B00CCYP714 EBOK (3 page)

The phone stopped ringing at some point. Rainey wasn’t sure when, since Katie was providing ample distraction. She was kissing her way down Rainey’s body, her blond head about to disappear under the covers, when the hamper erupted with an alarm fit for a radiation leak at a nuclear power plant. Startled into sitting position, Rainey nearly bucked Katie off the bed.

 “What the hell?” Katie exclaimed, wrestling with the cocoon of covers encasing her.

Rainey scrambled from the bed. “That’s the emergency app. Something’s wrong.”

“It sure as hell better be,” Katie said in frustration.

Rainey dug into the hamper, retrieving her phone. That alarm meant someone was in trouble, someone she cared about. Rainey loaded the emergency notification application on the phones of everyone in her tight circle of friends and family. Sliding her finger across her phone’s screen silenced the alarm and revealed a satellite image, with the standard distress message from Junior, and a blinking red dot pinpointing his location.

Rainey squinted at the dot, enlarged the map to verify her suspicion, and then whispered, “Oh, Jesus. Junior is at Maybelline’s.”

Katie hopped out of bed. “Is that bad?”

“It probably isn’t good. I can’t believe he went without Mackie or me.” Rainey hit the callback link on the phone, while looking for the clothes Katie had so recently removed from her body and thrown about the room.

When Junior answered, he did not wait for salutations. “Rainey, you have to come. Now.”

Rainey was not pleased. “Why did you try to pick up Maybelline on your own? You know better, Junior.”

Junior defended himself. “Mackie is with me. He told me to call you. I did, but you didn’t answer. So, I sent the emergency signal.”

“Where is he? Let me talk to him,” Rainey said.

She put the phone on speaker, set it down on the bedside table, and continued to dress. A nude Katie brought Rainey a clean shirt, after having retrieved the baby food-covered one from the hallway. Rainey smiled with the memory of how it got there. Her smile disappeared immediately with Junior’s next words.

“She shot him, Rainey.”

Katie’s gasp accompanied Rainey’s hurried questions. “Was he wearing his vest? Is he all right?”

“She shot him in the vest on his left side, lower part of his ribcage. I didn’t see any blood, but he went down. He was having trouble breathing.”

“What hospital are they taking him to?”

Junior hesitated, before answering, “We got a problem, Rainey. He’s still in the house with Maybelline. He made us leave him there.”

“You left him in there, alone? What the hell, Junior?”

Rainey began buttoning her shirt frantically, while Junior explained. “I got a tip from Bobo that Maybelline had come back home. He said he didn’t see anybody else at the house. But Rainey, there was a mess of kids in there when we went through the door. Maybelline pulled a gun, started waving it around and ranting about wanting to talk to you. We couldn’t use the Taser on her. She was holding a baby. Mackie tried to talk her down, but the gun went off. He was only a few feet from her. It was a .44. I don’t think she really meant to shoot him, but she went wild after that. Mackie told us to get out.”

Even with a level-three ballistics vest to stop the bullet from penetrating his chest wall, Maybelline could have caused some serious damage. The kind of damage a sledgehammer could do to a ribcage, like broken ribs, a punctured lung, internal bleeding. He was more than Rainey’s partner. Mackie was her guardian angel and filled the shoes of his old friend, her father, when he was killed almost four years ago. Mackie loved Rainey fiercely and she him. She could not lose him.

She steeled herself and tried to ask calmly, but felt the tremble in her voice. “So he’s talking? Have you called 911?”

“Yeah, he’s talking, but with the trouble he’s having breathing, he can’t say much. The cops are already here. The negotiator and the ambulance should be here any minute, but I’m afraid they’re going to wait around ‘til it’s too late.”

Rainey wanted the door kicked in and Mackie taken to a hospital. Any number of things could be killing him by the second. They needed to get him out of there. She was at least twenty minutes away from Maybelline’s house, and that would be at record speed with traffic. Rainey took a deep breath and let the emotion subside, switching gears from concerned family member to the FBI agent she once was.

“Let them do their jobs, Junior. It’s out of our hands now. I’m on my way.”

