Call of the Cougar (Heart of the Cougar Book 2) (14 page)

"Your place? I thought she was having supper with Stryker last night."

"Yeah, it's complicated. Anyway, so she got this call and said it was her partner, but both Stryker and I were suspicious. Then he asked her about Anton's health when he was taking her home, and she didn't know what he was talking about. With the business of her being worried about entering the cabin on her own and not telling us the truth about who she was talking to—unless she was just really tired, which I doubt—we believe she might have had news about the case, but she's keeping mum about it."

"And?"

"Well, I tried calling her, and she didn't answer her phone."

Silence.

"Stryker just left her cabin a little while ago."

"How long ago?" Chase was moving about now, zipping his pants.

Hal looked at the clock. "Probably forty-five minutes ago."

"Hal, she's probably sleeping! Like I should be doing. Like
you
should be doing."

"Will you check on her? If you don't, I'm heading over there and she's got that Glock, remember?"

Chase chuckled. "Yeah, so she'll use it on me instead of you. I'll check on her. You owe me on this." The door opened and shut.

"How's Shannon?"

"Asleep for once. Which I should be. You know before long, I won't be getting any sleep."

"Sorry."

"No problem."

Chase's boots crunched on gravel. Even though he moved quickly, it wasn't quick enough for Hal. "Hell," Chase said.

"What?" Hal was off the bed in a heartbeat, trying to tug on his clothes.

"Her Hummer is gone."

***

As soon as Stryker left her place, Tracey got a call back from Ricky. It was eerie, as if he had been watching her cabin, waiting for Stryker to leave. Thinking back on the earlier conversation with Ricky, she remembered him saying how similar he and his brother's voices were, and she knew that could be true. Whenever she or her twin sister called anyone, they always asked which one of the twins it was, if they knew both of them. Even their parents got them mixed up.

But what if Ricky hadn't called her? What if his brother had instead?

He knew her phone number and had reached her before. Or what if Ricky didn't even have a brother?

And now he was calling her to set her up again.

Which meant? She had to ask him about another case they'd worked on where the outcome was good. Except, would his brother have known about that also?

"Okay, remember the case you helped me with, concerning the goat that had been stolen from the reserve?"

Ricky took a while to respond, and she worried he was doing an Internet search. It probably would be easy to find too.

"Yeah, pretty brown goat. You caught the traffickers on that one."

"Right, but if you hadn't given me the clue about her and where she could be found—that was really amazing—and we might never have located her. Certainly not as quickly as we did. Worth every penny of the $500 I gave you."

He didn't respond.

"You there?"

"Yeah, just making sure no one's eavesdropping."

Or didn't know that she had paid him $750 for the job? "Hey, do you remember that time we met at the zoo and you were wearing—wait, can't think of the movie."

"The Dark Knight."

Which he could still know if he was the brother, if Ricky wore the shirt all the time and it was the only one he wore that had a movie theme. But she hoped Ricky would only know about this. "Yeah, and I slapped your chest in annoyance?"

Ricky laughed. "Yeah, cuz you hate mosquitoes and one had landed on my chest. Wondered what the hell you were doing."

She smiled.

"Didn't you pay me $750 for that donkey job?"

She chuckled. "Yeah, you're right. You kept calling it a donkey. It was a goat."

"Damn, you're
testing
me. Wow, that's too cool. And good idea. Okay, so I was hanging around with my brother and his friends, acting like we were all friends and I didn't know he'd turned on me."

"Be careful, Ricky. I don't want you hurt."

"I know how to handle myself, 'k?"

He might think so, but in a business like this, no one was really safe. Often, there was way too much money involved.

"Anyway, I was drinking beers and just hanging out, being my usual self, cracking jokes, not wanting anyone to think I was aware of what had gone down."

"Good. And?"

"Benny, he's one of my brother's friends. Been in jail a number of times. Twenty-four, got a ton of rattler tattoos. Anyway, he had a good buzz, and he was spouting off about getting in on some new action. Course, if it means money, everyone was listening. Me? I figure I'll earn my money in another way."

