Out of the Shadows (Tangled Ivy #3) (6 page)

I woke with a jerk, gasping as Devon bounded out of bed. In seconds he was at the door, and before I could utter a word or ask a question, he was outside.

Confused and trying to clear the cobwebs of sleep from my brain, it took me a moment to get to my feet and follow him. That’s when I saw the headlights outside, burning bright enough to blind me.

Devon was going somewhere without me?

But no, he was there, and the car . . . someone was stealing it.

Gunshots made me jump, my heart climbing into my throat. I couldn’t see, couldn’t tell what was going on, but then the car was tearing out of the lot, gravel spewing from behind its wheels, and Devon was firing more shots. I heard glass breaking, but then the car was gone, the taillights a dim red disappearing down the road.

I stood in the sudden silence, still trying to wrap my foggy brain around what had just happened. Someone had stolen our car and Devon . . .

I looked around, my eyes adjusting to the darkness, and saw him. He was standing about ten yards away, arms at his sides and hand still grasping his gun.

“Devon?” I asked, my voice cautious. “What . . .what’s going on?”

He turned back to me. “Ivy,” he said, “do get back inside. I don’t think there are more of them, but you’re an open target, standing there like that.”

I hesitated for a second, then stepped back into the dark room. Hurrying to the bed, I pulled on my pants and was tying my shoelaces when he came back inside.

“So someone just stole our car?” I asked.

“It appears so.” His voice was grim.

“That’s so . . . random,” I said. “I mean, we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“Exactly.”

I hesitated, trying to decipher what he was thinking. “What does that mean?”

“It means I don’t think it was random.”

Alarm shot through me. “You think they found us?” The thought of going back into that facility to be poked and prodded, separated forever from Devon, made me physically ill.

But Devon shook his head. “If it had been Vega or the FBI, they wouldn’t have left us and taken the car. No, I think we’re dealing with a different element here.” He removed a box of bullets from the duffel and reloaded his gun. I was really glad he hadn’t left the bag in the car.

“So what are we going to do?”

He rammed the full magazine home and I started at the sound.

“I’m going to get it back.”

He headed out the door again and I jumped to my feet, following him. He turned around, but I spoke first.

“Don’t even think that you’re leaving me behind in this creepy motel by myself,” I said. “No way.”

My stubborn insistence softened the hard expression on his face. “I keep forgetting you’re not one to sit idly by and wait for life to suit you,” he said, taking my hand with his free one. “All right. You can come, but you must do as I say. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” Unless he told me to leave him and save myself or something dumb like that, of course.

The office door was unlocked when Devon pushed it open, a rusted bell announcing our presence. No one was behind the counter and it was quiet, the only sound that of the buzzing fluorescent lights overhead.

Devon’s steps were silent and he squeezed my hand and let go, a glance telling me he wanted me to stay put. I stopped, watching him lift his weapon, elbows bent, as he rounded the counter to a door just beyond.

Someone coughed and Devon paused, moving to the side of the door and waiting. Sure enough, a few seconds later, the door opened and a man stepped out.

I barely had time to notice his scraggly beard, stained T-shirt, and lip and nose piercings before Devon had him by the throat and shoved up against the wall. The muzzle of the gun was pressed against his temple and Devon was in his face.

“Where the fuck is my car?” he growled.

The guy looked terrified, but struggled not to show it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man,” he said.

Devon pressed the muzzle harder into his head, until he flinched.

“I’ll ask you one more time, then I’m going to shoot you.” Devon’s t
one was cold, and sweat broke out on the man’s brow. “Where is my car?”

“I don’t know—”

The gunshot made me flinch, but Devon hadn’t shot the guy. Instead, the bullet was lodged into the wall behind his head. Blood dripped from his ear, and I realized the bullet had taken a chunk of flesh with it.

“Oh God! Oh God!” The guy was crying now, his hand covering his injury. “Please don’t kill me! I know who took it! I’ll tell you! Just don’t kill me!”

“Then talk,” Devon bit out.

