0373447477 (R) (17 page)

Leaves crackled under someone’s feet.

Not Malone. He moved through woods as silently as a cat.

She pressed back against an old pine tree, the prickly bark digging through her clothes. A dove called from somewhere deep in the woods. Another one answered.

It took a moment for her to realize it was a signal.

Malone and his team, or someone else?

She tightened her grip on the stick, the silence of the forest enveloping her again. If she looked carefully, she could see the lake through the woods, the water glinting with reflected moonlight.

The dove called again. This time closer. Seconds later, the headlights of the car went out, and the world plunged into darkness.

ELEVEN

S
he needed to move.

She could not keep standing in the shelter of the tree, hoping for the best. She had to find Malone or find help.

Quinn eased around the tree trunk, tried to see into the blackness. Nothing moved. No more dove calls or snapping twigs. She could have been alone in the woods, but she knew she wasn’t. People were there, and if she wasn’t careful, she’d run into one of them.

She tightened her grip on the stick, took a step away from the tree. Someone grabbed her, throwing a hand over her mouth so quickly she didn’t have time to scream.

“Shhhh!” The voice wasn’t Malone, and she panicked, kicking backward, connecting with a shin.

Her assailant didn’t release his hold, just leaned down and whispered. “It’s Chance. And I bruise easy, so lay off.”

“Malone,” she mumbled against his hand.

“He’s chasing after the guy who was in the car.”

“What—?”

“How about we talk about it once you’re safe?”

“I’m not worried about being safe, I’m worried about Malone!” she protested as he hurried her to the road, waved at someone she couldn’t see.

Headlights flooded the street, and the SUV pulled up beside them. Chance hurried Quinn into the backseat, slammed the door and slapped the roof. Then he was gone, running back the way he’d come.

The SUV rolled forward, turned onto Lake Way, a GPS device spouting out directions as Stella drove, her expression grim and tight.

“You’re a lot of trouble, you know that?” she said.

“I’m not trying to be.”

“Apparently you don’t have to try. It just happens when you’re around. Bet that sister of yours is the same way.”

“Did you find her?” Quinn shifted, trying to see out the back window. Where was Malone? Chance had said he was okay, but would he stay okay? She’d heard gunfire. Had Malone been the one shooting, or had the bullets been flying toward him?

She tried not to think about him, lying bleeding and wounded, but she couldn’t stop the image from filling her head.

“No sign of your sister. She’s as wily as you are. But we’ve got an idea where she was heading. There’s an old factory just outside of town. Abandoned. You know the one I’m talking about?”

“Factory?” She tried to think of the building Stella was talking about.

“Factory. Shop. I don’t know what it is. A couple of stories high. Boarded-up windows?”

“The tannery?” The place had been in its heyday a hundred years ago, when there was a premium for leather goods and hunting hadn’t been regulated. It had closed in the sixties, when the old-fashioned process of tanning hides had been too expensive and time-consuming to be lucrative.

“Quinn, you’re the one who lives in this town. I’m just passing through on my way back to a normal life,” she said wearily.

“It’s on the north side of town, right?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the tannery. It’s been closed for decades.”

“Which makes it a good place for people to squat. We talked to some locals. They seemed to think that if someone wanted to hide, that’d be the place to do it.”

“Did you tell the sheriff what you suspect?”

“We did one better than that. We went ourselves. Didn’t have time to get in, thanks to Malone’s SOS, but one of the boards on a back window had been taken down. Seemed like an easy access point. Once we get this newest mess cleared up, we’re heading back.”

“Shouldn’t the sheriff be told about this newest mess?” If Quinn had her phone, she’d have already called, but she had no way to contact anyone. Not the sheriff. Not her brother.

Not Malone, and he was the one she most wanted to hear from.

“Trust me, that grumpy old man has been informed. Your brother has been at the station for hours, trying to get information about Tabitha. I texted him and told him to send the old guy this way.”

“Sheriff Lock isn’t old or grumpy.”

