by Sara L Foust
Annalise pointed to the ground.
“Oh, yeah. Good eye.”
She held her head high. “Thanks.”
“There was corn in the tent where Buster was shot too,” Zach added.
“Yeah, there was.” Kirk took a swig of water.
“We probably ought to start looking for a place to camp, don’t you think, guys?”
They nodded and resumed hiking. Annalise kept her eyes peeled for a suitable site, and she knew the guys were doing the same thing.
It was her favorite time of day. When the sunbeams hit the world at acute angles, lighting the leaves like paper lanterns. Whoever had ridden through forged their own trail, but they’d done it frequently enough that hiking in their tracks was simple. How had the park rangers in Cataloochee not noticed them? She stopped cold. Because they didn’t always start in the park. Maybe they alternated entry points, all converging onto this one trail. She should have paid better attention to side-tracks.
“Zach?”
He stopped again, and this time she thudded into his back. “You’re sweaty.”
He chuckled. “Yeah. And your point is?”
“These guys are really well organized for a bunch of moonshine runners, don’t you think?”
“It seems that way.”
Her feet grew heavier with each forward step. What were they walking into? There was big money in moonshine. Someone seemed to be taking his business very seriously. Was it Jimmy Vern? Or someone following in his footsteps? If it was Jimmy Vern, he’d obviously learned some things from his first go-around with the law and adjusted his operation accordingly.
“We will have a dry, dark camp tonight. Okay, guys?” Kirk said from the front.
“Agreed,” Zach said.
She nodded. No sense in tipping them off if they were up ahead somewhere.
Kirk stopped them in a depression, safely tucked inside rolling bumps on the side of the mountain.
“How old you think these trees are, Lise?”
“As old as the earth.” She liked the thought of bedding down under the boughs of trees that had seen Native Americans gliding in the shadows. Deer that had never seen a man. Wild horses, native elk, and maybe even American Bison at some point. If they could share their stories, what would they reveal about the ages long past?
As quietly as possible, they set up camp and ate a light dinner of tuna and crackers. With her back to a rock, seated facing Kirk and Zach, Annalise watched the patches of sky turn black between the treetops. What was Dave doing right about now? Was he mad at her? Did he even care anymore?
She had to do something more than just hope and pray that things would be okay. When they got back, she’d find a Christian marriage counselor and see if she could talk him into going. He wasn’t big on talking to strangers about his problems, but she would be able to convince him on this issue. It was too important not to enlist some extra support.
Was Paul okay? She chided herself mentally. Of course he was. Captain Brooks would protect him with his life, should it be necessary.
How about Cody? She’d pushed thoughts of him aside with the physical exertion. But it was taking her too long to find him. By dawn it would be seventy-two hours since his abduction. What had the poor boy endured in those three days? Had he even survived the first one? She shuddered. He may have been better off not making it through the initial twenty-four. Who knew what his kidnapper was capable of? There wasn’t exactly such a thing as a normal, nice kidnapper.
“You okay?”
Zach’s question made her jump. “Yeah.”
“Thinking about Cody or Dave?”
Kirk’s eyebrows lifted, but he didn’t say a word.
“Both.”
No one seemed to know what to say. She didn’t either. So they sat silently, listening to a barred owl calling to its lost mate. A profound sense of emptiness filled her from the bottom of her stomach, climbing higher until she felt hollow.
As darkness enveloped them, Zach clicked on his battery-operated lantern. He looked at her and then clicked it back off.
A moment later, she felt his strong arm around her shoulder. There was a rustling to her left, and Kirk’s dark form slipped into his tent. She leaned into Zach’s shoulder as hot tears streaked down her cheeks. She needed the release her tears brought. Holding in her fears and suspicions and worries was exhausting. Thank you, Lord, for a good friend like Zach.
Suddenly self-conscious, she straightened, shook his arm away, and swiped at her cheeks. “This is silly.”
