Kate groaned.
He listened another moment and said, “But it can be activated remotely if we can provide the password. Kate?”
“Nobody said anything to me about a password,” she protested. “Or if they did, I can’t remember what it is. Can’t we explain it’s an emergency?”
Wyatt did his best to explain the problem, but the woman remained adamant. Without the password, she couldn’t activate the GPS remotely. He hung up the phone and said, “We can go through the police, but that’s going to take time. I suggest we split up and—”
Wyatt’s phone rang. He flipped it open without looking at the caller ID. “What? Where?”
He turned to the other three parents and said, “One of the twins just activated the GPS. They’re on I-410, halfway between Houston and San Antonio, headed west.”
“That eliminates your compound,” Jack said. “But we still don’t know whether he’s head to Kate’s house or Twin Magnolias.”
“Kate’s home is the most likely place for the twins to have hidden something,” Wyatt speculated. “If they buried it, which J.D. might have suggested, they probably wouldn’t have dug it up to take it to Twin Magnolias. If J.D.’s headed farther west than San Antonio, we can cut him off.”
“He’s got a big lead,” Kate said.
“I’ve got a big jet,” Wyatt replied.
42
“When are we going to get there, Dad?” Lucky asked.
“We’ve got another hour to drive at least,” J.D. replied. “You shouldn’t have lied and told me you took the box to Shaw’s compound. We’d be a lot closer to San Antonio by now.”
J.D. heard what sounded like scuffling in the backseat. “You boys settle down back there.” He’d considered tying them up, but he hadn’t been able to make himself do it. Besides, he hadn’t brought along anything to use for rope.
He wished he had that child safety feature in this old Impala that the manufacturers put in newer model cars, where the kids in the backseat couldn’t open the door from the inside. He should have thought of that when he was stealing a car. But he didn’t think he had to worry about the kids trying to escape at seventy-five miles an hour.
He figured no one was going to believe a couple of eight-year-olds if they said their father had returned from the dead, so maybe he didn’t have to kill them, either. Better to keep them alive and well, at least until he got the twenty million from Wyatt Shaw. That had been a brilliant idea, if he did say so himself. This way, after he got the ransom, he could head straight to the FBI with his evidence against D’Amato and disappear into witness protection.
“Push there,” Lucky whispered.
“Where?” Chance whispered.
“Right there,” Lucky said.
“Got it,” Chance said.
“Is it going to work?” Ryan asked.
“Shh!” Lucky said.
J.D. glanced in the rearview mirror and said, “What are you boys doing back there?”
“I was trying to get a really big lump out of the seat,” Lucky said.
“Yeah, this is some old heap,” J.D. said.
“Do you think it’s working?” Ryan whispered.
“I can’t tell,” Chance whispered back. “It’s supposed to.”
“Do you think what’s working?” J.D. asked suspiciously.
“Nothing,” Lucky said quickly.
“Yeah, nothing,” Chance said.
J.D. turned around to look in the backseat, not sure what the boys were up to, but wanting to see for himself that they didn’t have a cell phone he hadn’t found, or some other means of contacting their parents. “You boys got a phone back there?”
“No, sir,” Lucky said.
“No, sir,” Chance said.
“What about you, kid?” he said, glaring at Ryan in the rearview mirror.
“My mom says I’m too little to have a phone of my own. I have a Game Boy,” he said. “It’s in the drawer beside my bed at the hospital.”
“What were you doing in the hospital?” J.D. asked.
“I have leukemia,” Ryan said.
“Shit. You need medicine or something?”
“No. I got a bone marrow transplant, so I don’t need chemotherapy anymore.”
The kid was still wearing a hospital gown and slippers. J.D. had been damned lucky to get him out of the hospital without getting caught.
“I wish I hadn’t changed out of mine at the last minute,” Lucky said.
“Wish you hadn’t changed out of what?” J.D. asked.
“Chance can run really fast in his tennis shoes. I didn’t wear mine.”
