Smoky Mountains Ranger

by LENA DIAZ,

  Adam didn’t answer. She wasn’t even sure that he’d heard her. He seemed engrossed in whatever he was reading.

  “Adam?”

  “Hmm?”

  She sighed and glanced over her shoulder at the opening. The rolling door was down. Adam was so worried about keeping her safe that he’d insisted on keeping them locked inside while they searched the place. She never usually shut the door when she was here. It was too much like a cave. Or a prison.

  Or her room back home, when she’d watched a similar slit beneath her door and prayed she wouldn’t hear footsteps in the hallway.

  She swallowed and turned back toward Adam. He was frowning down at a piece of paper.

  “More title searches and real estate transactions?” she asked.

  “Pretty much. And bills of sale. I’m no expert on that infrastructure bill Duncan mentioned earlier in relation to that city councilman and Senator Sinclair. But I remember a few local news reports about the government buying up land for right of way.” He lifted his gaze to hers. “A lot of these tracts of land mentioned in these bills of sale are ones from the news reports. The buyer is the government. The seller on most of these is a company named Preferred Parcel Purchasing Corporation. That’s a lot of P’s. Remind you of anyone connected to you?”

  Her pulse leaped in her throat. “Peter, Patricia, Patience, Patrick, Paul. You think my adoptive father set up a shell company? And that he’s involved in some kind of crooked real estate deals that Sam discovered?”

  “We’ve already established that Peter Ingram is a lowlife. Connecting the dots to shady business deals isn’t much of a stretch. Another company listed on some of these transactions is Amelia Enterprises. Isn’t your adoptive mother’s name Amelia?”

  She nodded, her entire body flushing hot and cold. She’d always thought of her adoptive father as evil. But could he be evil enough to have had someone kill Sam and Tracy? Was he trying to have her killed, too? Because of land deals? And money?

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “He’s wealthy. There’s no reason for him to do anything illegal to get more money.”

  “Maybe Peter isn’t as well-off as you think. Bad investments, a struggling economy, poor decisions—they can quickly ruin someone financially. If he’s had heavy losses, he might be desperate enough to make deals with some pretty bad people—like Damien Flint.” He held one of the documents up and pointed to a bold signature scrawled across the bottom. “The witness on all of these documents is Judge Martin Jackson. Ever heard of him?”

  Something about the name sent butterflies loose in her stomach. “I’m not sure. It sounds familiar. But it’s not an uncommon name.”

  “Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced. “I know I’ve seen it somewhere recently.” He flipped the folder closed. “It will come to me. In the meantime, I think we should head back to my house. I’ll tell Duncan what we’ve found and have him send someone for this folder. He’ll want to search the rest of the storage unit.” His jaw tightened. “When he has resources. Is that okay with you?”

  “Of course. If it helps with the case, by all means. Did you find anything in the folder to explain why someone would want to hurt Sam? Or Tracy?”

  “Or you?”

  She swallowed. “Or me.”

  “I haven’t found a connection yet. But I will. Or Duncan will. Don’t worry, Jody. I’ll take care of you.”

  “I’ll take care of you, too, Adam.”

  He smiled, the first smile she’d seen in a long while.

  “We’ll take care of each other, then,” he said.

  A few moments later they were heading down the two-lane road back toward town. Barbed-wire fences ran along both sides of the road with cows grazing in the green fields behind them. How ironic that such beauty and serenity could exist just a few feet from their car when her world seemed to be turning upside down.

  Adam tensed beside her.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I remember where I saw that signature before, the name Judge Martin Jackson. That’s the same judge who ruled on the case involving your adoptive father.”

  Her hands curled against the seat beside her. “You mean...the abuse case? My abuse case?”

  He nodded. “I told you that my dad’s a retired federal judge. From what I heard growing up, judges specialize and tend to stay in their specialties. It doesn’t make sense to me that a family court judge is signing a bunch of real estate transaction documents. Even if he did switch specialties, the coincidence is sending up all kinds of red flags.”

  “What coincidence? The real estate transactions have nothing to do with me.”

  “They have everything to do with you. Your boss was looking into them and hid the evidence in your storage unit. Those have to be the documents Damien was talking about. He said pictures, and maybe there are some pictures, too. But maybe he meant documents, or whoever hired him didn’t know if someone had physical printouts or just photographs.” He waved his hand. “Doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the same judge who signed them played a huge role in your life early on, signing other legal papers associated with you. Sam asked you about your birth parents. And your adoptive parents. Then he hid those papers where you’d eventually find them. Why would he do that if all of this isn’t connected?”

  He stared through the windshield at the winding road in front of them. His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Didn’t you tell me that Peter was a real estate developer? That he was always amassing property in the mountains?”

  A cold chill seemed to run up her spine. “You think...you think he’s somehow connected to all of this? Because the papers are about real estate?” She gave a humorless laugh. “That’s quite a leap.”

  They drove in silence for a moment, then Adam slammed a hand against the steering wheel. “The timeline. That’s it.”

  “What?”