“Th-they pay me a thousand bucks to tell them about any good cars. Then they come and steal them. I don’t know what they do with them, I swear.”

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know their names,” the guy said, his eyes swiveling to where Devon still held the gun close to his face. “They live about a mile from here, in the trailer park. They’re a bunch of meth heads and dealers, brewing that shit up and selling it.”

“A mile in which direction?”

“S-south,” he stammered.

“Excellent.”

Devon moved fast, the butt of the gun coming down hard on the guy’s head. His eyes rolled up and he dropped to the floor like a rock.

“He’s not dead, is he?” I asked, eyeing the body.

“No. Just out for a while. I don’t want him to warn them.”

“Warn them about what?”

Devon looked at me like I was an idiot. “That I’m coming.”

“You can’t go take on a bunch of drug dealers alone,” I protested. “It’s just a car. We-we can rent a new one.”

“Where on earth do you think we’ll be able to rent a new one out here?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

Okay, well he had me there. Maybe we could sneak into the park, find the SUV, and steal it back. No muss, no fuss.

Yeah, right.

I sighed. “Okay. Let’s go.” I pointed at him. “And no, I’m not staying behind.”

“I wasn’t going to suggest you should,” he said, sounding affronted.

I snorted. “Sure you weren’t.”

“All right. Perhaps I was thinking it would be safer—”

“We’re in this together,” I interrupted. “Where you go, I go.
Whether it’s dangerous or not. We’re not separating.” I knew what hap
pened when you separated. I’d seen enough movies. It was always
bad.
Like getting up in the middle of the night to check out the strange noise downstairs in a horror movie. Always a bad decision. “Agreed?”

I waited, crossing my arms and staring at him until he finally caved. “Agreed.”

Devon searched the clerk’s pockets until he turned up a set of car keys, which went to a beat-up VW Bug we found behind the building. I slid into the passenger seat and gagged on the overwhelming odor of weed.

“Good lord,” I said, rolling down the manual window. Hadn’t seen one of those in a while. “Is getting high all he does?”

“What else is there to do around here?” Devon replied, starting the engine.

Okay, he may have had a point.

We drove south, following the same direction they’d taken the SUV, for about a mile. I scanned the darkness ahead, then pointed.

“There it is.”

It
was a dilapidated wooden sign proclaiming the entrance to “Hunter’s Glen,” and beyond it I could see the outline of trailers lined up in a row. At this hour, I’d expect them all to be dark, but lights glowed from so many windows, it was as though it were merely seven o’clock in the evening instead of only a few hours from the approaching dawn. Very weird.

Devon pulled off the road and killed the engine. He handed me the gun Beau had left, racking the slide for me.

“It’s loaded with a round in the chamber,” he said, “so be careful. Don’t point it at anything you wouldn’t want to shoot.”

I nodded, my mouth suddenly dry. If Devon did actually need me to help him, I hoped I could.

“I want you to stay here,” he said. I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut me off. “I’m going to do a recce, see what we’re dealing with. Easier and quieter with just one person. Then I’ll be back.”

Okay, well, I couldn’t really argue with that, so I just nodded, but I wasn’t happy.

Devon switched off the overhead light so it wouldn’t come on when he opened the door. When he got out, he didn’t slam the door shut, but pushed it lightly until it latched.

The road was empty and silent, and I watched until he was swallowed by the darkness.

God, I hated the waiting.

My nerves were on edge and I started at every little noise. The smell inside of the car grew nauseating with each minute that passed, even with the windows down. Finally—afraid I was going to vomit from the sickly sweet odor—I couldn’t take it anymore. I got out the same way Devon had, making sure to be as quiet as I could.

The weeds were thick on the side of the road and I tried to watch my footing carefully, not wanting to tumble down into the ditch. Walking a few yards down the road away from the car, I took a deep breath and cradled the weapon in my hands. Crouching down to better conceal myself, I waited.

