by Becky McGraw
Izzy was smart too. She was small, and would find a good place to hide. They wouldn’t find her. She would be quiet. At least that’s what Carrie prayed she would do.
Carrie’s chest was on fire from the air she dragged into her overtaxed lungs, when a beefy hand dropped on her shoulder and drove her to the ground. Sticks and pine needles dug into her knees, as she fought to get to her feet again. The man held her to the ground, then put his foot in her back and shoved her to the ground.
Cold metal was pressed behind her ear. “You’re gonna regret that,” he said in a rough raspy tone, as he heaved breaths.
This was it. She was going to die, she thought, and squeezed her eyes tight. But he grabbed her arm and jerked her to her feet instead of shooting her. “We’re going back to the ranch, and you’re calling those people your son is with.”
“I’m not calling anyone,” she said firmly. Izzy was safe now, and so was Chris. She hoped he was at least. These men could do what they wanted. As long as her kids were safe, she didn’t care if they killed her.
Carrie heard a second set of footsteps, then a voice she recognized, but couldn’t place, said, “I couldn’t find the kid. And the drugs aren’t in the barn. You fired that damned shot, and someone probably called the station. Let’s quit wasting time, just do it.”
The gun was pressed behind her ear again, and Carrie held her breath, waiting for the pain. She hoped it wasn’t too bad, that it was quick. The gun remained where it was, but the man holding her didn’t pull the trigger. Maybe this was some sick mind game he was playing or something. Just do it.
“I think we should take her back to that ranch,” the thug holding her said. “She knows where that kid is and he knows where the drugs are. He’s the one we want. And besides we need to find that damn diary.”
“God, this has turned into a cluster fuck,” the man with the familiar voice growled. “I knew I should never have gotten involved with Leland.”
Leland Rooks. Senator Leland Rooks. The rogue politician they had just sent to jail for a laundry list of crimes. Trace’s dirty-dealing daddy who had sent his own son to prison. The man who had been indirectly responsible for her husband’s death. She heard the second man walk away, then the gun fell from behind her ear, as the man’s hand closed around her arm. “I will shoot you if you try that again,” he growled near her ear.
“I’m not calling Chris.”
“Oh, you’ll call,” he said, and Carrie didn’t miss the threat in his tone. She could barely keep her feet under her as he dragged her back through the woods to the car. The other man was standing at the hood thrumming his fingers. Carrie tried to see who he was, but couldn’t in the darkness. The thug holding her opened the back door and the interior light came on.
She bit back a gasp and quickly looked away when Chief Sam Patterson turned his face into the light for a second. Sean’s old boss was involved in the drug ring. He had probably helped Seth Copeland set Sean and Trace up.
How many others were involved? The whole department?
Evidently there was something in that log book, or diary, as the thug had called it, to implicate at least the Chief. She was thankful for that, because that was the only reason she wasn’t dead yet. That and they wanted her to help them find her son.
They might as well kill her, because that was not happening.
But at least at the ranch, she’d have a better chance of getting out of this. It was her home territory. She knew it like the back of her hand, so she wasn’t giving up just yet.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dylan finally made it to the ranch in Sugar Bush and picked up Chris. The kid was practically a basket case, he was so scared. Dylan almost had to pry the shotgun out of his hand. He’d calmed down a little now, but not much. He glanced over at him. “You okay over there?” he asked.
“No, I won’t be okay until we find my mom and sister,” he said, his voice quivering.
Neither would Dylan. He just didn’t know where to look. Joel agreed that they should probably wait to call the police, but Dylan wasn’t so sure. The longer they waited, the farther away the bad guys could take them. But he agreed they needed to all sit down and talk about things. Come up with a plan, and get Chris to tell them exactly what he knew about the situation. Maybe he had ideas on where they could search.