"By informing on them. What if they know that you are? What if they're setting you up? Me up again?"

"Yeah, I've thought of that. Okay? Give me some credit here."

She smiled.

"So here's what we do."

***

Hal rushed to tell Ted where he was going to be, not that he knew exactly, but just to give him a warning that he was going on a search for Tracey if anything came up with the foal, and to call the vet.

He couldn't believe that Tracey was off working on the mission again—and this time in the middle of the night, God knew where. While he was flooring it, trying to reach her cabin to see if he could find any clues, he called his good friend Mick, her boss. He didn't want to get her in any trouble with her boss, but they had to lay down some new ground rules. Like—Hal was going to help her hunt down this Mooney bastard before she ran off as the Lone Ranger again and got herself killed.

It took forever for Mick to answer the phone, and Hal recalled a little too late that Mick was a really sound sleeper.

"Damn it to hell, Hal! How could you lose Tracey that easily? I thought one of you guys was going to be safeguarding her."

How the hell did Mick already know? "Dan must have called you."

"No, he didn't. If you're calling me at…" Pause. "Three-thirty in the damn morning, she's missing."

"And so is her Hummer."

"Good thing we put a tracking device on it. Just in case."

Hal was damn glad Mick knew her so well. "Where is she?"

"Checking in with the office right now. Hold on."

Hal was practically holding his breath as he sped way over the speed limit to reach the cabins. He wasn't worried about anyone with law enforcement stopping him because
they
were the law enforcement out here, and he knew all of them would be rushing to meet up at her cabin in the same way that he was.

All at once, all hell broke loose. The dispatcher was on the radio letting him know a shooting had gone down ten miles south of there, near an abandoned gold-mine shaft at Pine Ridge—and Tracey was the one who had called it in. And needed backup. ASAP!

Damn it to hell!

Everyone was responding to the call, saying they were en route and where they were coming from. Hal was the closest, being that he lived the furthest out. What the hell was she doing at the old gold-mining shaft?

Mick got on the line and said, "Here are the coordinates where her vehicle stopped. Not sure what's out there. Nothing but…national forest and—"

"And a damn gold mine. She's called into our dispatcher for backup. She's in a shootout. Again. Who the hell are these guys anyway? This sounds damn personal."

"I'm going to have to put her in protective custody."

"Yeah, mine," Hal said.

Chapter 8

"Keep your head down!" Tracey snapped as she and Ricky crouched behind an outcropping of rocks inside the gold mine. She didn't want Ricky killed. But he kept trying to shoot at the shooters while she and he used the cover of the rocks. Three shooters, she thought.

They were hiding in the trees, another ambush. She was surprised they didn't catch them out in the open. But maybe they had planned it this way. Wait until she and Ricky entered the gold mine, then once the shooters killed them, they would dump their bodies down a mine shaft. That way they wouldn't have left bloody evidence outside the gold mine, nor would they have to carry their dead bodies far.

Glancing at him hunkered down behind the boulder, she said, "You probably don't even have a license for that gun."

"You need backup. You called it in, but nobody's here. I don't want to get killed either. If they kill you, where will I be?"

"In protective custody, if we get out of this alive."

"No way. Cramp my style."

"Yes way. Until I solve this case."

"You think they're going to let you back on the case after this?" Ricky looked at her, his expression obstinate, chin jutted out, lips pursed.

"I'm not supposed to be on the case in the first place."

Silence.

Then he smiled a little. "Cool."

Hoping the cavalry would show up soon and take out these bastards, she let out her breath. At least she had phone reception in the entrance to the cave. "Tell me again how you made sure they didn't know we were meeting."

"I did a ton of switchbacks. You know. Just like in the movies. Batman did it."

She rolled her eyes.

"I'm not clueless."

He had been really good at this before, but this time, she was afraid the guys involved in the operation were too close to her, him, and her investigation.

