Blood on Copperhead Trail (17 page)

Joy whirled around, her expression shifting from surprise to terror in the span of a second. Hatred curling her lip, she spit out a profanity.

“Just give me the patch,” he told her, his voice expressionless. But Laney thought she heard a hint of dismay hidden beneath Bolen’s stoic tone.

“You don’t want to hurt Joy,” she said. “You’ve seen her grow up. You killed that man to save her.”

He jerked her hair, making her gasp. “I told you not to talk.”

She ground her teeth against the pain and tried to think. She’d heard no sound of a struggle from the front of the cave, meaning Bolen hadn’t gotten in here through Doyle. He must have slipped inside to try to retrieve the patch Joy had hidden while the rest of them were outside dealing with the fight and the fall off the mountain. “Doyle’s not going to let you take us out of here.”

“Shut up!”

“You can’t get out of this now, Craig,” Joy said. “We know about your part in all this. What are you going to do—kill us all?”

“If I have to.”

Laney couldn’t tell if he was bluffing or not. She had to err on the side of caution, she decided. Bolen had a gun. She didn’t. “Let Joy go. Use me as a hostage. I can get you off the mountain.”

“Joy stays. None of this works without her.”

“Your pal Ray is dead.”

“Shut up,” he snapped.

Joy moved suddenly, racing toward the passageway to the bigger part of the cave. Laney took advantage of the distraction to start struggling against Bolen’s grasp.

He cracked the butt of his pistol against the side of her head, making her reel. She sagged against him, losing her grip on Doyle’s phone. Darkness deepened, and the world reeled around her.

Bolen tightened his grip around her waist, keeping her upright. “Guess it’s just you and me, Charlane.”

* * *

J
OY
BURST
OUT
of the doorway into the cave, shouting Doyle’s name. He shook off the aches and pains from his fight with Ray, instantly on alert.

“Craig’s in the cave,” she cried. “He has Laney!”

His heart skipped a beat, but somehow he kept his head. “Joy, you have to go for help. Can you do that?”

She nodded quickly, though her eyes were bright with fear.

Hoping he still had the search-party map, he dug for it, relieved when he found it hanging half out of the torn back pocket of his jeans. It was ripped in places, but the map was still visible. “Antoine Parsons and Delilah Hammond are searching there.” He showed her on the map. “Near the boneyard. Can you find it?”

She nodded frantically. “Please get her out of there, okay? Don’t let Craig get away with what he’s done.”

Doyle gave her a swift hug. “Find Antoine and Delilah and tell them where we are.”

Joy started running east through the underbrush, her weariness showing. Doyle watched until she disappeared from view, hating that she had to make her way back to civilization alone.

But Laney was in that cave with a man who’d killed before. What would Bolen be willing to do to get off this mountain?

Doyle edged toward the mouth of the cave, trying to hear what was going on inside. But only silence greeted him.

“Bolen?” he called. “You’re not going to get out of this. Joy knows you’re one of the people who kidnapped her and kept her prisoner. I know it, too. All you’re doing is prolonging this whole mess. Give yourself up. You killed the man who killed Missy and shot Janelle—Joy can tell everyone what you did. You might even come out a hero.”

He waited for Bolen’s answer. But there was only silence.

“If you give up without a fight, I can help you. I can make things go a whole lot easier on you.”

Bolen’s voice rang from deep in the cave. “I’ve got Charlane, Massey. I don’t want to hurt her, but I will. Back off and call off your search parties. I’ll let her go when I get to a safe place.”

“You know I can’t do that. And you’ll only be prolonging the inevitable.”

“I’ll take my chances.” Bolen’s voice seemed closer.

“Laney?” Doyle called, his heart seeming to freeze in his chest as he waited for her to answer.

“I’m okay,” she called. But she didn’t sound okay. She sounded weak and woozy.

“My gun is against her head,” Bolen called. He was very close now. Peering into the cave opening, Doyle spotted a dark silhouette just beyond the rectangle of daylight painting the cave floor.

Bolen took a few steps forward, shoving Laney in front of him. Doyle bit back a gasp as he saw blood flowing from a gash in the side of Laney’s head. It spilled down over Bolen’s wrist and dripped onto the cave floor.

“I don’t want to hurt her,” Bolen repeated.

“I don’t want you to, either,” Doyle agreed, backing up to give him room to emerge from the cave.