  “The timeline. Three days. You said Damien told you that Sam’s PI firm had been a problem for three days. That was on Saturday. What happened three days before Saturday? What happened on Wednesday of last week?”

  The truth slammed into her. She started to shake. “The councilman was murdered.”

  “Exactly. And he was helping a senator with the infrastructure bill. The government has to buy out everyone who owns land that they need for right of way. Which means researching titles and deeds and finding out who the owners are. That’s what the councilman was helping with, because the land involved was here in Gatlinburg.”

  “Where my adoptive father owns a lot of real estate.”

  “Do you?”

  She frowned. “What?”

  “You told me your biological parents wanted to make sure you were taken care of. And yet their house passed to your adoptive family instead of to you. That seems unusual, to say the least. Isn’t it also surprising that they didn’t give you a generous enough trust fund to see you through life, not just college, but they left a huge fund for the Ingrams to take care of a house?”

  She rubbed her arms again. “The thought has definitely crossed my mind before, yes.”

  “A judge ruled against you when you had the trust fund audited. Was that Judge Jackson, too?”

  “No. I don’t remember the judge’s name, but it was a woman. It wasn’t Martin Jackson.”

  “Then the audit may have been legit. Which again brings to question why your parents wouldn’t provide better for you. The answer could be that they left you other investments, like real estate. They may have left you a fortune in land thinking it always appreciates in value and you’d be set for life, that you could sell some of it whenever you needed more money.”

  “But I didn’t get any assets in the will other than the trust fund.”

  He tapped the folder on the seat between them. “You sure about that? Wills can be faked. Sam was tracing the titles on all of the
land in this folder, either for a secret client that we haven’t found yet or because he heard something himself that made him suspicious and decided to follow up. Either way, it leads back to you. Because he left the information in your storage unit, for you to find. Maybe the land in that folder was actually owned at one time by the Radcliffes—your biological parents. Which means the land should have passed to you but never did. Sam got sloppy, took one picture too many, and Damien or maybe Peter saw him. They went through his things, realized he’d figured out what they were doing—making a killing, probably millions of dollars—selling your land to the government as part of that infrastructure bill. They have to destroy any hint of impropriety about those land deals or they’ll lose everything and wind up in prison.”

  She pressed a hand against her throat. “If you’re right, my adoptive father wants me—”

  “Dead. So he can enjoy the millions of dollars that were supposed to be yours.” He tapped the folder again. “This is what he wants. Once he has it and any pictures that Sam hid, there’s no reason to keep you alive any longer. You’re a liability, a time bomb waiting to blow up his financial empire if you ever decide to contest the will and dig into your parents’ financial history. As soon as we get this information to Duncan, we’ll both grab a suitcase and head out of town to lie low somewhere until this is resolved. No arguments. I want you safe and as far away from Peter Ingram as possible.”

  “No arguments from me.”

  A black Dodge Charger came into view on the next hill up ahead, coming toward them.

  Jody blinked and leaned forward in her seat. “Adam, that car. It looks just like the one that was parked near the Sugarland Mountain trailhead. The one Damien was driving.”

  Adam stared hard at the car coming their way. The Charger sped past them with a familiar profile sitting in the driver’s seat.

  “Adam—”

  “I know. It was Damien. Grab my phone. Call Duncan.” He kept driving down the road, heading toward his house. When he glanced in the rearview mirror, he swore.

  Jody whirled around in her seat. The Charger had hit the brakes. Damien was making a three-point turn in the middle of the road. The car took off, heading straight for them.

  “My phone, Jody. Forget Duncan. Call 911.”

  She grabbed his cell phone out of his pants pocket, her breaths coming in ragged gasps. “What’s your pass code?”

  He told her, and she punched in the numbers.

  Adam grabbed his pistol out of the holster and slammed the accelerator. His car was a sleek sedan with leather seats and all the creature comforts his money could buy. But it didn’t have the horsepower the Charger had. Damien was rapidly gaining on them.

  “We’re four miles from my house. We aren’t going to make it.” He reached up and slammed back the inside cover of the moon roof.

  “What are you doing?” Jody punched Send on the call.

  “You’re going to hold the wheel while I shoot the bastard. Did you call 911?”

  “I did but nothing’s happening!” She yanked the phone back to look at the screen. “The call didn’t go through!” Her hands shook as she redialed.

  Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

  Bam! Bam!

  The car bumped and swerved, skidding toward the drainage ditch on the side of the road.

  Adam fought the wheel. “The tires! Hold on!”

  “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” A tinny voice came through the phone.

  She clung to the armrest as the car headed toward the ditch and a group of trees on the edge of the road. “This is Jody Ingram and Special Agent Adam McKenzie,” she said so fast the words ran together. “Damien Flint’s shooting at us on the road to Rutherford—”

  “Brace yourself!” Adam yelled.

  She screamed. The car slid off the road, hopped the ditch and slammed into a tree. Everything went black.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “You idiot! Bringing them here was the last thing you should have done. What if someone saw you?”

  “No one saw me. I brought you the folder! After all the trouble I’ve gone through, including getting stabbed, you should be thanking me instead of yelling at me. My guys are hiding the car. No harm done.”