“Don’t be thinking about doing any running away,” J.D. warned. “You won’t like what I’ll do to you when I catch you. And I will catch you.”
The boys were silent in the backseat. J.D. figured they were sufficiently cowed that he could pay attention to the road.
“How far now, Dad?” Lucky asked a few minutes later.
“A little less far than the last time you asked,” J.D. said. “Now shut up and give me a little peace.”
Five minutes later, Lucky said in a tremulous voice, “Dad, I have something to tell you.”
“What?”
“After Mom told us you were dead, we dug up that box from the backyard where we buried it.”
J.D. felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. “Yeah? What did you do with it?”
“We kept it in the back of the top drawer to the chest between our beds. We wanted something of yours close by us at night,” Lucky said.
“That’s all right.” He felt a little spurt of pride that his boys had wanted to remember him.
“We took it with us when we went to live with Jack at Twin Magnolias,” Chance said.
“But we couldn’t keep it in the house because Aunt Rose was always cleaning and we were afraid she’d find the box and it was pretty dirty so we were afraid she might want to clean it or maybe even throw it away so we buried it again,” Lucky said all in one breath.
“Shit,” J.D. said. “So we need to go to Jack McKinley’s ranch, not your mom’s house, is that what you’re saying?”
“Yeah,” Lucky said.
“Why didn’t you tell me all this in the first place?” he said between tight jaws, eyeing the boys in the rearview mirror.
“We were afraid you’d be mad,” Chance said.
“I’m not mad,” J.D. lied through clenched teeth. “Is there anything else you haven’t told me about that box? Tell me now and I won’t be mad. You wait till later, I may blow a gasket.”
The two boys exchanged a glance before Lucky admitted, “We opened it.”
“The only thing inside was a phone,” Chance said.
J.D. was holding his breath, afraid the boys had thrown out the only bargaining chip he had to get himself into witness protection, where he was safe from D’Amato, and where Wyatt Shaw couldn’t find him to get his twenty million dollars back. “What did you do with the phone?”
“It didn’t work,” Lucky said.
“The battery was probably out of juice,” J.D. said. “What did you do with it, boy?” He’d started to say “son” and stopped himself. He hadn’t gotten over being pissed that his wife had cheated on him with Wyatt Shaw.
“We put it back in the box,” Chance said.
It was like pulling teeth to get the two of them to talk. “What did you do with the damned box?” he asked impatiently.
“We buried it in one of the stalls in the barn.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” J.D. said. He’d gone to Twin Magnolias before his deployment to Afghanistan for a picnic Breed had hosted for him and Kate, so he knew where he was going. If he wasn’t mistaken, the barn was a ways from the house, so this most recent news was good news.
Neither Jack McKinley nor Breed Grayhawk were living at the ranch. All he had to deal with was Jack’s parents, who would most likely be at the main ranch house. He could sneak into the barn and dig up the evidence against D’Amato wit
hout bothering anyone.
He could surely find rope or something else handy to tie the boys up and gag them before going on his way. They would be found sooner or later, after he was long gone. The kids’ parents would stay put in Houston, per his instructions, until he told them where to deliver the twenty-million-dollar ransom.
Of course, D’Amato was on his trail. Or rather, that stupid Roberto would be following him for his boss. But he’d checked his clothes the minute he’d left the warehouse where Roberto had been working him over and found the GPS tracking device they’d put in his shirt pocket. He’d gotten rid of his belt and checked his shoes, which he’d swear were clean. Good old Roberto was going to be disappointed.
He’d told D’Amato the kids had the evidence, but he’d suggested they’d hidden it somewhere in San Antonio. Of course, he’d said, they might have taken it to Shaw’s compound. Or left it at McKinley’s ranch. Roberto couldn’t be three places at once.
All J.D. had to do was stay one jump ahead of D’Amato’s brute. The mob boss would never suspect he’d head straight—all right in a crooked line—for a ranch owned jointly by an FBI agent and a Texas Ranger.
