Erin Solomon Mysteries, Books 1 - 5

by Jen Blood

  “Erin. Come on—I think someone drugged you.”

  “They’ll be out for a few hours—that’s it. Nothing serious,” I heard Kat say from behind me. When I turned, she was standing in the doorway, fully dressed. Her backpack was over one shoulder.

  “You did this?”

  “I needed to clear the way to leave,” she said simply. “Your friend Cheyenne was happy to help, once she understood her options.”

  Solomon roused herself, just barely. Kat nodded toward her, then looked at me. “You should let her sit. It’s just a mild sedative, but Erin’s never done well with drugs.”

  I slid her as carefully as I could into a chair. She’d gone borderline boneless on me, sliding low in the seat.

  “Why isn’t it affecting me?” I asked.

  “I don’t dose recovering addicts,” she said simply. “Especially not one who’s dating my daughter. Give me a little credit. Besides, I knew I could make you see the light.”

  “The way you made Cheyenne see the light?” I asked. “Maybe you should explain it. I think I’m missing a crucial piece of the argument.”

  I heard the side door open. Casper and Phantom barked in the next room, where Jamie had them crated for the night. Einstein yipped wildly at my feet, racing for the nearest exit.

  “You left us vulnerable here,” I said, my voice rising. “How do you not get that? People died out here today—or do you really not care about that?” I went for my gun. Where the hell was Juarez? Monty and Carl might be down for the count, but Jack hadn’t seemed completely out of it. Not like the others.

  Einstein raced back to me after his jaunt down the hall, barking the whole way. He spun in a circle, dove back toward the hallway, and returned. I hit the safety on my Glock and nodded Kat out of the way. Measured footsteps approached. I turned toward them with my gun up. The panic I’d been fighting from the moment I looked in Erin’s eyes officially took over when Mitch Cameron appeared in the doorway, his gun up and pointed at my head.

  “Put that down, please,” he said, nodding to my Glock. I heard someone pounding deeper in the house—banging against a door, while the dogs continued to bark bloody murder.

  “You first,” I said.

  “Please.” He looked at me like I’d just insulted him. “We know who’s getting off a shot first, don’t we? Put it down, Diggs. I have no interest in doing any harm here.”

  I lowered the gun, flicking the safety back on.

  Solomon wiped her eyes as she fought the drugs. “Cameron?” she said.

  “We need to be quick about this,” Cameron said to Kat, ignoring Solomon and me completely. “There’s been a change of plan.”

  “What do you mean?” Kat asked.

  “Jenny. We couldn’t get enough distance—she’ll be here soon.” He strode toward me so suddenly I was tempted to take a step back. He slapped an envelope in my hand. “There’s a silver Camry waiting for you on the mainland, with everything you and Erin will need. I want you to wait forty-five minutes, then go.”

  “We’re not going anywhere,” Solomon said.

  Kat shook her head, tension burning through her. “Jesus—for once in your life, use a little common sense.”

  “We don’t have time to fight about this,” Cameron said urgently. “I’ll get Kat away from here—you take Erin. I will find you both as soon as it’s safe, and I’ll explain everything then. But right now, you need to get out of here.”

  “But—”

  “NOW!” Cameron roared. In our limited interactions, he’d always been all about control: calm, measured. Now, he strode toward Solomon like a man possessed. I reached for my gun again. “You think I’m fucking around here? They’re coming for you. The gloves are off; there’s no reason left to keep you alive. Now—get dressed, and get moving.”

  Solomon started with another barrage of questions, but all it took was a glare from me and she quieted. If there were options, I wasn’t seeing them. Cameron took Kat’s arm.

  “You have what you need?” he asked.

  She indicated the pack on her back. “Don’t need much.”

  “Good girl,” he said. There was a surprising hint of softness in the way he said it. “Now—we’re headed to the other side of the island; I’ve got a plane waiting. I’ll take care of Jenny. There’s a good GPS in the Hurricane—the boat you brought over here. You use that, and get back to shore as fast as you can.”

  “And leave everyone else here?” I asked.