The humidity was thick, and sweat trickled down my spine, tickling me. The cicadas were out in force, their sound filling the night air. Grass moved off to my right and I prayed it wasn’t a snake. Though I’d grown up on a farm, I hated snakes.

Then the sound of a scream split the air, followed by a gunshot.

T
he scream cut off as abruptly as it began, and then there was a flurry of activity.

I watched in horror, terrified that Devon had been spotted. Several
men gathered in one area, talking animatedly. One of them pointed
at a particular trailer and after a moment’s discussion, that’s where
they went. I heard a screen door bang shut and more voices arguing.

I waited for Devon to appear, sweat trickling down my back and mosquitoes feasting off my exposed arms. Surely he’d have heard the commotion and would be hightailing it out of there. But minute after minute passed with no sign of Devon. Anxiety and fear clawed at my belly. What if they had caught him? Killed him? Was that what the gunshot had been?

Just when I thought I’d go insane, I saw him.

The screen door banged open again and two men dragged Devon outside, one under each of his arms. His head hung low toward his chest, and he was barely supporting his own weight.

Oh God . . .

They dragged him down the ramshackle stairs of the wooden deck and into the forest of trees behind the trailer lot. I thought frantically of what to do. Was he dead and were they taking him into the woods to bury him? Or was he alive and were they going to finish him off?

I couldn’t let them kill him. I had a gun and the added advantage of them not knowing I was there.

There were too many of them for me to take on at once. This would require a bit more finesse than going in there, gun blazing.

I hurried back to the car, searching the rank interior until I found something I could use—a ratty scarf. Quickly jerking up the shirt I was wearing, I used the thin scarf to tie my weapon against my side, tightly knotting the fabric so it wouldn’t slide. Then I grabbed a puffy vest emanating so much weed aroma, I could hardly stand it. I pulled it on and, as I’d hoped, it concealed the lump.

Panic made my hands shaky and it took longer to accomplish all this than I’d hoped. Taking a deep breath, I headed for the trailers.

The steps creaked underneath my feet as I climbed them, then I banged on the screen door. The front door was open, and I could hear a television playing loudly in another room.

At my knock, footsteps hurried toward me, bare feet slapping against the worn linoleum.

A woman came into view, a baby clad in only a sagging diaper on her hip. She wore a pair of stretched-out gray sweatpants and a T-shirt so worn the emblem on the front was nearly invisible. She looked me over in one quick pass, not opening the screen.

“Who’re you?” she demanded. The baby was fussing and stuck a fist into her mouth. She looked maybe eight or nine months old.

“Um, I’m Mackenzie,” I said. “Mac for short.”

“Whaddya want?” Her accent was thick hillbilly, which is different from redneck. Most people think they’re one and the same, but they’re not. Regardless of her accent, her second question was no less rude than her first.

“My car broke down,” I said, echoing a trace of her accent as I waved vaguely toward the road. “Was hoping I could use your phone.”

“We don’t have one,” she said curtly. “Sorry. You can keep walking. I think there’s a house up yonder. They’s got a phone.” She stepped back like she was going to shut the door.

“Wait.” I held up a hand and she paused. “I’m real tired,” I said, improvising on the spot. “Been driving all night. Do you think I can crash here for just a bit, then I’ll walk up later on?”

Her gaze narrowed suspiciously and she studied me. I looked as innocent and tired as I knew how and finally, she gave a reluctant nod.

“Alrighty then,” she said. “C’mon in. But this is only for a bit, ya understand? Ah got things ta do.”

“Yeah, no problem at all. Thanks.”

She pushed open the screen door and I grabbed it as she turned away. Before going inside, I glanced at the woods where the men had disappeared with Devon. They hadn’t returned.

Inside, the television was blasting
Spongebob
and a little boy about four years old lay on the floor in front of it, asleep. The kitchen had piles of dirty dishes in the sink and a pot of something brewing on the stove.

I followed the woman and she led me to a blue sofa with sagging cushions. With her free hand, she grabbed a pile of unfolded clothes lying across the seats and shoved it to one end. A black dog of indeterminate breeding with a limp came up to me and nuzzled my hand as I stood there.

