her around.”

  Oh, God, please let her be all right, please, please, please, ple—

  “She’s moving!” Jason shouted. “She’s moving! Coughing her guts out, but breathing.”

  “Oh, thank God!”

  The breath left everyone’s lungs in a whoosh. Even though they weren’t Catholic, Ash and Simon both crossed themselves.

  “What’s he doin’ now?” Ash asked.

  “Ash, I-I don’t—”

  “Jason, you have to!”

  “Dammit, Ash! He’s taking out a knife!”

  There was a collective gasp in both cars. Caleb squeezed his eyes shut. Jesus, God, no! Everyone stopped breathing. The sudden, harsh scraping of chair legs told them that Jason had stood up abruptly. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!” They could hear him pacing back and forth in front of his computers and Caleb knew both his hands were tugging at his hair. Since he’d left the Navy and let it grow out, it always looked like a haystack after a high wind.

  “Jason, tell us—”

  “I can’t! God damn it, Caleb, don’t you get it? What if he kills her? You want me to describe that to you? Like some…play-by-play announcer at a golf tournament?”

  “We want you to describe everything, Jason, just like you’ve done with all of our other, standard rescue ops.”

  “But this isn’t a standard rescue op, now, is it?” Jason demanded. “This is your woman and I’m not sure—”

  “Please, Jason. We have to know.”

  “Jesus, Caleb! God! You don’t want much, do you?” He huffed out a breath. “All right. All right. Just…gimme a sec, here, okay?” Jason took a few deep breaths and his voice calmed. “Okay. The knife. Back to the knife. He’s—okay, her wrists and ankles are bound. He’s not using it to cut her. He’s just cutting through whatever’s binding her—looks like duct tape. Okay. And just for the record, this is why I left the SEALs, remember? When I had to watch those motherfuckin’ tangos slit that poor woman’s throat—”

  Remorse hit Caleb like a brick wall. “Christ, Jason, I’d forgotten. I’m so sorry. But we need to know.”

  “I know. I know. I’ll try to keep my shit together. Okay. He’s pulling her up out of the trunk. Shoving her forward. Oh! Christ! She stumbled. She’s down! He’s not helping her up—why aren’t you helping her up, you son of a bitch?” Jason groaned. “Sorry, guys. Just…sorry. He—he’s standing over her, yelling at her and waving the knife around. She’s getting her legs under her, crouching…she—oh! She just sprang up and rammed her head into his gut! She knocked him down! Way to go, Kylie! She’s trying to run…but the driveway’s gravel and she’s barefooted…wait, she stumbled. Oh, God, she just went down. Now he’s yanking her up. Shit! He just gave her a slap across the face and he’s shoving her toward the house.”

  An anguished growl left Caleb’s throat. All three Raffertys were sick to their stomachs, listening to their colleague describe the horrors Kylie was being forced to endure even as they hurtled through the darkness in their desperate attempt to reach her. The entire scene had taken on a surreal aspect, as if the world had suddenly become a grotesque Salvador Dali landscape, with time melting away before their eyes.

  Caleb thought he was going to crawl out of his skin. His teeth dug into his lower lip so hard they drew blood. His body was rigid with the effort it was taking him to keep his despair at arm’s length. He’d kept telling everyone that they had to look upon this dispassionately, just like any other op. But this wasn’t just any other op. This was Kylie they were rescuing. “Jesus, Hank, can’t you drive any faster?”

  “On this narrow mountain road? We’re already doing ninety. Anything more would be suicide!”

  “Just do it,” Caleb ground out.

  “You hear that, Dwyer?” Hank directed his comment to the federal agent driving the lead car. “Get your ass in gear.”

  “Roger that. Suicide it is.”

  Both cars increased their speed, but not even a hundred miles per hour was enough for Ash and Simon. They were practically pushing their feet through the back floorboards.

  ‘Okay.” Jason’s voice. “I can’t see them anymore, they’ve gone inside. Where are you guys?”

  “According to the GPS, we’ve got another seven miles to go before we come to the gate,” Hank Graham said.

  “Wow! You must be really flying! All right, let me adjust…okay, I see you. If your sirens are on, go ahead and turn them off. You don’t want to take any chances that he’ll
hear you.”

  After a few more miles driven in total silence, Jason said, “Okay, guys, start slowin’ down. The entrance is coming up on your right.”

  Roscoe Sweeney turned on a high-powered spotlight, aiming it off to the side of the road. Everybody gaped at what was revealed in the glare of the spotlight. A six-foot-high barbed wire fence, eight strands across about nine inches apart, mounted on aluminum poles. However, as Jason had described, only the first and fourth wires were capped with black ceramic insulators on every post.

  “Jee-sus!” Sweeney muttered beneath his breath. “This guy does not want company.”

  “Too bad,” Caleb’s voice was grim. “’Cause he’s about to get some.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Kylie tripped over the threshold and stumbled forward into the dark cabin, banging her right knee on the hard stone floor and wrenching her right shoulder as she tried to catch herself. Her hands and feet were just now beginning to lose the numbness resulting from being tied up for so long, making the pins and needles from returning blood flow excruciatingly painful. She sucked in a hissing breath.

  “Get up, bitch,” Bullard snarled, giving her a sharp kick on the thigh, making her cry out again. “Get up, go sit in that wooden chair over there.”

  Sobbing, Kylie struggled to her feet, tears flowing freely down her face. She stumbled over to the plain wooden chair and sank gratefully into it, looking around the home’s interior. On the outside it had appeared to be a rustic hunting cabin. But on the inside it was homey and, under completely different circumstances, would have been welcoming. The wood-paneled main room combined a living area, dining area and functional kitchen under a vaulted, beamed ceiling. A huge, natural stone fireplace occupied the center of the left wall. Kylie speculated that the closed doors on either side of the fireplace led into bedrooms and a bathroom.

  Bathroom. Just the thought reminded her of how desperately she needed to pee. She’d been locked in the trunk for over six hours, the constant movement of the car only aggravating her need. “Please.” She caught herself pleading and stopped. She would not beg this man for anything. He was obviously going to kill her, most likely even torture her first. All she had to do was hold on until Simon, Caleb and Ash came to get her. And she knew they were coming to get her. She just hoped she’d still be alive when they finally got there. She’d never considered herself as particularly brave. She guessed she was about to find out. “I have to pee.” She raised her chin and looked over at him defiantly. He was standing at the kitchen table, zipping open a large, green nylon duffel bag. “Unless you prefer I pee all over your furniture and floor.”