Thus far, Lima still isn’t sure what to think. The move with trying to set them up at the warehouse felt like classic misdirection. An attempt to get them wrapped up while at the same time going to take care of something else.
Now, as they climb higher into the mountains, it is beginning to feel like something much different. A ruse not only to get rid of Lima and his team, but to give their fellow officers something to focus on while they slipped away.
“Starting to kind of feel like they’re running,” Lima says.
Never before has he been in this area, but he knows by the Google Map on his phone that it isn’t long before they run into the 2.
After that, it’s a short jaunt to the east before they hit the I-15 and can effectively disappear, the artery a direct route out of the state, feeding a handful of major cities and just as many international airports.
“You think?” Bocco asks without glancing over, his focus squarely on the road.
“Maybe,” Lima says. “Hell, I don’t know.”
In the last forty-five minutes, his thoughts on the entire ordeal have vacillated a handful of times. When he first got the call from Dwayne and Monte saying that Spiers had set them up, he’d been pissed. Irate. Wanting nothing more than to run the blue pickup down as it pulled from Lucas’s driveway and have it out right there in the street.
With each passing mile, though, the venom wanes. Replaced by reason, he can’t help but keep circling back to the reason for all of this.
Luis would believe in reinvesting in the community. He would applaud them cleaning up the streets, removing those that didn’t belong.
But chasing a pair of cops up into the mountains was a different thing altogether.
Even if the money they owed them would do a lot of good in their neighborhood.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Remaining on the far side of the fire does me no good. Being caught unarmed by Spiers’s early arrival, by my own foolish reliance on the tracking device planted on his car, I’m hidden from view, but I have no way of actively engaging him.
Undoubtedly, he is carrying his service weapon or an unmarked he picked up from the evidence locker at his precinct, or some combination of the two. At the first inkling of movement, he will open up, firing blindly into the woods, looking to mow down anything that makes a sound.
And, Murphy’s Law being the bastard that it is, eventually one of the bullets is bound to find me.
The longer I sit and wait, the higher the odds of that happening climb. Even worse, the less the lure of the fire and Amber’s skin tag do for me, further heightening the advantage he has.
Completely nullifying my entire point in pulling him up here into the woods.
Rising from my crouch, I can feel pine needles passing over my skin. Their scent is strong in my nostrils, my senses heightened as I pause, listening for the sound of Spiers exiting the truck and coming closer.
Hearing nothing, I cross my right foot over my left. Keeping my shoulders square to the turnout and the vehicles I know are parked there, I move slowly, shifting to the north.
Placing down nothing but the front third of each foot, I keep a steady pace. The fire remains on the periphery of my view, enough to serve as a guidepost without destroying my night vision.
Drawing in air with even pulls, beads of perspiration streak south along my jaw, dripping onto my bare shoulders. My pulse creeps higher, readying for impending battle.
I have two options, two ways of playing this.
The first is to hope the fire pulls Spiers in long enough to allow me to get to the SUV and grab what I need. Once I have a gun in hand, the first round goes into the tires of whatever rig he drove up here, effectively stranding him.
From there, it’s a simple matter of waiting him out, the man nowhere near my equal once we’re on equal footing.
The second is to skip the SUV entirely, again relying on the fact that there is no way a big city cop has anywhere near the ability necessary to match me in my element. As the sun on my skin and the scars running the length of me can attest, my life has been spent outdoors. Whether in the forest of Idaho, the sands of Mexico, or a thousand other spots in between, every skill I possess has been honed and tested by Mother Nature.
This pugnacious prick is used to riding in a car with air- conditioning. Wearing loafers and a sports coat to work every day.
I doubt he’s ever had to forage for shelter or water, never had to consider the angle of the sun or the force of the wind when taking a shot.
Buoyed by such knowledge, my fingers again begin to twitch. My pace increases slightly, feet placed softly down onto matted pine needles, the bedding serving as makeshift sound insulation.
In the distance, I hear the distinctive din of a metallic connection, a truck door being closed. A ripple of palpitations rises through my core, one corner of my mouth peeling back slightly.
At long last, he has arrived.
A predator stalking prey, I continue moving. Bit by bit, my positioning shifts, pushing me from the west side of the fire to the northwest corner. No longer do I need to move from side to side, instead pushing straight ahead, closing the gap between us.
The faint of glow of fire is just past my right shoulder as I keep pressing on, moving until a sound I do not expect pierces the night air, stopping me where I stand.
A second truck door closing shut.
Chapter Seventy
Of the two men Spiers sent to Idaho, one is dead and the other is in the hospital. His partner is also out of commission. I assume he rounded up some people to go to the fake meeting I called about earlier in the day.
Just how large the contingent involved in his scheme is, I can’t be certain. All that matters is, yet again, I messed up, assuming he would arrive alone.
The fingers on my left hand curl up, forming a fist. Clenching so hard I can feel the nails digging into my palm, I cease my forward movement.
