When the Wolf Prowls

by Vanessa Prelatte

  “Definitely information that would have helped the CBI during the original investigation. What about his wife’s personal effects? Did Marty have any information about what Jed did with them?”

  “Marty claimed that Jed had arranged for an old follower to receive his wife’s personal effects and hold onto them for him. In fact, one of the first things Foxe did after Marc started visiting him was to send him to get the Serenity medallion.”

  “Okay. Follow up on that, Sok. Find and interview that follower; get him to corroborate that he gave the medallion to Marc. Now, what about the Brown River Ranch? Did you find out anything when you stopped there?”

  “Yeah. The owner’s name is Buford Stilton. He was waiting for us on his veranda when we got to his house. He confirmed that Marc had worked for him several years back. When he asked us why we were interested in Marc, we told him that we wanted to question him regarding the disappearance and murder of several young women. He seemed really surprised by that.”

  “He did?”

  “Uh-huh. He said that he found it hard to swallow, because he never saw anything in Marc that would have led him to believe Marc would be capable of something like that.”

  “How did he come across to Stilton?”

  “Stilton said that Marc was quiet. Competent. Hard-working. Not a hell-raiser, like some of the other hands. He could always depend on Marc to do his job. Stilton didn’t seem to know much more about him, so we asked him if he knew of anyone who was close to Marc when he worked at the ranch, anyone he would have confided in.”

  “I’m hoping that he gave you a name.”

  “He did. Cy Prezlocki. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Prezlocki moved on. Left the ranch about a year ago, and Stilton lost track of him. Prentiss and I are trying to get a lead on him, find out where he’s working now.”

  “Keep me updated, Sok. I’d be interested in hearing what Prezlocki has to say.”

  “Will do, D.C. Meanwhile, what about you? Any new leads?”

  “Not yet. There are teams in the field, showing Marc Foxe’s picture to all locations within a thirty mile radius of the spot where Kit Blakewood’s car was found, but none of them has turned up anything yet.”

  Dawn said goodbye and disconnected the call with Sokoto. She was just about to try Marc’s adoptive parents again when she looked up and saw Rick bearing down on her.

  “Get a move on, D.C. We’re in the field.”

  Dawn raised her brows. “One of the teams got a hit on Marc?”

  “No. Not that. But we just got a call from the police station in Tenby. That’s a small town northwest of here, between Fairview and the Beulah Valley. A couple walked in there this morning, in bad shape. According to them, a man abducted them at gun point yesterday about a hundred miles north of here and forced them to drive him south. Eventually, the woman, whom the perp had forced to drive, deliberately wrecked the car. The perp attacked her, but her husband, who had been locked in the trunk, got loose and charged him. The perp took off after that, and the couple walked all night until they reached town. When they described their assailant, it rang a bell with one of the officers. He showed them Marc’s picture, and they made a positive identification. It was Foxe, all right.”

  Dawn rose from her seat and grabbed her jacket. “How long will it take us to get there?” she asked.

  “It’s about an hour away from here, so the sooner we get started, the better.”

  As they walked out to the car, Dawn asked, “How are they doing? The couple, I mean. Were they hurt in the wreck?”

  “The man is all right, but the woman was hurt pretty badly. They took her to the local hospital.”

  “Names?”

  “Mitch and Kayla Nyequist.”

  When Dawn and Rick walked into the waiting room at the hospital in Tenby, they saw a tall, dark-haired young man built like a linebacker pacing about restlessly.

  “Mitch Nyequist?” Rick asked.

  The young man stopped his pacing, fixed his eyes upon Rick, and answered, “Yeah, that’s me. Who are you?”

  Rick flashed his badge. “I’m Special Agent Adam Rikovsky.” Indicating Dawn, he said, “This is Detective Cimarron from the Mountpelier Police Department. We’re working together on this case. How’s your wife? We understand that the two of you went through a rough time.”

