by KG MacGregor
Buoyed by her backup, she focused on her plan once they got to the lake. They could steal a boat…assuming they could find one that hadn’t been stored already for the winter. Their other option was to track Ancil’s movement from the shore and hope like hell he docked on the Vermont side of the lake.
The map on her phone showed just how easy it was to reach Canada by water. Still, only a speedboat could do it in a couple of hours, and that boat trailer she’d found wasn’t long enough to haul a vessel of that size. At most, it was a small motorboat.
She placed another call to her father. “Pop, get out your laptop. I need you to check something for me online.”
“I’ve got it right here. I was looking at the map. Ham called and said the state police thinks they got in a boat.”
“Yeah, let’s hope they’re out patrolling the lake by now. I need you to figure something out for me. Say a boat left Chimney Point twenty minutes ago going north. Where would it be right now?”
“Depends on the boat. How many engines are you talking?”
“Probably just an outboard. The trailer was single axle. But it has to be big enough for three or four passengers.”
“So about eighteen feet. Probably a cuddy like the one Ham used to have. You’d have to be crazy to go out there in a jon boat as cold as it is.”
He was right. They’d freeze to death out on the water in an open boat.
“All right, so do some math for me. I heard one of them tell somebody on the phone they’d be there by seven o’clock. How far can they go from Chimney Point in a couple of hours? I figure it’s got to be one of the docks—Button Bay, Kingsland Bay or Shelburne. Call me back as soon as you’ve figured it out. But mostly I need to know where they are right now.”
Fields, barns and silos faded past as she skidded and spun. The narrow back road took her well inland before finally jogging west to intersect with the lakefront highway far north of the Chimney Point barricade. She pulled onto the shoulder and checked the map on her phone. It showed the lake right in front of her but all she saw was inky blackness.
Phone in hand, she zipped up her parka and slid through the snow and underbrush down a steep bank to the water’s edge. There she listened, trying to convince herself of the sound of a distant motorboat. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she scanned the water’s surface for anything that seemed to be moving.
Nothing.
The chime of her phone startled her. “Pop, what did you get?”
“New York or Vermont? You didn’t say which side.”
If they docked on the New York shore, there was no way for Zann to catch them. There were only three routes across the lake—Chimney Point and Larrabee’s Ferry behind her, and US 2 just this side of the Canadian border. “It has to be Vermont…has to be.”
“Good, Vermont has a lot more landings. But here’s your problem—you’re looking at anywhere between Kingsland Bay and Burlington. That’s a lot of territory to cover. And they might be headed for a private boat dock.”
Of course. She might be able to head them off if she got north of them on the shore. “Where would they be right now?”
“Best guess is around Rock Island. You know where that is?”
“Got it.” It was on her map about three miles north of her current position. She scrambled up the bank and raced back to her car. Squealing back onto the road, she said, “Keep me posted. I need to get in front of them.”
“Zann, the police are all over it now. They’re looking in three different states and Canada.”
“Wait…Everett!”
“What? Where’s Everett?”
“Everett’s not a where, it’s a who.” It was the longest of long shots but it was the only other clue she had. “I heard him tell some guy named Everett they’d meet him around seven o’clock. All the property tax records are online, right? So pull up everything between Kingsland Bay and Shelburne and see if there’s somebody named Everett with a house near the water.”
“First or last?”
“I don’t know. Try both.” Ancil had called everyone by their first name. “I’ve got to keep moving, Pop. Call me if you find anything.”
Ignoring the posted speed limits, she pushed past everyone in her way until she reached Button Bay State Park. Wes’s pickup, illuminated by its running lights, sat at the entrance. She flashed her headlights and slowed enough for him to fall in behind. At the far end of the park was a boat ramp, where she parked and raced all the way out to the shore.
“I take it we’re looking for a boat,” he said gruffly as he joined her, raising a pair of binoculars just as a three-quarter moon broke through the clouds to bathe the landscape in contrasts.
