South Dakota Showdown

by Nicole Helm

  “But we know they’re not here.”

  He raked a hand through his hair. “I’m not suggesting we stay here and do nothing. I’m suggesting we think.”

  “Think about what? There is no time to think. You have to go where we were and try to find Cody. I have to go toward where we think my father’s place might be and get Gigi. We don’t have time for anything else.” She sat on the bed and quickly tied her boots.

  “Are you going to fight off your father and any other Sons by yourself with one gun? And let’s say you could—when you get Gigi, what are you going to do with her? You can’t just go in there and die. That doesn’t serve anyone.”

  She stood and looked him square in the eye. “I couldn’t live with myself, if Gigi dies and I didn’t even try to get to her in time. Jamison, look at me.” She wasted precious seconds waiting until he did. “If it were one of your brothers when they were four and helpless, or even one of the Knight girls, what would you do? Put yourself in my shoes.”

  “I’m already in your shoes. You think Gigi being hurt would mean nothing to me?”

  The fact that she knew it would mean nearly as much to him as it did to her, even though he’d never met Gigi, only made her heart hurt more. But she’d wasted too much time. She hadn’t started on this journey to find Jamison again. Anything they’d shared in this cabin was only...a weakness. One she couldn’t keep letting change her. “We don’t have time. We do not have time. I have to go and so do you.” She grabbed the gun, then swung her pack onto her back. She opened her mouth to tell him to move, but he spoke first.

  “I love you—”

  She should have known he’d fight dirty. But she wouldn’t fall for it, even as her heart swelled and her eyes pricked with tears. “Jamison, don’t try to use—”

  “I have always loved you. I will always love you.” He was calm. Dead serious.

  And it couldn’t—didn’t—matter.

  “All the love in the world doesn’t matter if she dies and I didn’t try to get to her. I’ll die with her, one way or another.”

  “If you die, so does she. I want you to remember that. I had to. More than once did I have to remind myself that nothing good happened for my brothers if I was dead in a ditch. Find the house. Find Gigi. Do what you have to do to get her to safety—but you can’t be reckless doing what you have to do. You can’t risk yourself, because that only risks her. Do you understand me?”

  She didn’t, for a few seconds, because he was... He was letting her go. Not that she would have let him stop her, but she thought he’d try. She’d thought he’d...

  It didn’t matter. Because he was letting her go without further argument or impediment. She moved onto her toes and pressed her mouth to his—hard and fast.

  Then she gave him what he’d given her. “I love you. I have always loved you. I will always love you—whatever happens.”

  “As soon as I get Cody to stop this, I’ll be there. If you get her out—we’ll meet back here. Understood?”

  She nodded. He grabbed his own pack and handed her the walkie from it. “You keep this on. If they’re in there, one of the channels should pick it up if they’re sending messages outside.”

  “But you—”

  “I won’t be next to the house they’re in. Presumably.” He zipped up his pack and shouldered the larger burden. He reattached his holstered weapon around his waist.

  She didn’t want to take this next leg alone. She’d gotten so used to being alone she would have considered herself immune to feeling this again, to needing someone again.

  Here it was, though, an ache of longing. She wanted someone’s hand to hold. Someone to patch up her wounds and vice versa. She wanted his quiet strength and surety leading her into saving her sister.

  Didn’t she already know she couldn’t do this alone? She’d failed Marci and Carlee and—

  “Liza.”

  She looked up at him, panic an icy cold bucket of reality on all those plans she’d been brimming to fulfill.

  “We’re still together in this. We’re just working on two different ends of the same rope. We meet in the middle.”

  “I—”

  “We’ll meet in the middle. Now, here.” He pulled his map, the marked one he’d spent years on, out of his pocket and handed it to her. “This might help. There are extra batteries for the headlamp in the bottom of your pack if you start to lose power. Okay?”

  She stared at the map, then him. He was giving her a pep talk. Encouraging her. When she knew very well he did not want her to do it. When, if this was fifteen years ago, he already would have locked her in the cabin so he could do it all himself.

  I wanted to do it right.

  Letting her go, trusting her to get to Gigi like she trusted him to get to Cody and stop the explosives.

  On a deep breath, she nodded. “We meet in the middle.”

  Then she walked out into the darkness, ready to do whatever it took to get Gigi to that middle.

  Chapter Fourteen

  With every step he took, Jamison cursed himself for letting Liza go alone. He should have gone with her. They could have liberated Gigi together and let every other part of the Sons compound burn.

  But there were too many what-ifs. What if the explosives went off sooner rather than later? What if more than just Gigi was at stake when it came to innocent bystanders? There wasn’t time. No matter how he tried to convince himself those were the reasons he’d let her go, it wasn’t anything rational or reasonable.

  He’d seen that look on Liza’s face as she’d hesitated back there in the cabin. The way she’d been determined, and then doubt had crept in and left her frozen. She’d needed someone to trust her, to tell her she could do it.

  Maybe she’d always needed that from him and he’d never seen it. Maybe that was what a lot of people in his life needed from him—not someone to sweep in and fix and save everything, but someone to say they could handle it on their own.

