The Legend of Smuggler's Cave (13 page)

It was after four when she pulled her Jeep out of the Pinter Construction parking lot. The drive back to Bitterwood would take more than three hours, an interminable amount of time when she was now almost certain where she’d find whatever it was that Johnny had stolen from Wayne Cortland.

It couldn’t have been files, at least not the paper-and-ink sort of files, because there wasn’t a Mason jar in her stash at home big enough to contain that sort of contraband. But maybe Johnny had taken photos of the files and stored them on a memory chip. Or even a flash drive. Either of those things would be small enough to store inside a jar of peach preserves or pickled okra. Store it inside a pill bottle or a small film canister, wrap it in a zippered plastic bag and shove it into a jar of canned vegetables or fruit, and almost nobody would think to look for it there. The plastic would protect it from the canned food, and the food would protect it from easy detection.

The only danger would have been if Briar had pulled that particular jar from the shelf and opened it. And since she had a particular system of storing things, oldest in front, newest in back, Johnny could easily have chosen the least likely jar to be opened right away.

All she had to do was go through the jars that would have been at the back of her stash at the time of Johnny’s death and see which one held his secret.

Her phone trilled as she pulled out into traffic on the four-lane that led to the interstate highway, but when she tried to answer, she got a “low battery” message. “Damn it.” She couldn’t even see who had called.

There was a charger in the glove compartment. At the next traffic light, she pulled out the charger, hooked it to the cigarette lighter and plugged in her phone. The display came on and she saw that the missed call had been from Dana Massey. She called her back.

Dana answered on the first ring. “Briar? Where are you?”

“In Wytheville, Virginia,” she answered. “Long story. What’s up?”

“I’ve been trying to call Dalton for the last hour, and nobody’s answering. Is he with you?”

Alarm rattled her nerves. “No. He should be at home. He’s watching Logan for me.”

Dana’s silence raised her panic level by several notches.

“Maybe he’s not answering any calls but mine,” Briar ventured.

“That could be it.” Dana sounded relieved by the thought. “Why don’t you call him and see what’s up? And then tell him to give me a call. I may have some information for him about a group of anarchists he’s been trying to tie to Blake Culpepper. But I’ve been given the okay to talk only to Dalton.”

“I’ll tell him.” She hung up and tried Dalton’s cell phone. After five rings the phone went to voice mail. She left a message, then tried his home number.

She got a busy signal.

Maybe he didn’t have call waiting, she told herself as she set the phone on the seat to continue charging.

But twenty minutes later when she tried the house phone again, she got another busy signal.

After a third try, she called Dana back. “There’s something wrong,” she told Dalton’s sister. “And I’m three hours away.”

“I’m still in Knoxville, but I’ll call Nix and have him check on Dalton and Logan. I’ll get there as soon as I can.” Dana hung up the phone without saying goodbye.

Briar set the phone on the passenger seat, her heart starting to race as she pushed the Jeep’s speed as high as she dared.

Chapter Thirteen

Someone was hammering outside the house. The sound droned on and on, setting off painful throbs in the middle of Dalton’s forehead. He struggled to open his eyes, trying to stand up and cross to the door to yell at the offender to stop with all the noise.

But his eyelids seemed as heavy as boulders, and the hint of daylight that crept between the narrow openings felt like stiletto knives being rammed into his eyeballs. Nausea rolled through his gut in greasy waves, forcing him to be very still. For a second the hammering went silent, so silent that he feared for a moment that he’d been struck instantly deaf.

Then it started again, louder and more urgent than before.

Not hammering, he realized. Knocking.

Someone was knocking on his door.

He tried to sit up, but the world spun wildly around him, and he couldn’t stop the nausea that time. The best he could do was direct his sickness away from the sofa onto the floor below.

“Dalton, it’s Doyle. Are you in there?”

He couldn’t move, except the helpless heaving that finished emptying his stomach onto the floor. What the hell was wrong with him?

He was home. He could tell that much from the smell of the place, the feel of the nubby sofa fabric against his cheek, the bits and pieces of decor he could see through the narrow slits of his eyelids. He tried to answer Doyle, but his aching throat felt dust dry.

A minute later he heard the door open. The sound of footsteps rushed toward him, stuttering to a stop a few feet away.

“Dalton!” Doyle said sharply.

Dalton managed a groan. He felt hands on his face. Warm, rough hands.

“Can you breathe?”

I
am
breathing,
he thought, but he realized he wasn’t. He concentrated on taking a breath, then another.

His head felt heavy and thick, but the air moving in and out of his lungs had a clarifying effect. Some of the dizzying pain in his head subsided, and the next time he tried to open his eyes, he was able to do it with minimal effort. “I don’t feel good.”

“I can see that.” Doyle touched his fingertips to Dalton’s throat. Checking his pulse, Dalton realized.

“What happened to me?” he asked.

“You tell me. What do you remember?”

Nothing,
Dalton realized with a rush of panic. He remembered going to bed the night before and then...

Nothing.

“Where’s Logan?” Doyle asked.

