by Janice Kay Johnson - Cop by Her Side (The Mysteries of Angel Butte)
Carefully, she lifted the binoculars, first surveying the house. Drapes and blinds at several of the windows were closed. Nobody was visible through the few uncovered windows.
Then she focused on the opening into the three-car garage.
What she saw sent her racing back to her SUV. She couldn’t take a chance of the mower cutting out and Glenn overhearing her voice. She took a minute to do some online research before she called Clay back.
“Goddamn it!” he roared. “Where the hell did you go?”
“Clay, listen to me.”
“No, you listen to me. I think Stillwell is on his way to the Taylors’. We’re not five minutes away.”
“Clay,” she said, “I got a look into the garage. The first bay is empty. That’s where Arnett took the mower out through. The one car I can see in there is a Lexus. And it’s silver.”
He swore again, then said, “Who are these people?”
“I think they’re Glenn’s parents-in-law. Remember I mentioned that article in the paper about his wife chairing the event? I had this niggle of a memory and I just went back and looked it up again. Her name is Lois Taylor Arnett.”
“What if Mom and Dad are away?” Clay had calmed down, but she didn’t fool herself that he was relaxed. “Great place to stash the kid, and Glenn even has an excuse to go out there regularly.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“Where are you?”
She told him. Not a minute later, a vehicle turned into the Taylors’ driveway. Through the trees, she saw it was a shiny SUV, a sort of pearlescent tan. Stillwell drove a Land Rover, she remembered.
Itching to sneak through the woods and get a better look, she waited for Clay’s Jeep.
“Jane?”
She jumped six inches. He was standing right beside her open driver’s side door. “You sneaked up on me!”
“I parked across the road. Let’s get where we can see what’s happening.”
Once again she was reduced to trailing him through the narrow band of woods, wishing she had the ability to move as silently and surreptitiously as he did. His khaki-colored chinos and brown polo shirt were good camouflage, too. Her jeans and green T-shirt were subtly wrong, the green just a little too bright.
The ride-on mower abruptly fell silent and she winced as a branch cracked under her foot right then.
But when she followed Clay’s example and knelt beside him as they reached the last hint of anything that could be called a blind, a clump of what she thought were salmonberries, she realized it didn’t matter what she was wearing or what small sounds she’d made in getting close. The mower abandoned twenty feet away, the two men stood face-to-face in the driveway, engaged in an intense conversation. Neither was looking around.
Stillwell gestured sharply toward the house. Arnett scowled and appeared to argue. Stillwell’s next gesture, a slice of his hand, was even more emphatic. Expression unhappy, Arnett nodded.
“Jesus,” Clay murmured. “There’s someone else in the house.”
“What?”
“Eleven o’clock.”
It had to be a bedroom window. She couldn’t make out more than fingers parting the blinds enough for someone to watch the scene in the driveway.
Not a child, she realized right away, or probably even a woman. Whoever it was had to be tall.
“That son of a bitch is going to leave.”
Jane switched her attention back to the driveway, where Stillwell was indeed backing away.
Glenn Arnett looked angry. He must have raised his voice, because, straining, Jane caught a few words. “Why am I...?”
“Because you’re the idiot who left your laptop where anyone could browse through it,” Clay said under his breath.
James Stillwell snapped a reply she couldn’t make out, got into his Land Rover, backed in a semicircle and drove away. Arnett watched him go, his face suffused with fiery red and his hands knotted into fists.
Clay lowered his binoculars, his expression grim. “I should have called for backup. Hell. A warrant.”
“You think he was just ordered to get rid of her.”
His gaze met hers squarely. “You have a different interpretation?”
After a moment, she shook her head. Her heart drummed. Not only did they lack backup, they also had no idea how many people were in that house, how well armed they were, even in what part of the house Bree was being held. They each had one handgun, one magazine each, no flash bangs to confuse their opponents or any other embroidery on the basics.
With sudden terror, she knew Clay would insist they wait. He hadn’t wanted her being part of the raid to rescue Matt Raynor. He’d never accept her, a woman, as his partner in a high-risk operation like this one, where they’d be going in blind.
A low, viciously uttered expletive came to her ears. She switched her panicked gaze to Glenn Arnett in time to see him swing around and stalk toward the open garage.
“Clay,” she whispered. Begged, when her whole body strained to tear across the swath of lawn and follow Arnett into the dim interior of the garage.
* * *
CLAY COULD NOT freaking believe this was happening. Gazing down at Jane’s face, radiating intensity and desperation, he allowed himself one stricken moment of fear.
He could lose her. Have to watch her go down.
There was no chance to try for more complete intelligence, summon backup, arm themselves better. He’d give anything for a tactical vest—for Jane. He had one in the back of his Jeep...but Arnett was disappearing from sight, and they couldn’t spare even the couple of minutes it would take him to make his way to the road and back.
Either Arnett would prove to have enough conscience that he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to kill a little girl, or he’d do it fast, to get it over with. Or, hell, he’d order whatever scumbag was upstairs to kill the kid, so he could convince himself his own hands were still clean.
