Close To The Edge (Westen #2) (26 page)

“That looks to be how they got in and out of here.”

“Would explain why no one ever knew this was here and the lack of finger or footprints up at the Byrd house,” Gage said from just beside her knee, where he’d squatted down to study the body.

“The table’s full of boxes of plastic bags,” she said as she moved closer. She reached into her purse and pulled out a pair of tweezers. Using them, she lifted one bag to study the contents in the flashlight’s beam. “Crystal meth.”

“And you know this how?”

“Sadly, we had a kid trying to sell the stuff on campus last fall. The principal and the police did an in-service with us to make sure we knew what it looked like if or when we saw it in our kids’ desks. Seems the drug users and drug pushers are getting younger and younger.”

“What grade did you teach?”

“Seventh grade history and computer technology.”

“Ah, that explains how patient you are with Cleetus and the computers.”

“Believe me, he’s a much better student than some of my former ones.” She laid the bag of drugs back on the table, took the tweezers and poked through the box, counting the number of bags inside. “There are a hundred bags just in this one box. What’s the cost of one of these?”

“Street value?”

“Yes.”

“Probably between ten and twenty dollars a bag.”

“If there’s a hundred bags in each box, that means there’s about two thousand a box, times…” quickly, she counted the number of boxes, “sixty-five boxes, that’s over a hundred thousand dollars here. Dear God.”

“And more bad news,” Gage said, standing up, holding a wallet and state ID. “It’s definitely our man Rusty. Whoever is behind this is running very scared.”

“He’s killing off anyone who can connect him to both the bank fraud and the drugs.”

“The way you think is downright sexy.”

For a moment they stood and stared at each other, the intensity between them almost palpable in the room’s small confines. She wanted him to kiss her, but she didn’t want what they shared tainted by the grisly scene around them.

Almost as if he read her mind and agreed with her, he stepped to the side. “Tell me what else you see.”

Slowly, she studied the room. “Some wooden dishes and old eating utensils probably left over from the Underground Railroad days. A modern scale, for measuring out the drugs, I’m sure. Couple of chairs.”

“Good. Now what don’t you see?”

Puzzled at what he was getting at, she considered the room and what she knew about meth. News reports talked about how easy it was for people to cook it in their own kitchens. “There’s no stove to cook it on. No pots, nothing to manufacture it in.”

“Right. Which means this is simply a storage space for the end product.” He took her elbow and led her to the other exit. “That’s a good thing for us.”

“Why?”

“Meth labs are highly explosive and they leave the chemical residue on everything, even the air. Just inhaling the air in a meth lab can get you high on the stuff.”

“So where are we going now?” she asked as she followed him up the new tunnel.

“We know where the other exit leads. Let’s see where this one ends.”

“What if it leads to the meth lab? Wouldn’t that be dangerous?”

“Don’t worry. I have a feeling I know exactly where this goes.” He reached back to take her hand and steadily moved farther into the tunnel, which seemed to gradually lead upwards.

***

At the end of the tunnel, they encountered an old wooden door covering the exit’s top. Gage reached over his head and gave one good shove. It creaked open halfway and stopped. He peeked his head out the opening. In the dim evening light he couldn’t make out much.

Grass. Bushes. Trees. Nothing moving.

He lowered himself back into the tunnel and took Bobby’s cold hand in his once more. For a woman with such a bad phobia, she was keeping a tight leash on it. “I know you don’t like being in there, but I want you to stay here for a minute.”

“Why?”

The slight tremble in her voice tore at his gut. “I want to be sure no one is waiting out here to jump us.”

“Don’t take any chances. I haven’t finished all my fantasies when it comes to you.” Before he knew her intent, she leaned in close and kissed him hard. She stopped just as abruptly, her eyes widened with worry. “One minute. That’s all you get, then I’m coming out. I don’t want you getting hurt to protect me.”

“Make it two.” Her concern touched that spot deep inside he thought he’d closed off for good. For the first time since his father’s death he felt like his life mattered to someone besides himself. He slipped his gun out of the back of his jeans.

“All right, but that’s all the time my nerves can take.”