“Annalise...”
“I’m fine. I’ll be fine. Come on, we should get some sleep.” She tucked into her tent and zipped the door flap. As she lay down, the burdens she felt, both for her marriage and Cody, burrowed into a corner of her heart and took up residence. A dark, painful place she wanted to ignore but couldn’t.
Would tomorrow bring resolution to any of her concerns? Or just more sorrow?
MORNING SUNBEAMS PIERCED the canopy of her one-person tent, bringing with them a glow, as if she was sitting inside the paper lanterns she’d imagined the day before. She wished she was. Or maybe a little fairy inside a sunlit tulip, not a care in the world, flitting from bud to bud. Singing a happy song that would lift her heart and make her forget reality.
As soon as she unzipped the tent and began packing, though, her fanciful notions vanished. She’d needed to let some of the stress out last night, but today was a new day. She was tough. Strong. Resilient. Everything would be okay, one way or another. She snorted. Especially if she kept ignoring all the negative emotions and pretending she was fine.
“All right, let’s talk about the game plan.” Kirk motioned for them to gather near him.
Annalise couldn’t quite get a full, deep breath. What would they find ahead? Would they be outnumbered? Would there really be anything to find? And most importantly, could something out here, in the middle of nowhere, actually lead them to a living, breathing Cody?
“If we find a camp today, we will try to take them peaceably, obviously. However, I want you both to prepare yourselves for the worst. Should we run across a group that outnumbers us, we will hang back and wait for backup.” He patted his shirt pocket. “I have the park rangers on standby with four-wheelers, but it will take a couple hours for them to get here. And there is no doubt the noise will alert them to our approach.”
Zach nodded.
“And what if there isn’t anything there at all?” Annalise voiced her most pressing concern. It actually scared her more to find nothing than it did to face shooting, violent men. Because if they found nothing, she was back to square one again.
“Then we hike with our hearts in our throats all day for nothing, I suppose.”
Ugh. That idea sat well.
They silenced their phones and silently started up the trail. She kept her eyes more open for places where other branches could flow into this one and her ears strained for any unusual sounds.
It didn’t take all day. Two hours into their hike, Kirk held up his hand. They all paused. Men’s voices drifted through the trees, and the smell of a campfire greeted her nostrils. It could just be hikers, she supposed, but if it was, they were way off-trail.
They fanned out, with Zach on her left and Kirk on her right, and crept closer. She approached the next rise by slipping quietly from tree to tree. Without even needing to look, she knew the men did the same.
The voices grew louder.
She paused and made eye contact with Zach, then drew her weapon. He did the same. She had lost sight of Kirk somewhere, but he was there. Lurking, creeping, circling around to help.
A few hundred feet more, and she had eyes on the camp. Hidden under the canopy of dense trees and surrounded by thick undergrowth, three men worked around a large, copper still. Drawing water from a natural spring, one man fed the cooling apparatus while the other two appeared busy mashing corn in a stone basin, with the aid of one of the horses turning an old-fashioned grinder.
Wow. She had to give these guys some props here. They knew what they were doing and, clearly, had put serious time and effort into bringing the appropriate equipment this far into the mountains.
Kirk’s voice rang out across from her and Zach. “Everyone freeze.”
The three men jumped and spun to locate the voice, but it was too late. Kirk had stepped into their camp with his handgun aimed at the closest one. His hands shot up, dropping the metal pot full of water.
Zach and Annalise stepped out simultaneously. They’d always been able to connect on a subconscious level, to coordinate their actions without a word passing between them. The sound of their footsteps crunched on the fallen leaves, and the remaining two men turned their direction.
One drew a pistol from his waistband.
“Zach, look out!”
“I see him.”
His voice was as cool as ever. How did he manage to keep his calm, when her heart was racing and throat was dry?
“But, you see, he ain’t going to shoot me.” Zach grinned at her, keeping his gun trained on the man. “He’s out of bullets.”
