by Paula Graves
He started culling jars with those dates. “Should we open them all?”
She looked up at him, frowning. “I realize this is going to sound strange from a woman who’s terrified for the safety of her son, but these are his favorites, and I’d rather not ruin them if we can figure out which one is the right one.” She turned the jar she held on its side and gave it a little shake. She set it to one side and started to do the same thing to the next jar in her stack. Dalton followed suit, trying to figure out if there was something besides peaches in each of the jars.
“Oh,” Briar said a few minutes later, drawing Dalton’s gaze. She was holding a jar up toward the overhead bulb. Pressing against the side of the jar, Dalton saw with a flutter of excitement, was the corner of a plastic bag.
Briar twisted off the band that held the vacuum-sealed lid on the jar. Pulling a small knife from her jeans pocket, she pried up the lid until it released with a soft pop. “Grab that bucket in the corner,” she told Dalton. He brought it to her and she slowly poured out the sticky fruit contents of the jar until a small zip-sealed sandwich bag fell into the bucket.
She plucked it out with her thumb and forefinger, using the knife blade to scrape off as much of the peach preserves as she could.
Inside, wrapped in more clear plastic, was a small black flash drive.
Chapter Fifteen
Dalton didn’t know what he’d expected Briar to do when she found Johnny’s hidden secret, but dissolving into tears wasn’t it. Big gulping sobs seemed to burst from her throat, beyond her ability to control, as she clutched the sticky bag to her chest and shook with tears. “I was so afraid,” she said. “So afraid it wouldn’t be here. I didn’t know what I was going to do if it wasn’t here.”
He crossed to her side and put his arms around her, half expecting her to push him away. But she let him hold her, pressing her forehead against his shoulder and wetting his shirt with her tears. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice raw with emotion. “I’m sorry.”
She’d been holding herself together by sheer will, he realized, despite her earlier show of composure. Pressing a kiss to her hair, he murmured soft words of comfort, not inclined to hurry her through this reaction to the stress and fear she’d been laboring under since Doyle had called her to break the news about Logan’s disappearance.
But she finally gave herself a shake and pushed her damp curls away from her tearstained face, flashing him a wobbly smile. “That must have been a sight.”
“I’ve felt like doing the same thing for the last three hours,” he admitted. “I’m so sorry about losing Logan.”
“Someone drugged you.”
“Someone I let into my house,” he said bluntly. “Why would I do such a thing with Logan in danger?” The question haunted him, not least because he could remember nothing. Not a hint of anything that had happened to him between bedtime the night before and waking on the sofa to Doyle’s knock on the door.
“We’ll figure it out later,” she said firmly, closing her hands over his arms and giving him a little shake. “For now, we need to figure out what to do with this flash drive.”
“I wonder why Blake hasn’t already called you to make a trade.”
She looked down at the sticky plastic bag, grimacing at the mess the preserves had made on the front of her jacket. “I’m not sure how Blake even knows this thing exists, unless Johnny told someone about it.”
“Whom might he have told?”
“Nobody in his family. He didn’t have much to do with his kin. I guess maybe somebody at the trucking company, maybe one of the other drivers.”
Dalton frowned, trying to remember what he’d learned about Johnny’s job at Davenport Trucking. “What if he mentioned something to Paul Bailey?”
Briar looked up at him. “If he did, no wonder he ended up dead. Bailey was completely in Wayne Cortland’s pocket. But wouldn’t Johnny have known that, if he was copying the files?”
“Maybe he tried warning someone else at Davenport about what Bailey was up to. Maybe someone he didn’t know he couldn’t trust, either.”
Briar walked the plastic bag across the cramped little cellar to an ancient sink standing against one wall. She pulled a paper towel from the holder that hung above the sink and wet it with water from the tap, then went about scrubbing off the remainder of the preserves clinging to the plastic bag. “Johnny never did know who to trust.”
“He should have told you. If this was really about stopping Cortland.” He didn’t want to ask the next question, but he forced the words from his mouth anyway. “Do you think he wanted to stop Cortland? Or was this about getting the information for his own purposes?”
She looked up sharply. “You mean blackmail?”
“That. Or even to set up his own network.”
One corner of her mouth curved upward. “Definitely not that. Johnny wasn’t that ambitious. I don’t really see him as a blackmailer, either.”
“So maybe he really did want to stop what Cortland was doing?”
“Maybe.” She didn’t sound very convinced of that option, either, he noticed. No matter what else he’d been, Johnny Blackwood had clearly been an idiot. He’d had Briar and Logan, and he’d been on the verge of throwing it all away because of his lies and infidelity.
If Dalton had been in his shoes...
You’d have done what, hotshot? Let some stranger into your house to pump you full of drugs and take the kid right out from under your nose?
“Johnny’s old computer is upstairs in the bedroom.” Briar’s voice dragged him from an abyss of self-indictment. “I haven’t turned it on in months, but it probably still works. Want to take a look at what’s on the disk?”
* * *
THE POLICE HAD taken Johnny’s computer not long after his death, hoping to discover some clue to the motive behind his murder. They’d returned it after the fruitless search, and Briar had put it on a table in her bedroom and mostly ignored it except to dust around it now and then.
