Chelsea Lane (Haunted Hearts Series Book 5)

by Denise Moncrief

  Brett jumped to his feet. “Are you crazy? You’re gonna get us killed. You can’t shoot a gun around this stuff.”

  “Shut up and go back to work.” He squinted his eyes. “And wear a mask.”

  Brett pulled his mask over his nose and mouth again and spread his hands. “I always do.”

  “You should have made sure the woman did too.” Grayson’s voice rang with authority. He obviously had Haskins’s seal of approval. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be acting so high-handed.

  He banged the door open and pulled the girl out of the closet. She stumbled as he dragged her across the barn floor. “If you’re not gonna use her, you have to get rid of her.”

  The girl’s screams died down to whimpers. Her frightened eyes latched onto Brett, begging him for help. He turned his head away.

  “What are we gonna do?” Riley asked, bright expectation glittering his dark eyes.

  Brett suppressed a smile. He’d asked the right question in the right way.

  “We aren’t doing anything.” He spat the word we. “I’m getting rid of her.”

  The smile on Riley’s face melted.

  Grayson, sheathed his gun, tossed his keys at Riley, and pointed toward the door. “Back my car in here.”

  Riley backed up a step. “I don’t want no part of murder.”

  Dalton tossed evil angry eye darts at Riley. “It’s too late for that. You were there when it happened just like I was.”

  Grayson grabbed the girl by the duct tape binding her hands and shook her hard. “What are you talking about?”

  Riley glanced Brett and then at Grayson. He obviously didn’t like talking in front of witnesses. He came unglued. “Shut up, Dalton. I swear if you say one more word about that…”

  Dalton smirked. “You’ll do what? Kill me?”

  Grayson aimed his weapon at Riley’s face. The girl’s knees buckled, and Grayson pulled her back to her feet with one yank on the tape. She shook her head in violent bursts of energy.

  “Be still, girl. Don’t make me knock you out.”

  Her frenetic motion ceased as her eyes widened even more.

  “Now, Riley. Tell me what Dalton means.”

  Riley’s mouth clamped shut, but sheer terror reflected on his face.

  Dalton shifted from one foot to the other. His attitude suggested nonchalance. “Why don’t you ask him what happened to Jake Richards?”

  Riley cast a hate-filled glare at Dalton. “He made sure Jake wasn’t going to get in the way. He’d been arrested and let go. He wouldn’t tell Haskins why he was out. Or who got him out. Or nothing. We couldn’t take any chances.”

  Grayson muttered under his breath and then bit out his opinion. “That was stupid.” He moved toward the door. “Stop stalling. Get the car in here.”

  A few moments later, Riley and Dalton had done Grayson’s bidding and stuffed the poor girl into the back of Grayson’s trunk. With her mouth covered in duct tape, her eyes begged Grayson not to hurt her.

  Grayson glared at Brett. “You, come here.”

  Brett didn’t budge. “Whatdaya want, cop?”

  Dalton and Riley came to full attention. “Cop?” Dalton snapped.

  Grayson grabbed Brett by his shirt collar. “You and I need to talk.”

  “Wait a minute.” Dalton made a move toward Grayson.

  Grayson’s gun pointed Dalton’s direction once again. “Ex-cop. Why do you think I’m here?”

  Riley spluttered. “That’s what we’d like to know.” His hand reached under his shirt for the gun Brett knew he carried in his waistband.

  Grayson moved toward Riley, dragging Brett with him. “Haskins is my father. That’s why I’m here. Any more questions?”

  Riley’s hand moved away from his gun. Dalton and Riley backed up, hands in the air.

  Grayson snorted with contempt. “Come on.” His command for Brett to follow rang around the barn, loud and demanding.

  As soon as they were seated in Grayson’s car, the ex-cop took a huge bite out of him. “What the hell do you thinking you’re doing here? Are you trying to get yourself killed? These guys are going to get rid of you when they’re done with you. Don’t you know that?”

  “I’ve gotten some good information while I’ve been here. Right before I finish this batch, I’m going to get out of here. I’m going straight to Shaw Bennett with what I know.”