  Mitch stared down at his hands, which were balled into two tight fists. He slowly unclenched his fingers and took a deep breath before responding, “I almost lost her. That bastard practically choked the life out of Kayla before I got to her. I had to give her mouth-to-mouth. It seemed like forever before she started breathing again.”

  “But she’s all right now?”

  “She’s okay, but she has a broken collarbone. They’re treating her right now.”

  “Look, can you tell us about it? The whole thing, right from the beginning.”

  Mitch ran his hand through his hair. “I already told the local sheriff what happened.”

  “Can you run through it for us again? The guy who kidnapped you and hurt your wife is a suspect in another case. We’re trying to find him. Maybe we can connect something you say with another aspect of the case. Maybe that will help us find him before he can hurt someone else.”

  Mitch sized the two detectives up, his nostrils flaring. Folding his powerful arms across his chest, he began, “I would have fought him if he hadn’t had a gun. He made Kayla tie me up and then forced me into the trunk. Next, I heard him order Kayla to get in the driver’s seat, start driving. I lost track of time, but it seemed like we were on the road for hours.

  “All I could think about was how to get loose so that the minute the trunk was opened again, I could go into action. My hands were tied behind my back, but I groped around with them and managed to get my hands on the jack. It was an old one with a jagged edge, and I used it to start sawing away at the twine around my wrists. My hands were almost free when suddenly the car sped up. I remember thinking that Kayla was driving like a crazy woman, and I was flung all about in the trunk. Then we smashed into something, and I felt like the car went airborne. The next think I knew, the car had crashed to the ground again, and the trunk flew open. I tore the last of the twine off my hands and shot out of the trunk.

  “Kayla was a few yards away, fighting with him – the asshole who’d carjacked us. She’s taken kickboxing for years, my Kayla, and she was holding her own at first, keeping him at bay. But then he got the upper hand and managed to wrestle her down.

  “I ripped the bindings off my ankles, grabbed the tire iron from the trunk, and dashed over to the spot where he had her on the ground. By then, he had his hands around Kayla’s neck, choking her. I must have made plenty of noise on the way toward him, because he suddenly looked up and spotted me. When I charged him, he just let Kayla go, sprang to his feet, and turned tail, running away like a rabbit,” Mitch said. “What a coward. He was brave enough to tangle with a woman, but he was afraid to take on a man.

  “I would have given chase, but I couldn’t. When I checked on Kayla, she wasn’t breathing. Like I said, I gave her mouth-to-mouth. The best moment of my life was when she started breathing again.”

  “And then?”

  “She didn’t regain consciousness immediately. When she did, she was in a lot of pain. I carried her back to the car, put her inside, tried to make her comfortable. Then I checked to see if there was any way I could get the car running again, get it back up the hill to the road, but there was no way. The incline was too steep, and the car was too damaged.

  “The S.O.B. had taken both of our cell phones, so I realized that we were going to have to walk out of there, go for help. I couldn’t leave Kayla – the bastard could still be in the area. She had some over-the-counter painkillers for headache in her purse, so she took a couple of those. We climbed up the hill to the road and hiked into town. She was still in a lot of pain but she didn’t complain,” Mitch concluded proudly. “Not once.”

  He broke off and h
urried to the door as the doctor entered the room.

  “How is she?” Mitch demanded.

  “She’s going to be fine,” the doctor responded. “We’ve treated her and given her something for the pain. You can see her now, if you want.”

  “Is she conscious?” Rick interrupted.

  The doctor frowned. “Who are you?”

  “They’re the police,” Mitch answered. “They want to ask Kayla some questions about the guy who abducted us.”

  “May we see her?” Rick pressed.

  “I would advise against it, but it’s up to her husband.”

  Rick turned to Mitch. “We’d really like to talk to Kayla, get her side of the story.”

  Mitch didn’t hesitate. “Follow me,” he said. After getting her room number from the doctor, he led the way to Kayla’s room. There he paused.

  “Look, wait here for a minute. Let me make sure she’s okay with talking to you first.” He returned in under a minute and gestured for them to enter the room. After introducing them to his wife, he sat down on the bed, propping himself up beside her.