She held her breath waiting for the system to boot up, feeling the seconds ticking inexorably away from her. Why hadn’t Blake made his move? What if Logan’s kidnapping had nothing to do with this flash drive at all? What then?
Dalton’s hand flattened against her back between her shoulder blades, as if he’d sensed she needed his grounding touch to keep herself from going off the rails. “Just breathe,” he murmured.
The welcome screen popped up, and for an anxious moment Briar couldn’t remember Johnny’s password. Fingers fumbling on the keyboard, she typed in a couple of possible passwords before she remembered what had been important to her late husband. PontiacFirebird92 got her into the system.
“Interesting password,” Dalton said.
“Men and their cars,” she said shortly, not wanting to dwell on the memories. One of the first things she’d had to do after Johnny’s death was sell his beloved Firebird to pay off Johnny’s debts and put a little savings away for the coming lean times. Going from two incomes to one, with very little in savings to pick up the slack, had been stressful on a lot of levels.
She inserted the memory stick into one of the USB ports and crossed her fingers that several months in a jar of peach preserves hadn’t done any damage.
A message informed her the flash drive was loading its own software onto the computer, and a moment later the drive appeared on the list of drives. “Let’s see what we have.”
As she’d suspected, the flash drive was full of photographs. Over two hundred total. There was only one text file on the entire drive. It was titled “ForBR.”
“This is for me,” she said, surprised.
“Open it,” Dalton said.
She double-clicked the file and held her breath. A short note popped up. “Briar, if you ever find this, it means things went bad. I know you won’
t like what I’ve done, but I did it for Logan. He deserves more than we got growing up. But if you’re reading this, I’m probably dead anyway. So do what you want with it.”
Dalton’s hand slid up to her neck, gently kneading the tight muscles bunched there. “Eloquent.” His dry tone left little doubt about his assessment of Johnny’s character.
Briar couldn’t blame him, really. Johnny had been a very flawed man. She didn’t try to defend him.
“You want to see what’s on these files?” Dalton asked.
“Let’s copy them to the computer first.” She pulled up a second window, made a new folder she named JB and started the files copying to the hard drive. The computer was old and slow, and her attempt to access any of the files while they were copying led to nothing but annoyance, as the image program displayed not the expected photograph but a spinning digital hourglass that seemed to taunt Briar as the seconds ticked into minutes.
Giving in to her rising frustration, she stood and crossed impatiently to the window looking out on the small side yard, wondering if the faint glow of the computer had caught the attention of anyone who might be staking out the cabin. She pulled the curtain back a scant inch and peered into the darkness.
“See anyone?” Dalton asked.
“No, but they’re out there.” She let the curtain slide back in place and turned back to look at him. In the faint blue glow of the computer screen, he looked tired and troubled. She knew if she were in his place, the thought of being tricked into letting an enemy into her own home would have been a constant gnawing ache in her soul.
What she couldn’t figure out was why she wasn’t angrier at him. Thanks to his incautious moment, her son was missing and in grave danger, and most of the way home from Virginia, she’d cursed Dalton’s name and planned ways to make him regret his mistake. But by the time she’d arrived at his house and walked through the door to see him sitting there on the sofa looking sick and broken, all her anger had changed course and flowed toward the nameless, faceless person who’d betrayed his trust and left him looking so crushed and heartbroken.
And toward Blake Culpepper, of course, whose wicked greed and ruthlessness had made Logan a target in the first place.
A soft thudding sound from the front of the house drew her attention away from Dalton’s pale face. He turned in his chair, as well, his gaze going toward the bedroom door.
“Stay here. Keep that thing copying.”
“It’ll copy without me,” he said, falling in step as she reached the hallway. “Are you armed?”
“Of course. You?”
“Of course not,” he said with a grimace.
She stepped back into the bedroom and unlocked the closet door. The Mossberg shotgun felt like an old friend in her grip. She grabbed some shells off the top shelf of the closet and loaded both barrels.
Back in the hallway, she pulled the Glock from her holster and handed it to Dalton. “Don’t shoot if you don’t have to. But if you do, go for center mass.”
She edged her way down the hall, stopping just short of the front room. Holding her breath, she dared a quick look around the corner.
The front door was open.
She reached back, her palm connecting with Dalton’s hip. She gave a little squeeze, holding him in place. “They’re already inside,” she whispered, her voice barely more than a breath.
He tensed beneath her touch, but he didn’t flinch or edge back. He was in this thing till the end, she realized. Warmth flooded her body, as if the knowledge that Dalton would have her back was enough to quell the anxiety of facing a darkened room full of God only knew how many ruthless, dangerous men Blake had sent to bring her in.
Blake can’t win, she thought, and for a moment she believed it.
Then all hell broke loose.
* * *
THE TWO CAMOUFLAGE-CLAD men entered the cabin just as Nix, Dana and Doyle reached the edge of the tree line. Doyle and Dana both appeared inclined to rush in after them, but Nix caught them both by their arms. “Wait a minute.”
“They’ve just committed a crime. We have cause to take them in,” Doyle growled.