No time to do anything but go. Clay shoved the fear for Jane down deep. He couldn’t afford it right now. The truth was, he knew he was damn lucky he wasn’t here alone. Or—worse—that Jane was here alone. At least they’d had practice at this kind of rescue operation, Clay reasoned. And whether he liked the idea of her in danger or not, he’d seen her in action and knew she was good.
He had the fleeting memory of thinking he wanted her at his side pretty much always. Watch what you wish for.
Yeah...but he couldn’t offhand think of another cop he’d rather have at his back.
The soft sound of the door at the back of the garage opening and closing came to him.
“Shit,” he said again, and grabbed his cell phone. “Raynor?” he said a moment later. “I think you need to move on Stillwell Trucking. Now.”
Relief transformed Jane’s face.
“You found the girl?” Raynor asked.
“We think so. One way or another, they’re going to know in the next two minutes that we’re onto them. I suspect Stillwell is on his way back to the office to begin that shredding we talked about.”
“Then we’ll beat him there.” Chief Raynor sounded satisfied. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.” Clay raised his eyebrows at Jane as he stowed the phone. “You ready?”
“Yes!”
Clay grabbed her, kissed her hard, then said, “Let’s do it.”
No one was visible now through the window upstairs. He saw no movement behind any others. He turned and ran, hearing Jane close behind. He stopped to one side of the open garage door and waited until she flattened herself on the other. Then, weapons drawn, they went in together.
The garage was utterly silent, a couple of overhead bulbs on, a small square of sunlight at the far end where there was a window. A white SUV was parked on the other side of the Lexus. At the back
of the empty bay was a closed interior door.
Clay jerked his head toward it. Jane nodded. They moved swiftly and silently across the concrete floor. There were two steps up to the door. Clay went first, turning the knob slowly, easing the door open a crack. All he could see was a white interior wall.
“Arnett?” a man called, voice sounding hollow in the way they did in a building with high ceilings. “That you?”
“Yeah, I’m on my way up.” The second voice wasn’t coming from far away.
Clay opened the door and stepped into a hallway, turning with his weapon held ready in both hands. Jane followed. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her flatten a hand on the door to make sure it closed slowly and silently.
Clay didn’t even have to signal. They both moved down the hall to where they could see open space. A living room with vaulted ceiling, a vast kitchen and a slate-tiled entry all converged with a staircase.
In theory, he and Jane should clear this floor, make sure they weren’t leaving anyone behind them, but a driving sense of urgency told him they didn’t have time. He kept remembering looking at Glenn Arnett and knowing on a subliminal level that the guy was utterly cold-blooded. He might not want to murder a child; he’d raised two of his own after all. But he’d see the act as what he had to do to protect his children, his wife, the privileged life he had built.
The staircase was clear. Clay could hear voices upstairs now. Two? More?
He raised two fingers. Jane frowned and held up three. After a moment, Clay grimaced. They’d find what they found.
Too bad this wasn’t a mansion with a back staircase for the servants. They had no choice but to openly climb the stairs and hope no one hovered above in the hall.
Yeah, and hope Arnett didn’t head straight for wherever he had Bree stashed and shoot her before Clay and Jane could get that far.
The two of them climbed side by side. A faint creak came from under his feet, or maybe hers. They both froze momentarily. Heard nothing from above but low male voices.
Would Arnett go for something as messy as a gunshot? This was his parents-in-law’s house. He was sophisticated enough to know it was difficult to impossible to ensure no trace of blood had seeped into a crack behind molding or soaked the carpet pad and subflooring beneath it.
Maybe he’d carry her out with the plan of doing it elsewhere.
There was a creak and a scraping sound. Somebody swore.
Jesus, Clay thought. Chilled, it occurred to him that one twist of Arnett’s hands would break a seven-year-old child’s neck. From the alarm Clay saw on Jane’s face, she was thinking something similar.
Taller than her, he was the first to see the hallway. Empty.
“Clear,” he mouthed to her, and they took the last few steps faster, then started down the hall.
“Man, I don’t want anything to do with this,” a man’s voice said, close enough to raise the hair on Clay’s nape. “I thought we were going to let the kid go.”
“Yeah? You sure she hasn’t seen your face?”
The barrel of Jane’s Ruger swiveled toward the last doorway on their right. Master bedroom, Clay thought. It would have its own bathroom. Logical place to stash a hostage. Usually en suite bathroom doors didn’t have even a push-button lock. The door would open inward, though. The men had blocked it somehow from the outside. Removing that impediment was taking them the minute or two that kept them too distracted to watch out for anyone else entering the house.
Clay reached the door. Flattened himself against the wall beside it, Jane hovering. After a moment, he took a quick look. Only two men were visible. One—Arnett—had his back to Clay. The other had stepped aside, but had his head turned to watch Arnett, who was shifting a piece of plywood away from the doorway.
“This is a damned nuisance,” Arnett was grumbling.
“You think it’s a nuisance?” the second man said. “You’re not the one who had to drag that chest of drawers back and forth.”
Clay held up two fingers to Jane, but bent his head and murmured in her ear, “Can’t see the whole room.”