  “The Coast Guard will be here by morning,” he said without missing a beat. “You know that. You think you can handle this?”

  I looked at Solomon, still looking wobbly at the table. I nodded silently. Cameron studied me for a second, as though trying to decide whether or not to speak. Kat shifted impatiently.

  “I know you both want answers, but I can’t give them to you right now. I’ll get them to you in time. Right now, my only priority is keeping Kat and Erin safe before this whole thing goes to hell. You believe that?”

  Either he was the best actor on the planet, or he was speaking the truth. I chose the latter, if only for simplicity’s sake. “Yeah. I believe you.”

  “Good.” He pulled something out of his pocket and put it in my hand. A phone. “This is a burner—untraceable. You need to leave the phones you have behind, along with the laptops or ipads or whatever you usually carry. Any electronics you need will be waiting for you on the mainland, everything outfitted with the equipment you need to move under the radar. You cannot contact anyone. For now, this is just you and Erin—the rest of your world is gone. It doesn’t exist. I’ll reach out to you as soon as I can.”

  “But where the hell are we supposed to go?”

  “I’ve got that covered, don’t worry about it.” He put his hand on my shoulder and looked at me squarely. “They’ll kill Erin if they catch her; you need to know that. And Jenny… She hates easily, and she hates well. There’s nothing in this world she loathes more than Erin. Which means your girl’s death won’t come easy. It won’t come fast. Jenny knows how to make a body hurt in ways you can’t even imagine. She’s been studying it for a long time.”

  The words hit me in a way I didn’t even know words could: a shot to my stomach followed by a surge of fear and hate so strong that, for a minute, I didn’t know what to do with it. This, I thought, is why loving someone is a bad idea. It’s impossible to be logical about it—to look at anything objectively. All I wanted in that moment was to take Solomon and run as fast and as far as humanly possible with her. If there was a shuttle to the moon, we would have been on it.

  Cameron studied me with the beginnings of a pale smile, as though he knew his words had hit their mark. “You’re a good man. I know you can do this.”

  I had no idea how to respond to that, so was almost grateful when Sol staggered to her feet and approached.

  “My father,” she began. Not a good start. “He… is he with you? Is he on the island right now?”

  “Sol—” I said.

  She held up her hand. Adrenaline or sheer willpower were apparently stronger than whatever Kat had given her, because she looked completely present when our eyes met. “Just a second. Please.” She turned back to Cameron. The flicker of hesitation on his face was all I needed to know she was on the right track.

  “We need to go, Erin,” Cameron said instead of answering her. “You will get your answers. I give you my word—you’ll get them. But if any of us hope to make it out of this alive, you have to let me take Kat out of here now.”

  There was a gunshot somewhere far off, toward the south side of the island. Cameron flinched, another crack in that usually impenetrable calm. “Shit. She’s here sooner than I expected.” He turned his back on Solomon, focused on Kat now. “Let’s go.”

  Another shot sounded, closer this time. To my infinite surprise, Solomon nodded. “Just take her. Keep her safe,” she said, indicating her mother with a nod of her head. “We’ll be all right.”

  “I want you out of h
ere in forty-five minutes,” Cameron repeated as he made for the door. “No more, no less. Don’t tell anyone what’s happening, because I can guarantee they’ll be caught in the crossfire if you do. I know you don’t want that.”

  If Solomon was expecting a heartfelt farewell from Kat, she was disappointed—her mother went through the door without so much as a backward glance. Sol stood beside me, mute, as we watched them go. Before they were out of sight, I turned to her with a single goal in my mind:

  Get her the hell out of there.

  “We need to do what Cameron said,” he said. “I know you don’t necessarily trust him—I don’t, either. But right now this is the only alternative I can think of that doesn’t end up with you dead. And I can’t live with that.”

  She blinked at me, her eyes still a little foggy. A lock of hair lay loose across her forehead. I pushed it back behind her ear. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and thought for a second, maybe two.

  “Okay,” she said. “Until we can come up with something better… okay. We run.”

