Hot Pursuit (39 page)

“Where the hell is she?” Wolf asked, confused as he stared up and down the deserted highway.

Ben yanked open the driver’s side door. He could barely sit on the edge of the driver’s seat without shoving the seat back. Zoey was just over five feet, shorter than anyone else Ben knew. She was so small that when she drove she sat with the seat pulled almost clear up to the steering wheel. At least he knew no one else had sat behind this wheel other than Zoey. She had been the last one to drive it.

“Ben!” Wolf called out from the front of the car.

“What?” he snarled, his grouchiness mixed with apprehension and frustration over letting this happen.

“Look.” Wolf held up a damp, floppy piece of paper that looked like a ticket. “It’s an order to have this car towed,” Wolf supplied before Ben could push his way out of the car. “Most towns wait at least twenty-four hours, if not longer, before ticketing a car. And at that, usually they sticker the car as a warning first. Some states allow up to seven days.”

Ben didn’t need the traffic lesson. “Unless someone already knows the driver won’t be returning to the car.”

“Is this rental car in Zoey’s name?”

Ben shook his head, scowling at the traffic violation, which from the rain was already hard to read, other than the letterhead indicating it had been issued by the county sheriff.

“I rented the car. But where was the ticket?” He hadn’t seen it when he’d walked up to the car.

Wolf tapped the outside of the windshield, pointing, as water ran down his jacket and over his hand. “Right here,” he indicated, tapping the bottom of the windshield just below the hood. “If the sheriff stuck the ticket under the windshield wiper, it must have slid from the rain so that it was almost under the hood.”

“Good eye,” Ben muttered, and supposed Micah might not have noticed the ticket.

“Why they pay me the big bucks.” Wolf leaned over to see inside the car. “Anything in there give a clue why she took off without the car?”

“She didn’t leave the car willingly. Cortez has her. I don’t know how, or why she would have pulled off of the road. That part doesn’t make sense. But I just know he does.”

“My guess is that Cortez is padding the pockets of too many lawmen in Zounds, as well as possibly the entire county.” Wolf seemed indifferent to the downpour as he looked up and down the highway. “I’m guessing she was pulled over, probably by the sheriff. That would make sense. He flashes his lights. She pulls over.”

Ben didn’t like the picture Wolf was painting. But now, with the facts more or less in front of him, an unsettling lump settled in Ben’s stomach, making him feel sick. Outrage only ransacked his system further.

“The sheriff walks up to her car, takes her ID, and tells her to get in his car with him.”

“Cortez might have put a price on her head,” Wolf supplied, squinting at Ben. It almost looked as if there was compassion or maybe even sympathy in the man’s tough exterior. “Once the sheriff confirmed from her ID that he had Cortez’s daughter, he came up with a reason why Zoey would have to go with him, and he hightailed out of here.”

“We’ve got to go get her, man,” Ben said under his breath.

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

Wolf hadn’t ever struck Ben as the type of man to leap into the belly of danger. He seemed more the type of man to plot and delegate. Ben didn’t have time to do either.

“I’m going to go get her. You can help me, or not.” Ben leaned back into the car and reached into the ashtray, which he’d noticed right away was barely open. He pulled out the keys to the Taurus. Zoey had left them there for him, probably knowing the moment she was pulled over of the sheriff’s intention of taking her. Zoey knew Ben would come looking for her. Zoey didn’t smoke. The ashtray wouldn’t be open. She’d left the key for him to take the car. Ben wanted to scream his frustration.

He felt stiff when he stood and held the key up at face level for Wolf to see. “The car won’t be here for anyone to impound. I’m not asking you to join me. The choice is yours. But after I move this thing I’m breaking into Cortez’s house and pulling Zoey out of there.”

Wolf followed Ben into Zounds, where he parked the rental car behind Angel’s bookstore next to her car. Ben had to give it to Wolf for not taking time to let Angel know what they were doing. When she called him, all he told her was that he’d explain very soon but at the moment it was too dangerous for him to stay on the phone. Considering it didn’t take long before they reached Cortez’s Victorian mansion in the middle of town, he was definitely telling Angel the truth.