  “You’ve had plenty of time to gather sufficient evidence. Why are you still here?”

  Brett kept his calm. He had to. “I was waiting for them to mention Haskins. Actually, I was trying to create a situation where Haskins might show up here.”

  “Well, you did your job, but he sent me instead.”

  “That’s not good. Not want I planned.” Brett nodded toward the back of the car. “What are you gonna do with her?”

  “Haskins has no idea they kidnapped her. I doubt if those two will tell him anything about her now. They think they screwed up. She’s safe from Haskins as long as those two keep their mouths shut.” His eyes snapped before he issued his demand. “Make sure that they do. I’m taking her to Shaw Bennett so he can take her home to her parents.”

  Brett relaxed. “Good.”

  “You know, if you get caught doing this, you’re going to jail.”

  Brett laughed. “You could too.”

  “I have an immunity deal.”

  Brett liked the sound of that. “Get me one too.”

  “No, you get out. Tonight.”

  “I can’t.”

  Grayson growled his irritation.

  Brett defended his intentions. “I don’t want to blow your cover.”

  He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “You almost did.”

  “Better for them to find out while you’re there to defend yourself.” Brett smiled. He knew he had a good point. He shoved open the car door.

  Grayson tossed him a piece of unsolicited advice. “You better watch your back. Those two aren’t thrilled with you. They’ve complained about you to Haskins. He doesn’t like loose ends. If they think they can finish what you started, they’ll kill you. I didn’t do you any favors showing you any consideration here, you know.”

  He was aware of his precarious position. Grayson didn’t need to remind him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The clinic was only a few blocks from the house. Chelsea tugged a wig over her hair and set out to walk the short distance. When she arrived, she loitered on the back parking lot, hiding behind the dumpster with her focus trained on what she believed was Josh McCord’s truck.

  When the red-haired man left the building with the dark-haired woman, she knew she’d found him. “Are you Josh McCord?”

  He nodded. Wariness settled across his irregular features. The woman with him tensed.

  “Tori at the Sheriff’s Department told me I could find you here.” That wasn’t exactly true. Jordan had called the lab for her, and Tori had told Jordan that Josh had left for the day.

  If Shaw Bennett ever figured out what they were doing, he’d be livid, argumentative, or both. No doubt, he’d try to stop them. At this point, Chelsea felt unstoppable. That’s why she and Jordan were keeping him out of their plans.

  “Okay.” Josh’s hand drifted toward the gun holstered at his side, drawing her attention away from her inner thoughts.

  Did she really look dangerous? The sight of the gun made her anxious. She trembled a little and then stepped around him, out of sight of the alley that ran behind the clinic, putting his body between her and whoever might be passing by.

  “I heard you’ve been looking for me.” That’s what Brett had said. In fact, Brett had told her Josh McCord was the only cop in Hill County that had taken his accusations against Zach Halsey seriously.

  Josh remained silent with an expectant expression on his face. Obviously, the man wasn’t going to make their meeting easier.

  “My name is Cherish Duncan.”

  He reacted just as she thought he might. “Let’s get out of the o
pen.”

  “Is there somewhere we can go to talk?”

  He pointed toward his truck. “Get in.”

  She crawled in from the passenger side, and the woman slid in beside her. There she was, sandwiched between Josh and his girlfriend. Uncomfortable.

  Josh spoke first. “I thought you were dead.”

  “Oh come on, didn’t Shaw Bennett let you in on that?”

  He seemed confused.

  Well, that complicated things. “Shaw hasn’t told you anything about me?”

  “No, I bought that story about Zach Halsey shooting you. Where were you? Some cabins in the mountains?”

  She muttered ugly names for Shaw Bennett under her breath. “We were hiding there.”

  “What about Clark? Is he alive?”

  Oh, he meant Jordan. “He’s okay.”

  McCord had apparently been told just enough about the story that he had a few details but not all the facts.

  “Where have you been staying?” Josh asked.

