No One Else to Kill (Jim West Series) (27 page)

Suddenly, the beam of a flashlight lit up my face.

im?
 
Jim? Is that you?”

I immediately recognized the voice, “Sean? What are you
doing out here?”

“I saw that guy force you into the car.”

“You followed us?”

“I came out on the deck to look for you and saw the guy
with the gun then I saw you all drive off.
 
I thought if you got out on the highway, we would never find you, so I
decided to follow you.”

“Have you called the cops?”

“No.
 
My phone is
back in the room being charged.”

Damn, I thought.

“Sorry,” he said, as though he knew what I was thinking.

“No need to be sorry.
 
We need to hurry now.
 
He’s going
to kill her if we don’t stop him.
 
I need
you to head back to the lodge or to somewhere you can call the police.”

“I’m not going back.”

“What?”

“You go back, and I’ll follow them,” he said.

“Sean, this isn’t
safe.
 
Vic has a gun, and we don’t.
 
Even if we
catch up with them, it’ll be a long shot that we can do anything.”

“Look, Jim.
 
I
didn’t do anything last time.
 
I’m not
going to cut and run now.”

“You’re not running
,
you’re going
to get help.”

“Then you go.
 
They
already think I’m a kook.
 
They’d believe
you.”

We weren’t getting anywhere, and time wasn’t our ally.

“Okay, let’s go see if we can find them.”

“The path they were on is right back over here,” he
said.
 
I followed him to it and realized
at the same time that we needed his flashlight. Without it, simply staying on
the path would be difficult.
 
Whether we
went for help or after Vic, we would both need the same flashlight.

“How did you know where to find me?”

“There wasn’t another car on the road.
 
I saw you turn off the main road from way
back, and actually drove by the turn to make sure there wasn’t another
one.
 
There wasn’t, so I doubled back and
followed you in.
 
Despite your car being
behind some bushes, the taillights reflected my headlights. From that point, I
followed the only path I could find.
 
I
began to think I had made a mistake, when all of a sudden, I heard the
gunfire.”

“At that point most people would have turned around.”

“I couldn’t, but I did become more careful.
 
I kept the light pointed downward and watched
for you all.
 
I figured one of you had to
be carrying a flashlight, too.”

I noticed he still kept the light pointing almost straight
down.

“I saw the light about the same time I heard the
voices.
 
I couldn’t catch most of what
they were saying, but the gist of it implied you were either dead or missing.
 
I decided to see if I could find you, and
almost walked off the cliff just before you popped up.”

“You scared me.
 
I
thought you were Vic.”

“I take it that he’s got something to do with the
killings.”

“You’re right.
 
He
killed both Cross and Randi.”

“Is that the woman?”

“Yeah.
 
He killed them both in some convoluted plan
to get his hands on a lot of money.”

“How about the woman that’s with him?
 
Isn’t she his wife?”

“Right again.
 
She
needs to die so he can inherit.”

“Does he really believe he can get away with all
this?”
 
Sean asked.

“Yes.”

“You know, I’ve seen this type situation on television a
few times.
 
One of us will need to
distract… what’s his name again?”

“Vic.”

“Yeah, Vic.
One of us needs to
distract him so the other can get her away from him.”

Despite the seriousness of the situation, I had to grin to
myself.
 
This was a different side of
Sean that I hadn’t expected: Sean in charge.
 
I wondered what Colt would think.
 
But despite this bravado and commitment, he needed to know he wasn’t
going to be in charge.

“Not a bad plan, but we need to catch up with them first.
Then we can decide how to proceed, and Sean, we can only count at getting one
shot, if that.
 
I need you to let me be
in charge of this.”

“You’ve done this before?”

“Yes.”

“Are you a cop or in the military?”

“Kind of both for many years.”

“Fine, you take the lead, but I’m not going back until the
woman is safe.”

“Okay.”

We followed the trail in silence for a few minutes. I
wondered what was going through Sean’s mind and kept coming up with
redemption.
 
More than that, most likely,
but deep down redemption had to be key.
 
A noble cause most of the time, but it, like so many strong emotions,
had its drawbacks.
 
I knew a father one
time
who
didn’t pay attention to his five year old
daughter while shopping at a large hunting and fishing store.
 
An astute security guard noticed a middle
aged man carrying a struggling young girl out of the store.
 
The man had his hand over the girl’s mouth.

The security guard followed the man to the parking lot
where he finally confronted him.
 
At the
same time, the radio call came to be on the lookout for a missing girl.
 
The girl was rescued unharmed, the man
arrested, and the incident made the nightly news.

The father felt so bad about the whole thing that he went
to the other extreme.
 
Two years later at
a movie theater, while waiting in the snack line, he turned and saw a man
walking his daughter away from him.
 
He
had his hand on his daughter’s shoulder.
 
Without saying anything the father jumped on the man’s back, knocking
them both to the ground, and started hitting him with his fists.

