Shadow Fall (Tracers Series Book 9) (34 page)

“Mr. Valero?”

She went down the steps and crossed the muddy road. The shed was prefab aluminum, like the trailer, but forest green instead of white. A sign beside the door warned away trespassers:
CYPRESS COUNTY FIRE DEPT AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
.

The noise came again, definitely voices. M.J. knocked on the door, then looked through a grimy windowpane. It was a two-room storage building crammed with equipment—chain saws, axes, a four-wheel ATV with a missing back tire. A loud squawk drew her attention to a table in the corner where someone had left a handheld radio.

She knocked again. “Señor Valero?”

She tried the door, but it was locked. She cupped her hand against the dirty glass again and peered inside. In the back room were coiled fire hoses, a chair, a cot stacked with boxes. She glanced at the chattering radio again. Beside it was something blue and rectangular. She shifted against the glass for a better angle. It was a phone case.

A queasy feeling settled in her stomach. It was Tara’s lost phone case, right there on the table. It had been missing since the night someone shot at her.

M.J.’s pulse started to thrum. She scanned the room again, picking up details she hadn’t noticed at first glance—the fast-food wrappers, the muddy footprints, the chunky plastic ashtray filled with cigarette butts. Someone had been here recently, and for an extended period of time.

The sound of an engine had her whirling around. As the noise grew louder, she glanced across the road, suddenly panicked for reasons she couldn’t pinpoint.

Yes, she could.

She’d stumbled across someone’s hideout, and she was about to get caught.

She darted a look at her car, but it was by the trailer on the other side of the firebreak, at least thirty yards away. The engine noise was close now as she ducked around the side of the building and pulled out her Glock. She clutched it in her hand.

It could be nothing, maybe Oscar Valero back from an errand down the logging road.

She listened, heart pounding, thinking of the phone case and the radio and the muddy footprints. Valero didn’t fit the profile. He wasn’t their UNSUB.

A black pickup rolled to a halt just beside the shed. Flat black paint, no hubcaps. M.J. couldn’t see the cab.

She held her breath. The door squeaked open, slammed shut. Heavy footsteps across the grass. She gripped her gun. Sweat beaded at her temples as she tried to decide what to do. Fight or flight, a simple decision. But it wasn’t simple at all. She didn’t know whether he was armed or even whether he was alone.

The lock rattled. M.J. stood there, pulse racing, as he rummaged around the shed. A low curse. Something clattered to the ground.

Then silence.

She waited, holding her breath. Had he spotted her car? But it was tucked behind the trailer. Had she left footprints by the door or a smudge on the window?

More rummaging. The door opened again, closed. A metallic
click
as he secured the padlock. Then a high-pitched
squeak
as the truck door opened and shut.

M.J. flattened herself back against the building, gun ready. The engine grumbled to life again. She watched the truck bed as the vehicle pulled away. She stood still until the engine noise faded into the woods and all that remained was an eerie silence.

She let out a breath. Slowly, cautiously, she eased to the edge of the building and looked around the corner.

Gone.

M.J. dashed across the firebreak and back to her car. She slipped on a patch of mud and caught herself on the bumper just before she could take a header into the muck. She jerked the door open and reached for her phone charging in the cup holder. With a trembling hand, she dialed Tara’s number.

A blinding burst of pain as something smashed into her temple. She dropped to her knees and screamed, but the sound was cut off as a giant arm yanked back against her windpipe and hauled her to her feet. Another stifled scream as her arm was twisted violently behind her and her gun was ripped from her grasp.

“Fucking bitch.” The voice in her ear was a low growl. “You think you’re fucking smarter than me?”

Pain bolted up her arm, her shoulder, her neck. She gasped for air. Something hard dug into her back as she tried to breathe, to yell, to see past the spots dancing before her eyes.

“Fucking whore—”

She kicked back, a frantic jab at his kneecap. A sharp howl. His grip loosened. M.J. dropped to her knees and lunged away from him, landing on her face in the mud. She scrambled to her feet and ran.

J
eremy rolled to a stop in the alley behind the courthouse just long enough for Liam to get in.

“Your phone’s in the console,” Jeremy said. “And there’s a mob of reporters out front, so you might want to duck.”

“They can fuck off,” Liam said, retrieving his phone. He’d missed half a dozen calls.

Jeremy turned onto Main Street and handed him a printed list. “Second one from the bottom,” he said.

Liam skimmed the list to the second-to-last name. “Shit.” He looked up. “Did you call Tara?”

“No answer.”

Liam’s thumb was on her number when his phone buzzed with a call.

“It’s the fire chief, Alex Sears,” Tara said. “I can’t prove it, but everything fits.”

Her voice sounded excited and choppy, like she was on the move.

“He spent five years in the Army,” she rushed on. “Three tours in Afghanistan. Took a discharge six years ago and became a firefighter. He went through one of your training camps and applied for a job with Wolfe Security. You rejected him a year ago.”

Liam’s brain was spinning as the elements fell into place. Alex Sears, Army veteran turned firefighter. He’d come through training three cycles ago. Liam recalled a talented shooter with mediocre PT scores and an attitude problem.

“Liam? Are you there?”

“He knew Catalina,” he said, thinking aloud. “He met her when the homemade bomb was thrown at her house. Have you told the task force yet?”

“No way. I don’t know who his friends are. I’m keeping the locals out of it while I nail this down. But listen, that’s not why I called. I need Jeremy’s phone number. I can’t reach M.J.”

Liam looked at Jeremy. “You heard from M.J.?”

He frowned. “No, why?”

“Jeremy hasn’t talked to her.”