  There was no use going through the past, no use thinking about all the ways he might have stifled his brothers, but he could fix his present.

  Liza was a strong and capable woman, and she needed a win. She needed a few people to believe she could accomplish that win. Gigi needed to be alive. Jamison had to believe Liza when she said she couldn’t survive losing another person, and he had to do everything in his power to help.

  Which meant he had to stop the explosives. As quickly as possible, and at whatever cost. He had no experience with computers or explosives, so poking around on the computer was only a dangerous possibility.

  He had to find Cody because Cody knew all about computers. Cody had gotten a degree in computer science—the only one of them to make it to college—not that they’d given him much of a choice. Once teachers had started commenting on Cody’s intelligence in middle school, Jamison and his brothers had done everything in their power to learn about how to get their baby brother into college.

  Cody had protested at first, made noise about the police academy, but eventually he’d given in to the pressure and gone off to South Dakota State. It wasn’t Harvard, but it was something.

  And Cody had used those opportunities. He’d done internships within the CIA. He’d finished his degree with honors. For the past few years he’d spoken of an on-again, off-again freelance computer job that kept him in Wyoming. He only came home around Christmas and never gave much by way of details.

  If they weren’t Cody’s explosives, Cody would at least have a better idea of what was going on. Jamison had to believe Cody was involved with whatever was happening. There was no other explanation for him roaming around the Black Hills, carrying what appeared to be a Sons walkie and communicating in Morse code, all very far from where he was supposed to be.

  Jamison reached the spot where he’d originally run into Cody. He worried less about his headlamp now, because while
the threat of being caught still existed, it was a risk he’d have to take if he was going to find Cody.

  Jamison stopped and looked around. He’d been thinking about Liza and his brother, but he hadn’t been thinking strategically. Cody had been striding away from the clearing—opposite to the cabin. Jamison thought about the map, about where they thought Liza’s father’s cabin was.

  Immediately, he turned west. If his instincts were right, and he had the map clear in his head, Cody had been going in the direction of Tony Dean’s place. Maybe to lay the explosives? Or something else to do with them?

  There was only one way to find out.

  Jamison didn’t take the same path Liza had taken. They’d have better luck finding the place if they weren’t approaching it from the same angle. So, he thought about the direction he’d seen Cody go.

  Every so many steps he made an adjustment to the map in his head. Turning, thinking, analyzing.

  He heard a crack. The whisper of movement. Slowly, cautiously, he moved one hand to his gun and the other hand to the switch of his headlamp. Another whisper, this time on the opposite side of him.

  He switched off the light, plunging him and whoever—or whatever—else into darkness, and took a leap away from the spot he’d been standing in.

  But that crashed him into something—and since he hadn’t been standing that close to any trees, it had to be a person.

  So, Jamison fought. Trying to wrestle the other person underneath him. The other man pushed but didn’t hit, then whispered viciously.

  “Stop trying to hit me, you moron,” Cody’s voice hissed.

  Jamison stilled, then untangled himself from his brother and got to his feet. “You didn’t think to say, ‘Hey, Jamison, I’m lurking around the woods you’re hiking through.’ Who’s the moron? Thinking I won’t fight?”

  “Shut up for a second, and don’t turn on that idiotic light,” Cody growled.

  Jamison listened, though he didn’t particularly want to take orders from his baby brother. After a few seconds, Cody made an irritated noise. “What are you doing?”

  “Are we speaking now? Or did you want to hold hands and tap each other more?”

  “Now’s not the time for your sad attempts at humor. You can’t go that direction, Jamison. Go back the way you came. Stop trying to do...whatever it is you’re trying to do.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “This isn’t a joke, and it’s no place for—no offense—a sleepy small town’s sheriff’s deputy. I don’t know what you think you’re up to with Liza Dean of all people, but I don’t have time. You have to vacate the premises. Both of you.”

  “If I could do that, Cody, I would have done it the first time you asked. I’m not here as a sheriff, and Liza isn’t here as... Never mind. Listen to me. Are you the one with the explosives?”

  Cody shoved him. Hard. Jamison scowled, though it was lost in the dark.

  “Are you trying to get us all killed?” Cody hissed.

  “I don’t think you understand. If this is you, you can’t do it. You can’t... There are innocent lives at stake.”

  “There are Sons’ lives at stake,” Cody said with a cold fierceness that had Jamison feeling a chill go right through him. “I don’t care much about those,” Cody added.

  “What about the kids?”

  “Kids? There aren’t kids there. Do you think I don’t know what I’m doing? That I’m some rogue idiot trying to blow someone up for fun? For revenge. I have been canvassing this area and that house. I...I can’t get into this with you. I know you fancy yourself savior supreme along with big brother, but this is bigger than you, Jamison. Get Liza and go and leave me to it.”

  “What about Carlee Bright?”

  This time Cody didn’t shove him. He grabbed him by the shirtfront. “You have no idea—no idea—what you are getting involved in.”