#

Rainey’s Dodge Charger SRT8 was the physical embodiment of her personality—dark and fully loaded. Its specifications said it would do zero to sixty in four-point-five seconds. With the added body armor and ballistic glass piling on weight, her tricked-out custom ride achieved that speed a little more than five seconds after she cleared the guard shack of her gated community. She pressed down hard on the accelerator, the digital readout of her speed passing sixty and climbing rapidly, as she raced north toward Durham. If a cop tried to pull her over, he would have to follow her to Maybelline’s house. Mackie would walk through fire to get to Rainey if she needed him. The least she could do was spend the night in jail for evading the police when he needed her.

She checked in at the office and saw Mackie nearly every day, but did not keep up with the daily activities of the bond business. When Katie became pregnant with the triplets, Rainey took a step back from chasing fugitives. She now spent most of her time working from home as a private investigator and a consultant with local law enforcement, defense attorneys, and prosecutors. Rainey was happy to be using the skills her years with the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit afforded her, and Katie was ecstatic she was no longer kicking open fugitives’ doors. She was even speaking to her mother again. Rainey’s personal and professional lives were in the best condition of her forty-two years.

Mackie and Ernie had been with the bond business, bequeathed to Rainey by her father, since its inception. Miles Cecil McKinney, Mackie, was Billy Bell’s best friend and Vietnam buddy, as well as current forty-nine percent owner of Bell’s Bail. Ernestine Womble, the sixty-nine-year-old office manager and the backbone of the business for thirty-seven years, practically raised Rainey. It was at Ernie’s not so subtle urging that they moved from the isolated Jordan Lake location to the more populated area of Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. Since the move, the number of bonds they wrote swelled. Rainey wasn’t sure if it was the economy or the move, but the bail bond business was hopping.

In the middle of her personal happiness and the expansion in business, Rainey was having difficulty shaking the thought it could not last forever. The truth of her life was that the other shoe always fell. Rainey hoped she was merely being paranoid, affected by the daily threat of Ernie’s imminent retirement. She had decided it was Ernie’s way of preparing her for the time when it would be a reality. She did not know how she would cope without Ernie behind the front desk. There would be no replacing her. They broke the mold after Ernestine Womble took her first breath. There would never be another like her.

Rainey was also worried about Mackie. He was sixty-one years old and slowing down, not to mention he was overweight and his knees were giving out. Junior, Mackie’s nephew, and a few other runners did most of the fugitive recoveries without the six-foot-six, more than three-hundred-pound bear of a man ever leaving the office. She could not imagine why Mackie would have gone after Maybelline without telling her, and worse, not verifying who was in the house. It wasn’t like him to be caught unaware.

Flying down the two-lane blacktop as fast as she dared, Rainey was consumed with guilt for not being there for Mackie. He had been sick with a virus back around Christmas, missing the triplets’ birthday party because of it. He was having a difficult time getting back up to speed, but Rainey had not noticed it affecting his decision-making. Mackie did not make mistakes like walking in on a desperate bail jumper in a house full of kids. It just did not make sense.

The phone ringing through the sound system stopped her analysis of Mackie’s behavior. She glanced at the touchscreen display in the center of the dashboard for the caller ID. She pressed the answer button on the steering wheel, activating the hands-free communication system.

“Rainey Bell.”

 She recognized the smooth good ol’ boy drawl of the Durham County Sheriff’s Office negotiator, as soon as he started to speak.

“Sorry to drag you out at this time a night, Rainey,” he said, in his slow, deliberate delivery. “Captain Wiley Trainer, here. I’m told you are aware of the situation.”

People who mistook Wiley’s accent and measured manner of speaking as a sign he might be a bit slow were mistaken. He was as wily as his name implied. His ability to remain calm, while those around him experienced adrenaline overload, made him an exceptional negotiator.

“Yes, I’m on my way,” Rainey answered, falling behind traffic on the two-lane state road. “Dammit!”

“What’s that?” Wiley asked.

 “Traffic. I’m getting bogged down by traffic.” Rainey turned the emergency flashers on, honked the horn, and roared past two cars, before pulling back into the right lane. At times like this, she missed the blue lights and siren she once had at her disposal.

“From the sound of that engine, you can get here quick. Let me have somebody meet you up on I-40 and bring you in,” Wiley suggested.

