Friendly Fire (13 page)

Her door opened, and Clinton poked his head in. “Hi, Julia,” he said. “Ruth called to tell us you were on your way. I’ll park your car around back. You two can go on in with Rose.”

Julia was relieved. Having Ruth back her up, forcing Kevin and Angie out the door and asking them not to come back—made her feel humbled to have such a friend. Ruth had stayed at the house, understanding Julia’s need to take her daughter somewhere safe after Kevin’s unsubtle threat. What better place than the sheriff’s office?

When Julia walked into the station, though, she stumbled as she spotted Kevin and Angie with two of the volunteers across the room.

“Don’t pay no mind to them,” Rose said, setting her hand on Julia’s back. “You go right into the office. They showed up here right after Ruth called.”

Julia clutched Dawn’s hand, maybe squeezing a little too tightly. She felt panicked, cornered from all directions.

“Don’t worry about nothing, now,” Rose continued. “Ruth told us what happened, and he’s not going anywhere with Dawn. He’d have an entire town stopping him.”

If there was one thing Julia knew about Rose, it was that she said nothing without every intention of following through. Julia spotted the old sheriff as he strode her way. He seemed portly now, wearing a plaid shirt and a ball cap.

“Julia, don’t you worry none,” he told her. “We’re going to find your girl. There’re good people out looking for her.” He patted her shoulder and winked at her as if that would make everything all right. She had always liked him, but there was something that seemed too practiced and too perfect about his reply now. He and Logan were so different, she realized: Logan was a doer, an unassuming deep thinker, a man who’d get the job done. Sheriff Wilcox had always been about the politics. She remembered that now.

A loud whirring echoed around them, and Julia realized it was a helicopter. She wondered what was happening now.

Rose looked up, frowned, and said, “Is that a helicopter?”

“Sounds like it,” the old sheriff replied.

There was a commotion out front, and one of the men shouted, “A helicopter just landed in the middle of the road!”

Julia followed Rose out the front door, and she glimpsed a person she thought was Logan. She blinked, realizing her mistake in her fogged, overtired mind. The man she stared at was the same height and build as Logan, so he stood out from everyone around him. He was drop-dead gorgeous, with dark hair, clean cut and polished. He looked as if he had stepped off the cover of
GQ Magazine,
right down to the rich leather of his coat. There were three other men with him, all tall, wearing dark coats and blue jeans—not from around here. He glanced around shrewdly as if taking in the room and everyone in it. When his gaze landed on Julia and then her daughter, pinned to her side, his expression softened.

“I’m looking for Rose,” the man called out in a deep, confident voice.

“You found her,” Rose replied, starting toward the man. “You must be Ben, Logan’s brother.”

“I am.”

Clinton strode in from the back. “Rose, there’s a chopper in the middle of Main Street!”

She just waved her hand his way as if she knew all about it.

Sheriff Wilcox lifted his ball cap and scratched his head, chiming in. “Are you joining the search?”

“No,” Ben replied. “I’m taking it over.”

Chapter 24

L
ogan could hear dogs in the background as he moved through the brush, his flashlight illuminating odd tracks. He had to back up, running his flashlight along the ground, taking a second to try to reorient himself. He was rusty, and he wanted to kick his own ass for not picking this up sooner. He’d been following Trinity’s tracks, which had suddenly ended, and he now caught the impression of someone being dragged. He shone his flashlight around the area and noticed a bent branch. The trail looked as if something had come through this way—then the same footprints, the deep grooves, the diagonal traction. Logan cursed under his breath. The tracks deepened, as if the person was now carrying some weight…much more than the weight of a little girl who weighed next to nothing.

“Tom, I’ve got an awful feeling, here. Tell me, are there any cabins nearby?”

Tom rustled the brush and was at his side, shining his light at the path, which had suddenly changed direction, winding up a sharp incline. “There’s a cabin up that way: small, rustic, with an open meadow in front. There were always supplies of some kind there, too. It’s just up on the ridge. You can’t see it from here until you hit that break of trees at the top.” Tom glanced behind him. “Sounds like the dogs are coming, too. They’ll have picked up the girl’s scent.”