  He’d asked one too many questions. Time to divert him to her reasons for sneaking up on him. She shifted to face him. “That doesn’t matter.” When he drove into a garage and closed the overhead door behind them, she yanked off the itchy wig. “What does matter is that my brother is in trouble.”

  He tensed. “So I’ve heard.”

  She studied his reaction a moment and then remembered her tense discussion with Shaw Bennett at the hospital in Fayetteville. “He didn’t kill Jake Richards.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  The man was as bad about drawing conclusions as Shaw.

  “I’m positive.” She leaned forward. “Brett told me how you helped him. He said I could trust you.” She pressed home her point. “I think he’s volunteered to cook Fred Haskins’s meth for him.”

  Josh reacted with a jerk of his head. “Why would he do that? I thought he got out of that.”

  “He thinks he’s going to get enough evidence on Haskins to get him arrested. I’m afraid all he’s gonna do is get himself killed.”

  Ashley finally added her thoughts. “Josh, she’s right. Playing Haskins is dangerous. You know that.”

  Sympathy covered his face, but it wasn’t directed toward Chelsea. She got the idea that Ashley had gotten on the wrong side of Haskins.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know.” Josh’s grumpy reply suggested he hated agreeing with her.

  Chelsea placed a hand on his arm. “So I’m asking you…if you hear anything about where he’s at, go get him. Get him out of there before he gets himself killed and before the other cops catch him. They’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”

  “You have a bad opinion of cops.”

  She held her breath and then let it out slowly. “I’ve been on the other side of the law most of my adult life. I’m sure my attitude toward cops comes from my experience living with criminals.”

  Josh gazed out the windshield instead of looking at Chelsea. “I can’t promise you anything. He’s in a world where I don’t have access. If I tried to get in there, I’d get shot.”

  “Can’t you get word to Grayson?” She hated begging. But this was about Brett.

  Josh sighed, and she would have thought his lungs would pop from the volume of air he expelled. The guy could be a little dramatic.

  “I don’t have contact with him except through Shaw Bennett.”

  His statement startled her.

  He hit her with a question she didn’t want to answer. “Why didn’t you ask Shaw to help you get word to Grayson?”

  Truth time. “I’m not sure I trust him where my brother is concerned.”

  “Brett has made a lot of enemies in this town.”

  An understatement.

  Hadn’t Brett mentioned bar fights and taking punches at cops. Neither side of the law was likely to have fond feelings for her brother. That’s why he needed help.

  “Please. Just do what you can for him.”

  “We’ll see what we can do,” Ashley said.

  “Ash!” Josh’s low reprimand waltzed past her toward Ashley.

  “Josh, he needs help. How many times have you been jammed up with the cops and needed help?” Her quiet rebuttal suggested he would be wise to back off his attitude.

  Chelsea turned to witness the other woman’s pleading stare.

  “Okay. Okay. A guy can’t so no when he’s ganged up on by a couple of women.”

  Ashley reached across Chelsea and punched him on his upper arm.

  “Ouch. Quit abusing me, woman.”

  Ashley muttered something inaudible.

  The man obviously knew nothing of real abuse. The flippant remark stung. Chelsea pushed past the offense. “There’s something else I want.” She braved her second request with her breath hanging in her throat.

  Josh grunted, and his impatient expression pushed her to say what she needed to say.

  “Can you help me scare the hell out of Zach Halsey?”

  “Whoa! I can’t help you—”

  “Oh, please. I don’t want him dead or even maimed. I just want him to know what it’s like to be frightened of things he can’t control.”

  “You know he’s a suspect in connection with your death.”

  She smiled. “Yeah, I know.”

  “I see where you’re going with this.” He grinned. “I think I can help with that.”

  She liked Josh. He didn’t seem to mind getting his hands dirty. For the right cause.

  ****

  Jordan lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes. “Looks like he’s in there.”

  Josh did likewise, focusing his lenses on the rear bedroom window. “Yep, I see his shadow moving around in there. Well, that makes sense because his grandfather has always protected him from the consequences of his stupidity.”