“He acts old, and he was sure grumpy with me when I spoke with him earlier. Guess the guy isn’t used to dealing with chaos.”

“Echo Lake is usually calm and quiet.” Quinn had loved it from the moment she’d visited for the first time, met all Cory’s friends, his family, the people he’d grown up with and loved.

Now that he was gone, she was part of that network, as completely enmeshed in it as he had once been.

“It seems like it. It’s pretty, too. Trees and water and beautiful old houses. I bet there’s a bed-and-breakfast somewhere, right? Some huge old Victorian that some old lady inherited from her family.”

“Blue Bonnet Hill. It’s on a double lot in the middle of town.”

“I knew it!” Stella said. “I’ve always wanted to live in a place like this. When my husband was alive, we used to...”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just silly kid stuff dreaming about things that are never going to happen.”

“Like moving to a little town and raising a family?” Quinn guessed.

“Like I said, it was silly kid’s stuff. Sometimes it works out for people.” She pulled into Tom’s Marina, and shifted so she could meet Quinn’s eyes. “When it does, it’s pretty special. Look at my friend Boone. He’s married now, with two beautiful kids, and soon he’s going to be reunited with the child he’s spent five years searching for. Everything he’s hoped for is working out.”

“What about you, Stella? What are you hoping will work out?”

“Us finding your sister and me getting back home. When you get to be my age, it takes a little more rest to look good, and I wouldn’t want to look rough for my date.” She patted her unlined cheeks and smiled, but there was a hint of sadness in her eyes.

“Your age? What are you? Twenty-seven?”

“Add a few years to that and then multiply it for all the stress in my life. Come on. Let’s go find the guy you and Malone were planning to talk to.” She opened the door, her gaze scanning the empty parking lot. She didn’t seem nervous, but Quinn didn’t suppose she had any reason to be. She’d probably been in a lot worse circumstances than these, facing a lot more daunting odds.

“What about the men?” Quinn asked as she got out of the SUV.

“If they get into trouble, they’ll let me know, and I’ll call in the cavalry. Otherwise, our assignment is this.” With that, she grabbed the hem of Quinn’s shirt and tugged her into motion.

* * *

The guy was there.

Malone could hear him moving through the trees somewhere ahead. Behind him, sirens blared as the sheriff and his deputies arrived. They could take a look at the car, figure out where it had come from. They could help with the search, find the perp, bring him in for questioning, but they wouldn’t be able to stop what had been set in motion. The only one who could do that was Tabitha.

She held the key to this.

She knew what she’d heard or seen or experienced. She understood the power she had over Jarrod’s future. And it had to be a lot of power because a guy like Jarrod Williams didn’t scare easily, and he was scared. No one sent this much manpower if there wasn’t a lot at stake.

Money?

Business?

Freedom?

All of the above?

Malone slipped through dense foliage, moving toward the area he thought the perp had gone. The guy they’d caught in Pennsylvania had said he and two other men had been hired to find Jubilee. They’d taken two into custody. If they assumed that the dead man was the third, it stood to reason this fourth guy was Charles Libby. If they got their hands on him, they might get confirmation that
the boss
was Jarrod Williams.

He motioned for Chance to flank to the right, try to get in front of the perp before he made it to the lake. Malone could see it through the trees, hear the water lapping against the shore line. The woods must front to a small beach. If Malone were on the run from the police, then that would be the last place he’d want to be. Too open.

But it was the direction the perp seemed to be heading.

Could there be a dock? A boat?

Maybe the boat that had been stolen from the marina?

He moved cautiously, gun still in his hand, body humming with adrenaline. His senses were most alive when he was on the hunt, moving into dangerous territory to find or free the lost, but he was finding that he couldn’t live in this place, that his mind was starting to crave normalcy, that every time he visited Tennessee, he thought of how nice it would be to have a place like that to return to, some
one
to return to.

Quiet evenings spent talking.

Fireside chats on winter mornings.

A couple of kids running around.

Maybe a dog.