  Part II: Road to Nowhere

  Chapter Eight - Kat

  For years, Kat blamed Maddie for the worst things in her life. Maddie Tate, her best friend since kindergarten: the first girl ever to kiss her, at six years old out behind the swings at Jefferson Elementary. The girl who gave her her first cigarette; her first drink. The girl who convinced Kat to steal her father’s boat one gray winter’s night when they were teenagers, so they could sneak out to Payson Isle together. Just to see if they’re really as crazy as everyone says, Maddie told her.

  And now, thirty-five years later, here she was: still paying for that stupid lapse in judgment she’d had by trusting Maddie Tate the winter they both turned seventeen.

  She and Cameron had run maybe fifty yards, no more, before he stopped and produced a gun from his jacket—another gun, different from his own. Smaller, but certainly no less effective.

  “What the hell is this?” Kat asked.

  “You may need it. I have no idea what Jenny has in store, but it’s probably not good.”

  The thought was sobering. An image of a tow-headed, brown-eyed little girl popped into her head. How do you know my daddy? Jenny had a lisp as a child. Always dressed in ribbons and bows; Daddy’s little girl.

  “I don’t need a gun,” she said. “You have one. That will do the trick. I’m a surgeon—I don’t shoot people. I fix them after other idiots have shot them.”

  “Spare me,” Cam said. “It’s not like you’ve never used one before. Just take it.”

  He forced it into her hand. The steel was warm from being carried close to his body. She shoved it into her pocket without checking to see what kind it was, or even if it was loaded. Her father was a military man who lived and died by the second amendment; Kat knew her guns. If she needed to use it, she knew perfectly well how to do so.

  Cameron continued on, slowed to a more cautious pace now, his own gun up and at the ready. Kat followed alongside. The island was eerily still now. She wondered if Erin and Diggs were getting ready to go. If Erin would follow Cam’s directions at all, or if Diggs would have to fight her on it. She had no doubt that he would do exactly that, this time around.

  “You’re sending them where I told you, right?” she asked. “You got the tickets?”

  “I got them,” Cam agreed, glancing at her. “They’re taken care of. Now let’s focus on getting you out.”

  It was freezing, the snow stopped and the island a glistening, gleaming sheet of ice. Less than ten hours ago, she’d been lying in a pit of the dead, convinced she was about to join their ranks. And now here she was, still very much alive. She had no clue what would happen next, no idea how long she might stay that way, but for now at least she had a pulse. Her legs were still moving; her heart was still beating. And Erin was safe.

  She saw a flash of her daughter’s future, then—the cheesy Hollywood ending she would never admit she fantasized about: Diggs and Erin, on some godforsaken beach somewhere. Diggs tanned to a golden brown; Erin with a floppy hat and zinc oxide on her nose, bouncing a mop-topped toddler on her knee.

  A branch snapped behind them on the path, pulling her back to the present. Cam stopped her with a hand on her arm, guiding her into a grove of spruce trees so thick she was nearly blinded by a branch that grazed the side of her eye. That was what she got for getting sidetracked by sentimental bullshit like Erin’s blissed-out future with her cradle-robbing boyfriend.

  “What was that?” she whispered.

  Cam put a finger to his lips. They stayed that way for a minute, maybe two, frozen in the undergrowth. Kat was just beginning to lose feeling in her toes when she heard more branches snap not far from them. Seven breathless seconds passed—she counted each of them—before an island deer nudged its way through the foliage. It stopped to nibble at the bark on a nearby birch tree, and Kat breathed an audible sigh of relief.

  About to head back into the open, she stopped when the deer’s head came up. Its ears tipped forward, then back. Cam grabbed Kat’s arm. Every breath came on a puff of white in the darkness. The deer’s tail twitched, then flipped up. It stood in the stillness, frozen.

  Somewhere too close for comfort, there was the smooth, throaty ratchet of a shotgun being cocked.

  At the sound, the deer glided noiselessly back into the forest.

  An instant later, Jenny took the animal’s place, the shotgun raised to her shoulder. Cameron’s fingers tightened around Kat’s arm. Neither of them moved.

  Neither of them breathed.