“Ya can rest here,” she said, once she’d cleared a spot. “I’m Liza, if’n ya need anythin’.”

“I’m sure I’ll be fine.” I patted the dog, who’d begun to whine softly as it looked at me. That’s when I noticed the milky eyes and realized the dog had to be blind.

Liza paused, her face betraying surprise as she looked from the dog to me and back.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“This here is old Maisie,” she said. “She been around for almost twenty years. Blind as a bat, but she knows when folks is sick. Real sick.” Liza’s expression turned sympathetic as she looked at me. “I reckon you do need your rest if you’se sick. Take your time, honey. I’ll be in the back trying to git this one ta sleep if ya need me.”

I was at a loss as to what to say other than, “Thanks.” I sat cautiously and watched as she headed down the narrow hallway to the back of the trailer. Maisie lay down at my feet, her unseeing eyes still fixed on me, a low whine coming intermittently from her throat. It was odd behavior from a dog, and likely some old wives’ tale, but still unnerving.

The woman and her kids were sitting ducks for me to use as hostages, and for a split second, I thought about it. It wouldn’t be hard to do. But then I thought of Devon, and knew he wouldn’t want me to do that, no matter how much danger he was in.

The door flew open and in came the guys who’d taken Devon along with three more. They were talking.

“ . . . in the shed for now, ’til we figger out what to do—”

“Who the fuck are you?”

One of them had spotted me and stopped short. The rest of them swung their gazes my way as one, their expressions ranging from curious to downright malevolent.

“I-I’m Mac,” I stammered. “Liza let me in for a while. My car broke down up the road, but she didn’t have a phone for me to use.” My pulse was racing with fear and adrenaline, but hope flickered at what I’d overhead. Devon was in the shed.

Please still be alive
, I thought.

One of them stepped forward, marking himself as the leader of the rather motley crew. They ranged in age from what I guessed to be around eighteen to mid-forties. The leader fell somewhere in the middle.

“You from around these parts?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I’m from Kansas. Just traveling through to visit family in Florida.”

“Why ain’t you on the highway?” He sounded suspicious and my nerves ratcheted higher.

“I’m not in any hurry.” I shrugged. “It’s family, ya know? Only so much time I can take listening to my ma tell me to get a job.”

The leader got a crafty look in his eye. “Really? You lookin’ for work?”

Not knowing where this was going, I went with it. “Yeah. You know of any?”

The guy glanced at his buddies as though communicating something, then looked back at me.

“I’m Jeb,” he said, holding out his hand, which looked none too clean.

Eww
.

I took it anyway, keeping the handshake as brief as possible and concealing my distaste.

“We’re looking for someone to fill a position,” he continued.

My eyes widened and my heart skipped a beat. God only knew exactly what
kind
of position they meant.

I cleared my throat. “Um, you mean like a job? Doin’ what?”

“Deliveries,” he said. “We do deliveries in places that aren’t the best.
Lots of cops around. They see one of us, they get suspicious. Profiling and shit. But they see you . . . a pretty little thing who looks like she couldn’t hurt a fly . . . why they’d just be leavin’ you alone, I reckon.”

I pretended to think about it. “So . . . how much would I get paid?”

Jeb glanced at his buddies again. “Five hundred a delivery,” he said.

I felt my jaw drop open and I shut it with a snap. “That’s a lot of money,” I said. “What exactly are ya’ll delivering?”

“Nothin’ you need to worry about,” Jeb said.

Yeah, right.

“Just drive to where we tell you, wait for the truck to be unloaded, take the envelope they give you, and drive back,” he said. “Think you can do that?” His tone had turned slightly belligerent and threatening.

“Um, it doesn’t really sound like my thing,” I said, getting to my feet. Now that they were all in here, I’d take a chance on getting Devon out of the shed.

“Have a seat . . . Mac,” Jeb said, shoving me hard in the shoulder and pushing me back onto the couch. “We’re not through with you yet.”