Big dreams for a guy who’d never wanted any of those things. Maybe that was part of the process of maturing or maybe it came from seeing the worst parts of life—the hard things, the sorrow, the tragedies. That made a guy yearn for a little normalcy, it made him crave the innocuous everyday troubles that most people complained about—broken water heaters, flat tires, kids throwing fits. Those were the easy things when a person really knew what the hard things were.

And Malone did.

Something splashed into the water, the sound a jarring note in the eerie silence. Another splash, and Malone sprinted forward, clearing the trees and racing out onto the beach. Two hundred yards away, a dock stretched out into the water, a pretty little houseboat tied up beside it, blocking his view of what lay beyond. There were no lights on in the boat, no sign that anyone lived there.

He raced toward the dock, Chance running up beside him, the sound of oars slapping against the water spurring them both on.

“Hold on!” Chance pulled him back when they reached the dock. “You said he was armed, and we have no idea where he is. Until we’ve got a clear view of the area, we need to take it slow.”

“He fired three rounds. He might be out of ammunition, because he hasn’t fired since.”

“Either that, or he realized he was wasting ammunition and was holding off until he had a clearer shot. Let’s play this safe. I don’t want to lose a team member.”

“I’m off the team, remember?” Malone stepped onto the deck, staying close to the houseboat as he moved.

“You’ve been reinstated. As much as it pains me to admit it, you’re an asset to HEART.”

“You must be tired, Chance, if you’re talking like that.”

“Just want to make sure that you know you’re appreciated. Some people on the team say that I’m not generous enough with the praise.”

“Some people meaning Stella?”

“
Some people
. Meaning people.”

“Well, unlike those people, I’m not all that concerned with being praised.” He stopped at the end of the house boat. The dock stretched out another twenty feet, moonlight glittering on the water beyond it. He couldn’t see the perp; and the lapping of waves against pilings masked any other noise that he might have heard. “He’s out of view. I’m going to have to go out in the open.”

“Cautiously,” Chance muttered, following Malone out of the shadow of the boat.

The guy was a few hundred yards out, rowing hard for the far shore. Malone could see him clearly. Dark hair. Middle-aged.

“May as well come back now,” he called. “The police will be waiting when you reach the other side.”

No response.

Not that Malone expected one.

He could have jumped into the lake and gone after the guy, but he could hear sirens screaming in the distance, could see them flashing in the trees on the other side of the lake. Sheriff Lock knew what he was doing. He had men on the ground, and unless Malone missed his guess, there’d be a state helicopter with a search light appearing soon. He could already hear the thump of helicopter rotors in the distance.

“Looks like he’s not any better at listening than you are,” Chance muttered.

“Looks like it isn’t going to matter. He’ll be in custody in minutes.”

“And we’ll be answering more questions asked by the local PD. This is why I like to keep out of trouble when we’re in the States. It wastes time. Time I don’t have.”

“You have somewhere more important to be?”

“Yeah. In DC making sure Boone and his family are doing okay. This stuff—” he gestured to the lake, the cruiser that had just appeared on the opposite shore, the helicopter that was a dot on the horizon “—is just incidental. It’s not what HEART is about. What our company is about is what happens after the chaos and the trouble and the gunfights—people finally being in each other’s arms again. Looks like the perp is changing directions, hoping to find a safer place to land. Let’s go deal with the questions, so we can both move on.”

He turned away from the boat and walked off the dock.

Malone stood where he was, watching the perp turn circles as he struggled to figure out a way to escape. Malone could have told him it was useless, but he didn’t waste his breath. As Chance had said, they had more important places to be.

TWELVE

T
hey’d come up empty.

No information on the missing boat except that it was still missing. None of Tom’s neighbors had noticed anyone or anything out of the ordinary. No phone call from Chance or Malone, either. At least that’s what Stella had said when they’d gotten back in the SUV. Quinn looked at the dashboard clock. Only five minutes ago.

“Do you think—?”

“They aren’t dead.”

“You haven’t heard from either of them,” she pointed out.

“I’d have heard if something happened.”

“What if they can’t contact you?”