by Kait Nolan
“Chief of what?”
“Wishful PD,” Ethan answered.
“You’re outta your jurisdiction, ain’t you?”
Ignoring that, Ethan continued. “I’m here to ask you some questions about a friend of yours. Harley Forbes.”
“Don’t know no Harley Forbes.”
“We’ve already got witnesses placing the two of you together. We know he’s one of your dealers. So start talking.”
“Dealers for what?”
“Maybe for the prescription narcotics you’ve got hidden in plastic bags in the tank of the toilet,” Deputy Nichols suggested. He stepped into the room, a Ziplock bag dangling from his gloved hand.
Judd offered a pleasant smile that fooled no one. “You’re caught, Eugene. We’ve got enough here to shut you down, so you might as well cooperate.”
Eugene’s face reddened and he began to swear. “Goddamn it. I knew this would happen. I fucking knew as soon as he brought that woman here, you cops would come sniffing around.”
“What woman?” Ethan demanded. “What do you know?”
Sensing he had something of value to trade, Willig smirked. “What’s in it for me?”
Ethan grabbed him by the throat, hauling him to his feet. “I don’t snap your neck right here.”
Willig’s eyes bugged out, and he gasped.
“Ethan, if you kill the bastard, it’s going to mean a helluva lot of paperwork,” Judd said mildly.
“He...he...”
Ethan relaxed his grip, so Willig could speak.
“He had her in the barn. Trussed up like a goddamned turkey. I told him he had to leave.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. Maybe half an hour ago.”
“Did he leave?”
“I don’t know.”
Ethan squeezed.
“I don’t! I didn’t get involved. I just wanted him gone,” Eugene rasped. “The fucker had a knife. He knows how to use it. I wasn’t about to go up against that. Not when he was looking so…cr…crazy.”
A hand gripped Ethan’s shoulder. “He’s turning purple, man. Let him go.”
Ethan threw Willig back to the sofa, where the little man coughed and wheezed.
“Crazy how?”
“Crazy like he’d be happy to stick me like a pig if I got in his way any more. The only reason I had any leverage at all is he’s been working for me and he likes the money that comes with being one of my dealers. I didn’t like the look of him, so I came back to the house and locked the fucking door. I swear that’s all I know.”
Ethan was already headed for the door. “We have to check the barn.”
Leaving Willig with Deputy Nichols, Ethan, Judd, and Deputy Rickett headed for the dilapidated structure a hundred yards away that passed for a barn. Moving fast and low, they circled the building. No vehicle outside. No lights shone through the gaps between the boards. The whole damned place had an air of abandonment that did nothing to quell Ethan’s fears about what could be waiting inside.
Converging at the front, the deputy gripped the wide door. Ethan and Judd pressed against the side, ready to slip in and clear the space. At his nod, Rickett hauled the door open. Ethan slipped inside, going left as Judd went right. He cleared the row of stalls as Judd did the same. The deputy headed up the ladder to the hay loft as Ethan and Judd converged on the closed door of what was probably a storage or tack room.
Ethan kicked it in, sweeping inside. But there was no one in the room. “Empty. The whole place is clear. Get some lights on.”
As ancient fluorescent lights flickered to life, he squinted and took in the space. His gut twisted.
A chair lay on its side, spindles broken, a length of dirty rope still partly attached. Wads of duct tape littered the floor. Blood glimmered against the silver of the tape.
“She was here.” And she was hurt. Probably from her bindings.
He was going to kill Harley when he found him.
Judd crouched down but didn’t touch anything. “Looks like she got loose. There’s not enough blood here to suggest she’s bleeding out or seriously injured.”
Had she managed to escape? A flare of hope sparked. He knelt, dabbing a finger against the bloody tape. “It’s still mostly wet. She hasn’t been gone long.” He and Judd exchanged a look. “Fan out.”
No clear tracks showed in the hard-packed dirt floor. Heading back to the door, he shouted. “Miranda!”