“Thanks for coming. If I’m right, they’ll be rounding that point any minute now.”
“How many we talking about?”
“Probably no more than two. They aren’t exactly trained commandos but they’re both armed. One guy, Ancil Leclerc…he’s real trouble. He killed their other partner, lured him in the back room and shot him in the stomach. It was cold, man.” She shuddered at the ruthlessness of Scotty’s murder and the knowledge that Ancil would do it again without batting an eye. “They’re chasing seven million dollars worth of heroin. Marleigh’s friend Bridget…turns out her boyfriend’s a mule. He picked up their shipment in New York and ran off with it. Now they’re using Bridget to try to lure him out. What scares me is they don’t need Marleigh. They could threaten her just to get—”
Wes’s hand went up as he peered out across the lake. “I got something.”
She eagerly took his binoculars and discovered they were night vision, lighting up the shadows in various shades of green. Sure enough, there was a small motorboat rounding the point with two figures visible at the console.
“That’s gotta be them,” he added. “They’re running dark.”
The men were wrapped in blankets all the way to their heads, but one was unmistakably slight in stature—Ancil. “That’s them, all right.”
“Want me to call the cops?”
“Not yet…I don’t want them to panic and do something stupid. If they cross over to New York, we’re screwed.” As the boat pulled even with their position on the shore, her phone rang. “Pop, we found them. They’re passing Button Bay right now. What have you got?”
“Two properties, both of them right on the lake. One belongs to a Stephen Everett, the other to an Everett Percy. Both assessed around a million four. The first looks like it could be a farm, eight and a half acres south of Shelburne. Percy’s is a six thousand square-foot house—pretty fancy if it’s worth that much.”
This was the break Zann needed. She and Wes could lie in wait for the boat to arrive and surprise the captors. “I want you to call Ham and tell him to send the cops up toward Shelburne, tell him you got a tip. But don’t give him the exact address until I give you the word. If they show up with lights and sirens, it’ll scare them off. I need these bastards to dock.”
“Zann, you be careful.”
Careful, but focused and determined. Tonight she was a trained combat soldier tracking the enemy. “Don’t worry, Pop. I know what I’m doing. Send me everything you can find on both of those guys.”
“Leave your Jeep,” Wes said. “We’ll be a lot less obvious if we don’t look like we’re having a parade.”
Her only reluctance—that he might not drive as fast as she did—proved not to be a problem. Plus his truck was equipped with an elaborate navigation system that allowed him to issue voice commands. Stephen Everett’s farm was only twelve minutes away.
“What is it with you guys and your trucks? Is this some kind of…extension?” Her joke was a feeble effort to calm the adrenaline pumping through her veins. It reminded her of Whitney Laird’s lame banter, something she’d done to break the tension as their unit entered a village. It was unsettling to have Whit invading her thoughts now of all times.
“Don’t knock it. I’ll take it over that rusty bucket of bolts you drive any d
ay.” He gestured toward the crew cab space behind them. “Check out the hardware. So happens I brought your Legion.”
“You mean your Legion.” It was pure luck she’d sold her guns back to Wes. That meant going in with something she’d trained on, something she’d fired hundreds of times. “How about the Colt?”
“How about a SIG M400 instead?”
A top of the line assault rifle. “You spoil me.”
“Only the best for my friends.”
His simple acknowledgment of their friendship should have been gratifying. Instead she felt guilty for dropping off his radar after selling back her guns, unable to explain herself or to face the idea of sharing her feelings with the veterans group. What good were their opinions at that point? She wasn’t looking for comfort or support for killing her own soldier.
“You realize what we’re doing here is a little outside the lines,” he said. “There probably ain’t a court in the land that’s gonna let us off if we go into a man’s house and shoot him.”
