The first call went unanswered, every possible reason of what could have gone wrong running through Cuddyer’s mind. Again, he had to force himself to breath, to push back the anger he knew was just beneath the surface, as he dialed the number again, this time pressing speaker phone.
The shrill sound of the ringing echoed through the room. It rang twice before being picked up, nothing more than deep panting audible.
“Jasper?” Cuddyer asked, again feeling his apprehension and anger rising.
Three more deep breaths could be heard before Jasper’s voice sounded, his tone confused. “Cuddy?”
“Jasper, where are you? What’s going on?” Cuddyer asked, pushing himself away from the table with his hips and raising the phone just shy of his mouth.
“Cuddy,” Jasper whispered again. “What happened? Where am I?”
His eyes sliding closed, Cuddyer raised his face toward the ceiling. He remained fixed in that position, forcing his voice to remain even.
“Jasper, look around. Where are you?”
Another grunt could be heard, followed by some movement, the familiar sound of a parka rustling.
“I’m in the truck,” Jasper managed. “It’s cold in here, starting to get dark.”
Completely ignoring the last line, Cuddyer said, “Okay, you’re in the truck. Are you parked?”
He knew even as he asked the question there was no way that Jasper had just stumbled into a parking lot and fallen asleep, envisioning the rig overturned in a ditch or lying upside down in the center of the road as a deer traipsed off into the distance.
“I...I don’t know,” Jasper said. Another grunt from exertion, followed by, “I don’t think so. For some reason the truck is tilted.”
The veins in Cuddyer’s forearm bulged as he squeezed the phone, his initial fears confirmed. He shouldn’t have sent Jasper. He should have just risked the time it would have taken to go himself.
Or better yet, just made the woman do her damn job with what she was given.
“The truck is tilted,” Cuddyer said, pushing the words out through gritted teeth. “Are you hurt?”
There was no response for a long moment, Cuddyer continuing to grip the phone, his entire body straining, waiting for any type of response.
“Cuddy? I’m going to have to call you back. Somebody just pulled up.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Our sudden arrival seemed to surprise Baker and Azbell, both jerking around from their computers to stare at us. True to form Baker wore a scowl on his face, continuing to glare in my direction, while his counterpart seemed startled from the unexpected entrance.
“Need one of you to run an address,” Ferris said, bypassing any sort of greeting. It was far and away the most tense I’d heard him since meeting the man 14 hours earlier, the pressure of the situation having been ratcheted up by the emergence of some suspects.
Both of the deputies seemed surprised by the directive, neither moving, simply sitting and staring back at him.
“Now!” Ferris said, slapping his hands together, the crack of his palms causing Azbell to jerk again. In unison both turned to face forward, putting their backs to us.
“854 Mountain View Lane,” Ferris said, leaving his coat on as he strode across the floor and took up his coffee mug still perched on the edge of his desk from more than an hour before.
He glanced down at it once, checking that it was empty, before wagging it toward me. “You want any?” he asked while drifting toward the hall.
I waved him off, content to wait where I was. After the low-speed chase and the prospect of a new heading, I had enough adrenaline surging through me to keep going for days. Adding caffeine to the mix would only make me jittery, something I could ill afford at the moment.
It took just over a minute for Ferris to fill his mug and return, Azbell having the information he requested upon return.
“Original owner was—“
“Art and Bea Buchanan,” Ferris said. “I know. Who did they sell it to?”
“Henry Lott,” Azbell said, reading it off of the screen.
“Hank?” Ferris said, his eyebrows rising.
“That’s what it says,” Azbell answered. “I thought he lived...“
“Over on Highland,” Ferris said, completing her sentence for the second time.
“So you know him?” I asked, sensing from his responses, from his tone, the information was news to him as well.
“Hell, everybody does,” Ferris said. “Hank’s been around here forever, owns the hardware store in town.”
The fact that the man was so well known, coupled with his owning a second property in town, told me that the farmhouse we had just been to was most likely a rental, something he had picked up for some residual income.
“Any idea where we can find him?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Ferris replied, raising his wrist and using his mug to push back the cuff of his jacket. “Unless this storm has forced him inside, he’s at the same place he’s been every day for lunch the last 10 years.”
Without further explanation I turned for the door, already knowing where our next stop was.
“Hold on,” Baker said, “you should also know, Sheriff, that we got a call while you were out.”
My hand froze a few inches from the doorknob, my head turning, waiting for him to continue.
A moment passed, no sound coming as he glanced in my direction.
“About?” Ferris said, his posture and tone letting Baker know this was no time for pettiness.
In the short time since Ferris had come to my room, I hadn’t spent much time considering a ransom call. It just seemed that the nabbing of Yvonne Endicott had been part of something bigger.
Given the weather, there were too many variables for a simple money grab to seem plausible.
“The kidnappers?” I asked, ignoring whatever prick tendencies Baker had.
Flicking his gaze to me, Ferris drew a bit closer to Baker.