"They can't have bugged my cell. I changed it out." He smiled at her as if he'd fooled them.

She was certain no one had bugged his phone. "Where were you when you were talking to me?"

"In my
car
." His eyes widened. "Hell, you don't think they bugged my car, do you?"

"I don't think so. Have you been here before?"

"Yeah. That's how I knew to meet you here."

"How…how did you know it wouldn't take me much time to get here? Have you been watching me? Do you know where I'm staying?"

Another volley of shots were fired from the trees, the rounds pinging off the rocks inside the cave, splintering chips, and sending them flying everywhere as she and Ricky instinctively ducked again.

"Wish I had a rifle with a scope. I'd nail every last one of them." She turned to Ricky. "Answer me. You knew where I was or you wouldn't have suggested meeting me here. If I'd been in Denver, and you knew that, you would have met with me somewhere closer."

Rick's eyes were round, then he nodded. "After they tried to kill you, I figured I'd stick close to you. You know, because I thought I might learn something about who they are. How else could I get you any new word? They're going to be holding their tongues around me."

"Okay, so you know where I'm staying?"

"The last cabin at Pinyon Pines. Sure. And they do too. It's not a safe house, is it? Because if it is, I'm going to tell you right now that it can't be all that safe if I know where it is."

"A deputy sheriff runs the resort and lives on the premises."

"Right. But when you went off with that other deputy sheriff, and came home with another…" He smiled at her. "That was a pretty cool move, I tell you. But anyway, I watched your place. You know. Just in case anyone planted a bomb there or something."

"You watch too many movies."

"Yeah, but they're nothing like what you're always getting into."

That seemed to be true of late. "Okay, so you said you have evidence."

"Yeah. Well, not real trial kind of evidence. But—"

"Not more rumors. You said you had real evidence."

"Not me. I mean, I didn't want to say. Not over the phone. It was too dangerous. You know, because it has to do with your sister."

"Wait, you know about my sister?" Her heart began to race even faster. It was one thing for Tracey to be involved in this. It was her job. But her sister was a total innocent. "What's her name?"

"Jessie. She looks just like you. I saw the article about the guy who tore off her diving regulator in the islands. I put two and two together. At first, I thought I was looking at you. But then I saw the name and realized she had to be your twin. Or a double. Or you were undercover doing another spy mission."

"Why would you be looking at stories like that?"

"I research this stuff. Like you. Only, I'm looking to see if I might know something about the mission. In case I overhear something. In her situation, her name caught my eye. Well, her picture. She looks just like you. If I were her, I'd want to kill the guy who pulled off her dive regulator. He could have killed her. Everyone even knew who the guy was. Why wasn't he brought up on charges of attempted murder? If it had been me, I bet they would have locked me up and thrown away the key."

"What about my sister?"

"She was taking pictures in Hawaii, right? But she took some in Colorado too. Didn't she? I'm wondering if the guys behind this—"

Another five rounds pinged off the rocks, and she and Ricky instinctively ducked again.

"What? The guys behind this what?"

"They thought like I did. That you were her. That she was you. That you were being your secret agent self."

"Special Agent."

"Right."

"How do you know Jessie took pictures in Colorado?"

"She posted them on Facebook. You don't have a Facebook account. I looked. So I figured that was you. Only you had this other name. And you were posting the pictures to show them off as part of your undercover operation. To bring the trafficker out in the open. You really have a twin sister who looks identical to you?"

"Yes." Tracey knew that Jessie had been in Colorado, since their parents lived in Loveland. She hadn't known she'd been conducting some of her wildlife photography there. Tracey should have known. Jessie always had her camera with her. "What exactly had she taken pictures of?"

"This gold mine shaft."

Tracey just stared at him. "And that has to do with what?"

"I figured we'd come here and find the clues. If they're coming after you, maybe it had something to do with the pictures she had taken of the gold mine."

Tracey closed her gaping mouth and turned her attention back to the trees.
Un
. Real. Maybe her boss was right. She needed to take a break from this case.