She’d thought about that. They weren’t operating under military rules of engagement that allowed them to storm an enemy camp and fire away at anyone who fought back. Even the cops were expected to show restraint. “If you want out, fine. But I’m not going to sit on my ass while these bastards threaten my wife. I’d gladly live out my days in a prison cell if it means she gets out of this in one piece.”
“Never said I wanted out. You think I’m gonna sit by while you have all the fun? I just wanted to make sure you remembered this is Vermont, not Afghanistan. There ain’t nothing you can do here that’s gonna change what you did there.”
That was a sucker punch. This was about saving Marleigh, not Whit.
“That’s right,” he went on, scolding her with a condescending gaze, which he seemed to think showed compassion and insight. “I looked up your commendation. You lost somebody over there and it’s still messing with you. That’s why you started shooting again, so you’d be ready next time.”
Zann felt as if a scab had been ripped off her soul. “How could you possibly know what’s in my head?”
“’Cause it’s in mine too. I lost three guys to an old, decrepit suicide bomber after I told ’em to show some respect for their elders. You know what that’s called? Shit you have to live with. But you think I don’t see his wrinkled-ass face every time I pull a trigger?”
What a horrible burden to carry through life, three lives lost forever because he believed in humanity. “Jesus, I’m sorry. That’s just so…some days I wonder if we don’t all belong in a mental hospital.”
He snorted. “Yeah, like the VA’s gonna pay for that!”
“You have arrived at your destination.”
Zann shook off the heaviness and turned her attention to the farm. The lot was long and narrow, with a two-story frame house at one end and a flat, snow-covered field that fronted the lake at the other.
“This doesn’t look much like the castle of a drug lord,” Wes said.
She agreed but wasn’t going to leave without checking it out. “Stay here. I’ll go have a look in the windows.”
“Maybe I should do it…nah, never mind.” Obviously he’d forgotten for a moment she was a Marine.
Approaching the house, she aimed a penlight at the pair of vehicles parked in the drive, a pickup and a hatchback with bumper stickers touting local produce. A peek through the window confirmed her conclusion this was not Ancil’s destination. A woman of about seventy stirred a pot at the stove while a man of the same age wearing nothing but an earnest look piled laundry into a washing machine.
She jogged back to the truck and slid quietly into the passenger seat. “I’d give anything not to have looked in that window.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Everett Percy was definitely their guy. It wasn’t the house that tipped them off, though it was certainly grand, glittering from bottom to top with up-lighting and floor-to-ceiling glass that allowed one to see through it to the lake. It wasn’t even the two luxury vehicles that sat on the circular drive. What gave Percy away was the infrared beam that ran at ground level from each side of the gated entrance to the corners of the property. Drug dealers needed warning when someone entered the premises unexpectedly.
“What do you think?” she asked Wes, who’d just returned from an exploration of the perimeter.
“There’s only one clean way in. We have to climb a tree and hop over to the roof of the boat shed. Then we’ve got a whole new problem ’cause the backyard looks like it’s wired with motion detectors.”
The best way to beat a motion detector was to move while movement was expected. “Those guys will set off the sensors when they dock. We could hang out on the roof and go in when they do.”
He nodded absently. “Like hiding in plain sight. See, that’s why they pay captains more than sergeants.”
She followed him around the wall through the neighbor’s yard to the water’s edge, where the thick trunk of a beech tree forked high above Everett Percy’s boathouse, leaving about a four-foot drop to the roof. Climbing out on a branch was the easy part. The real trick would be sticking the landing on the steep slope, especially if it was icy.
“Guess we’re about to find out how a mountain goat feels,” Wes said, grunting as he hoisted himself up to the fork. A strip of bark gave way beneath him and he flailed at a branch to regain his balance. “Last time I did this, I was twelve. You wanna hand up your gear?”
“I’m good.” The Legion was tucked inside the pocket of her coat and a strap held the rifle in place across her chest. She pulled herself up to join him, acutely aware her right arm was doing most of the work. Hanging back while Wes walked out on the limb, she studied the hand- and footholds he used. Simple enough. But to reach the roof, she’d have to lower herself and drop, something she wasn’t sure she could do given her weakened grip.