I sat down hard, bracing my hands on the cushions, and didn’t take my eyes off him. Adrenaline was hitting me, the rush of cold felt like I’d been dipped in ice water as I stared at the five men looming over me. I didn’t want to think of just how badly this could go.

“We know you’re with that man we caught sneaking around,” Jeb said. “We have lookouts everywhere. You gotta, with what we do.”

I decided it wasn’t worth trying to play dumb. I didn’t need time. I needed to know that Devon was okay. “What did you do to him?” I demanded.

Jeb’s grin was malicious. “Don’t worry about him. He’ll survive. Probably. But if you don’t do as I say, I can guarantee he won’t.”

The gun at my side felt as though it was burning a hole in my skin. My fingers nearly twitched to grab it and it took a supreme amount of self-control not to. I knew there was no way I could get to it before they realized what I was doing, but my panic wanted to overrule my brain.

“So what do you want me to do?” I asked, glad that my words were even, betraying none of the fear twisting in my gut.

“Come with me.” Jeb jerked his head toward the door and I stood. The men parted a path for us, falling in behind me when I passed by. I could feel their eyes on my back and it made my skin crawl, every sense on alert for one of them to grab me.

Jeb took me behind the trailer, the path lit by the glow from the windows in the trailers flanking the path. A dog barked a few trailers down, which started another dog barking, then someone yelled at them. It was obvious no one was sleeping in this crazy place, even at this ungodly hour.

The breeze moved the trees, and the whisper of the leaves was eerie. I had no idea if Jeb was really taking me somewhere to deliver what I assumed were drugs, or if they were going to do something else to me. The drugs were obvious once we went deeper into the trailer park. The telltale odors of rotten eggs and ammonia that usually emanated from a meth lab permeated the air. If it hadn’t been for some white-trash neighbors who’d spent every weekend from Friday night through Sunday cooking their favorite drug, I wouldn’t have known what it was. But once I’d smelled it, it wasn’t something I could ever forget.

To my relief, Jeb led me to two parked cars: an old Dodge van and
the SUV they’d stolen from us. The paint job on the van was peeling
and duct tape held on the driver’s side mirror. He led me to the SUV.

“Flynn is going to ride along with you to show you where to go,” he said.

One of the men stepped up to us. He had a shaved head and a tattoo around his neck, some kind of line art I couldn’t see clearly. If I could’ve picked the least threatening of the bunch, Flynn would’ve been my last choice.

“I can see why the cops might red-flag you,” I said dryly. The smirk on Flynn’s face faded. I turned to look at Jeb. “I’m not doing anything until I see that my friend is all right.”

“You’re not in any position to be making demands,” he said.

“I think I am,” I said. “You need to make this delivery. And I’m guessing the people you’re delivering it to won’t take it well if you don’t show up. The cops are watching for you so your operation is hanging by a thread. So I’d suggest you take me to see my friend.” All of this was a shot in the dark. But they’d taken a chance, stealing our SUV, and I hoped I wasn’t wrong.

I held my breath, waiting, trying to appear more confident than I felt.

“We could just kill you,” Jeb said with a shrug, “and dump you in the woods. Critters around here will have your bones picked clean by tomorrow night.”

“Go ahead,” I said, looking him square in the eye. I took a step closer and lowered my voice. “Because if you’ve killed my friend, drug dealers are going to be the last thing you need to worry about.”

And I meant every word. If Devon was dead—if this piece of shit had killed him—then he might as well kill me now because I wouldn’t rest until only one of us was left standing.

Jeb must have read the look in my eyes because he studied me for a moment. At last, he gave a curt nod.

“Fine. This way.”

I struggled to keep the relief from my face as he led me into the woods. Only Flynn and one other man followed us, the other two remaining behind.

We stopped in front of a metal shed with a guy standing guard by the door. Jeb nodded to him and he stepped aside, looking at me curiously. Jeb unlocked the padlock on the door. After what felt like forever, it finally swung open.