  A string of violent curses followed.

  The words drifted through Jody’s mind like a canoe slogging through mud. Someone was shouting at someone else. Both of the voices seemed to be coming through a long tunnel. They were achingly familiar. Not in a good way. She groaned and pressed a hand to her throbbing head.

  “Jody?” Another voice, whispering next to her ear. Deep, soothing, full of concern.

  “Adam?”

  “Thank God.” He pulled her close. “Where do you hurt?”

  She blinked and opened her eyes. Then promptly closed them, her stomach lurching. “The room is spinning.”

  “You lost consciousness. You probably have a concussion. What about your arms? Your legs? I didn’t see any cuts or obvious breaks. Does anything other than your head hurt?”

  “Everything hurts.”

  “I know, sweetheart. I’m so sorry. Can you try to open your eyes again?”

  More shouting. Something about deeds and pictures and...infrastructure? That voice. She knew that voice. It was...oh no!

  Her eyes popped open. The room was still moving, but not as badly as before. She was sitting on the floor, her back against a wall. Adam knelt in front of her, the side of his head smeared with blood yet again.

  He smiled. “There you are. Better now? The room isn’t spinning?”

  She reached out a shaky hand. “Your head. You’re always getting hurt.”

  He ducked away. “I’m fine. Now that you’re back in the land of the living, let’s work on getting out of here. Do you know where we are?”

  She looked past him and winced. “My room. My old room. When I was a little girl.”

  “One of Damien’s men carried you up here. After Damien shot out our tires, we crashed. You hit your head on the side window.” He framed her face in his hands and pressed a whisper-soft kiss against her lips. “You scared me to death. I thought I might lose you.”

  She clung to his hands. “What happened? Why are we here? Is that my...is Peter downstairs?”

  He nodded again. “Damien had a submachine gun. I lost my pistol in the crash and couldn’t do anything to stop him.”

  She reached down to her side.

  “Your gun is gone, too,” he told her. “We don’t have any weapons. But that doesn’t mean we’re defenseless. As long as they’re arguing, we know where they are. Can you stand?” He didn’t wait for her reply. He grabbed her around the waist and lifted her to her feet.

  She’d squeezed her eyes shut because the room was spinning again. But when she realized she was clutching his shoulders to steady herself, and that she was bending over at the waist to do it, she forced her eyes open again. Adam was still kneeling on the floor.

  “Good job,” he said. “I’ve tied some bedsheets together and anchored them to the four-poster bed. You need to climb out that window and run. Looks like there are some trees ten yards out. That should give you good cover.” He tugged her hand to get her moving.

  She pulled her hand out of his grasp. “Where are your crutches? Did those monsters take them away from you? I’m not leaving you here.”

  He frowned. “Jody, we don’t have time to argue. We don’t know whether that 911 call did any good. You didn’t have time to give them an address. We have to assume that help isn’t coming.”

  “I told them Rutherford Estates. And we crashed. They’ll see our car, look for us. They have our names. Why are you shaking your head?”

  “You said Rutherford. And you gave them our names. They’ll look me up and realize I live in Rutherford Estates, so they’ll go to my house. Not here.”

  “
But the car. Surely they’ll see the crash, know something is wrong. When they don’t find us at your house, won’t they search the whole subdivision, go door to door? Canvassing. That’s what it’s called, right?”

  “From what I could tell from the yelling downstairs, it sounds like Damien and his guys cleaned up the accident scene. I don’t know that the police will have cause to go door to door searching for us.” He frowned and glanced past her toward the door, which she noted no longer had the dead bolt on it that someone had installed for her years ago.

  “I don’t hear them anymore,” he said. “You need to hurry. I’ll do what I can to stall them. But you have to get out of here.” He pushed her toward the window again.

  She shoved his hand away. “You can’t even stand. I’m not leaving you.”

  He grabbed one of the posts on the bed’s footboard and shoved to his feet. “There. I’m standing. I’m not helpless. Now go.”

  “You’re as white as a sheet.”

  “It hurts, all right? But I’m fine. Please, Jody. Just go.”

  Fresh blood marked the denim of his jeans. He wasn’t even close to fine, and they both knew it. She took a quick look around. Everything in the room was eerily similar to the way it had looked when she was little, probably because the house was so large there was no reason to redecorate this particular room. Dust covers were draped over the bed, the chair in the corner, the desk. If all of her things were still here, there were crutches she’d used when her adoptive father had slammed her into a wall and broken her leg. They’d be too short. But maybe Adam could still use them like canes to help him walk, like he’d done with the tree branch in the mountains. She ran to the closet.

  “Jody, what are you doing? Get out of here.”

  “I’m not leaving you. So quit telling me to go.” She flipped the light on and rushed inside. Her stomach dropped when she saw nothing that looked familiar. The large closet was obviously being used for storage now. There were boxes stacked in neat rows all across the back. Labels declared them as “crafts.” Probably for Amelia. She’d always loved making things and took up new craft hobbies all the time. Or at least she used to. There might be something in these boxes Jody could use.