Making a point of scowling at me again, Baker focused on the sheriff and said, “No, from Albertson’s, actually.”
At once the previous tension bled from both Ferris and me, a glance between us showing neither one appreciated the false lead or its delivery.
“Yeah?” Ferris asked. “And what did they want?”
“It seems they had a, quote-unquote, vagabond show up there a while ago,” Baker said, lifting his hands to make air quotes.
“Vagabond?” Ferris said, his face scrunching in confusion.
“That’s what the woman said,” Baker replied. “Said some guy wandered in, looked like hell, smelled like death, wandered the aisles for the better part of an hour.”
Ferris and I exchanged another look.
“What did he smell like, exactly?” Ferris asked.
“I don’t know,” Baker said, “that’s all she told me.”
“What did he buy?” I asked.
“I don’t know that either,” Baker said, refusing to look my direction. “All she said was that he kept to himself, but he was bothering some of the other customers, looking and smelling like he did.”
The same perplexed look remained on Ferris’s face as he glanced up at me, trying to make sense of what we were being told.
“So then, why did she bothering calling it in?”
Both shoulders rose as Baker shrugged. “Just wanted us to be aware, maybe keep an eye out for him around town.”
I could see my own thoughts play out across the sheriff’s face, going the full range from questioning how we would just spot this man in a snowstorm to why Baker had held us up to mention it.
“Come on Hawk, let’s go.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Wood Arrasco stood in front of the picture window in his office, his arms clasped behind his back, and stared out at the world. Already completely buried in white, more continued to fall, piling higher on every available surface.
At best he thought it might be slowing, but only slightly.
On most occasions, Wood had no real problem with the snow. It was a marked difference from what he’d grown up with in the south, something he had hated for years before finally accepting as a reality of his new home.
Today was not such an occasion.
To someone who loved nothing more in the world - with the possible exception of Maria – than being out on the road, opening the throttle on his Harley Fat Boy, hearing nothing but the roar of his engine, feeling nothing but the wind on his face, seeing snow brought with it the harsh reality that he was stuck inside. The freedom that he so craved was completely cut off, always bringing with it the feeling that some small part of him was missing as well.
It wasn’t that he needed to ride every day, but just knowing it was there as a possibility helped immensely. Every time the business of the club became overwhelming, each moment that he didn’t quite feel like being inside, listening to Maria yammer away, he liked knowing precious release was within his grasp.
At the moment, the feelings of muted rage were even more pronounced, the snow bringing with it the harsh reality that he could not be where he was needed, could not see to things as he should. Instead of being out on the road, assessing whatever Sam Cuddyer and his crew had gotten themselves into, he was stuck inside, waiting.
It was not a skill anybody would ever say he was especially adept at.
The sound of the phone ringing erupted from his desk, the tone turned up to full volume, seeming to reverberate off the wall. Wood gave no outward reaction at all to the sudden intrusion, remaining planted in front of the window until the third ring before turning and taking two steps to his desk, snatching up the phone.
The sat phone was a big and blocky model, an older design that was used only in circumstances such as this, when cell signals were down or they were someplace too remote. To his knowledge only a handful of people even had the number, Wood not bothering to check the screen for the ID, just keying the phone to life and pressing it to his face.
“Arrasco.”
“Prez, Trick,” the voice replied on the other end.
It was the same basic opening that always preceded club business, each side keeping it short, giving the other the chance to alert them if anybody was nearby, if anything could be overheard.
This time Wood pushed right past it, his growing impatience getting the best of him. “How bad?”
If there was any surprise at all by him getting right to it, Trick did not show it, responding in the same even tone he always used. “Bad. From what we could see, the lab was pretty well destroyed. Most of the barn was completely gone.”
Wood paused a moment, processing what he’d been told, trying to envision things in his mind.
“From what you could see?”
“Yeah,” Trick said, the whine of his snow coach engine just barely audible in the background. “We had to abort getting any closer than the road.”
Wood paused, his mouth dropping open in surprise. It wasn’t like Trick to leave something unfinished, especially after going so far to see it through.
“Feds?” he asked, closing his mouth, setting his jaw.
“I don’t think so, but the law for sure,” Trick said. “Only one truck, two guys, but enough for us to keep right on going.”
At that Wood nodded, the information fitting much closer with what he expected from Trick.
Taking down a pair of locals would have been no problem, not with Mac and Barnham riding along, certainly not with the amount of firepower stowed in the back. Still, it would have brought along more attention that could be ill afforded at the moment.
Blizzard or not, two dead officers would pull every able-bodied person in town out.
Right now the weather was keeping people away, was probably the reason the law had just discovered the damaged lab instead of 12 hours before. No need to make it a bigger problem when they didn’t have to.
“Okay,” Wood said, “did they spot you? Follow you?”
“Not that we could see,” Trick said, “but visibility is so poor, it’s hard to tell. Either way it’s been a good half hour, and we still haven’t spotted them.”