  And because his brother seemed genuinely—scared wasn’t the right word—affected, concerned, sharp and poised, like a blade, Jamison didn’t fight him off. He let Cody have his grip as he spoke calmly and quietly.

  “No. I don’t. But I know that Liza’s sister saw Carlee murdered, and then Gigi disappeared after telling Liza. I know Tony killed Carlee—or at least was there when it happened. I know, having done no canvassing and spending no time here, that Gigi is four years old and in exactly the kind of danger we can imagine.”

  “Tony comes and goes. Three of his henchmen. A few women are in there always, but no kids.”

  “Did you check the shack? The stables?”

  “I’ve been watching. There isn’t—”

  “What have you been watching, Cody? Not everything. Not every inch. You’ve been watching Tony and his men, but have you been paying attention?”

  “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself mixed up in, Jamison. Go home. Go back to Bonesteel. Let me take care of this.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Right. You can’t. You can’t listen to me, and you can’t trust me. But you trust Liza. Who went back.”

  “I trust Liza, who’s trying to save someone she loves. I know something about that. You have to stop the explosives, Cody. You have to. Until we know for sure.”

  “It’s not my call, Jamison.”

  Jamison put his hand over Cody’s, still twisted in his shirt. Not to pull it off, but to get through to his brother. “Make it your call. Now.”

  Cody’s grip stayed tight on Jamison’s shirt. “You don’t get to boss me around anymore, big brother.”

  But someone apparently did. “What on earth are you involved in?”

  “Bigger things than saving one little girl.”

  “There’s no bigger thing than trying to save the kids caught in that place. If it was as easy as blowing up all the bad men, we could have done that twenty years ago. It isn’t so easy, Cody. I know you know that. Somewhere deep down you have to know that.”

  Cody released Jamison’s shirt, giving him another slight shove as he did. Then he swore, viciously, in the dark.

  Jamison waited, though every second that ticked by tested his patience and his worry over Liza. Cody was doing something, tapping at what sounded like computer keys, but there was no light, no sign of what he was doing.

  After a few minutes he took Jamison’s hand and pressed a small rectangle into it.

  “You’re going to go to the compound.” Cody swore at himself as if he already regretted giving that order. “You’re going to search the stables—there is nothing going on in the shack or the house. The stables... It’s just horses, but my men did the search. Not me. It wasn’t my assignment, but...”

  “Assignment?”

  “You’ll search the stables—that’s it. If it’s clear—you press that button twice and you get the hell out because I’m blowing the place up. If, on the insanely off chance my guys missed something and there are innocent people on the premises, you press it once and only once.”

  “And if they’re there—then what?”

  “Then, I might be able to get you some help. Might. But not before I’ve got proof, maybe not even if I do.”

  “Cody—”

  “No questions. You can’t worry about me, brother. You’ve got bigger things to worry about right now.”

  Jamison hated that it was true. “You’ll stay safe.”

  “Safe? What do you take me for, Jamison? Certainly not a Wyatt,” Cody said with just the tiniest hint of humor. “Now go. And hurry.”

  That was just what Jamison did.

  * * *

  LIZA NEARLY TRIPPED over the first sign she was on the right track. The metal glinted in the light of the moon—which had been bright enough for her to keep the headlamp off. Occasionally she’d use the beam to check the map, but otherwise it made her feel too conspicuous.

  Now she flipped it on and found a littl
e pink tricycle, covered in dirt and pine needles like it hadn’t been used in a while. Based on the fact it was early spring, it probably hadn’t been.

  She tried not to get her hopes up. A little pink tricycle could mean anything. But mostly it meant a little girl had been around here somewhere at some point, and a little girl was what she was looking for.

  She turned the headlamp off and looked up. Off in the distance, she thought she saw the hint of lights. Lights.

  Slowly, carefully, she moved toward it. The closer she got, the more the trees crowded together—providing excellent cover. But after walking awhile, she nearly sobbed in relief, because through the trees she saw the warm glow of lights dancing in windows. Windows.

  In the moonlight and starlight, the shadow of a big, beautiful cabin loomed. It had to be what she was looking for. It had to be.

  Knowing her father, she was sure there would be all sorts of security. Men watching from all angles. Cameras, maybe. Anything was possible because this whole place was very unlike the Sons. They liked their tents and shacks and things you could leave behind, and quickly. They preferred caves for big meetings and “justice” being served because evidence wouldn’t be found.

  This whole spread before her was very strange—and spoke to a permanence the Sons had never attempted before.

  Maybe, just maybe, it could be their downfall.

  But that wasn’t the point of right now. Now she was solely focused on finding Gigi. She stood behind a tree, forcing herself to slow her breathing, to think rationally.

  She’d made it, found her father’s place. Now she just had to find Gigi. And avoid all detection by the Sons, and hope Jamison found Cody to stop the explosives.

  She knew she should entertain the thought Jamison could fail, but it wasn’t possible. Jamison and failure in the same sentence didn’t make sense. She couldn’t get her brain or her heart to think it possible.

  It didn’t matter—because she had a job to do here. A girl to find and protect. And if someone found her or them, she had a gun. She’d defend herself and Gigi.