By the time they had been pulled apart, the father had
broken the man’s nose.
 
Turned out the
man was his daughter’s former school teacher, and he was simply walking her over
to say hello to his wife who worked in the small school’s front office.
 
Both the adults knew the little girl and were
simply saying hello to her.
 
The wife was
standing in another snack line nearby.

Good intentions but a bad move.
 
Somehow, I needed to ensure that Sean didn’t
rush in blindly and get everyone killed.

“Pretty brave of you to take after us like that,” I said.

“More necessity than bravery.
 
I had the keys to the car with me, running
back inside and telling somebody what had happened to you didn’t seem like a
smart thing to do.
 
Like I said before, I
didn’t think anyone would believe me, and even if they did, we would have lost
too much time to have any idea which way you went.”

I still wasn’t sure if he had done the right thing, but
having company right now did feel good.

All of a sudden we were out of the forest and in an open
area that in the darkness looked sort of like a meadow.

“Turn the light off,” I whispered.
 
Once he did, I pointed ahead of us.
 
“Look. I see one,
two, ….
three
houses.”

“They look like cabins,” he corrected me.

It didn’t matter what they were.
 
“I think I can see a light on in the closest
one and the one further down to our right.”

“You think that’s where they are?” he asked.

“One of these three has to be the cabin he was leading us
to.”
 
Despite the darkness the cabins
stood out against the native background.

“Would he use a light if the cabin was supposed to be
vacant?”

“He might. I don’t think he had enough lead on us to have
gotten to the furthest house yet.
 
I can’t
see anyone walking around with a flashlight out there.
 
Although like us, he may have turned his
flashlight off when they got to this spot,” I said. I instinctively squatted
down and surveyed the area ahead of us again.

Sean followed my lead and knelt down next to me.
 
“Think they’re still out there somewhere?” he
asked looking around.

“Maybe, but I can’t see them.
 
Can you?”

“No.
 
My guess is
that they’re in that house right there.”

He indicated the closest one.

“You mean the cabin right there,” I said grinning at him.

“Yeah, cabin.
 
What
do we want to do?”

“We go there, quietly and carefully.
 
We either find them or someone else.
 
If it’s someone else, we have them call the
Sheriff.
 
If it’s them, we’ll have to
come up with a plan.”

“Sounds good,” Sean said.

“Remember Sean, nothing rash.”

“Okay.”

We started our approach to the house.
 
It looked about three hundred yards
away.
 
A short par four, I thought. In
the darkness, we soon found ourselves off the trail. It may have ended or
meandered in a different direction, but we took a direct route to the closest
house. I checked my watch. Ten o’clock.

“Are we going to look in the windows?”

“Yes.”

“What if they have a dog?” he asked.

“We’ll soon find out.”

“You know if it’s not them, but some other family, and they
see us looking in their windows, can’t we get into trouble ourselves?”

Obviously, Sean was getting nervous.
 
I stopped and grabbed his arm. My grip was
firm, but I didn’t jerk him to a stop.
 
I
didn’t want to get him any more agitated than he was.

“Would you rather wait here?” I asked.

“No, no. I’m just thinking out loud.”

“Anything that brings the police out here will be to our
advantage.
 
Don’t worry, we’ll be very
careful.”

I felt like saying that if he wanted to worry about
something, he could worry about being seen by the occupants, whoever they might
be, and having our heads blown off before they took the time to call the
police. Very few
people
who live in the country, and
especially out here in the semi-wilderness, have much sympathy for prowlers.

We were only about twenty yards from the back of the cabin
when the light went out.
 
We both froze.
I looked around to confirm what I already knew.
 
The backyard provided nothing to hide behind, no big bush, no tree, no
shed, just an open field.

It felt like suicide at the time, but I ran toward the
cabin and braced myself flat against the wall between the window and the back
door.
 
Sean impressed me by following my
lead. He stood, pressed against the wall of the house on the other side of the
door.
 
I could sense his fear, but maybe
that was my own.

No sounds came from the house.
 
I counted to fifty before I moved.
 
When I did, I slid my body to the edge of the
window and peered through it. Partially shut blinds blocked most of my view,
and the darkness didn’t help, but I could make out a few pieces of
furniture.
 
I saw no sign of life.

I looked over at Sean.
 
He had already moved down to the window on his side.
 
He stared into it, and I waited silently for
him to finish. When he did, he turned toward me and shook his head.
 
I moved over to the door. It appeared to be a
solid piece of wood without even a peep hole.
 
I gently checked the door knob and found it locked.

Sean moved in close to me.

“What’s next?” he asked.

That had been running through my mind, too.
 
Why were we here?
 
Why didn’t we run back to his car and drive
somewhere for help? I knew why, but I didn’t know if I had made the right
decision.
 
If we had gone back we would
have lost time, maybe an hour or two, and we would have had less of an idea
than we had now as to where they could be.
 
It was the same reasoning Sean used when he jumped into his car and
followed us.