Bolen kept Laney between them, shielding himself from Doyle’s weapon. “Put down the pistol.” He gave his own weapon a jab toward Laney’s head, making her gasp in pain.

Doyle was a pretty good shot with a handgun, but not good enough to risk Laney moving the wrong way at the wrong second. Slowly, he bent and lowered the pistol to the ground.

Without warning, Bolen’s pistol barked fire. Doyle felt the bullet whistle past his head and, at the last second, retrieved his pistol and rolled away, looking for cover.

All he found was a leafy bush about ten feet from the cave entrance. It offered more camouflage than cover, but Doyle took what he could get.

Bolen took a second shot at him, the bullet rattling the limbs of the bush, driving Doyle farther toward the outer wall of the cave.

He was pinned down, with nowhere else to go.

Chapter Seventeen

Bolen’s gun fired. Doyle went down.

Laney cried out his name and struggled harder against Bolen’s
grasp. “He did what you said!”

“Shut up!” Bolen tightened his grip around her neck, squeezing
the breath from her.

She pulled at his arm with her uninjured hand, fighting to
breathe. Dark spots appeared in her vision, and she stomped desperately at his
feet. She couldn’t inflict much damage on his sturdy boots, but he loosened his
grip enough for air to flow into her lungs again. The dark places in her vision
diminished and she could see once more.

How long had Joy been gone? Was there anyone close enough to
their position to hear the gunfire and come to investigate?

Doyle’s voice came from behind a bush a few yards in front of
them. “Bolen, there are police all over this mountain. You can’t get out of
here. But so far, you haven’t killed anyone who didn’t need killing. It’s a
point in your favor.”

“You know it doesn’t work that way!” Bolen dragged Laney closer
to the bush, his pistol outstretched, as if he was ready to shoot at the first
sign of movement.

“Maybe not. But know this. So far, you’ve killed a serial
killer who shot two defenseless girls. You shoot me, it’s cold-blooded
murder.”

“You think they’ll let me walk after all of this?”

“No. But you won’t fry.”

“Not good enough.” Bolen had dragged Laney only a couple of
feet away from the bush behind which Doyle had disappeared. Another few steps
and they’d have him cornered.

She couldn’t let that happen.

Balling her hand into a fist, she shifted her body to the right
and slammed her fist into the soft vulnerability of Bolen’s groin.

His grip loosened. Not completely, but enough for her to
wriggle free of his grasp. She grabbed his gun hand and swung it wide as he
started to fire into the bush again.

The kick of the pistol slammed his fist into her face. She
stumbled backward, crashing into the outer wall of the cave. Bolen swung the gun
toward her, his eyes full of pain and rage.

Suddenly the bushes exploded next to them, and Doyle tackled
Bolen, knocking him to the ground. The older man’s hand hit the ground hard and
the pistol skittered free from his grasp, sliding toward the mouth of the
cave.

Laney dived for it, sweeping it into the cavern and pushing the
door closed. Rolling over, she saw that Doyle had pinned Bolen to the ground and
held him there with her pistol pressed against the rogue cop’s neck.

He met her gaze, his green eyes afire with anger. But under the
fury she saw something softer, something deeper that made her breath catch in
her chest. She sat up and gazed back at him, wondering if he could read her
thoughts.

A slow, sexy smile crossed his face, and she realized he
could.

* * *

“H
IS
NAME
ISN
’
T
R
AY
.”
Bolen didn’t meet
their eyes across the interview-room table. His anger had subsided the moment
Doyle had belted his hands behind his back and told him, with a few salty terms
that had made Laney’s eyes widen with surprise, that trying to move was a very
bad idea. “I guess you’d call it a nom de guerre.”

His battle name, Doyle thought, and made a guess. “I suppose he
spelled it
R-e-y,
then? With an
e?
”

Bolen lifted his gaze for the first time, a hint of respect
gleaming there in his narrowed eyes. “King of all he surveyed,” he murmured.

“What’s his real name?” Doyle asked, half his mind wandering
back up the mountain, where they’d left the fallen man’s body while they
returned to the police station with Joy. She had arrived within fifteen minutes
with reinforcements in the form of Delilah Hammond, Antoine Parsons and a pair
of uniformed deputies from the county sheriff’s office. They’d apparently been
only a couple of miles from the cave when they’d heard gunfire and headed toward
the sound to investigate.