“She’s not answering her phone, which is totally out of character. I’ve been calling and texting. I—”

“You need to have emergency services ping her cell. They’ll be able to locate it with GPS unless the battery’s been removed or destroyed for some reason.”

“I did all that! Nothing. It’s totally dead. Liam, I’m getting worried.”

He could tell by her voice that she was beyond worried. “Where’s her last known location?”

“She was on her way to Corrine Timber.”

“What’s at Corrine Timber?” He looked at Jeremy, who took the information aboard and stepped on the gas.

“She was interviewing the property manager. Oscar Somebody.”

“Listen to me, Tara. You’re dead on about Alex Sears. I just got a customer list from my contact at Full Black. They shipped a custom-made tactical knife, camo green, to Sears’s Silver Springs address two years ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice was shrill.

“I’ve been in the damn jail all day! I just got this. Tara, Sears knows this area inside out. He can slip through our fingers in a heartbeat. We need to find out where he is without tipping him off that we’re looking for him.”

“That’s not easy! He’s got contacts everywhere. And he’s probably monitoring the police frequency.”

“Call backup from your office.”

“I will, but they’re thirty minutes away, minimum, and she’s missing
now
. I—”

“Jeremy and I are en route to Corrine Timber. Meet us at the turnoff.”

“I’m already on my way.”

“Wait for me.”

“Not happening.”

“Tara—”

“I’m almost there and you’re where? Cypress?”

“I’m on the highway.”

“What if he has her
now
? I can’t wait, Liam.”

“God damn it! I can’t protect you if you won’t goddamn listen to me!”

“It’s not your job to protect me.”

Yes. Yes, it was. At this moment, it was the one job that mattered more than anything in his whole life. He gripped the phone and tried to get a grip on his emotions. “Tara. Think this through. You need to wait for backup. You can’t go after her alone.” But as he said the words, he knew she’d see the double standard—she had a radar for it. He was asking her to refrain from doing something he’d do without hesitation if one of his men needed him.

“Tara?”

“Liam, I have to.”

M.J.’S THROAT WAS
on fire.

She blinked into the darkness and felt the flames sweeping up and down her esophagus. She tried to swallow and would have cried out at the pain, but her tongue was thick and swollen, and her lips wouldn’t move.

She couldn’t see. The blackness around her seemed to hum, and she was on a hard floor. Her head throbbed. Her brain felt fuzzy. Had she been drugged or just deprived of oxygen? Her body pitched sideways. White-hot pain zinged up her arm, and a realization flashed through her mind.

She was in a trunk. Using her uninjured arm, she groped in the darkness. The walls around her were hard metal. She moved her legs and gradually realized it wasn’t a trunk but a truck bed, something with a lid.

Blurry snippets came into focus. Black truck bed. Flat black paint. Murdered out.

You’re with him,
an inner voice told her.
He’s taking you . . . somewhere.

The floor pitched again. She rolled sideways, and the fiery bolt of pain brought tears to her eyes.

She was on a bumpy road. He was taking her somewhere deep in the woods.

The horror of that fact seeped in as she explored the metal box. She groped for a latch, a weapon, a tool—anything to help her—but her fingers touched only hard, vibrating metal.

Fear churned in her stomach as she thought about what the groping meant, what it really told her. Bits of memory came back of how he’d choked her and choked her until she felt like she was drowning. She’d blacked out. And now the fear inside her turned to panic as she realized why he’d left her hands free.

He thinks you’re dead,
the inner voice told her.
And now he’s going to cut you.

TARA SPED DOWN
the bumpy road and whipped into the parking lot of Corrine Timber. The sight of M.J.’s car beside the double-wide trailer sent her pulse into overdrive.

She parked and jumped out. “M.J.?” She was nowhere in sight. Tara slid her gun from her holster as she circled the car. A phone charger was plugged into the dash but no phone.

“M.J.?” she called again, scanning the surrounding woods. She hurried up the steps to the office, hoping the white pickup parked out front meant someone was there.

No one answered.

“Shit!”

She tried the door. Locked. Not a sound from the office or the forest or anywhere.

Tara rushed down the stairs and noticed the grooves in the mud near M.J.’s car, as if someone had slipped.

Blood on the ground. Tara’s heart skittered.

She crouched down to confirm. Only a few small droplets, but it was definitely blood right there beside the door.

She spied more droplets several feet away. And a few more. Icy dread filled her stomach as she followed the blood trail until it disappeared in the grass beside the firebreak where fresh tracks had been made in the mud.

She whipped out her phone and texted Liam. Then she texted Brannon. She knew both would get here as quickly as they could. And she knew both would tell her to wait.

She eyed the heavy-duty gate blocking the dirt road. Her SUV could probably plow through it, but there was a log blocking the road. She would bet it wasn’t there by accident.

Tara gripped her weapon and scanned the woods around her. Dark, quiet. Full of shadows and secrets.

Her phone buzzed with a text from Brannon:
ETA 15 MIN
.

Fifteen minutes.

No time at all.

But to M.J. maybe an eternity.

Tara ducked through the gate.

PANIC SET IN
as M.J. felt around in the darkness. She couldn’t fight it. She bumped along in the hard metal box and searched for the slightest object that would give her hope, but her hands came up empty.

She had no weapon.

Her right arm was useless.

She probably couldn’t even scream effectively—her throat felt like she’d swallowed a bottle of Drano.

The tears started to come, making her shake and gasp and hyperventilate. She tried to calm herself, tried saying a prayer over and over. But then the words jumbled together and all she could think of was the knife.

And what could she do? She didn’t even have her gun.

It’s your service weapon, and it could save your life.