Joel was also calling in a man named Dave Logan. Supposedly he was a security specialist or private investigator, or something like that. Ex-military, commando type guy. They could use a few of those kind of men to help them. They should get to the ranch about the same time since he was driving in from Dallas. Joel was also calling Trace Rooks for advice. He seemed like a pretty tough man too, not only an ex-con, but an ex-cop. And he’d been involved in a similar situation. But Joel said he was out of town with his wife, and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.
They were assembling all the right people to help them without calling in the police. Doing all they could do. Now they could use a little bit of luck.
“Chris, where do you think they took them?” Dylan asked for the fifth time. “Think, buddy. See if you can come up with anything.”
He thought for a good long minute, then said, “Well, I came clean with my mom. She knows that I hid the drugs in a barn somewhere, but I didn’t tell her where.”
“Where is the barn?”
“Close to my old school. That’s what I told her, but there’s a lot of country places out there. A lot of old barns.”
“Why were you so vague?”
“Because I didn’t want her to know anything in case I got busted and the cops asked her questions. I didn’t want her in trouble too. Or if…if something like this happened. She didn’t know anything, so they wouldn’t hurt her. ”
“Why don’t the bad guys know where the drugs are?”
“Because I moved them. It took me three days to do it, but I did it. Roger helped me move them the first time, I told him someone had seen us. But I moved them again after that,” he said. “I wanted to use them to bargain with the gang for information on my dad…but I got busted with the pot before I could do it.”
“Who’s Roger?”
“Older kid from school who was running the drugs for them too.”
“So you think she may have tried to take them out to find the barn? To give them the drugs to get you off the hook?”
“It’s possible. I did a stupid thing though, and I think that’s why they’re after me too. It’s more than the money.”
Dylan’s knee jerked, and he hit the brake, then slammed it down on the accelerator. “What did you do?” He didn’t think he could take much more, but the kid was talking, so he was going to let him talk.
“I told Roger about the diary my dad kept. About what I knew. There were other dirty cops involved in their ring. Roger had been in the ring longer than I had, and I knew he would tell the right person. They would come talk to me. I wouldn’t have been able to talk to them otherwise. He’s the only one I’d ever met. But then I got—“
“Busted before you could talk to them.” Dylan supplied then huffed out a breath.
“Yeah, and mom made us move to grandpa’s ranch.”
That fucking explained a lot. And it also sent his worry meter off the chart. These guys weren’t petty thieves and two-bit drug dealers. This was a lot more than that.
Zane said he’d worked at the Diamond Bar Ranch before he came to the R & R. If this was connected to that, and it looked like it definitely was, then this kid was in more trouble than he thought. And so were Carrie and Izzy.
Dylan pressed down harder on the accelerator, he had to get them to the R & R fast. Thirty minutes later, he pulled into the driveway at the ranch, and skidded to a stop at the front of the house. Every light was on in the ranch house, several black vans parked out front, a couple of trucks, and a Humvee. The camouflage color on one of the trucks told him that Dave Logan was probably already there.
Chris was right on his heels as he busted through the front d
oor of the ranch house. The conversation stopped as he walked into the living room, and all heads turned his way.
Joel smiled, but it was fleeting. “Welcome back,” he said shortly.
“Chris said he may know where they went.”
“Where?” a muscular, dark-haired man, dressed in black military pants, a black tank top and flak jacket asked. That had to be Dave Logan, Dylan thought, as he walked toward him. “Dylan Thomas,” he said sticking out his hand.
The man looked at his hand but he didn’t shake it, he pinned him with his hard green eyes. “Dave Logan,” he said, then turned his attention to Chris. “And you must be Chris. Now where do you think they took your mother? We don’t have time to waste here.”
“It’s over by my old school,” Chris said, obviously intimidated by the man’s tone.
“That tells me a helluva lot. Care to be more specific, kid?”
“Suburb south of town. I can show you.”
“Fine, let’s go check it out,” he said gruffly, then almost scorched Chris with his glare. “You know if you’re wrong, we might not find her at all tonight. Are you sure?”