He had no doubt if he didn’t return with in one hundred and twenty seconds she was coming out after him, not from her fear of the tunnel, but her fear for him. And that idea both pleased and scared him.

She rotated her wrist and flashed the light on her watch. “Go.”

With a couple of quick lunges, he scrambled out of the tunnel’s hole onto the ground beside it. He dropped into a crouch, paused and listened for any unusual sound. Undercover in the city, he’d known by the cadence of the cars and the movement of feet on pavement when danger was close at hand. Today, he had to draw on memories of days spent hiking and camping in the woods as a kid.

Birds chirped in the trees. Far off, he could hear bullfrogs calling and water running in the creeks that fed into the Mohican River. No cars grinding over the gravel road. No limbs cracking beneath errant boot steps. Nothing to say someone watched in the woods.

“One minute,” Bobby whispered from just inside the tunnel.

Still squatting, he duck-walked forward a few feet. The light was fading fast, especially in the copse of trees, but he was able to make out the shape of something on the edge of the trees. He didn’t have to guess what it was. Just like he suspected—the charred remains of the MacPherson barn.

He glanced around at the ground. The grass had been trampled here recently. No real footprints could be seen, but from the different depths of the dents in the grass, he’d say someone stood here for some time.

Watching the fire the other night?

A frisson of fear skittered across his neck, lifting the hairs. Watching the tunnel exit?

“Gage?” Right on time, Bobby peeked her head out of the tunnel.

He straightened, walked back over and slipped his gun back in the waistband of his jeans. Leaning over, he grabbed one of her hands. “Let me help you. It’s a little slippery.”

“Did you see anything? Anyone? Where are we?” she whispered as she scrambled out to stand beside him.

“We’re alone now, but someone was definitely here not too long ago.”

“How do you know?”

“Over here.” He took her elbow, led her over to where the grass had been flattened and pointed out the area with his flashlight. “Someone stood here for a while.”

“Could it have been a hunter?”

“Maybe, but I doubt it.”

“Why?”

“This is a spot where someone could view anyone coming out of the tunnel over there.” He swung his light to where they’d just exited the tunnel then back behind her. “And that’s the barn that burned down just two days ago.”

“So the fire, the land fraud, Harley’s murder, Rusty’s murder and the drugs are all connected.” It wasn’t a question. She’d come to the same conclusion he had. “So what do we do now?”

“First we get some help to lock these drugs up and out of commission then we figure out who’s behind this mess.” He took her hand and led her out of the woods to the open area behind the barn. Pulling out his cell phone, he called the office.

“Cleetus, this is Gage.”

“Hey, Sheriff. No one’s found any sign of that Rusty fellow, and the men pretty much finished cleaning out that trailer like you asked.”

“I found Rusty.”

“You did? Did he say why he beat up that poor little lady? How about who his supplier is?”

“He’s dead, Cleetus.”

“Dead? Well, damn.”

Trust his deputy to feel bad about a tweaker dying.

“I need you to call the county coroner’s office. I’m also going to need you to get hold of someone over at the state DEA office. We have a whole lot of meth down here.”

“Meth?”

“Apparently our boy Rusty wasn’t just a tweaker. He was a supplier and quite possibly the cook.”

“I’ll get Daniel to take over the station and make those calls, Sheriff.”

“Good. Let’s try to keep this information just between us for now.”

After he hung up, he called Deke to drive out to the site. He wanted his input as to what exactly was going on and just how likely they were to find the meth kitchen before the whole situation exploded.

***

Bobby sat on the hood of her car, watching Gage talk to Frank Watson and the county coroner’s team as they walked the blanket-draped stretcher with Rusty’s body on it to the ambulance. He’d moved both their vehicles from the Byrd place closer to the burned-out barn and the tunnel entrance while they’d waited for everyone else to arrive.

“Lorna sent you some tea and sandwiches,” Cleetus said setting several paper cups and a bag on the hood next to her.

“That was nice of her. How did she find out about this?” Bobby took the lid off one cup and swallowed some of Lorna’s special sweet tea. She’d suffer for the calories later, but right now she was starving and thirsty.

“Lorna’s one smart woman. She saw the coroner’s ambulance go by, then Deke Reynolds stopped in to get his dinner to go, something he doesn’t ever do, and she just figured something was up.”