“Someone’s already in there,” he said quietly. He’d spotted the slightest twitch of a curtain in Briar’s bedroom window, barely visible through the trees as they’d made a stealthy approach through the woods. There was also an odd glow to the room, as if someone had turned on a television or something like it inside.
“Who?”
“If I were a betting man, I’d say it’s Briar. And your brother’s probably with her, too.”
“Her car isn’t anywhere around,” Dana protested.
“So she walked. Or she had another way of getting here.” Nix couldn’t give them a more concrete reason for what was essentially one of his infamous hunches. He’d been teased about his intuition for years, mostly by well-meaning folks on the police force who got a kick of having a real-life Cherokee “seer” among them.
There wasn’t anything paranormal about his hunches, of course. He just paid attention to things like twitching curtains and glowing rooms.
Before Doyle or Dana had a chance to respond, a flurried sound of movement drifted out of the open cabin door, and Nix could no more have stopped Dana and Doyle from rushing toward the cabin than he could stop himself.
Outracing his fiancée and her brother to the porch, he took a leap up the three shallow steps and hit the wooden slats of the porch just as a shotgun blasted from somewhere inside the house. He ducked and rolled toward the side of the porch, crouching in a tight ball. Doyle and Dana, he saw, scattered in opposite directions, away from the open door.
“Anybody moves again, this time I aim for flesh. Got me?”
That was Briar’s voice, Nix realized with an emotion that fluttered between alarm and relief.
A male voice followed, deep and thick with a mountain accent that turned his string of curses into a profane sort of music. But the gist of his flood of expletives was that he understood her words and would do nothing to invite her further wrath.
Nix couldn’t hold back a grin.
* * *
“BILLY HACKMORE AND Terry McDavid.” A thick rime of contempt crusted Briar’s voice as she looked down at the two men Walker Nix and Doyle Massey had just subdued and cuffed. Dalton wondered if she should put down the shotgun now, but he didn’t want to be the one to ask her to do so.
“Boys, at the very least, we have you on breaking and entering. Plus, we’re going to run your names, see if there are any outstanding warrants. And whether or not you have the right paperwork for these weapons.” Doyle waved his hand toward the four pistols lying on the nearby kitchen table. “Seein’ as how they all seem to have the serial numbers filed off, I’m thinkin’ that might be an issue.”
Dalton glanced at his brother. After just a few short months in Bitterwood, Doyle was already losing his flatlander accent and beginning to pick up a mountain twang. His beach tan was also fading. He’d be a mountain man in no time.
Oddly, Dalton was starting to think of himself as a mountain man, as well. The thought of leaving these hills behind didn’t hold nearly as much charm as it once had.
All the charms he could want in the world, he thought as he watched Briar lower her shotgun and shake her rowdy curls back from her face, seemed to be located right here in the Smoky Mountains.
“I’m thinking you don’t have any reason to be loyal to Blake Culpepper beyond the money he tosses your way. Or maybe you’re afraid of him?” At the flicker of fear in both men’s eyes, Doyle leaned a little closer, taking advantage of his own power, both physical and legal, to keep the two captives off guard. “You should be afraid of me instead.”
“Where is Blake?” Briar had apparently reached the end of her patience. She charged closer, making Terry McDavid, who sat nearest her, fli
nch away.
Dalton caught her arm. She whirled on him, and the ferocity of her gaze nearly made him recoil, as well. With obvious effort, she regained control of her anger.
“It’s a good question,” Doyle agreed far more calmly. “Where is Blake Culpepper? Where is he keeping Logan?”
“He’ll kill us if we tell you,” Billy Hackmore said.
“And I’ll make you wish you were dead if you don’t,” Briar growled.
Doyle gave her a pointed look and she growled again but turned away, stalking out through the open front door.
Dalton followed her out, easing his arms around her. She quivered like a wild animal that had been cornered, but after a moment she gentled beneath his touch, leaning back against him. He tightened his embrace, burying his face in her curls. “They don’t owe Culpepper any loyalty,” he murmured. “Doyle will break one of them sooner or later.”
“The longer Logan stays with Blake, the more likely something terrible will happen to him.” A nervous ripple ran through her slender body, and he hugged her tighter. “And even if we find out where he is, what next? A SWAT raid? With my baby as a hostage?”
“We’ll figure something out,” he said, although he wasn’t sure how to avoid just the scenario she imagined. Blake Culpepper was almost certainly well armed. Getting inside and getting Logan out wasn’t going to be easy.
“I have to go alone,” she murmured.
His body stiffened reflexively. “And give him two hostages?”
She turned in his arms, looking up at him in the glow spilling from inside the cabin. Dark shadows of anxiety bruised the flesh around her stormy eyes. “I’m not so easy to take hostage.”
Her skin looked like velvet. He couldn’t resist the urge to touch her cheek, to see if it was as soft as it looked. He brushed the pad of his thumb over her lips, and they parted, her soft breath warming his hand. “I want Logan back with us. More than anything. But I don’t want to sacrifice you to make it happen. There’s got to be a way that doesn’t put you in that man’s hands.”