Logan didn’t say anything. He was thinking, doing his best to shut out the pounding in his head. He touched the back of his head again, feeling dried blood. It hurt like hell. “Stay behind me—” he started to say when he heard a chopper in the distance. The spotlight was dragging toward them. “Give me your phone,” he demanded, holding out his hand. He dialed Ben’s number.

“Yeah?” Ben shouted over the line.

Logan could hear the chopper in the background. “Ben, I can hear you coming and can see your lights. You’re almost on top of us.”

The noise level ramped up, the cut of the chopper blades stirring up wind and setting the trees rocking around them.

“Just ahead of us, up that incline, there should be a cabin,” Logan shouted, his finger stuck in his other ear. He waited as the chopper moved ahead a bit. The light swirled across the area around them and up higher, then seemed to hover in place.

“Yeah, I see it. Tucked away against the side of the mountain, has a nice lookout spot. Whoa, wait! Someone’s up there,” Ben said.

Logan held the phone and started up the hill, fighting the ache in his leg, which was starting to slow him down. He was fine on the straightaway, but climbing nearly finished him off.

“I can see someone running!” Ben was shouting. “Set it down,” he said to someone in the background, and Logan could hear the chopper descending.

Logan somehow found it in himself to hurry up that hill. He tossed the phone to Tom and pushed through the bush up the incline, but he couldn’t hear anything with the chopper blades whirring in the background. He sensed the man bursting through the brush before he saw him, and Logan threw himself forward, locking his arms around the man’s chest. They went down, rolling over rocks and debris and stopping when they hit a tree.

Logan sucked in a breath. The other man was moving to his feet already, and Logan reached for his leg and took him down again, but the man was strong and kicked him in his bad leg, as if he knew exactly where to hit him. Logan groaned and was stopped by the excruciating pain. He reached for his gun, pulled back the hammer, and fired.

He heard a scream, and the man went down. Logan hobbled to his feet as Tom set his hand under his arm to help him up.

“Logan!” Ben shouted from somewhere in the trees. Logan could hear feet pounding over the ground and the whir of chopper blades slowing.

“Over here!” he shouted. Beside him, Tom shone his flashlight on a redheaded man on the ground, blood seeping from his leg. Logan would never forget that face; Brent Maloney. He knew something had never added up about the man, and here he was, writhing on the ground, wearing the heavy-treaded boots that had left the tracks.

“Where is Trinity?” Logan demanded, staggering toward Brent, whose face held the dark expression of a man who’d stop at nothing to get what he wanted.

“You bastard! You shot me without any warning,” he yelled.

“Consider this the warning shot! You’re damn lucky I didn’t decide to kill you,” Logan said, watching as the man grasped at his leg.

“Logan!” Ben pushed through the brush, slipping down the incline to where Logan had fallen. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, still aiming his gun at Brent. “I asked you where the girl is!”

Tom’s flashlight still shone in Brent’s eyes, and he held up his hand to block the brightness. He actually smiled when he replied, “She would have been mine, you know.”

Logan knew exactly who he was talking about, but he wondered if anyone else did. “Why Trinity? Why take a little girl if you were intent on having Julia?”

“She was losing interest. I had to do something that would let me be there for her,” he said.

“And Trinity, what were you going to do with her?”

Brent just stared back at him with an expression he had seen often in combat. It was a dead look, as if life was meaningless, as if killing people meant just another day at the office. There was no feeling left, no remorse and no guilt.

He took a step toward Brent and winced, yanking the cuffs from his belt, keeping his gun trained, hoping Brent would make a move so he could be forced to put another bullet in him. Logan started to bend down to cuff him, his leg hurting as if the fires of hell were shooting through it, but he used the pain to grab Brent by the shirtfront and press the barrel of the gun between his eyes. “Give me a reason,” he snarled.

Brent didn’t move. “Do it,” he goaded. A sick smile touched the edge of his lips. “Amazing, Sheriff. You lose it in Julia’s cafe, damn near killing her like the reckless bastard you are, yet you don’t have the balls to pull the trigger now.”

The man was provoking Logan. He knew this deep down, but Brent somehow pressed every one of his triggers like no one had before. Logan just stared down at the worthless scum, and a hand touched his shoulder.

“Logan, don’t,” Ben said, stepping up beside him. “Give me the gun, and put those handcuffs on him.”