Raising his eyes out to the winter scene outside, Wood nodded.
“Good. En route now to the fallback location?”
“We are,” Trick said, pausing for a moment.
Just a hint of something in his voice caught Wood’s attention, his eyes tightening just slightly. “What is it?”
“Well, we’ve had a complication,” Trick said. “You’re never going to believe what we just stumbled on out here along the road.”
Raising his free hand to his brow, Wood kneaded his thumb and index finger over his forehead. The bottom of his stomach dropped, the familiar feeling of dread seeping in.
“Let me guess, Cuddyer stuck in the snow, frozen solid,” Wood said, the thought bringing with it a flash of anger.
If anything was going to happen to that bearded bastard or his team, he wanted to be the one to do it, not letting them get off so easy by freezing along the side of the road.
“Close,” Trick said. “It’s Jasper, and he’s alive, but the way he’s stumbling around out there looks like he’s banged up pretty good.”
“Jasper?” Wood said, pulling his hand away from his face, his features twisted. “Alone?”
“That’s what it looks like,” Trick said. “Mac and Barnham are out there now trying to lend a hand. I stayed behind to call you, then I’ll go take a closer look.”
“Holy shit,” Wood muttered, shaking his head at the inanity of the entire situation, at how fast things had devolved.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Trick said. “Looks like the dumbass went right off the side of the road. Truck is sitting at a 40 degree angle right now. We’ll be lucky to ever get it out.”
“Don’t even bother trying,” Wood said, the anger continuing to build. “Just get him in the van and get on to the site. We need to know how bad this is, and fast.”
A moment of silence passed, Wood continuing to try in vain to swallow down the venom within him, wishing nothing more than to be able to cut off Cuddyer and every person connected to him, moving on without ever having to bother with any of them again.
“The meeting didn’t go well this morning,” Trick said, piecing together what Wood was telling him, the words very much a statement, not a question.
“It went fine,” Wood replied, knowing that the acrimony he felt toward Cuddyer was seeping into the words but making no effort to mask it. “Chance and his crew make okay product, and they’re happy to push out as much as they can for us, but they’re about out of materials.”
“Oh, shit,” Trick muttered. “The storm.”
“Exactly,” Wood said. “Without raw goods, they can’t make any more product. The trucks aren’t running, so they can’t get what they need.”
“And by the time they do, we’re already too far behind schedule...”
“And the buyer goes someplace else,” Wood said.
“Shit,” Trick whispered again, the same thing Wood felt creeping into his voice.
The reality of their situation was not lost on either one of them, their success having created a market that was now threatening to overtake them, move on without them.
“Once this is over, we’ll bring in some new suppliers, make sure this never happens again,” Wood said. “Until then, get them up and running, make enough to get us through the next couple of weeks.”
“You got it, Prez.”
Chapter Forty
A few more people had wandered into Ned’s since my original pass through two hours before. Both of the televisions above the bar were now up and running, the volume muted, Sportscenter playing on one, Fox News on the other.
Neither surprised me in the slightest, tracking perfectly with every outward indication the place had given on my two previous visits.
True to form, every person in the room turned to stare as we entered, their expressions tightening, their hands cla
mping down on whatever they were holding.
There was no way to know if such a reaction was caused by something Ferris had done in the past, or maybe even an auto response to me after everything they’d heard about six weeks prior. More likely, though, it was just an ingrained response to anything resembling law enforcement.
Behind the bar Ned was perched with a towel over his shoulder, both hands pressed against the back edge, a smile on his face as he stood in conversation with a guy seated before him. At the sight of us the grin faded away, his head dropping a few inches, his previous hope of not seeing either one of us again dashed.
I gave Ferris the lead as we entered, staying behind him as he walk forward, his thumbs hooked into the front pockets of his jeans. He swept his gaze across the room, finally finding what he was looking for along the back wall.
He walked straight to the table, four men grouped around it, playing cards and beer glasses scattered over the tabletop.
Apparently, Ferris had taken some liberty with what he earlier referred to as a daily lunch.
All four of the men seemed to be Ferris’s age or older, all dressed in jeans and flannel, coats hanging off the back of their chairs.
“Gentlemen,” Ferris said, approaching the table slowly, making sure his hands were visible at all times. “Sorry to interrupt, but I was hoping we might borrow Hank for a few minutes.”
On cue, three of the men turned their attention back to their cards, the fourth – I presumed to be Hank Lott – sitting with his arms folded over a thick midsection, a frown on his face.
“What’s this about, Sheriff?” he asked without moving, making it quite clear from his stance and his tone that he had no interest in being borrowed for any length of time.
“There’s been an accident at your house,” Ferris replied, choosing to sidestep the question a bit and come in from the side.
“My house?” Lott replied, his eyes opening wide. “When? What happened?”
Turning and casting a quick glance over his shoulder to me, Ferris looked back to the table. “It looked to be some sort of explosion, most likely sometime during the night.”
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