“That would be excellent,” Rainey said, flooring the six-point-four liter Hemi V8 engine around another car. There was a sharp curve to the left coming up, and then a mostly straight shot to the on-ramp of the interstate. “Tell them I’ll be at the on-ramp from state highway seven-five-one in about five minutes, driving a black Charger. Tell ‘em to turn on their radar. I’m the hot one coming at them,” she shouted over the engine roar, as she paddle-shifted down and banked into the curve.

Rainey heard Wiley’s muffled arrangements for her escort. She powered the Charger through the apex of the curve and rocketed out the other end, happy to see no other brake lights ahead.

After a moment, Wiley’s voice was back in the speakers. “You keep it between the lines, Rainey. I need you here.”

“What does Maybelline want, Wiley?”

“She wants to talk to you. I told her you were coming. Talked to Mackie, too. He’s hurt, but breathin’. I got her to give up most of the kids and one of her adult daughters, but she still has the baby, a toddler, and the other daughter in there with her. Angeline, I believe it is. She stayed behind. Said she wasn’t leavin’ her sister’s baby in the line of fire, and her two-year-old would not leave without her. So that’s where we stand.”

“Where’s the baby’s mother? Maybe she could talk Maybelline into giving herself up.”

Rainey could almost hear Wiley rubbing his chin, a habit when he was thinking. The pause he left between her suggestion and his reply told her it wasn’t going to be good.

“Well, Rainey, I believe that’s the sticking point. Maybelline’s youngest daughter, the baby’s mother, is missing. Been gone almost four months now. She disappeared from over near State College last September where she was taking some night classes.”

“She’s one of those missing girls?” Rainey asked, knowing, in this case, missing probably meant dead.

“Not exactly. She had a rap sheet, some minor juvenile stuff, and a pick up for prostitution when she was eighteen, but it was dropped. When cases were being flagged for the task force, Jacqueline’s file—that’s her name—was dismissed as not fitting the criteria. I guess they missed that part about her being a student at the college. Maybelline is mad as hell that her daughter was not on the list of possible victims that got published last Friday.”

“Whose bright idea was that, anyway?” Rainey asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “Publishing a list of ‘possible serial killer’ victims, without having found a single body or crime scene, was poor judgment on somebody’s part. The only things we know for sure are women are missing, and the victim profile shifted from prostitutes and street people to affluent women back in the fall of 2011. Nobody suggested missing women outside that criteria not be flagged. At least those words never came out of my mouth. I can’t speak for the task force. I’m just a consultant.”

“I told her that,” Wiley drawled, “but that didn’t make Maybelline feel any better.”

“So, is that what she wants—someone to look into her daughter’s disappearance?”

Wiley chuckled. “No, not someone. You. She wants you to investigate, and she wants to look you in the eye and hear you say you will.”

“Do you think she’d shoot Mackie or harm those kids if you let the SWAT boys go in there?”

Wiley’s voice deepened. Rainey could almost see him lowering his eyes on her. “You know damn well that woman is desperate. You knew that when you bailed her out, which doesn’t seem like the best course of action to have taken, lookin’ back.”

“She’s always come in before,” Rainey answered, only half-heartedly believing her own defense.

Maybelline Upshaw was an old client, one of the first for Billy Bell’s Bail and Bait. Since moving from Jordan Lake, Rainey and Mackie dropped “Bait” from the name, but kept many of the same clients.

Billy bonded out a juvenile Maybelline the first time she was locked up for stealing food from a grocery store. She was a pot-dealing grandmother now, having been in and out of jail and sometimes prison her whole life. Rainey had a soft spot for the old woman, who in reality was a mere ten years older. That was why she bonded her out this time, knowing Maybelline might not comply with the order to appear.

Rainey ignored her instincts and Mackie’s warning when she got the call to go to the courthouse from one of Maybelline’s daughters. Momma was in trouble again. She also dismissed the warning bells when she discovered the charges against the old girl. Maybelline had too many strikes against her and was facing a lengthy sentence. She distinctly remembered Maybelline vowing never to go back to prison after her last stretch and had hoped it was a declaration that she was giving up her criminal lifestyle. The other implication was the fugitive status Maybelline was willing to acquire in order to spend not another day behind bars. Rainey recalled thinking about that at the bail hearing, but posted the one hundred thousand dollar surety bond anyway.