Dalton stared at his brother. “I don’t know. Oh, God.” He tried to get up from the sofa but the movement made his head spin again. He swallowed the nausea and tried to push up again.

“Sit still. I’ll check.” Doyle pulled his phone out of his pocket and headed out of the room. Going to search the downstairs, Dalton realized after a moment of confusion. Being thorough.

He stared down at the vomit on the floor. Not a lot, he saw. Mostly liquid. Had he eaten breakfast? He looked at his watch. Almost five. Morning or afternoon?

Afternoon, he decided, noting the western light. He’d lost nearly a whole day.

“Where’s Briar?” he asked as Doyle came back through the living room, heading for the stairs.

“She’s on her way back from Wytheville.” Doyle paused on the stairs. “You don’t remember her leaving?”

“I don’t remember today,” he answered, trying to stand up again. “I don’t remember anything since going to bed last night. At least, I think it was last night.”

The look Doyle shot his way scared the hell out of him. But his brother started back up the stairs quickly, not commenting.

He needed to clean up the mess on the floor, Dalton thought. He didn’t want Logan or Briar to see the mess.

Staggering to the kitchen to grab a roll of paper towels, he returned to the sofa and tried to lever himself down far enough to mop up the mess. But even bending over made his head spin.

He did what he could, cleaning between bouts of dizziness. Finally, though the floor would need a good mopping, at least he was no longer staring down at his own stomach contents.

Doyle came down the stairs slowly, his expression grim. His gaze met Dalton’s briefly, then skittered away. He pulled out his phone and made another call. “I need everyone available to meet me at Hale’s place. 224 Maplewood Lane in Edgewood. We need to put out an Amber Alert. Logan Blackwood is missing.”

Dalton felt sick all over again.

* * *

H
E
’
S
JUST
HIDING
.
He’s hiding, and when he hears my voice, he’ll come out and everything will be okay.

Except Briar knew it wasn’t true. Too much time had passed.

The call from Dana Massey had come somewhere around Bristol, Tennessee, while Briar was still more than two hours out of Bitterwood. The rest of the drive home had been a blur, driven at speeds that risked pursuit by the Tennessee Highway Patrol. She’d traded calls with Dana, Nix and even the chief himself during the drive, all apprising her of the latest information.

But no call from Dalton. Dalton, whom she’d trusted to protect her child while she was away.

Nobody had said much about Dalton.

The guard at the gatehouse had looked grim as he let her through into the subdivision. Flashing blue-and-red lights cut through the evening gloom, each swirling pulse a grim beacon, drawing her into her worst nightmare.

Nix stood sentry on the porch. He met her halfway up the walk, his hands closing over her arms. “We’re going to get him back.”

“I know that,” she said shortly. “Where’s Dalton?”

“Inside.” The corners of Nix’s mouth tightened.

“What aren’t y’all telling me?” she asked as she walked with him up the porch steps.

He caught her hand in his, turning her to face him when they reached the door. “You know I’d be happy to blame him for everything, but we’re pretty sure he was drugged somehow.”

She looked up at him through narrowed eyes. “Drugged?”

“Paramedics came to look him over. He’s coming down off whatever it was, but he has all the symptoms of some sort of drug ingestion. They got a blood sample to test. They wanted to take him to the hospital, but he wouldn’t budge until you got here.”

The ache in the center of Briar’s gut intensified. “What did he say happened?”

“That’s just it. He doesn’t remember.” Nix’s grip on her arm eased into a gentle caress. “Hopefully the test will tell us more, but given the memory loss and his other symptoms, I’m guessing it was something like GHB or Rohypnol.”

Both date-rape drugs, Briar thought. GHB—gamma hydroxybutyrate—might be more likely, especially if her cousin Blake was behind what had happened. GHB could be cooked easily enough, and the Blue Ridge Infantry was all tangled up with mountain meth mechanics these days. “How did someone get close enough to drug him?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out. The TBI has been here an hour, going over the place with tweezers. If there’s a clue to be found, they’ll find it,” Nix assured her.

“What about the gatekeeper?” she asked. “Nobody gets in or out of this subdivision without passing through the gate.”

“We’re trying to find the daytime guard. He went off duty around five—he was gone before we figured out we needed to talk to him, and nobody seems to know where he went. His replacement said he mentioned something about doing some nighttime crappie fishing. We’re trying to track down where that might be, but he’s not answering his cell phone.”

“Do you think he could be in danger?”

“I don’t know. Probably not.”

“I need to talk to Dalton.”

Nix squeezed her hand. “You’re not going to be able to make him feel any worse than he already does.”

She didn’t want to make him feel worse, she realized. As much as she was aching inside, aching like a bad tooth, she couldn’t find it in her to vent that pain, or the rising anger filling her gut, on Dalton. She’d nearly lost her son right out of her own arms once, hadn’t she? If Dalton hadn’t intervened that night at the cabin, she didn’t think she could have stopped those men from taking her son.

And one look at Dalton, sitting on his sofa with his head in his hands, was enough to drive away even the thought of blame.

He looked up at the sound of her footsteps, his face a road map of guilt and grief. “I’m so sorry.”