“Let’s circle around the block.” Ben pointed as he spoke. At the moment he was actually grateful for the rain. It cut down visibility if anyone happened to be staring out toward the street from Cortez’s house. “I’m going inside alone,” Ben continued, plotting how they would do things as they circled around the Gothic-looking huge old home. “Stay put. Keep the motor running.”

Wolf had stopped behind the old home in an alley. The rain had finally slowed a bit, but there were large puddles everywhere. He rested his wrist on top of his steering wheel and surveyed their surroundings, as Ben did as well.

“Okay,” Wolf said slowly. “I’ll give you ten minutes, but then I’m coming in flashing badges, handcuffs, and guns,” he added wryly.

Ben grunted and smiled for the first time. Adrenaline ripped through him as it always did when he was closing in on a hunt. It dawned on him that, for the first time, he was actually going to be the one to close in for the kill, in a matter of speaking. If he pulled this off, and he was going to do just that come hell or high water, he would definitely need to call his boss, Greg King, and give him every detail. The old man would be proud of him. Ben had no doubt.

He could hear King now.
Not surprised a bit that you pulled it off. Always knew you had it in you.
Just hearing his boss say that in his head was all the motivation Ben needed.

“It won’t take me ten minutes,” Ben promised, and hopped out of the Escalade and into the freezing and very wet world outside.

The old Victorian home might look Gothic or even romantic to the idle passerby. But Ben saw an entirely different picture. The house was as wired as Micah’s small cabin had been. Which encouraged Ben to move even faster. He would bet his life that every square inch of the property surrounding the house, as well as the rooms inside, was monitored by sophisticated surveillance equipment. It was a bit harder to detect the monitoring cameras in the gloomy weather, but Ben spotted them. There were several cameras wired up in the trees, as well as along the outside of the house. He also noticed one just inside the back door facing the alley. Ben fought the urge to flip the camera off but decided muddy foot prints tracked into the expensive-looking home would be sufficient.

There wasn’t anyone around and, to his surprise, the door was unlocked. He moved through one room, then another, searching for stairs. If Zoey was here, he guessed she would be locked in her bedroom. She had described it to Ben, and he knew it was on the second floor. Zoey hadn’t told him how to get to the room, though.

The house was as quiet as a tomb. He didn’t see anyone as he reached a hallway and finally found a staircase. There wasn’t time to take in how magnificent the house was, how elaborately furnished, how impeccably clean each room was. Ben didn’t care how magnificent the crime lord’s lair happened to be. None of that mattered. Zoey was in here somewhere. He remained alert to any sound and continued searching each room, hallway, and staircase for devices that might deter or, worse yet, hurt him. So far he’d only seen surveillance equipment outside and at the entrance into the home. Cortez apparently didn’t think anyone would dare enter his house.

Ben dared to do a lot more than that.

“Oh my God,” a thin woman wearing a black maid’s uniform gasped as she came around the corner from the other end of the hallway. Wisps of brown hair fell from a tight bun at the back of her head. Her eyes were large and terrified in her slender, gaunt face. “God, please,” she sputtered.

Ben put his finger over his lips, praying the woman wouldn’t start screaming. “Where is Zoey?” he whispered, banking on the fact that Cortez’s servants probably hated his guts and wouldn’t turn Ben over to him or prevent him from getting Zoey.

The woman’s hands fluttered in front of her face as she remained frozen, looking terrified. For a moment it looked like she might either start screaming hysterically or drop dead in a hard faint. Ben wasn’t sure which direction she was headed, but at the moment the woman was his primary focus. He couldn’t have her doing either.

“Tell me where Zoey is,” he said, keeping his voice gentle and holding his hands out to his sides, palms out, to show the women he wouldn’t hurt her. “I’m going to get her out of here.”

She continued fluttering her hands in front of her as if she might try flying away from him. When they settled on her cheeks, she simply stared at him a moment, frozen. Ben would give her a few seconds at the most to come out of her trance before leaving her standing where she was. He would find Zoey on his own if need be.

Fortunately for both of them, the woman finally moved and nodded to the stairs. “Third door on the left.” She moved slowly, too slowly, when she lowered one hand and slipped it into a large pocket in her uniform.