Logan didn’t move, staring down at Brent. The man started laughing at him, and that was when Logan reacted. He hit him on the side of the head, knocking him out. Instead of handing the gun to Ben, who was now cursing beside him, he holstered it.

“You feel better now?” Ben asked, all sarcasm.

Logan flipped an unconscious Brent over and cuffed his hands behind his back, running his hands over the man’s body to check for weapons. He found a hunting knife attached to his belt and an ankle holster with a gun. When he hobbled to his feet, he took in the unanswered question in his brother’s expression.

“No, I don’t feel better,” he finally replied.

Chapter 25

“H
ey, we need some help up here!” a man shouted from the darkness somewhere above them. Ben set his hand on Logan’s shoulder.

“Down here! What’s up?” Ben yelled.

“There’s a man injured up here—I think he’s the missing deputy! And we found the little girl!”

Logan wanted to race up the hill. He started a step, almost dragging his leg, and he sucked in a breath at the sharp pain. Ben was right at his side.

“You okay? You need help up?” Ben asked. The last thing Logan wanted was to have to be carried up any hill by his brother, but his leg was messed up, and this was the worst possible time. Tom was kneeling beside an unconscious Brent, his backpack open, putting pressure on the bleeding leg.

“Tom, we’re going to need you up top. Looks like he’ll live. Leave him.”

Tom appeared ready to argue, but he shoved the first aid kit back in his pack. “I patched it up where you shot him. Doesn’t appear to have nicked an artery,” he said.

Logan turned to Ben. “I’ll go up with Tom. You stay here with that scum. I’ll send one of your guys down to help you drag his sorry ass up.”

Ben cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hey, get down here! Help me carry this guy up,” he shouted. When Logan took a step away, Ben set a hand on his shoulder and said in a worried voice that Logan had never heard before, “We need to have a talk when this is all over.”

Logan understood his meaning. The fact was that he didn’t want his family worrying about him or knowing the horrors he carried. They were his, and he didn’t want his brothers tiptoeing around him as if he was some fragile, paranoid, unpredictable nutcase. He didn’t say anything to Ben, but he turned to Tom. “Hey, could you give me a hand up this hill?”

He grabbed hold of the back of Tom’s jacket and pulled himself up. They cut through the brush to the top just as one of Ben’s men approached, letting them pass before sliding down the hill.

Logan let go of Tom’s jacket when the path flattened out. They stepped into a large, grassy area and took in the helicopter, its light still shining. He couldn’t see the cabin, but a man in a down vest hurried toward him and said, “Some of our men are inside the cabin. The little girl is in there with someone I believe is your deputy. He’s pretty banged up, too. Somebody worked him over real good.”

“Tom, go ahead. I’ll be right behind you,” Logan said. Tom took off at a jog and disappeared into the darkness, but Logan could hear feet on wood steps and knew the cabin was close. “My brother needs some help bringing up the kidnapper,” he explained. “Just be careful with that guy. He’s out cold now, but he’s dangerous.”

The man glanced toward the path and back at Logan, maybe wondering to himself what Ben had gotten him into. “Right,” he mumbled, then started off into the darkness.

Logan headed toward the cottage, limping. His limbs, muscles, every part of him ached, but it was nothing a hot shower wouldn’t cure. Nothing could beat the overwhelming relief he felt when he stepped inside that dusty, dirty hideaway lit up with flashlights and a kerosene lamp. On the rotted wood floor, he spotted Trinity, grime and dirt covering her tear-streaked face. She was huddled in Jordy’s coat, and one of Ben’s men was with her. Tom, with the help of the other man, had helped Jordy sit up against the wall. His deputy was in pretty bad shape, with a busted lip and swollen face, as if he been rammed into a brick wall.

“Sheriff…” he began, spitting out blood. By the looks of his leg, the bent angle, it was a pretty bad break.

“Jordy, it’s okay,” Logan said.

“Sheriff, I didn’t hear him. He came up behind me. Felt something hit me. No one does that to—” He choked and coughed.

“Take it easy,” Logan said. He glanced at Tom. “Can you three get him on the chopper?”

“We got him. Just let me stabilize his leg before we move him,” Tom said. He touched Jordy’s arm. “Listen to me. This is going to hurt like hell.”