No answering shout or even a whimper came back. Only the quiet of the night.
If she’d gotten free, which way would she have run? To the house, hoping for help? Or to the overgrown fields, thinking to hide? This time of year, there was nothing growing. Not a lot of cover either way. Not until the treeline another hundred yards away. She didn’t have shoes. None of this terrain was easy on bare feet. The crushed gray gravel around the barn would probably have sliced them. He panned his flashlight in a widening arc from the door of the barn, looking for traces of blood.
“Over here!” Judd shouted.
Ethan sprinted for him. He knew before he reached Judd’s side that he hadn’t found Miranda. The ground was churned up, as if someone had been tackled.
Judd pointed with his own flashlight to a hoof pick a few feet away. “There’s blood spatter. Best guess, she got a piece of him when he took her down.”
“Not a big enough piece to kill him.” Which meant Harley was that much more pissed off. What would he do to punish her? “Shit! Where the fuck has he taken her?”
Chapter 24
Miranda came to in agony. A sharp pain radiated from her temple and nausea roiled in her stomach. Her whole world felt fuzzy. Some part of her brain catalogued injuries. Concussion. Multiple contusions. Abrasions. One eye would barely open. Her limbs were numb with pain. She couldn’t breathe properly, and copper coated the back of her throat. Blood.
The relief of unconsciousness dragged at her like a riptide. Everything would feel better if she could just sleep... But there was some reason she couldn’t do that.
What the hell had happened? Had she been in a wreck?
Something dinged. What was that? Some kind of monitor? Was she in the hospital?
“Son of a bitch.”
The angry male voice had her one good eye going wide.
Harley.
She’d come so close to escaping, but he’d caught her at the edge of the fields, taking her down with a flying tackle worthy of Super Bowl Sunday. She’d fought back, slashing with the hoof pick and catching him in the shoulder. But she hadn’t hit anything vital, and he’d struck her full in the face. Given the pain radiating out, he’d probably broken her nose. Jesus, it was a miracle she hadn’t choked on her own blood.
Now she was back in the rear of her Grand Cherokee, bound again, beneath a blanket. From the front, Harley continued to curse, muttering something about irresponsible women and proper car maintenance. What was he talking about?
The low fuel light. She knew she’d been getting low, but she’d intended to wait until morning. He didn’t have more than forty miles left in the tank. Either he’d have to stop to refuel or he wouldn’t be able to go far.
Surely everyone would be looking for her by now. They’d know he had her Jeep. He’d be sticking to back roads, and there was no way he’d return to his own place in search of gas. Ethan would undoubtedly have it under surveillance. So where could he go?
Judging by the amount of cursing going on, his original plan had been screwed. Was that a good thing? No time for the long, drawn out torture session he’d apparently been imagining. And surely, no opportunity to set up any kind of sophisticated trap for Ethan. But did that mean he’d cut his losses and kill her quickly? She knew he wouldn’t just let her go. He was in too deep, so he had to finish this, one way or the other.
Her brain felt sluggish and the temptation to slide back into oblivion was huge. She just wanted to stop feeling the pain.
Must. Stay. Awake.
The caution did nothing to sto
p her drooping eyes. The next thing she knew, a crash yanked her back to consciousness as a shudder ripped through the Jeep. The engine revved high as Harley swerved and skidded along the road. Miranda’s stomach rolled as she tensed, waiting for the car to flip. But Harley managed to right it. What had he hit?
A minute later, he rolled to a stop and turned off the motor. For a few seconds, Miranda panicked, trying to come up with something, anything she could use to fight. But there was nothing. She’d lost her one chance.
The back hatch opened. Harley flipped the blanket back and chill night air rolled over her, cooling her heated skin. He grabbed her ankles and dragged her to the edge.
“Sit up. I know you’re awake.”
Miranda struggled to move, her abused limbs refusing to cooperate. The pain in her side had her gasping. She added bruised ribs to her inventory. Probably from the kicks.
