Line of Fire

by Rachel Ann Nunes

  I bet they’d moved their drugs to this place when the sheriff’s deputies scared them out of Millard’s rental house and after I’d seen the imprint of the mortuary.

  “They’re lucky all the roofs haven’t caved in,” Cody added. “Probably bought the land with the idea of expansion. Practically hidden from the road. Speaking of which, we should probably stay to the trees. That moon is far too bright now that the clouds are all gone.”

  That meant walking through the newly fallen snow, which only slightly cushioned our steps from the crunchy, older snow beneath.

  “What Kirt said about you and Jenny Vandyke,” I said into the silence.

  Cody stopped walking and faced me. “What about it?”

  “Did you take her? I mean, if Kirt’s guys didn’t. They seem to think it was you.”

  His eyes narrowed but didn’t quite reach mine. “I did not kidnap anyone.”

  “Then why do I get the feeling you know more than you’re saying?”

  He turned his back on me. “Just focus on what’s at hand. Better be quiet now. They probably have guards.”

  Anger smoldered in my chest, but he was right. I had to find Shannon, and then I’d deal with Cody.

  A man stepped out of the trees. “Hold it right there.”

  My heart sank. I’d been stupid, stupid, and more stupid. What made me think I could approach a drug ring’s hideaway without proper backup? At the very least I should have brought Kirt’s gun and crawled through the trees so I wouldn’t be seen.

  The man was big, and he looked remotely familiar, probably from the hospital shooting but possibly from the imprint on Kirt’s keys. He wore a bulky parka, boots, and a wool hat, which hinted that he’d been out in the cold a long time or planned to be. In one hand he held a gun and in the other, a two-way radio. “Boss,” he said, bringing the radio to his face, “I found two intruders. Don’t look like police.”

  A surge of static. “Shoot them.”

  “Will do. But just so you know, the woman might be the one who was with that police detective.”

  “Bring them here. If they resist, do what you have to do.”

  I strained to recognize the voice through the static, but the connection was too poor.

  The thug put the radio into his pocket. “You heard him,” he said, motioning with his gun. “Get walking.”

  If we went with him, we probably wouldn’t make it to another day. I wished I’d talked to my sister once again and cuddled my baby niece longer the last time I’d held her. I wished I’d kissed Shannon harder and more often and found out where our relationship was heading. I wished I’d said I was sorry to Jake. Sorry for not loving him the way he thought he loved me.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Cody said, his voice turning cantankerous. So, he’d come to the same conclusion I had. I felt more than saw his muscles bunching under his flannel shirt. This time, at least, there were no innocent bystanders as there had been at the restaurant.

  “It’s all the same to me,” the thug said with a flat grin. “In fact, I’d just as soon shoot you both here.”

  That’s what I was afraid of.

  I moved before Cody did. One swift kick to the thug’s right hand. It was supposed to send the gun flying into the snow so Cody and I could jump him, but my muscles were cold and my blow didn’t carry much force.

  The man laughed as he brought the gun around to point at me again. “I’m not some lightweight like those guys you got away from in Portland. You broke my brother’s arm, you know? And now you’re gonna pay. Because unlike my boss, I don’t much care for the idea of having a weirdo like you working for us.” He grinned. “Say good-bye.”

  Cody passed in front of me, jumping at the man. He jerked as a bullet caught him under the rib.

  I gasped as Cody continued his forward movement, slamming into the man hard and toppling both of them to the ground. The thug jumped up, still in possession of his gun, but Cody had pulled out the .45 he’d taken from Dale. He fired a warning shot before our attacker could bring up his weapon.

  “Drop it.” Cody’s voice was deadly.

  The man dropped his gun, and I picked up the 9mm from the snow before rushing to Cody’s side. “You hit?” It was a stupid question since I’d seen him take the bullet.

  He grunted, his free hand clutching against his chest. The gun in his hand wavered. “Imprint,” he muttered. “I’m not wearing gloves.”

  Whatever imprints were on the gun, they obviously weren’t pretty.