J.D. grinned. This was all going to work out even better than he’d hoped.
43
“He’s changed direction, Roberto,” D’Amato said from the front passenger seat of his limousine. His enforcer was driving. D’Amato knew he should have stayed home and let Roberto finish off J.D. Pendleton, but J.D. had been such a pain in the ass he hadn’t been able to resist coming along for the ride.
D’Amato had instructed Roberto to put two tracking devices in places where J.D. could be expected to look for them, so he would find them and destroy them and believe he was no longer being followed. “He probably examined his shoes, too,” D’Amato said to his henchman. “But he never found the GPS chip you slipped under the left heel, and that son of a bitch is still wearing them!”
D’Amato suspected his son and the Texas Ranger wouldn’t be far behind them. But he only needed to be a step ahead of them to retrieve the evidence that could send him to jail for the rest of his life and finish off the bastard who’d forced him into this wild-goose chase.
“He’s heading north,” D’Amato said. “Turn onto U.S. 281. I believe our mark is headed to Sergeant McKinley’s ranch. Step on it, Roberto. We don’t want to miss all the fun. I haven’t been on a scavenger hunt in a very long time. Once we have the prize, I’m afraid you may have to do a little more digging. I intend to bury this problem once and for all.”
44
“Ladies and gents, buckle your seat belts,” the pilot drawled. “Our next stop is an airstrip west of Austin, Texas.”
Wyatt took Kate’s hand in his as they lifted off from San Antonio International Airport headed to an airstrip that her uncle, North Grayhawk, had put in halfway between Twin Magnolias and his ranch, which was a little farther west.
“How much time did we lose by coming to San Antonio instead of going straight to Jack’s ranch?” Kate asked.
“Not much,” Wyatt said. “Even with this detour we should get to Twin Magnolias about the same time as J.D.” They’d already been on the ground in San Antonio before J.D. changed direction and headed north on U.S. 281. Fortunately, they’d managed to get clearance to immediately take off again.
“What if he’s already come and gone before we get there?” Kate asked.
“J.D. isn’t going to disappear until he makes sure I’ve wired twenty million into that offshore account he gave you. He should know better. The Feds can always trace the money and find him. Which means D’Amato can trace the money and find him. He would have been better off just making a run for it.”
“Which means that whatever he’s hunting for must be pretty damaging to your father,” Kate guessed. “Do you have any idea what it is?”
“No,” Wyatt said. “I don’t.” But he knew D’Amato had done his share of heinous things.
“How are we going to get from the landing strip to the ranch?” Holly asked from her seat next to Jack across the aisle from them.
“My uncle North keeps vehicles at the airstrip,” Kate said. “The keys will be in a lockbox under the wheel well.”
“How long to get from where we land to your ranch, Jack?” Holly asked.
“About twenty minutes.”
It took thirty minutes before the main house at Twin Magnolias, which looked like an old Southern plantation, appeared on the horizon. The sky was dark with thunderclouds and streaked with heat lightning.
“Do you see anything that looks out of order?” Wyatt asked Jack.
“Let’s take a drive around the property before we go up to the house. Maybe we’ll see a vehicle that doesn’t belong.”
Wyatt was at the wheel with Jack beside him. Jack had his SIG P226. Wyatt had a Glock 22 he’d retrieved from the glove compartment of his limo. Both men checked their weapons, making certain a bullet was chambered. Thunder cracked in the distance.
Before they continued their drive, Wyatt put his arm along the back of the seat and turned around to speak to the two women sitting in the backseat. “Maybe you two should wait at the house.”
“You’ll need us to take care of the kids, while you take care of the bad guys,” Kate said.
“I should be there if anyone requires medical assistance,” Holly pointed out.
Wyatt exchanged a rueful look with Jack and said, “All right. But you wait in the car until we call for you.”
Wyatt watched the women exchange a glance that told him they’d be out of the car two seconds after he and Jack left it.
“Hell,” he said. “Just be careful, both of you.”