“If he’s right, we will find her,” Dylan countered, not the least bit intimidated by the abrasive asshole. “He knows her better than we do, so I think you might want to listen to him. He also knows a lot about the situation. He created it after all.”
Chris’s eyebrows raised, then his eyes narrowed and he shot Dylan a hot look. “I did create it, and now I want to help fix it.”
“You can tell me what kind of trouble you’ve gotten us all into on the way there,” Dave said with a harsh laugh. “Y’all load up too,” he said with a nod at the fifteen or so similarly dressed men sitting on the sofa, and chairs. “If we don’t hit right off the bat, a sector search would probably be faster. Keep your radios on thirteen.”
They loaded up in the trucks and vans and Dave Logan took the hummer. Dylan wasn’t invited to ride in the Hummer with him and Chris, so he rode in the camo truck with a man named Slade. Dylan didn’t know if that was his first or last name, and he wasn’t asking.
The guy was massive, and his attitude was a lot like Dave Logan’s had been. Put out. Aggravated. Willing to help, but he wanted to get this over with. That was fine by Dylan, he wasn’t in the mood for conversation anyway. And nobody in the fucking world wanted this over more than he did. Something else he wasn’t in the mood for was being licked by the huge German Shepherd in the back seat. He batted the dog back, and wiped the side of his face with his sleeve. Slade looked over at him and surprisingly he grinned. “She likes you. I guess that means that I like you too.”
“You let your dog pick your friends?” Dylan asked with a snort.
“Yep, Lola has a pretty good sense about those things. She growls at someone and I have to kick their ass. Usually means they have drugs on them, or they’re a bad hombre.”
Thank God she seemed to like him. Dylan had no doubt this big beast of a man with muscles on his muscles could kick his ass. “She’s a drug dog?” Dylan asked.
“Yeah, among other things. She has a sniffer that can spot weed, heroin or any other kind of drug at a hundred feet. Nothing gets by Lola.”
“She work for the cops? Are you a cop?”
Slade snorted, before he threw his head back and laughed. A big booming sound that pulled a bark out of Lola in the back seat. “No, I work for Dave.”
That was obvious, but he acted like that should mean something to him. He started to ask exactly what Dave did, but the radio clicked twice then Dave said, “Turn off at the next exit.”
The whole convoy exited the interstate, and Dylan wondered why. They hadn’t even reached mid-town yet, much less the south side. Dave’s hummer pulled up into a gas station, and all the vehicles stopped too. Slade got out and so did Dylan. They walked around to join the huddle of men. “I didn’t want to say this over the radio. We have a problem.”
“What?” one of the men asked.
“This kid has bitten off a helluva lot. He’s knee deep in a branch of that operation the feds took down at the Diamond Bar Ranch. He has proof there are more dirty cops involved, but he doesn’t know who they are.” Dave shook his head. “He was running his own undercover op with a kid at his school who was working as a mule for them to try and find out. He stole drugs from them to try and negotiate for information on his dad’s murder.”
“Good God Almighty,” Slade said with a short bark of laughter. “That kid has balls.”
“That kid hasn’t got a lick of sense. He has their drugs hidden and owes them twelve thousand dollars to boot. But that’s not all of it. He let them know he has the proof so he could smoke them out to talk to him.”
Slade sighed. “That’s why they took his mother and sister?”
“I’d say so,” Dave affirmed. “They probably want them all dead, if I had to guess. But they want to find that book first. He has it at his house hidden under his mattress.”
“Doesn’t he know that’s an obvious hiding place? The first place someone would look?”
“I guess he didn’t learn the lesson when his mother found the eight grand he stashed there.” Dave said, crossing his arms over his broad chest.
“What?!?” Slade shouted.
“Yeah, she spent it to move them out to the country to get away from the thugs, after he was busted with a little pot.”
“So what are we going to do?” Slade, who Dylan now realized must be the second in command, asked.