  The thug lunged not toward us but away, disappearing into the trees.

  “I should have shot him,” Cody mumbled, dropping the pistol.

  “You should have waited for a better opportunity,” I countered.

  “That was the best opportunity we’d ever have. We’ve already been really lucky, but that luck has finally reached an end.” He gave a deep, shuddering breath. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get yourself back to that van and get out of here before our friend comes back with the cavalry.”

  “I thought the cavalry were the good guys.”

  “Not always.”

  Given my suspicions of the sheriff’s deputies, I had to agree. Sometimes the so-called cavalry was on the wrong side of the law.

  “Go on. Get out of here.” Cody jerked his head in the direction we’d come.

  “I’m not leaving you.” I leaned over and grabbed his arm.

  “Get out of here! I ain’t nothing to you.”

  “Look,” I growled, “I didn’t come to Hayesville just for a missing girl. I came here too because you have information about my past. Information about my ability, about your mother, and about probably a hundred other things I don’t know enough about yet to ask. I’m not leaving you—and don’t you dare die on me!”

  His brow furrowed. “So you lied about only wanting to determine my innocence.”

  “It’s not as if I’m the only liar in the family.” He knew something about Jenny Vandyke—I was almost sure of it. One way or the other, I had to know. With great effort, I heaved him to his feet.

  “I’ll never make it back to the van. You really should leave me here.”

  We hadn’t heard anything from the thug and his buddies yet, though they were bound to come looking for us. I couldn’t protect him here. Or hide him. If his wound didn’t kill him, the exposure would. The only option was to move somewhere. Hide.

  I looked around, panic growing in my chest. Wait. The little house with no roof was close, just through the trees. If we could get there before we were discovered, maybe I’d have the chance to call for help. I explained the plan to Cody as I shoved a gun into each of my pants pockets, the smaller 9mm on top of the magazines. It was an awkward fit, but I pulled my red sweater down to cover the barrels and hoped they’d stay put.

  I pushed, pulled, and otherwise forced Cody onward. I worried about the tracks we were leaving in the snow, until I realized there were many others crisscrossing the area we hobbled through.

  Were some of these tracks Shannon’s? I hadn’t much time to think about him in the past few minutes, but now my worry returned.

  We struggled on. How could the little house be so far away? It seemed we hadn’t made any progress toward it. Cody was heavy and growing heavier by the moment. The .45 fell out of my pocket, and I scooped it out of the snow and shoved it into my pocket again, feeling a seam inside partially give way.

  We stumbled to a stop beneath a tree, and Cody slumped down, his head lolling against the trunk. Blood spotted the snow where we crouched. If I didn’t get us moving, Cody was going to die right here in the snow, and I’d never learn what he knew about my talent or about his mother. I’d never learn if he was sorry.

  In a swift motion, I pulled my red sweater over my head. I was wearing a fitted black T-shirt underneath, like the kind I normally wore in the summer. I caught my breath at the cold.

  “What are you doing?” Cody asked. “You need to get out of here. You see that, right? I can’t go
on.”

  “What I need is to stop this bleeding. Now hold this tight. There don’t seem to be any imprints of consequence on it. Well, a little fear, but that won’t kill you.” He grunted in pain as I pressed the folded sweater over the wound and put his hands on top. I needed more, but it was all I had.

  I pulled out my phone, removing my gloves to replace the battery and to use the touch screen. Shannon’s icon still hadn’t updated. Feeling nauseated at the worried imprints I’d left on it earlier, I called Shannon’s partner.

  “Autumn?” Tracy asked through a yawn. “Do you know what time it is?”

  “I need help,” I told her. “And I don’t know who to trust.”

  Instantly, she was alert. “Tell me what you need.”

  I outlined our situation, including the fact that I had no idea where Shannon was or if he was alive. That he hadn’t called Tracy himself told me he thought she was too far away to help, but I hoped he was wrong.

  “I know some people in the police department in Salem and in the FBI,” Tracy said. “Since they’re already involved, I’ll contact them.”