“We will,” Kate said.
“There,” Jack said, pointing. “That Impala behind the barn doesn’t belong here.”
“Behind that stack of hay,” Wyatt said, his heart suddenly pounding. “That’s my father’s limo.”
“Park here,” Jack said. “They’re in the barn. We’ll go in through the back door.”
Lightning lit up the sky as Wyatt moved toward the back door to the barn with Jack. “My father will have a weapon. So will whoever’s with him.”
“J.D. probably will, too,” Jack said. “We don’t want the kids caught in a crossfire. We need to get them under cover before the shooting starts.”
“You don’t have a problem with divided loyalties, do you?” Wyatt asked.
“I don’t work for your father,” Jack replied. He met Wyatt’s gaze and said, “I never did.”
“That snitch you killed—”
“Is alive and well in witness protection.”
“All right,” Wyatt said. “Let’s go.”
Wyatt felt ashamed when he saw the scene in the barn. His father was threatening Ryan McKinley—a six-year-old child—with a shotgun, while the twins stood huddled together nearby, holding each other tight, tears streaming down their faces.
J.D., or a man Wyatt presumed was J.D., was lying dead in the center of the barn floor. His face was gone. Probably the result of a blast from the shotgun his father was holding. His heart went out to his sons, who’d apparently witnessed J.D.’s death.
Roberto must have been wounded in whatever gun battle had taken place before they’d arrived. He was sitting on the cement floor, his back braced against one of the wooden stalls, a big hand pressed against his bleeding gut, while the other lay on his thigh holding a Glock.
Judging from the fresh blood pooling on the cement floor, J.D. hadn’t been dead very long. Apparently, Jack’s parents hadn’t heard the shots. With the brewing storm, they must have mistaken the gunshots and the shotgun blast for thunder.
“Where’s the damned cell phone?” his father ranted to the twins. “If you don’t tell me right this minute, I’m going to blow this boy’s face off, just like I did J.D.’s.”
Wyatt exchanged a glance with Jack. His father had just confessed to murder. Which meant he wouldn’t want to leave any witnesses. The minute they showed the
mselves, he was going to start shooting to eliminate them.
The twins had obviously figured out that as soon as they told their grandfather what he wanted to know, they were going to end up like J.D. They were damned smart. And doomed unless he and Jack could figure out a way to save them.
Jack was motioning that he was going to expose himself to gunfire to save his son. Wyatt was supposed to take out his father when D’Amato turned to shoot Jack. Jack would finish off the wounded enforcer.
Wyatt shook his head. Even though his father was a monster, he couldn’t kill him. He indicated that he would expose himself and Jack could take the shot at D’Amato. Wyatt would take care of Roberto.
Before either of them could act, the two women stepped inside the front door to the barn. Kate held a pitchfork. Holly held a spade.
“Let those kids go,” Kate said, her teeth bared.
D’Amato was smart enough to know that the women hadn’t come alone. He swung the shotgun up to stop them in their tracks. “Hold it right there!”
Which was when Wyatt leapt from his hiding place. He grabbed Ryan as D’Amato swung the shotgun back around and fired. He wrapped Ryan protectively in his arms as he ran, shielding the screeching boy from the buckshot that peppered his own cheek and shoulders and back.
The women charged, yelling like banshees as they attacked with pitchfork and spade.
“Stop those women!” D’Amato cried.
“I don’t shoot women,” Roberto yelled back.
“Put down your guns,” Jack said, stepping into the aisle and standing spread-legged, his SIG aimed at D’Amato’s heart.
Roberto lifted his gun, and Jack shot him twice in the chest.
D’Amato held the shotgun out in front of him sideways with both hands, then eased it down to the ground and put his hands up. Jack crossed to the mob boss, pulled his hands down behind him one at a time and handcuffed him.
“I’ve waited a very long time for this day,” Jack said. “You’re under arrest for kidnapping and murder.”
From his position on his side on the ground, Wyatt saw Kate gather the twins in her arms.
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