Bobby took a bite of a chicken salad sandwich. Manna from heaven couldn’t taste this good. She chewed and swallowed quickly. “I keep forgetting how small this town is. News really does travel fast.”

“Yeah, Lorna knowing something’s up is only one of the things the sheriff isn’t gonna be too pleased about,” Cleetus said as Gage and Deke neared the Toyota.

Gage had introduced her to the fireman about an hour earlier as they waited for Frank to process the body and photograph the crime scene. It took all her willpower not to stare at the ridges of scars covering the left side of Deke’s neck and lower jaw like an angry poisonous vine. His deep, raspy voice suggested the fire he’d obviously been caught in had damaged his vocal cords, too.

“I didn’t expect this murder to stay quiet for long. Town’s too small for that. I’m just glad the mayor, town council and the newspaper reporters aren’t here mucking things up,” Gage said, reaching for a drink. His arm brushed Bobby’s in the process. He stopped and stared at her a moment. “You want to get inside the car where it’s warm?”

She shook her head a moment, still trying to come to terms with how a simple touch from him had her body tingling from the inside out. “I like it out here.”

“Okay.” He went to his truck. Returning, he held a worn denim jacket in his hands, which he placed over her shoulders without further comments.

Thank goodness it was dark now, her cheeks were so red from the intimate act she probably looked like a lobster with a sunburn. He couldn’t have announced their relationship any louder had he shouted it from the top of the barn’s ruins.

She glanced around and caught Deke staring at her. After a moment he gave a brief nod. Hopefully, that meant he approved.

Why? Did she need Gage’s friend’s approval? It wasn’t like they’d committed to a life-ever-after or anything. They’d simply had some good hot sex.

That’s when it hit her. She’d liked having sex with him. She also liked teasing him, the way he made her jump by sneaking up on her, hearing how protective he was about all the quirky people in town. She loved how patient he was with his deputies, how he tolerated the small-town politics, and that he liked Lorna’s cooking, but hated spiderwebs.

Damn, she didn’t just like those things. She loved every single one of them. And she’d done the stupidest thing. In less than one week, she’d fallen head-over-heels in love like some young girl on her first date.

“What else is going to piss me off tonight, Cleetus?” Gage finished off the last bite of the sandwich he’d almost devoured while she mused.

“I made that call over to the state DEA department. Seems they have a couple of raids goin’ on in Cincinnati and Columbus tonight and can’t spare a man to come get all this meth.”

“Aw, shit.” Gage turned and stalked off toward the barn.

Bobby started to scoot off the car and go after him.

Deke held up a hand, stilling her movement. “Give him a moment.” The words rasped out over the cool night air. “He walks while he thinks.”

“You’ve known each other long?” she asked, tearing her gaze away from watching Gage, who’d pulled out his phone, the dial pad glowing against his face as he talked to someone and stalked through the grass in the twilight.

The fireman took a long drink of tea before answering. Did using his voice still hurt from his past trauma? Guilt washed over her for asking him to speak again.

“Met him his first day at school when he and his dad moved to town. The gunslinger was a couple of years behind me in school, but I recognized something in him from the get-go.” Deke stopped to take another swallow of liquid.

Even though she wanted to know everything about Gage, Bobby waited for Deke to tell the story at his own pace.

“I recognized the anger. He hated his dad for moving him to a small, rinky-dink town. He hated being the new kid in a school where most people had known each other almost from the time they were born. He hated his mom leaving them and hated himself for being angry with her. That anger made him edgy.”

“That’s a good thing?”

“If channeled right. It makes him aware of danger coming his way. It’s what kept him alive all those years undercover.”

Except for when his own wife nearly cost him his life. Silence hung between the trio. She wondered who or what had subdued Deke's edge and caused his scars.

“So how did Gage learn to channel that anger? I’ve seen teens just give into it, turn to drugs or gangs.”

That made Cleetus laugh and the right side of Deke’s mouth turned up in a half smile. “Until tonight, I’d say the worst drug problem we’ve had in Westen was the Saturday night pot parties. And as for gangs, there are only two that count.”