Doyle and his detectives had left the deputies to await the
mountain rescue unit. He hadn’t heard anything about the status of the
extraction by the time they arrived back at the police station, but he assumed
they’d figure out a way to get Rey’s body up the mountain, sooner or later.

“Merritt Cortland.” Bolen answered Doyle’s question. “Not
legally Cortland, of course, but that’s who he was.”

Doyle glanced at Delilah Hammond, who sat beside him across
from Bolen. She didn’t react visibly, but he knew the name
Cortland
had to give her a start. Wayne Cortland had tried to kill
her only a couple of months earlier—and damned near succeeded.

“Yeah,” Bolen said, reading their expressions. “
That
Cortland. Merritt was his son.”

Delilah shook her head. “Cortland didn’t have any
children.”

Bolen’s smile was a sneer. “None he claimed.”

Doyle shifted in his chair, hiding a wince of pain as the
bruises in his rib cage twinged. “Was the kidnapping his idea or yours?”

He saw Bolen considering how to answer.

“The truth will serve you better than lies,” Doyle warned.

Bolen’s lips pressed to a thin line. “Mine. But I wouldn’t have
even thought about it if he hadn’t been blackmailing me.”

“With what?” Delilah asked.

He shot her a black look. “He knew I was Rayburn’s man.”

“We had a feeling the corruption didn’t end with him,” Delilah
murmured. “How deep does it go?”

Bolen shook his head. “I’m not a snitch.”

Doyle and Delilah exchanged a look. She gave a slight shake of
her head, which he read as a suggestion that he move on past the subject of
police corruption. They could deal with that problem another day.

“How did Merritt know you were Rayburn’s man?”

“He’d been dogging his father’s business for years, ever since
his mama told him who his daddy was,” Bolen answered. “He got a job at the
sawmill. Wormed his way into the business without Cortland ever knowing he’d
hired his own kid. He made copies of all the keys and snuck around finding out
his daddy’s business. He wanted to be the heir to the throne.” Bolen’s teeth
bared in another bitter smile. “Got a little impatient.”

Delilah reacted that time, her body shifting forward toward
Bolen. “You’re saying Merritt killed his father?”

“You always figured the bombs were an inside job,” Bolen
answered, meeting her gaze with a knowing look. “You were right.”

“What about his father’s files?” Doyle asked.

Bolen shrugged. “He said he had made copies of everything he
needed. He was planning to take his daddy’s place.”

“And Wayne Cortland never suspected Merritt was his son?”
Delilah asked.

“Oh, he knew,” Bolen answered. “Merritt told him. Damn fool was
thinking his father would welcome him into the fold and give him his due as his
son.”

“But he didn’t.”

Bolen shook his head. “Fired him instead. But it was too late.
Merritt had the keys to the kingdom by then.”

And blew it to smithereens,
Doyle
thought.

“Why kidnap the girls?” Delilah asked. “I assume that’s what
you were after, right? Kidnapping the Adderly girls and Janelle Hanvey?”

“Just the Adderly girls,” Bolen answered. “Not Janelle. She was
in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“What were you going to do with her?” Doyle asked, an image of
Janelle’s sweet smile flickering in the back of his mind.

Bolen’s silent stare told him the answer. Rage flared in the
center of Doyle’s chest as he remembered the depth of Laney’s fear and pain when
they’d found her sister’s unconscious, bleeding body in the trail shelter. He
gripped the seat of his chair to keep his hands from balling into fists and
slamming his former chief of detectives to the floor.

“What were you after?” Delilah asked. “Ransom?”

“Coercion,” Doyle answered for Bolen. “Right? You wanted to
influence Dave Adderly’s county commission vote on whether or not to dissolve
the Bitterwood Police Department.”

Once again, Bolen’s gaze held reluctant respect. “Merritt
needed the Bitterwood P.D. to stick around.”

“We’re a long way from Travisville, Virginia,” Doyle said,
referring to Wayne Cortland’s home base. “What does Bitterwood offer that’s so
important to Cortland’s enterprise?”

“It’s like a chain,” Bolen said. “Break a link and everything
can fall apart.”

“So there are more links in this chain.”

It wasn’t respect Doyle saw in Bolen’s eyes that time.
“Cortland owned these mountains, all the way from Abingdon to Chattanooga. He’d
co-opted meth mechanics and militia groups the feds don’t even know about. But
keeping them on the chain is a precarious business.”

“And if Bitterwood P.D. fell?”