She nodded.
“I’ll go for them. You sweep the room.”
Another nod.
Clay went fast through the doorway to clear the way for Jane. “Police!” he said loudly. “Put your hands in the air!”
A gun went off. The bullet slapped into the wallboard so close, Clay felt the sting of wood and gypsum shrapnel. He didn’t let himself take his eyes from the two men who were his targets. At his back, Jane fired and Clay heard a grunt of pain. She was yelling something, but he ignored that, too.
The man with Arnett was snatching a handgun off the bed.
“Put the weapon down,” Clay ordered as he crossed the width of the bedroom. It lifted toward him and he squeezed the trigger. Once. Twice. The son of a bitch went down, the gun falling from his hand. Glenn Arnett had flattened himself with his back to the bathroom door and his arms over his head.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
“Down,” Clay snapped. He used his foot to shove the big black handgun under the bed, where no one could dive for it. “On the floor. That’s it. Spread-eagle.”
Once Arnett was facedown, his fingers gripped the pile of the oat-colored carpet tight enough to rip fibers free.
“You have cuffs?” Jane asked.
“Back pocket.” The scum sprawled a few feet away from Arnett was bleeding, but he wasn’t dead. Clay kept his weapon trained on both men.
He felt Jane’s hand slide into his pocket and pull the plastic handcuff ties out. Too bad he only had one set.
A moment later, he heard her voice. “Backup requested.” She was on the phone. He listened as she gave the address, told the dispatcher that two men had suffered gunshot wounds, aide cars requested.
The next moment she raced past Clay and around Glenn Arnett and reached for the bathroom doorknob.
Clay moved so he could cover all three men.
“Bree?” Jane called, her voice shaking. “Are you in there? It’s Aunt Jane. I don’t want to scare you coming in.”
The silence chilled Clay. He didn’t even want to know what it did to Jane.
What if she wasn’t here? What if—?
“Is it really you?” came a small voice.
A sob of relief escaped Jane and she shoved the bathroom door open. “Bree. Oh, Bree. Oh, my God. Look at you. Oh, Bree.” Tears thickened her voice. Clay saw her fall to her knees and then all but crawl to where a small figure was squeezed behind the toilet.
Clay felt a sting in his own eyes. Only the rage that filled him kept him from breaking down.
“You’re slime,” he said gutturally, when Arnett turned his head so he didn’t have to watch the reunion taking place within. “Your life as you know it is over.”
“I came to see what was going on in the house,” he cried. “This wasn’t me. It was Stillwell. He knew the house was empty and he’s been using it. I saw somebody upstairs—”
“Save the bullshit for your attorney.”
The first, distant sound of a siren came to Clay’s ears as he began, “You have the right to remain silent.”
* * *
JANE SAT ON the bathroom floor, her back to a wall, and held her niece who clung to her as if she was a lifebuoy in a raging ocean.
Bree cried in horrible, gulping sobs of terror she had been suppressing. “I thought you’d never come!” she wailed at one point.
Jane knew her own cheeks were wet, too. “It took us a long time to find you,” she explained, then went back to murmuring things like, “Oh, Bree. I’ve been so scared.”
In her first, sweeping assessment, she hadn’t been able to tell whether the little girl had been hurt. Bree had looked so small, so skinny, her hair tangled and wild, her expression
torn between disbelief and hope. And then she’d wriggled out from behind the toilet and thrown herself at Jane, the small body smacking against Jane’s and knocking her back on her butt.
Since then, all Jane could do was hold her and wait for the storm to abate. Thank God, Clay had remained in her line of sight, most of his attention on the three men he held at gunpoint, but every so often his gaze shifted to hers and she saw everything she felt in his eyes.
“Oh, sweetheart. Your mom and dad have been so scared, too. I can hardly wait to tell them you’re safe and coming home.”
Bree went very still before she rubbed her face on Jane’s T-shirt and cautiously peered up from between swollen lids. “Mommy isn’t dead?” she whispered. “I thought she was dead.”
“No.” Jane bent her head and kissed her forehead. “She was knocked out, and it was days before she woke up and could tell us what she remembered. But she’s going to be fine, Bree. I promise.”
“Oh.” The wiry body in her arms sagged and Bree laid her cheek back against Jane’s breast.
Voices brought her head up. The bedroom suddenly swarmed with EMTs and uniformed deputies. Glenn Arnett was pulled roughly to his feet, handcuffed and led away. The medics applied bandages to the two injured men, shifted them onto gurneys, lifted them and then they disappeared, too.
Jane realized with a funny feeling of panic that she had lost sight of Clay. But no sooner did she think that than he filled the bathroom doorway, something in his hand.
“Nice to meet you, Brianna Wilson,” he said, in an astonishingly gentle voice. He held out his phone. “I kind of thought the two of you might want to make a call.”
A spurt of tears blinded Jane. Coming into the bathroom and crouching right beside them, Clay gave a low chuckle. “How about if I get Bree’s daddy on the line for you?”
Jane’s head bobbed. Bree was staring at Clay with that same look of dazed hope.