Wes was down, girding himself at the apex of the roof to help break her fall should she slip. “Easy does it, Cap’n.”
“If I fall on my ass and set off the alarm, I want you to shoot whoever runs over here to check it out.”
“My pleasure.”
It was hard not to feel exposed, though the bright lights inside the house made it unlikely anyone could see out. She crouched and wrapped herself around the branch, mentally gauging the mechanics of the maneuver and how she’d compensate if her left hand gave way. Before she could start her drop, Wes caught her foot and absorbed her weight as she lowered herself…as though he’d known all along she couldn’t do it on her own. “Thanks, man.”
“Save that hand of yours for target practice.”
They settled on the back side of the slope, a position that kept them mostly hidden but allowed them to watch both the house and the dock. Tall glass doors opened onto an expansive brick patio, where a snowy path had been cleared to the dock. Inside were two men, one a prim-looking man with silver hair who paced the room, cocktail in hand. That had to be sixty-eight-year-old Everett Percy, according to the public records her father had unearthed. Officially, he was CEO of a distribution network for sundries, mundane items that filled impulse displays in grocery stores and bodegas. Probably how he moved heroin as well…a few packs here, a few there…with each layer of the network taking its cut. From the way Ancil had spoken to him over the phone, he was at the top of the chain. Only a powerful man could have pulled the strings for a daring escapade like the one Ancil had launched today.
The second man was a hulking giant whose rigid posture and position near the door made her think he was a bodyguard. A guy his size could be trouble. While holding a phone to his ear, his eyes remained fixed on the dock.
“There’s a rifle laying across one of them chairs at the dining table,” Wes said as he handed her the binoculars. “And the big fella’s probably wearing a piece.”
“I expected as much. The old guy is Everett Percy. I don’t see a gun on him. He strikes me as someone who doesn’t like to get his hands dirty.”
“W
ell, I’m not gonna turn my back on him.” He whacked her shoulder gently with the back of his hand. “Hey, you hear what I hear?”
The humming of a boat engine grew louder as the beefy man put his phone away and stepped outside to a flood of security lights turned on by the motion sensor. Inside, Percy set his drink aside in anticipation of the new arrivals.
The boat puttered as it neared the dock and the men aboard came into view. Zann ID’d David as the one scrambling to toss a rope over a mooring cleat, nearly falling into the water as the vessel rocked in its own wake. She watched for Marleigh and Bridget, her anxiety turning to panic at seeing only the men. The women’s footprints back at the sportsman’s lodge proved they’d gotten on the boat. What if Ancil had pushed them out after Bridget failed to cooperate?
“Sasha! It is very good to see you again, my friend. How is Everett?” Ancil’s exuberant greeting sounded as fake as when he’d lured Scotty to his murder.
“Mr. Percy is waiting for you,” the hulk replied tersely, his breath leaving a cloud in the cold air. Like Ancil, he spoke with an accent, but it wasn’t French-Canadian. More like Eastern European. “He wants to know when you’re going to get his shipment back.”
“Soon, mon ami. I have Luc Michaux’s girlfriend, who will lead us to his father. I am certain Luc will do whatever we ask if we promise not to cut off any of his old man’s ears.”
So Bridget was on board, apparently in the cuddy cabin beneath the steering console. Clinging to the image of two sets of footprints in the snow, Zann told herself Marleigh had to be there too. If Ancil had wanted to kill her, he’d have left her body in the SUV.
She clicked out a message on her cell phone. “I’m texting my dad to wait three more minutes and send the cops. They should be clear of the boat by then. We need to get down there and seal the back.” For the second time that day, she thought of her team getting pinned down in the alley in Girishk, how reinforcements had driven the insurgents backward into a trap. That would work here too. When the cops came through the front gate, Ancil and the others would try to escape out the back—where she and Wes would be waiting.