Ben was fairly certain the servant wasn’t armed. He watched as her thin hand disappeared into the large pocket. When she pulled out a ring with a key on it, she looked away from Ben for the first time.

“This will get me fired,” she whispered, and sounded more as if she was accepting the fact than blaming him for the outcome of her action. “Her room is locked. No one is supposed to go to her.”

“The worthless prick,” Ben snarled.

He didn’t move toward the servant to take the key but simply held his hand out. She took the steps necessary and placed the key in his hand.

“Where should I leave it?” he asked, already headed for the stairs.

“In the lock, I guess. Are you Ben Mercy?”

He stopped on the third step and looked over his shoulder at the woman. She was thin, weathered, possibly from the strain of this job, and definitely plain looking. She stared up at him with terror still lingering in her large dark eyes.

“Did Zoey ask for me?” A glint of hope swelled inside him.

“Cortez and his men are out looking for you.”

That was just as good. “Nice to know,” he said, and smiled at the woman. “And thank you.”

Ben was up the flight of stairs in the next instant. In spite of the reassurance that the men who would eagerly kill him if they found him in this house weren’t here, there was no telling when any of them might return. He almost slid to a stop in front of the third door and rammed the key into the lock.

Ben opened the bedroom door without making a sound but then let out a noise louder than the servant had when she’d first seen Ben. Although this sound wasn’t a shriek of terror but more a roar of fury. Zoey lay crumpled in the middle of the large bedroom, on the floor. Her clothes were almost completely torn from her body. It looked as if she’d been whipped with a belt. There were bruises and cuts that had come from another object as well.

Her long, beautiful black hair was matted with dried blood. Zoey’s face was bruised and cut almost beyond recognition. Ben was sick as he rushed into the room and slid to his knees.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’m going to get you out of here. I’m never leaving your side again, and if I have to kill the asshole myself, I swear to you that you’ll never see Cortez again.”

Zoey didn’t say a word.

Chapter Seventeen

Angel knew Wolf wasn’t telling her the whole story. She hung up the phone and stared at it for a moment. All Wolf had said was that he was taking Ben and Zoey to the hospital and he’d be back to the store soon. There had been stress in Wolf’s voice when she’d talked to him on the phone after Ben parked his rental behind her store, an urgency in the way he spoke that had left Angel antsy. In his phone call just now he had sounded calm, too damn calm.

Walking around the rental car that Ben had parked behind her store, she hopped in her car and started the engine. It was still raining. Heavy downpours like the one earlier sent everyone home. Downtown became a ghost town. Angel hadn’t seen the point in keeping the store open and had looked forward to spending the afternoon and evening with Wolf. Obviously, that hadn’t worked out.

She pulled out of the alley and onto the road, not surprised that there wasn’t a car around, in spite of it being late afternoon. Her automatic headlights came on when she accelerated. The thick, overcast sky would make it dark earlier than usual tonight. Angel forced herself not to dwell on how her evening could have been.

Zoey was hurt. Wolf didn’t have to tell her for her to know. Angel didn’t have to ask how or why. She would have liked to know, however, how badly. A few details would have been nice. Obviously, it was bad enough that Wolf was taking her to the hospital. Angel accelerated just over the speed limit, not wanting to give any of the cops in Zounds reason to pull her over. There were enough of them already on Cortez’s payroll.

It would only take a few minutes to get to the small hospital. Angel worried about Zoey, but her thoughts were also distracted by Wolf. She thought about it as she sat at a red light, the small hospital in sight. She’d known Wolf just under two weeks now. In that short time their relationship had flown off the charts. All charts. Sexual and emotional. God, just thinking about the sex, the many places they had fucked in the past two weeks, took all chill out of the air. The emotional part, well, that wasn’t quite as easy to figure out. It might have been better if she had kept it just sexual. But damn it, the man had crawled under her skin.

Angel really liked Wolf a lot. It was more than him being so handy around her store. They just worked well together, like a perfect fit. She and Wolf would talk to each other all day in between customers. If she got busy, the moment there was a lull in business, he’d pick up the conversation right where they’d left off. It was as if he really enjoyed her company and couldn’t wait for the next opportunity to spend time alone with her. Should she focus on training Wolf to not run out the door when someone called?