She covered the third man while Zach drew closer and removed the gun from the other man’s hand.
The man cocked his head sideways. “How’d you know?”
“It’s a revolver, bud. I can see the empty holes.”
Okay, props-giving time over. These men clearly were not the brains of the operation.
Chapter Twenty-Two
ZACH TOOK A DEEP BREATH while Annalise had her back turned. That was close. He wouldn’t tell her he was bluffing and that he couldn’t be a hundred percent sure all the chambers in the gun were empty. She’d kill him.
The three arrested men sat on a log, their hands cuffed behind their backs. Kirk stood watch over them. The distant hum of ATVs buzzed the otherwise quiet summer air. According to the last radio transmission from the rangers on four-wheelers, it would take another hour for their ride out to arrive. The sound bounced off trees and up the valleys, growing louder as time passed.
“You okay?” He nudged Annalise’s shoulder.
She nodded. “Glad we got them.”
“But you’re disappointed.”
She shrugged.
“I get that. I was hoping Jimmy Vern would be here too.”
“Yeah, well, maybe we can find something here that will tie him in and give us enough reason to go back to his place.” She bit her cheek. “I can’t shake the feeling we missed something. What if Cody was there all along? What if we missed our chance to save him? What if—”
“Annalise, stop. Don’t go down the what-if road. You’ve done everything you can, within the limit of the law, to find the boy.”
“You say that like you think it’s too late already.”
He did, but he wasn’t about to confess that either. Maybe there was a miracle in the works, and somehow, Cody was still alive. But Zach was skeptical, to say the least. “Now, I didn’t say that.”
“I can tell by the look on your face, best friend. I’ve known you too long.”
Zach hated seeing the hurt welling up in her brown-streaked hazel eyes. “That means you know I won’t lie to you, if I can help it.”
She started to turn, but he grabbed her by the elbow.
“And that I won’t hurt you either. Not just if I can help it, but no matter what.”
She nodded. “I know.”
“Good. I hope you’re the one who is right. I honestly do.”
“Thanks.”
He and Annalise combed through the site, carefully examining each detail of the men’s belongings and the still.
“Check this out.” Annalise emerged from one of the tents and handed him a couple of Sawyer water filters.
“Same as Buster’s.”
“Lots of people buy these though.”
“True.” He smiled. “But there’s this.” He handed her the small slip of paper he had found in the other tent.
“A receipt. Brilliant.”
“Looks like they paid cash, but maybe we’ll get lucky and find them on security footage.” He pointed over his shoulder. “Found out what made the loud noise the campers heard. Come look.”
She followed him into the edge of the woods. Lying discarded in the undergrowth, a large boiling chamber pot with its sides burst open sat on its side. Jagged metal stuck out at odd angles.
“Guess they had an accident.”
“And needed a new one packed in on the horses.” Annalise smiled.
“Makes perfect sense.”
Annalise scrunched her brow. “Zach?”
“What?”
“Where’re the other horses?”
Good point. Why hadn’t he or Kirk noticed that yet? Zach squatted in front of the men. “Horses? Where are they stashed?”
The men squirmed but remained silent.
“Fine. Don’t talk to me.” Zach grinned. “We’ll let Kirk chat with you when we get to headquarters.”
Kirk glared at them and crossed his arms over his chest.
Zach chuckled as the men shrank subtly. Kirk had quite a reputation for his interrogatory skills. He could get information out of an inanimate object. A dead man to talk. And he never had to touch his victims. Zach still didn’t know how, because no one Zach knew had ever seen Kirk’s interrogations in person. Someone had at the TBI, Zach was sure of it, but they didn’t talk about it afterward.
Hopefully, Kirk’s reputation wasn’t all smoke and mirrors. They needed these men to give them more. Annalise’s ability to find Cody depended on it.
ANOTHER DAY’S WORTH of his pitiful little sunbeam had come and gone. And he was still here. He hadn’t seen Jimmy Vern since the fried chicken.