  Kayla Nyequist, a little firecracker of a woman who couldn’t have weighed more than 105 pounds when wet, took them through her side of the story, right up to the point where she decided to crash the car.

  “Smart move on your part, forcing the guy to get rid of the gun,” Rick commented to Kayla. “Brave, too.”

  Kayla closed her eyes for a minute and turned her head into her husband’s shoulder. “I wasn’t feeling brave at the time,” she admitted. “More like desperate, I think.” She lifted her head up again and added, “I knew that I somehow had to take the gun out of the picture. He was going to kill us. Well, maybe not me, but I knew that he was planning on using that gun on Mitch, eventually. And I decided I’d rather be dead than live without him. If I crashed the car, we had a chance. If I didn’t, there was no chance at all. Not for Mitch.”

  “What made you think he would let you live, Kayla?”

  “He kept rambling on about men and women and their respective roles. How men were supposed to be dominant and women submissive. They were supposed to stay at home and take care of their husbands and children. Oh, and women who worked outside of the home were destroying family life, according to him.

  “He was eating one of the sandwiches we’d packed for lunch at that point. Suddenly he was waving it in my face. Started ranting on about how horrible store-bought bread was. Women never baked their own bread anymore because they didn’t have the time, he said. It was a sin for women to put their jobs first and make their families eat crap like store-bought bread.”

  “Interesting. Did he say anything else on that theme?”

  “Oh, yeah. He talked about how ‘his woman’ was upset when he forced her to learn how to bake bread from scratch. She’d complained and complained about it. They didn’t have air-conditioning in the ranch house, so she complained that it made the kitchen too hot.”

  “Ranch house?”

  “Yeah. That’s what he said. He then started on how women should speak only when spoken to. How he’d had to ‘discipline’ her – his ‘woman’, I guess – time and time again for shirking her work and nagging and complaining. If she was hurt, it was her own fault. Everything would have been fine if only she’d stayed in her place and behaved like Serenity.”

  “Serenity?”

  “His step-mother, I think. He talked on and on about her, how she was the perfect woman. You ask me? I think he was a little in love with her. His own step-mother. Sick S.O.B.”

  “And after that?”

  A smile crossed Kayla’s face. “I kept agreeing and agreeing and agreeing with him until he finally shut up. I wanted to take him off-guard, you see, make him underestimate me. It worked. You should have heard the panic in his voice when I started speeding! At one point, I thought he was going to wet himself, he was so scared.”

  Mitch lifted her hand and held it to his lips. “You saved us. Both of us.”

  “Not really. I think he would have killed me, choked me to death when he caught up with me if you hadn’t come after us. He was so enraged.”

  She turned back to the two detectives. “You want to know the really strange thing? As he was chasing me, he kept shouting, ‘How dare you! How dare you!’ I guess he really believed all that ‘women should be meek and submissive’ crap.”

  Mitch grinned. “Not my woman. I like the strong, kick-ass type, myself.”

  He kissed Kayla’s fingers and took up the story. “After we hiked back up the hill to the road, we started walking. We were hoping that we could hitch a ride, but no cars came by. Not one. It took us most of the night to make it into town, but once we got here, they couldn’t have taken better care of us.”

  Looking around the hospital room, Mitch gave a wry smile and commented, “Heck of a way to spend a honeymoon, don’t you think?”

  Chapter 36

  Three hours and one hundred sixty miles away from the small town of Tenby, Rafe Melbourne looked around his own hospital room, seething with frustration. According to the latest update from Detective Sokoto, the Foxe case – his case – was on the verge of breaking wide open. And where was he? Stuck in a hospital bed, that was where, surrounded by a bevy of females determined to play at being ministering angels.

  “No, really – you don’t have to do that,” Rafe protested as Tara attempted to fluff up his pillow once again. “I’m perfectly comfortable the way I am.”

  “If you’re perfectly comfortable, why do you keep squirming around in that bed?” Tara said.