  The FBI. I hadn’t even remembered them, not that I had Agents Cross and Morley’s phone numbers at my fingertips. Of all the law personnel involved, they were the farthest down my suspect list.

  “Try to find some cover,” Tracy went on. “Try to stop the bleeding and keep that guy as warm as possible.”

  “There’s a little house ahead,” I said. “Caved-in roof. We’ll try there. Look, take down my location because I’m going to turn off my phone now. Like I said, I don’t know who to trust.”

  “Get to that house and sit tight.” Tracy sounded calm, the way she always reacted to serious situations, but inside, I knew she was dying of frustration that she was too far away to help me herself. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she added. “I’ll send help.”

  “I might do something stupid,” I told her. “I have to find Shannon.”

  “Oh, Autumn. I’m sorry.”

  Sorry that I was falling for Shannon? That she encouraged it? That I made a lousy partner since I’d failed to cover his back?

  “I’m hanging up now.” Clicking off, I wiped tears away, turning my head from Cody. I could feel his eyes on me, and I was glad he didn’t speak. I’d give myself a moment, and then I was going to make him move again.

  “My ability started after they took my mother away,” Cody said so softly I almost didn’t hear. His voice grew stronger. “She was young. I wasn’t even ten.”

  Another traumatic event, like the ones that had precipitated my ability.

  “She went to a sanitarium?”

  “They said she was crazy, that she was a danger to herself and to me.”

  “Why?”

  “You touched her quilt—don’t you know?”

  “I know she loved you, that she felt guilty for leaving you.”

  He shifted his position, drawing in a breath laced with pain. “That’s not what I mean. Some of the things she put into the quilt, things in my life, she wasn’t there to witness. I don’t know how she did it.”

  To me it made perfect sense. His mother, our grandmother, had the same ability as Tawnia, only she’d been a woman alone in a world that was more interested in locking up what it didn’t understand than with learning why.

  “She saw things,” Cody continued. “Or rather when she drew things, she said they’d come true. She drew all sorts of things—community events, bank robberies, even murders. Of people she’d never met. She’d show them to me in the paper, and they always matched her drawings. One time she drew a family whose boat capsized, drowning all of them but a teenage daughter. She called the police while it was happening, hoping to save them, and for a while they suspected she’d done something to cause it. When she tried to explain, well”—he paused, his voice growing thin—“they took me away and sent her to that place. Said it was to fix her, but she was never right after that. She was very fragile. My whole goal in life was to survive the foster homes and grow old enough to get her out of there.”

  “But she died.”

  He nodded. “She died. From there on, it was downhill for me. I never found myself.”

  “You have now. What about your land, your art, your donations to the community?”

  “It’s all pretend. A make-believe life.” He swallowed hard. “The truth is that every day I relive what I did to your mother.” His eyes shut, whether in pain or in memory, I didn’t know. “She’d imprinted all the emotions she’d felt on a stuffed animal, and once I touched it, I knew what I’d done. I couldn’t remember a thing for myself, but I knew it all. I knew how despicable I was.” He paused before adding, his voice lowering. “I should have been the one to die, not her.”

  Finally the admission of guilt I’d waited for, and yet it wasn’t as satisfying as I expected. It was desperate and more than a little sad. I remembered the utter self-loathing on the imprints at his house. Once I might have been gratified to see his suffering, but now I only pitied him.

  “Maybe you’ve paid enough,” I said when I could finally speak. “Maybe it’s time to let that go, to forgive yourself and go on.”

  He shook his head, his eyes meeting mine. “There’s no forgiveness for me. Not in this life. Not until I hear it from her. I deserve to suffer. In that one instant, I hurt so many.” He bowed his head in defeat.

  Several heartbeats passed in utter silence and then, “I forgive you,” I said.

  His head lifted. “Why?”

  “Because I don’t think you intended to hurt her.”

  “I didn’t protect her, either. I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing because of the drugs. That was my choice.”

  “That’s something you have to live with, but it doesn’t mean you deserve death or to suffer forever.”