She sat beside him, wrapping her arms around him. “Are you okay?”

He shrugged away from her grasp. “Don’t, Briar.”

She dropped her hands to her lap. “You can’t remember anything?”

“I remember...last night.”

She thought about the night before, how she’d sat on this very couch, anchoring Dalton’s hips between her thighs as they’d strained toward some ephemeral promise of release. Just two people seeking pleasure in each other—as natural as breathing.

Profanely distant from this horrible moment some twenty-four hours later, she thought. “You don’t remember waking me this morning to tell me you had to go see your father in the hospital?”

His gaze snapped up to meet hers. “My father’s in the hospital?”

She could see the shock and fear in his eyes, as immediate and real as it had been early this morning when he’d awakened her to tell her he was on his way to the hospital.

“He’s okay,” she said quickly. “Just a panic attack. They transferred him back to the jail around lunchtime.”

He looked as if she’d just punched him. “I don’t remember.”

“Nix says you were probably drugged.”

He shook his head, stopping quickly. His face turned a sickly shade of gray, and for a moment Briar thought he was going to be sick. Color seeped back into his face after a moment. “I wouldn’t have let anyone in. How could I be drugged?”

“Maybe they forced their way in?” she suggested, but even as the words left her mouth, she could see that while the room showed signs of having undergone a search by the crime scene unit, it showed no signs of a struggle.

“I don’t think so,” Dalton murmured. “They said I must have ingested whatever it was. That’s how those kinds of drugs are usually administered.”

“I guess the question now is, who would you have trusted to let into your house while Logan was here?”

He leaned back, resting his head on the sofa cushion behind him. “I’ve been wondering the same thing. It couldn’t have been just anyone. I wouldn’t have let just anyone in.”

“Then think about it. Who would you trust enough?”

“My mother,” he said immediately. “But there’s no way she’s involved.”

“Okay. Who else?”

He rubbed his jaw, looking sick again. “Tom Bevill,” he said. His boss at the county prosecutor’s office. “Laney. Any Bitterwood cop, I guess.”

That might be a problem, she thought, since they weren’t yet certain that everyone on the force could be trusted. “Anyone else?”

He looked at her again. “Most of the attorneys at the office, if they were bringing files from work for some reason. My secretary. Maybe some of the clerks.”

“What about Lydia?” she asked, thinking of the blonde she’d met in his office.

“No, not Lydia.” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “They still can’t find George Applewood? The security guard at the gate?”

“He went fishing, they think. He’s not answering his phone.” At least, she hoped that was the situation. If he’d seen who’d come through that gate, he might be a witness.

And the people they were dealing with right now didn’t seem the sort who’d care to leave witnesses.

“What are we going to do, Briar? What have I done?”

She rose from the sofa and sat on the coffee table in front of him, catching his face between her hands. A day’s growth of beard scraped her palms as she forced him to look at her.

“I’m going to find Logan. That’s what I’m going to do. And when I do, I’m gonna make whoever took him regret the sorry day they came mewlin’ and squirmin’ into this world.”

Dalton’s eyes were red-veined, his pupils a little dilated, but he found it within himself to meet and hold her gaze. “Don’t leave me out of this, Briar. Please don’t cut me off.”

She dropped her hands to his shoulder. “You’re in no condition to go lookin’ for kidnappers in the mountains. You can’t even see straight.”

“So give me something. There’s got to be a way to counteract this thing, right? Call the paramedics back here—they’ll know what to do.”

“I’m sure they already gave you something if there was something that could be done.”

His brow furrowed, as if he were trying to remember.

“They said it’s possible he vomited up a fair bit of the dose.” Dana Massey had walked up behind her. She came around the coffee table and sat beside Dalton. “They tried to get him to go to the hospital for further treatment, but he refused to go.”

“I had to talk to you first,” Dalton told Briar. “I needed to tell you how sorry I am.”

She put her hand on his knee. “You need time to let the rest of the drug get out of your system.”

“We don’t have time.”

“Dalton—” Briar looked at Dana for support.

But Dana returned her look with hard determination. “He needs to be part of this. He’s a lot more lucid than he was when I got here.”

“Has anyone contacted you?” Dalton asked, making a visible effort to pull himself together.

“No,” she answered, wondering why she hadn’t even thought about getting a call from the kidnappers. That was the point of taking Logan from her, wasn’t it? To get her to turn over whatever Johnny had taken.

At least now she had a pretty good idea where to look for his secrets.

She hadn’t told the others, she realized. Why hadn’t she?

Because they might try to stop you.

She was a police officer. She knew as well as anyone how the police would want to handle it. Stall for time to make a copy of whatever Johnny had stolen, assuming it was Wayne Cortland’s secret books. Leave Logan in the grasp of men who were more than willing to risk his life for their own purposes. All in pursuit of a “greater good.” As if there was a greater good than getting her son back.

Would Dalton feel the same way?

She studied his face, took in the shadows of fear in his eyes and the lines of desperation carving deep valleys in his handsome features. She wanted desperately to believe she could trust him.