“I ain’t gonna ask again.” The unmistakable sound of a gun being chambered punctuated his statement.
Her mouth went impossibly drier, but she made it more or less vertical.
Harley grabbed her roughly by the arm and hauled her to standing. She almost went down in a heap the moment her feet touched the ground. Only his vise-like grip kept her upright. This time he’d only bound her knees together, leaving her ankles free. “Walk.”
Walk? Walk where?
He navigated her around the end of the Jeep and toward a long metal building. As best as she could, Miranda scanned her surroundings as she shuffled along with her captor. He’d parked in the lea of a loading dock. She could just make out a chainlink perimeter fence. Was that what he’d hit? Had he driven straight through a gate?
If they were still near Wishful, this had to be one of the defunct factories. Which one was it that Harley had worked for? Heirloom Home Furnishings. The place had stood empty for more than a year and a half since the parent company moved manufacturing to Mexico. Miranda knew Norah had been trying to find some means of repurposing the space, but so far, there’d been no bites. It was about five miles out from town proper. It backed up to woods on two sides and had a long stretch of empty space between it and the roads, with no farms or neighborhoods nearby. There were some isolated houses, but even if she managed to get off the gag, there’d be no one to hear her scream, and she’d never make it back to the main road before he caught her again. Her only hope was that there was some kind of alarm system that he’d set off when they went inside.
The trip up the stairs was slow and painful, with regular prodding from the barrel of the gun against her back. When he simply lifted a broken padlock off the door and shoved it open, she gave up on the idea of an alarm. The sound of her scuffing steps echoed in the empty space. Except, no. It wasn’t empty. Hulking shapes rose up in the gloom. Apparently the company hadn’t seen the need to take its equipment when it left. She had no idea what any of it did, but surely with furniture manufacture there were saws, industrial staplers, and other machines and sharp implements that could tear up a human body. Was there still electricity turned on out here?
Harley paused, studying the place. “Nobody comes out here much anymore. Should’ve thought of it sooner. It’ll do nicely for what I have in mind.”
And what is that? But Miranda didn’t give voice to the thought.
He didn’t seem to need any input from her, just steered her through the dark with a familiarity that suggested he’d spent a lot of time here, probably since the factory closed.
He shoved her back against one of the empty industrial racks that had once probably held pallets of materials. When he grasped her bound wrists and started to fasten them to the rack above her head, she bucked, trying to catch him with her feet. His answer was a back fist to her face that left her ears ringing. Then the gun was in her mouth, the metallic oily taste coating her tongue.
“Cooperate. I’m gonna be real pissed if you make me kill you before I’ve done what I need to do.”
Tears streaming down her cheeks, Miranda pressed back against the cold metal support.
Ethan, where are you?
Ethan made it back to the station first. Judd and his deputies were tied up at Willig’s place, waiting on a forensics team and one of the other Wachoxee County investigators. A crowd had gathered outside the police station. Media and a shit ton of locals. He laid on the horn and they parted like the proverbial Red Sea so he could make it into a parking place. Questions were hurled at him from every direction, as soon as he stepped free of the car.
“Do you have any leads?”
“Have you found Dr. Campbell yet?”
“Do you know who took her?”
Ethan ground his teeth and ignored them all, stalking toward the door. Clay was near the front, expression as grim as Ethan had ever seen it. Without a word, Ethan took his friend by the arm and towed him inside. They stopped just past the vestibule because the station was a hive of activity, with officers and people of interest all over the place. Ethan hoped like hell somebody had decent, actionable intel.
“I don’t have much time.”
“I know. I don’t wanna get in the way. I just wanted to check in, like everybody else, I guess. How are you holding up?”
“How’s it look?”
“Like you’re ready to chew through furniture and spit nails like a machine gun.”
“Sounds about right.”
“You’re going to get this fucker.”
“I wish I had your conviction. I feel like I’m always one step behind this guy. I underestimated him.”