“There wasn’t any way to be sure the people he had in place
were going to be able to get jobs on another force. Or that they’d have the
access and influence he needed to keep investigations into his business from
going anywhere,” Bolen answered without emotion.

Doyle could tell he hated telling them the truth, but that was
the bargain his former chief of detectives had struck. They weren’t going to
charge him with murder in the death of Richard Beller in exchange for his
confession.

But so far, he hadn’t given up any of the people in the police
department he might have been working with.

“How many other departments in the area?” Doyle asked.

“Most of them,” Bolen replied. “But Merritt said his father
never was able to penetrate the Ridge County Sheriff’s Department. If they took
over our jurisdiction—”

“A link would break,” Delilah finished for him.

Bolen looked at her without answering.

“Did Dave Adderly know who was blackmailing him?” Doyle
asked.

Bolen shook his head. “He told me about it, begged me for my
help.” To his credit, he looked sickened by his betrayal of his old friend. “We
didn’t figure on a sicko like Beller coming along and screwing up our plans. I
swear to God, I wouldn’t have let Merritt hurt those girls.”

Doyle didn’t remind him that he’d terrorized one of those
girls, throwing her in a dark, cold cave and traumatizing her for a long time
yet to come.

“What were you and Merritt planning to do with Laney and
me?”

Bolen’s lips pressed to a thin line and he didn’t answer.

“Were you going to try to pin this on me?” Doyle guessed.

Bolen’s gaze whipped up to meet his.

“I had some time to think about it, in the cave,” Doyle
continued. “There was no reason to keep me alive when you two ran into me on the
mountain. No reason to shoot me with a Taser instead of bullets. You had to have
a reason you needed me alive.”

“Merritt said it would kill two birds with one stone,” Bolen
mumbled.

“What two birds?”

“He was going to set you up to be the bad seed in the police
department. We knew you already suspected there might be someone in the
department involved in Joy’s abduction. We knew you weren’t going to let up
searching the mountain until you found her. You and Laney Hanvey. You took it
personal because of her sister.”

“Everyone took it personally.”

Bolen didn’t argue. “He was going to have you kill Joy and then
I was going to kill you. He told me so, after we left the cave.” He leaned
forward toward Doyle. “I swear to God, I went back there to stop him, but you
reached him first. And then I thought, while y’all were distracted, I’d go in
the cave and hunt for that patch that got pulled off of my jacket. I’d already
scoured the woods looking for it without any luck.”

“You knew it would tie you to Joy’s abduction.”

“Nobody knew I was involved. I took care not to let Joy see
me.”

“She saw you,” Doyle said. “She knew the whole time it was
you.”

Bolen looked genuinely stricken.

“What made you think people would believe I would be in on the
abduction?” Doyle asked.

“You had a lot to lose if the county shut down the Bitterwood
P.D. You just took the job. You’d moved your whole life here.”

“I don’t exactly have a reputation for corruption.”

“Maybe not down there on the beach where you came from, but
you’re a Cumberland. Cumberlands are crooks and swindlers. Hell, they’re baby
killers. People around here would have found you guilty just by association. No
good ever came from a Cumberland in these parts.”

Cumberland had been his mother’s maiden name. Doyle had never
known it until her death. She’d never talked about her family or where she’d
come from. But his mother had been the most good-hearted, honest-dealing person
he’d ever known. Why would Bolen think people would hold Doyle’s mother against
him?

Before Doyle could ask another question, a knock on the
interview-room door sent a jolt through his nerves, sparking irritation. He shot
a look at Delilah and she went to the door, slipping outside. She came back into
the room almost immediately and bent to speak into Doyle’s ear.

“Merritt Cortland’s body is gone.”

* * *

T
HE
X-
RAYS
CONFIRMED
Laney’s
assessment that her hand was not broken, only badly bruised. The doctor at the
urgent-care clinic had a nurse wrap her hand in a compression bandage and
suggested ice packs for the swelling and acetaminophen for the pain.

Doyle had called her mother to meet her at the clinic while he
went with his detectives to take Bolen in and book him. Alice was still in the
clinic’s large waiting area when Laney walked out of the exam area.

But she was not alone.

Doyle rose at the sight of her, his expression hovering
somewhere between relief and an emotion she couldn’t quite discern. He crossed
the room and wrapped his arms around her, his cheek pressed tightly against
hers, transmitting the unidentified emotion straight to her own nerve
center.