  “I’m just restless,” Rafe replied. “All this enforced inactivity is getting to me.”

  He shut his eyes, hoping that he was dreaming, but when he opened them again, he had to face the fact that his visitors were no mirage. In addition to Tara, Ty’s cousin Lotti and her best friend, Bree, were gathered around his bed, all three of them seeking ways to render assistance.

  Sloan and Maeve Lewellen had introduced Tara to Lotti when they had all arrived simultaneously to visit Rafe the day before. Lotti had in turn introduced Tara to Bree. Somehow, within the space of twenty-four hours, the three young women had become fast friends.

  Seeking to divert attention away from himself, Rafe grinned at Bree and asked, “So, how’s everything going between you and Corey?”

  Bree’s smile turned to a frown.

  “Unfortunately, Corey is now history, Rafe. I gave him his walking papers about a month ago.”

  “Really? That surprises me. It seemed to me that the two of you were getting along great the last time we were together.”

  Rafe, Lotti, Bree, and Corey had gone skiing together back in February. The whole trip had come about when Lotti and Rafe had been having coffee together after Lotti attended the first session of a self-defense course Rafe conducted periodically for women. He had been surprised when Lotti mentioned how she had enjoyed skiing in the Alps when she lived in Europe. Up until then, Rafe hadn’t taken Lotti for the athletic type. When he’d pressed her on the subject, she told him that she had given up skiing once she got married.

  Given what he knew about her unhappy marriage, Rafe hadn’t pressed the point. He’d simply suggested that they go skiing together. Lotti had suggested it might be fun to go as a foursome, so she had invited Bree and Corey to go with them. During the trip, Rafe had gotten the impression that things were beginning to get serious between Bree and Corey.

  “We did get along great – most of the time,” Bree admitted. “But the more serious we got, the more possessive Corey became. He started flying off the handle if I so much as spoke to another man. I’m talking just common courtesy here, Rafe. Just ordinary politeness to male co-workers, for example. No matter how much I explained to Corey that it didn’t mean anything, he’d still get really nasty about it. So I decided to cut him loose.”

  “Smart move, Bree,” Rafe commented. “Guys like that only get worse as time goes on.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”<
br />
  “Are you dating anyone else now?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly? What does that mean?”

  Bree exchanged a glance with Lotti.

  “Go ahead, Bree. Tell him about your latest conquest,” Lotti encouraged.

  “No – it’s early days yet. I don’t know if I want to jinx it by talking too much about it.”

  “Jinx it? Now you’ve aroused my curiosity, Bree. You’re going to have to cough up some details for me.” When Bree still looked doubtful, Rafe added, “Come on, Bree. It will help take my mind off the pain.”

  Tara gave him an “Oh, puh-lease” glance, but the ploy worked. Bree took a deep breath and said, “His name is Neville. We met last month when I was on a business trip to Chicago.”

  “He lives in Chicago?” Rafe repeated.

  “Yes. That’s another reason I’m not really talking much about it. Long-distance relationships rarely work out.”

  “But you travel to Chicago frequently on business,” Lotti pointed out.

  “Yeah – there is that. And he did mention that maybe he would arrange to come down to visit me here in Mountpelier some time. But I’m not holding my breath.”

  Bree looked at Lotti. “We’d better get going,” she said. “We arranged to meet Maeve for lunch at Quinerius.”

  After Lotti and Bree had departed, Tara said, “She likes you, Rafe. If you were to ask her out, she’d say yes.”

  “Who – Bree?” Rafe said, deliberately misunderstanding. “Sounds like this guy Neville has the inside track with her right now, and I’m in no shape to compete with him.”

  “I was talking about Lotti, not Bree, and you darn well know it. So, why isn’t she your girlfriend?”

  “Lotti just got out of a bad marriage and isn’t ready for any sort of a new relationship right now. She enrolled in a self-defense course I was teaching, and we became friends. We get together every once in a while. Now that she knows the rudiments of self-defense, I’m also teaching her how to shoot.”