“You won’t do it again. Look, I know I’ve always given you shit for choosing law enforcement over music. But it was the right choice for you. You’re a great cop. Your record speaks to that. You’re going to find Miranda, and you’re gonna bring her home.”
Ethan dredged up the ghost of a smile. “You were supposed to be playing the Rocky theme while you delivered that speech.”
“It was totally playing in my head.” Clay squeezed Ethan’s shoulders. “You’ve got this, brother. Go find the bad guy.”
With a short nod, Ethan turned into the chaos. “Somebody give me a sit rep!”
“Harley’s truck was found a mile away from Miranda’s house. Rowan went over it. No evidence Miranda was ever in it. It looks like he parked and walked. Nash found a laptop,” Inez reported. “Jay’s holed up in your office seeing what he can pull off it.”
Ethan walked in without knocking. Jay Quimby, the local tech guru, was hunched over the desk. “What do you have?”
“Nothing good. Videos. Short clips probably made with a cell phone. He’s been watching Miranda for weeks.”
Ethan’s blood chilled a few more degrees. “What kind of videos?”
“Mostly of her coming and going. Some through windows Peeping Tom-style. Nothing that indicates he was in her house before tonight.”
“What else?”
“His search history is nothing unexpected. Porn. Some gambling sites.”
“That explains where the rest of the money went. Anything else of note?”
“Not yet.”
He clapped Jay on the back. “Keep digging.”
Back out in the bullpen, he checked with Reuben and Clint, who’d been tasked with interviewing the people on the list Rene had generated. “Status.”
“Cousin Terry reports that Harley has been more of an asshole than usual, more erratic and angry,” Clint said.
“He say anything about the drugs?” Ethan asked.
“I asked if Harley had been partaking of what he’s been selling, but Terry denies knowledge of the drugs. Says he suspected but didn’t know and didn’t ask.”
“What about everyone else on the list?”
“No one else has turned up anything useful,” Reuben reported. “Just more reports of Harley being pissier than usual. Most folks figured that was because his wife left him and his kid tried to shoot him.”
“Anybody give you any trouble about coming in?”
Reuben consulted the list. “We
’re still waiting on a couple of people, but so far everybody came straight down wanting to help. Darius should be finishing with Ralph Slocombe any minute now. Maybe he had better luck.”
The door to the station opened again and Judd marched in with Willig in cuffs. “Can I borrow a cell for a while? I didn’t want to take the time to haul his ass to county lockup while the search was ongoing.”
Ethan jerked a thumb toward the two cells in the back. “You know where they are. Appreciate the help.” He spied the bruising on Judd’s knuckles as his friend shoved Willig into motion. “What happened to your hand?”
“He tried to run again, managed to slam my hand in a door. Mostly just pissed me off.”
As Judd hauled the drug dealer down the hall, the door to interrogation opened and Ralph Slocombe stepped out.
“Eugene? What the hell are you doing here?”
Ethan’s gaze narrowed on the two men. “You know each other?”
“We used to work together,” Ralph said.
Willig only glared.
“Get his ass in lockup then come join me. Ralph, go right on back and sit down.” Ethan all but shoved the older man into the room.
Ralph sat at the table, looking nervous. “I’m sorrier than I can be that all this is happening to Doc Campbell. But like I told Officer Greeley, I don’t—”
“Save it. I know you’ve been buying illegal opiates from Harley.”
Sweat broke out on Ralph’s temple. “It weren’t no regular thing. Just when I ran out and couldn’t get more the usual way. I told you how it was. I saw Harley after I couldn’t get another prescription. Sounded off some about the whole situation, and he said as how he could send her a little message. Cause her a little trouble. I told him there was no point in that. It wouldn’t change the system. I…I heard about her tires, but I didn’t know he’d actually done something.”
Didn’t want to ask, more like.
Ethan had never fully trusted Harley’s alibi for the night of the bonfire. “So he was doing a favor for a friend.”