  Jenny wore a parka with fur at the cuffs, collar, and hood. Even bundled, it was clear that she had grown into a beautiful woman. She was younger than Erin by at least a few years—only in her early to mid-twenties, Kat thought. Still, the girl was a veritable carbon copy of her mother. Looking at the cold smile and calculating eyes that glared into the darkness, it occurred to Kat that the similarities were more than skin-deep: Cameron’s wife had been a sociopath from the word go.

  His daughter was following in her footsteps.

  As if to confirm the theory, Jenny took aim at a spot just to Kat’s right. Her finger tensed on the trigger. Kat was sure they’d been spotted. She could practically feel Cam preparing himself to step in front of the bullet. To surrender. Never, of course, to shoot. Not Jenny.

  For a second, Kat considered doing it herself. She could take out the gun Cam had given her, and take the girl down. It wouldn’t end anything—not really. There were plenty of others ready and willing to take Jenny’s place; plenty in J’s ranks anxious to hunt them down and end the threat the Solomon family presented once and for all. None of them would take this whole thing as personally as Jenny had, though.

  The seconds passed.

  No one moved.

  If Jenny saw them, she gave no indication.

  Kat’s hand curled around the gun in her pocket. She wondered if Cam would stop her. Maybe he would be relieved.

  How do you know my daddy?

  Ribbons and bows; a gap-toothed smile. That was fifteen years ago. Kat was just getting to know Cam, then.

  She let go of the gun.

  “Where did you go, Daddy?” Jenny whispered the words into the night, singsong. A child’s voice, from a grown woman’s lips. Cameron tensed beside Kat.

  A shiver ran up Kat’s spine when the girl’s gaze shifted. For an instant, Jenny stared directly at her father.

  “Jenny!” A man shouted in the distance. The girl started, her finger still on the shotgun trigger. Kat closed her eyes and waited for her world to end.

  Instead, she heard the roar of a boat motor rev to life somewhere nearby.

  “I’ve got ’em!” the man shouted. “Come on—the boat’s leaving, Jen. We’ve got them.”

  Fear ran through Kat’s body like an electric current. She made a move toward the clearing, her hand once more at the gun in her pocket. They’d found Diggs and Erin. Cameron clapped a hand over her mouth and pulled her back, her back pr
essed to his front. He was stronger than she had expected, his grip like iron.

  Jenny lowered the gun. “You sure?” she shouted back.

  “Come on, damn it,” the man responded. There was a rustle of brush and then he appeared beside her: a tall, broad man with an angular face and clear, uncomplicated eyes. Kat flinched. A scene on Payson Isle nearly a year before flashed through her mind: That same man, eyes cold and unaffected as he beat her. Nearly killed her. Erin gets worse than this unless you convince her to back off, he’d promised then.

  “We lose them and this is on our heads,” the man said. “Move!”

  Jenny looked back into the undergrowth one more time, forehead furrowed, before she dropped the gun to her side and loped back in the other direction.

  As soon as Jenny was gone, Kat scrambled away from Cameron. Her heart was racing. “What the hell is wrong with you? Diggs and Erin—”

  “Won’t be leaving the island for another…” he consulted his watch. “Twenty-six minutes. They’re all right.”

  It took a minute for that to sink in. “That boat was a diversion, then,” she guessed. She felt like an idiot for having doubted him. Cameron was the kind of man who would have this covered. Then, it dawned on her. “Who was driving the boat, Cam?”

  He returned to the trail without looking at her. “I think you know that. Adam’s been doing this a long time now… He’ll be all right. But I couldn’t do it alone, and I sure as hell don’t have any other allies anymore.”

  There was the sound of another boat revving to life, this one louder—more horses, without a doubt. Cameron stood still beside Kat, waiting as his daughter ran from the island. For the first time, Kat took note of the man beside her. Usually fit and trim, Cam was looking a little ragged around the edges.

  “How long have you been on the run now?” she asked him.

  “Not long,” he said. “J. was suspicious before, but things went to shit after Kentucky.”

  “Because you helped Erin,” Kat guessed.

  “It was a long time coming,” he said with a shrug. “Things had been tense for a while. Jenny was the one who caught on in the end.”