Cody’s mouth had thanked him for the food, but his stomach had revolted. Curled up on the cold dirt floor, he didn’t even want to think about the corner he’d been using as a bathroom or about what had happened there for the last day. He lifted his hand to brush a spider from his forehead, and shook with the exertion.
Why couldn’t he just be a man and get up and break out of this place? The thought of what Jimmy Vern might do should he catch him in his escape made him tremble even more. He struggled to sit up and found his head throbbed with each breath, so he lay back down.
How many days had he been in this hole?
It didn’t matter really. His mom, and now his dad for sure, were on their way. The police were waiting to rescue him until it was safe. And until they could nab Jimmy Vern at the same time. He just had to be patient. And strong. And keep fighting.
Right?
ANNALISE PACED THE forest edge surrounding the camp. How could these guys have hidden the other horses? It’s not like they were silent, tiny hamsters. Each of the men had to have ridden one in to account for the separate sets of prints they’d seen. Based on the prints, one of the horses was considerably larger than the others, possibly a mule. Perfect for carrying the corn that had once occupied all the empty feed sacks.
Jimmy Vern had horses. Was it possible he had been with these men, dropped them off here with instructions, and then taken his mounts home with him?
She spun and stalked to where the men waited to be loaded onto the rear seat of the ATVs. “I know you had at least two more horses. Are they Jimmy Vern’s?”
Still the men refused to answer.
She needed something to entice them. A reduced sentence or a get-out-of-jail-completely-free card. She would be willing if it meant finding Cody, but it wasn’t up to her. After Zach and Kirk took these men in, she would have to go home and wait. Maybe she should just tell Kirk right here and now that she wanted the job. She stomped back to the tree line and resumed her pacing, chewing on her thumb as she thought.
What would get these stubborn goons talking? A hot iron? The fire under the still smoldered. She could—
No. What in the world could make her, even for a second, consider something like that?
“Annalise?” Zach waved to her.
“Huh?”
<
br /> “Ready?”
They’d put each of the arrested men on a side-by-side ATV with two officers. Kirk waited on a four-wheeler with a park ranger at the steering and another on the back rack, and an empty ATV waited for her and Zach. She climbed on behind him, strapped on the helmet, and wrapped her arms around his waist.
She found comfort in the way his muscles moved as he steered down the mountain ahead of the side-by-side carrying the arrested men. In the way his breath flowed in and out and his heartbeat reverberated under her grip. But she wished it was Dave. How long had it been since they’d done something fun together? Just the two of them, relaxing and her not worrying about work or leaving in the middle of the night to go help someone she didn’t even know.
That was why Dave had put distance between them, wasn’t it?
Maybe when she got home, she’d ask him out on a date. Romance him a little. A candlelit dinner and a night in their backyard oasis staring up at the stars.
Who was she kidding? She couldn’t take a night off and relax with her husband. Not while Cody was still missing and Paul was under her protective watch. But as soon as the case was over, she’d plan on wooing her handsome husband. They could fix things. She just knew it. She would prove to Dave how much she loved him and wanted him to be front and center in her priorities. As soon as she found Cody. And put his kidnapper behind bars for a very, very long time.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“I’M HUNGRY,” ZACH SAID as he climbed into the passenger seat of Annalise’s truck.
“You’re always hungry.”
“I feel like we’ve had this conversation before.” He grinned.
“We have. Multiple times.”
She slid into the driver’s seat and started the vehicle, checking her rearview to make sure the officers lined up behind her. The arrested—and still completely silent—men accompanied by two officers each waited for her lead. Kirk brought up the rear. They planned to caravan back to Knoxville. Kirk and Zach would begin interrogations first thing tomorrow morning, after keeping them each in isolation the rest of the night. Kirk’s interrogation techniques and preferences were different than other officers’, but his track record proved he knew what he was doing.