A second person changes things. Not only is there now another gun, there is the tactical advantage of being able to fan out. An easy way for one to check the campsite and another to stay by the vehicles.
Every curse word and expletive I’ve ever heard in English or Spanish floats to the front of my mind. One after another, they rifle past, allowing myself just a few moments of self-flagellation before casting them aside with an angry shake of my head.
There will be plenty of time for that shit later. A long drive to Idaho or back to Mexico or wherever else, when I can sit in silence and ruminate on every damn mistake I’ve made out here.
But that won’t happen unless I focus now. Push aside the extraneous and home in on what is in front of me.
Which is, right now, Spiers and one other person are between the road and the campsite I’ve set up. Sixty yards of dense forest, in places packed so tight that even light won’t penetrate.
Both are law enforcement. Both are armed. Both are pissed about Amy stealing their money and me killing their colleague and who knows what else.
Good.
For three long years, I have denied myself. I have hidden away in the desert, pretending that this isn’t exactly who I am. That the life I left behind wasn’t just how I paid the bills, it was what I was good at, the thing that brought me joy.
The way I identified myself.
When Amber asked me if my name was in reference to a ham sandwich, I told her yes, because there was no way that I was going to tell a ten-year-old the truth. In a way, I’ve been doing the same with myself, acting as if the endless training and the occasional bouts at Jake’s aren’t me clinging to my true self.
That ends now.
Outnumbered or not, unarmed or not, these two assholes don’t have the slightest idea what they just walked into.
Pushing myself into motion, my pace is much quicker than before. No longer quite as concerned with the placement of every step, I move just short of a jog. Cutting the gap between my position and the vehicles by almost half, I come to a stop.
&
nbsp; Pausing, I listen hard for a moment, peering through the trees. To the southwest, I can just make out the faint flicker of the fire. On the eastern front, the pale glow of headlights penetrates the woods.
Nowhere do I see a silhouette, any sign of a living being.
Sweat streams over my face as I drop to a knee, using a knotted clump of pine trees as cover. Sliding the cell phone from my back pocket, I thumb the device to life, the faceplate glowing bright.
I close my right eye completely, shielding it from the harsh glow. My left, I leave open just a sliver, maneuvering through various screens as quick as I can.
A bit more advanced than the simple flip phones I prefer to accommodate the tracking program, it takes me a moment to pull up the call menu. My free hand cupped around the phone, shielding its glow, I punch in a few random digits.
Just enough to keep the screen active and bright, I place it flat on the ground and spread a thin layer of pine needles over it. Obscuring some of the luminosity, I leave it there, fading back, waiting until I am a dozen yards away before opening both eyes again.
Behind each one is a faint flicker of light, popping up with every blink.
I’ve made do with worse.
And it’s still better than what they’re working with right now, standing in the middle of the floodlights from the rig they drove up here.
Looping around to the east a bit further, I tuck my body up against a bushy spruce tree. Remaining upright, I melt into the thick boughs of it, staring out intently.
Two traps have now been set, my next move dictated on how they react.
What they decide right now doesn’t really matter, just as long as they do it fast.
I’m so damn amped up right now, I can barely stand still.
Chapter Seventy-One
The main path is too obvious. If the woman really did leave Amy and Amber out here to hide in seclusion, she wouldn’t have done so without adding something as one last line of defense.
Some sort of trip wire. Or motion detector. Or even a damned Burmese Tiger pit with pine boughs and rocks covering a hole filled with sharpened stakes.
None of those are the least bit appealing to Jensen Spiers. Already, he has gotten a personal demonstration of what the woman is capable of. And while he still can’t quite wrap his mind around her leaving them at all, that is only because she doesn’t know about the marker sprayed onto the young girl’s neck.
Circling out to his left, Spiers slides between the outstretched limbs of a pair of pine trees. Long needles slide over the mask and along the side of his head as does so, their soft touch igniting the swelling still covering his cheeks and forehead. Pinpricks of pain ripple across his flesh, a sheen of moisture coming to his eyes.
Bringing with it a heightened sense of animosity.
The left corner of Spiers’s mouth curls back in a snarl. His right hand squeezes the ridged grip of the Sig tighter, the left held at chin level, brushing back any stray branches that might try to hit him again.
So badly would he like to have a few minutes alone with the woman that did this. The one that shot his partner and turned his face into a science experiment, the promise of surgery in his near future none too appealing.
Getting his wife and stepdaughter back right now is a solid first step. It will close the loop on the missing money, ensuring that anything Lima tries to say to save his own ass later tonight can be proven false.
But it won’t be the end of it.
Not by a long shot.
His body turned parallel to the truck behind him, Spiers continues moving forward. Shifting his path a step or two to the front or back as needed, he threads his way forward, the glow of the headlights falling away behind him.
Visibility reduced to nothing more than a few feet, Spiers extends his left hand as far as possible. Swinging it in a wide arc before him, he peels back thin branches, their elasticity snapping them into place the instant he passes by.