  They’d just seen the ex-Sheriff of Hill County leave his house in a hurry. It seemed that someone had tipped off the feds about his storage unit, and the FBI was about to bust the lock with or without his consent since the unit had been rented under a fictitious name. The nugget of information Josh had dug up that morning had been useful. He’d proclaimed to Jordan and Chelsea that he didn’t feel like sharing everything he knew with the feds. An anonymous phone call to Halsey’s house had been enough to get him to clear out for a while.

  “Wonder where Halsey went in such a hurry?” Josh chuckled at his own semi-joke.

  Chelsea rolled her eyes at the two jerks sitting in the front seat.

  “Whose car did you say we borrowed?” Jordan asked.

  Josh smirked. “I didn’t say.”

  They’d chosen to use a different vehicle in case Halsey the Lesser was familiar with theirs.

  “Sheriff Halsey waited until after the feds had searched his place before he took Zach in.”

  Josh nodded. “He’s a cop. He knows the rules of engagement.”

  Jordan cackled. “Bet he’s getting tired of FBI raids.”

  Enough cop banter. “Can we do this already? Halsey is likely to come back any minute.”

  Jordan glanced over the seat at her. “He’s not gonna be back for a long time. We didn’t make the FBI raid thing up. They’re actually waiting patiently for him to show.”

  Josh glanced at his clothing. “Did we really have to wear all black?”

  “What? Have you no sense of adventure, McCord?”

  He huffed at Jordan’s lame jab.

  Chelsea exited the car. Jordan had already headed around to the back to retrieve their gear. He rolled his shoulders and adjusted the strap.

  “Are you okay? Are you hurting?”

  He smiled down at her. “It only hurts when I breathe.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t—”

  “No, no, no. You begged me to do this, remember?”

  She nodded and glanced up at the big bright moon that hung above them. Halsey lived on a dirt road that looped through the hills, making their clandestine activities easier to conceal from potential witnesses.

  Within minutes,
they’d entered Halsey’s garage and discovered the access to the attic. Josh nodded toward the stairs and pulled them down. Well oiled. Not a single squeak. Halsey had made it almost too easy for them. Jordan motioned toward the outside of the house. His job would be to aim a high intensity lamp into the bedroom where Zach was staying. Josh’s mission was to send the smoke from a fog machine through the ventilation system into the room.

  Chelsea wrung her hands, hoping to settle her jitters. She was going to be the voice of Cherish Duncan’s ghost.

  She slipped into the house. Moved soundlessly toward his room and stuck a couple of pennies between the door and the jamb on the hinge side. No way he was getting the door open without a struggle. If things went south, the makeshift barricade would give them time to get away.

  With her back to the wall next to the door, she waited. Before long, the obvious thump and scrape of movement came from the other side. Based on the noises coming from Zach’s room, Josh had started the fog and Jordan had hit the lights. She hurried through the house, out the door, and around the back.

  Zach’s voice rumbled through the windowpane. “What the hell?”

  That was her cue. She counted to ten and lifted the voice modulator to her mouth.

  “Run, Zach. Run.” An echo of the words Jeremy Haskins’s ghost had uttered when Zach had taken her to the Love Shack so many years ago.

  Defiant words came from the other side. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “Cherish.”

  Nervous laughter. “What?”

  “Remember.”

  “Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. I didn’t do anything to you. I promise.”

  “Tell the truth.”

  “Don’t hurt me.” His voice trembled.

  Inside, the obvious crash of Zach slamming into the door met her ears. Jordan grabbed the high wattage lamps with one hand and her hand with his other. Together, they raced across the yard to hide behind a shed. Within minutes, the sound of shattering glass split the quiet night. Peeking from her hiding spot, she observed Zach as he hurled himself through the opening. Panic had flared in his eyes, flashing red in the moonlight.

  Jordan’s hand rested on the top of her shoulder. She leaned closer to him, and he wrapped his arm around her waist. His breath puffed out of his mouth in ragged bursts. It might have been too soon for him to sprint across the yard at such a fast pace.