“We’re going to get Lola to help us find the drugs, because he doesn’t remember exactly which barn he hid them in. Then we’re calling the cops. The kid is scared about us doing that, but we don’t have much choice. I’m not transporting those drugs and getting caught doing it. We’ll call Susan Whitmore with the feds though, instead of the local yokels. She’ll probably end up handling this anyway.”
“We can’t call the police,” Dylan said stepping forward.
“Why not?”
“Because that ballsy, senseless kid will go to juvie until he’s twenty-one if we do that. I think we should just leave the drug issue alone and focus on finding Izzy and Carrie. That’s what’s important here.” Dylan saw Chris standing at the side of the Humvee listening, scuffing the toe of his boot in the dirt. “And we’re wasting time standing out here ridiculing a kid who was just trying to do the right thing, even though he went about it all wrong.” Chris looked up then and met his eyes. A small smile kicked up one side of his mouth. “Let’s go in the general direction. It’s dark tonight, but I bet he can tell us the right way to go.”
Dave nodded, then the men disbursed back to the trucks. The convoy pulled back on the highway, and within fifteen minutes they were pulling off again. The call over the radio said they were on the road where the barn was located. At least that’s how Slade interpreted the coded message. Dylan didn’t have a clue. It seemed like these men had a language and code of their own. One he wasn’t privy to. As long as it resulted in them finding Carrie and Izzy, he didn’t care. He had stood up for Chris, but he couldn’t help but think they were on a wild goose chase, when they stopped at the third barn and found no sign of Izzy, Carrie or the drugs. Lola got out too, and although she hit on a spot in the dark barn, they found nothing.
Maybe it was one of the barns he’d moved the drugs to and from, Dylan thought as they loaded back up in the truck. The next barn on the road was set further back off the road and was surrounded by trees. Only a small path cut through the trees to the barn. The muddy dirt road was a straight shot up to the ramshackle building. It was obvious the barn hadn’t been used in a very long time. One side was caved in, and the other didn’t look too far behind.
Slade got Lola out of the back seat and she immediately started barking, then took off toward the barn, before he could get her leash hooked. He jogged behind her toward the barn, but Dylan stayed behind. He was more interested in the footprints he saw in the headlights. Small feet made those prints. One set smaller than
the other, then there were two sets of bigger footprints. His eyes followed them to the barn where they split off. One big, one small going either direction.
“They were here!” Dylan yelled and ran to the back of the truck. He’d seen some weapons back there. Slade came running out of the barn. “Lola says the drugs were here at one time. Probably not too long ago. The scent was strong, and she went nuts.”
“I swear this is where I left them,” Chris said, shaking his head as he walked beside Slade.
Dylan grabbed a rifle he found back there, checked that it was loaded then walked around the truck. “Wait—stop there!” he shouted, before Slade and Chris screwed up the tracks. “Look at those tracks. They’re here, or they were.”
“I’ll be damned,” Slade said, his eyes following the prints into the woods.
He bent and took off Lola’s leash again. “Lola find,” he said with a pat on her side. The dog smelled the prints, stopped at the edge of the woods to look, then took off into the brush. Dylan didn’t notice until then that the men had some kind of small black military weapons strapped around their chest. Everything they wore was black, so it was no wonder he missed it.
They swung the guns to the front and followed Lola into the woods, and Dylan trailed behind them. Once he was inside the thicket he couldn’t see anything, it was pitch black. All he heard was sticks crunching as the men in front of him walked deeper into the woods, and Lola’s panting. No crickets chirping, no birds singing, nothing.
Dylan knew from hunting that the animals and insects knew their domain had been breached, so they were watching and waiting, not giving away their location. He sure hoped that wasn’t the same thing going on with the bad guys. It was so dark in these woods, he knew he wouldn’t be able to see well enough to shoot them. The commandos had on flak jackets to protect them. Dylan had nothing. His t-shirt wasn’t going to save him, that was for sure.