His breathing becomes shallow as he continues. His gaze swings in either direction, the harsh burn of sweat settling into his eyes.
So much he wants to go charging forward, to scream out into the night, bellowing every cruel thought and bit of angst he has stored over the last week. His lips move without any sound escaping, mouthing silent threats, as he peels back yet another branch.
And pulls up abruptly as it reveals the faint flicker of a fire, fingers of orange and yellow rising no more than a couple of feet from the forest floor.
Allowing the branch to ease back into place a few inches, Spiers’s chest pulls tight as he stares, watching for any sign of movement. His gaze sweeps the area, looking for any stray shadows, hoping for a silhouette to give away somebody’s position.
For almost a full minute he waits, seeing absolutely nothing, before pushing the branch forward again and easing through.
Chapter Seventy-Two
The man that emerges before me isn’t so much a man as an overgrown bear lumbering through the forest. Moving with all the grace of an elephant, I can hear him long before I see him, snapping branches and thrashing about.
Still, that doesn’t mitigate the surprise I feel to see who actually appears, drawn in by the faint glow of the phone half buried in the cluster of pine trees.
The last time I saw Spiers’s partner, the man had a round in his lower abdomen, another just beneath his right collarbone. The power of the two shots had just knocked him backward, his girth and ungainly manner enough to send him toppling over before eventually landing in a tangle with his partner on the floor.
A mere four days ago, I didn’t think there was any way possible that he would now be up and about. Certainly not clambering through the woods, out searching for Spiers’s family and the promise of whatever money they might have pillaged.
Clearly, I have underestimated their investment in the matter.
Moving like a man recently shot multiple times, his upper body is completely rigid. A gun is gripped in his left hand, His right arm tucked against his ribs, favoring his wounds. His posture and the grimace on his face both give the impression it will be a struggle for him to even raise it to shoulder height, let alone fire.
His stint in the hospital seems to have deflated some of his previous mass, his body listing to either side as he stumbles forward, focus solely on the square of light.
Which is what happens when a person is injured. Their body is forced into damage control, barely able to see past the enormous pain they are in. If they can muster the strength to focus on anything else, it’s never more than one thing.
The peripheral ceases to matter.
Options like checking his surroundings barely even register.
Of the possible outcomes that the sound of the second door slamming could have delivered, this is far and away the best. Spiers is in so deep, the sole backup he could find was his partner, a man that on his best day is already big and slow.
Now, he is injured to the point of being almost useless.
And he’s brought me a gun.
Remaining stationary another moment, I watch as he continues to move forward. His gait is a combination of a stumble and a shuffle as he descends on the phone, waiting until he is almost on it before pausing.
Giving nothing more than a cursory glance around, he again shifts his attention toward the ground, staring at the phone as if it is some sort of archaeological phenomenon.
Never will I get a better chance.
Grabbing the closest branch, I shove forward off my back foot, using the tree for a bit of extra leverage, launching myself ahead. Within two strides, I hit my top speed, stray limbs and pine needles scraping at my skin, whipping across my torso as I hurtle forward.
My breath is clenched tight as my arms form into ninety-degree angles. My entire focus is on the man as he stands awkwardly over the phone, scrutinizing it closely.
Halfway there, my luck runs out. My foot lands square on a felled branch, snapping it clean. The sound seems overly pronounced in the quiet
of the forest, enough to pull his attention away from the phone.
Even in his muddled state, he looks up to see me, barely a darkened outline bearing down on him, his eyes wide as his vision fights to adjust after staring straight down at the light.
Slowly, I see his left hand start to rise.
Beginning deep in my diaphragm, a guttural sound starts to roll out of me. Growing louder with each step, I pound ahead, letting it pour forth, no longer worried about anybody that might hear me.
Gone is any concern for stealing about in the shadows, my focus square on the chest of the man before me.
Cutting the gap between us to no more than a couple of yards, I push hard off my back foot, launching myself into the air. For an instant, I hang suspended, my body a few feet off the ground, parallel to the forest floor.
Splayed out in a textbook dropkick, the heels of both my boots aim for his center mass as he continues trying to raise his gun. Able to do little more than flick his wrist upward, the soft tissue of his right pec and shoulder destroyed by my shot days before, he squeezes off a single round.
The next split second occurs in three distinct parts, one thing after another, all so close together I can barely parse them out.
The first to occur is the orange blossom erupting from the tip of his weapon. Blindingly bright, it brings with it a thunderous report, the sound reverberating through the forest.
Next in order is the bite of the round tearing through the flesh of my left calf. Like a hot poker shoved into my skin, it cleaves a trench clean through, hot blood spatter slapping against my bare arm and shoulder.
Barely is my body able to register the wound before the final thing happens, the full weight of my body slamming into the man. With my feet staggered just slightly, my left foot lands on his right pec, mashing into his recent wound. The right hits a bit lower, breaking at least one rib, expelling the air from his lungs.
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