  Tears wet his grizzled face, reflected by the moonlight. “Please go,” he said, his voice like gravel. “I don’t want to be the reason you die, too.”

  “You came here because of me. That makes all this my fault.” Before he could answer, I jumped to my feet, shivering because of inactivity. If I got out of this, I’d need a host of herbs and herbal teas from Jake’s store to stave off pneumonia.

  I kicked snow over the blood and adjusted the guns in my pockets. We faltered on, my toes so cold in my leather boots that I no longer felt them.

  Sudden shouts in the trees urged us onward, though it was impossible to tell how close the voices were because of the large area and the muffling snow.

  Cody stumbled, and we fell.

  We weren’t going to make it. Cody had been right all along. He was big and though I was strong, I wasn’t strong enough. He was failing fast.

  A rustle in the trees caught me by surprise. No time to reach for a gun or to hide.

  Detective Levine stepped from the trees.

  Chapter 21

  Autumn, what happened? What are you doing here?” Levine’s voice held real concern.

  He didn’t draw his weapon, so maybe he was on my side. I sagged with relief. “Cody was shot. I’m trying to get him to that house.”

  In three steps Levine was next to me. “Don’t worry. I’ll help.” He touched my bare arm. “Gosh, you’re like an ice cube. Here, take my jacket.” He shrugged it off and slipped it over my shoulders.

  I stiffened, half expecting an imprint, but there was nothing.

  “What?” Levine asked, gazing at me sharply. “Oh, is there one of those—uh, imprints? I didn’t even think.”

  “No. I just have to be careful.”

  “Whew.” He brushed a hand playfully over his forehead. “Because for a moment, I thought my jacket was telling stories about how much I like you.”

  I allowed myself a grin and reached for Cody.

  “I’ll carry him.” He bent over and hefted the old man. “Okay, lead on.”

  We went much faster now, though Levine staggered at times under Cody’s weight. “I can help,” I said.

  Levine shook his h
ead. “I got it.”

  Too tired to protest, I decided to let him prove whatever he needed to. The .45 started slipping down my leg through the growing hole in my left pocket, so I took the opportunity to put both guns into the pockets of my borrowed jacket. The last thing I needed was for one of these to go off by accident.

  Another distant shout urged us to hurry the last few feet to the little house. Like the roof, the door was missing, and I wondered how much shelter it could offer, but inside I discovered that part of the roof in the kitchen was still intact.

  “Put him by that old stove,” I said. “That looks like the most protected place.” Too bad I couldn’t start a fire.

  Leaving Levine with Cody, I waded through the snow, dead leaves, and garbage for something I could use to tie up Cody’s wound and maybe get him warm. Ancient furniture scattered around the place, destroyed by age, weather, and animals. At the foot of a broken bedstead, I found a battered old chest that despite its ruined outside had kept its treasure of bedding mostly intact. The chest was old enough and sturdy enough that with a little clean up, I could probably sell it in my antiques store for a few hundred bucks.

  I took off my gloves and checked everything for imprints before carrying the bedding to him. In his weakened condition, a strong negative imprint could do serious damage.

  “I can do this myself,” Cody said as I used my teeth to start a tear in a sheet, its antiquity playing in my favor since I didn’t have scissors. “You two get going.”

  Levine shook his head. “Hold still, Mr. Beckett. That’s a nasty wound. What happened?”

  “Gunshot,” I said. “We ran into one of the drug dealers.” I put a folded sheet on the wound under my now-soaked sweater and carefully threaded the torn sheet around Cody’s back and over his chest. “How’d you find us anyway?” My suspicions were returning, though we wouldn’t have made it to the house without him.

  “I wasn’t actually looking for you. I came here because your friend Detective Martin called and told me he was here and had found a lead.”

  “He told you? What about Commander Huish and your partner?”

  “Just me. He specifically said not to tell them.” He hesitated before rushing on. “To tell the truth, I’ve been a little worried about what’s been going on at the sheriff’s office. Evidence has never been tampered with before.” He scratched his cheek, looking and sounding every bit like a boy I’d gone to kindergarten with.