Tennessee Takedown (3 page)

He crouched down beside her door, giving her that same kind smile he’d given her earlier. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry that I interfered, back inside. I thought I was helping, but I realize now that I could have gotten you hurt—” she swallowed hard “—or killed.”

“You were very brave. You have nothing to apologize for. Everything worked out.”

She offered him a shaky smile. “You saved my life. I don’t know how to pay someone back for something like that.”

“Fix that clicker. That’s payback enough. Then I won’t have to worry about you fumbling with your keys.” He fished a business card out of his pocket and handed it to her. “If you think of anything else you want to tell me about what happened, anything that can help us sort through this mess and figure out why this guy picked Gibson and Gibson, give me a call.”

* * *

D
ILLON
WATCHED
THE
surprisingly brave, pretty little auditor drive away in her aging dark blue Chevy Lumina. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen one of those cars on the road. Obviously Ashley Parrish wasn’t making a fortune in her chosen occupation, which made any obvious financial motive for the shooter to target
her
seem unlikely.

“Did she tell you anything useful about the shooter?”

Dillon turned at the sound of Chris Downing’s voice behind him.

“No. But she’s pretty shaken. She might think of something later.” He glanced past his friend. His boss was standing with the rest of the SWAT team, his face animated—not in a good way—as he spoke to them. “Let me guess. Thornton sent you to get me.”

“Yep. He’s riled up like a preacher on Easter Sunday, all fire and brimstone raining down on our heads for going in against orders.”

Dillon let out a deep sigh and started toward his boss, with Chris at his side. He wasn’t in the mood to take a tongue-lashing right now, but he’d have to endure it to try to keep his job, and to keep his men from being blamed for what had essentially been a mutiny.

Regardless of the consequences, he had no regrets. The three wounded survivors they’d pulled out had lost a lot of blood and wouldn’t have lasted much longer if they’d waited. And he didn’t know what would have happened to Ashley Parrish. She wasn’t the only survivor they’d rescued, but she was the only one the shooter had essentially stalked through the building.

Maybe he’d stop by her house on the way home tonight, to make sure she was okay and see if she’d thought of anything else that might help with the investigation. Their initial inquiries hadn’t yielded any connections between the shooter and Gibson and Gibson. If the shooter had never worked there, and had never conducted any business with the company, why would he choose this particular office complex?

It was isolated, a few miles out of town, which might have made the shooter think he could shoot the place up and escape before the cops got there. But if he’d wanted to kill a lot of random people, there was a mall five minutes away that would have yielded plenty more potential victims. So why had he chosen Gibson and Gibson?

Dillon would lay odds it was something personal, and he’d bet his ten years as a detective that the personal part was somehow related to the woman who’d just driven off in a beat-up old Chevy with a key fob that didn’t work.

* * *

A
SHLEY
CLUTCHED
HER
cell phone to her ear and peered out the front window. Lightning flashed, illuminating the acres of green grass and long gravel driveway that formed the front yard of her rental house. In the distance, the Smoky Mountains loomed dark and menacing.

She’d never wanted to live this far from the conveniences in town, but her options were limited, since most people insisted on a long lease. Still, she hadn’t minded living here temporarily. But with this morning’s shooting fresh in her memory, the isolation was making her feel uneasy, and vulnerable.

Thunder boomed overhead.

“What was that?” Lauren asked over the phone.

“Thunder. The weathermen have been predicting a big storm all week. Looks like it’s finally here. It’s pitch-black outside even though it’s only six o’clock. And the rain’s been coming down like a monsoon for the past couple of hours. After all the rain we had last week, we sure don’t need this. The river’s already near flood stage.”

“Should you get out of there?”

“I’ll be fine. The house is on high ground and the river’s several miles from here. Plus, I’ve stocked up on essentials in case the road gets washed out again.”

Lauren droned on about poor road maintenance and the crumbling infrastructure in the country while Ashley looked through the curtains again. She would have loved to leave Destiny far behind after the horrific shooting this morning, but she’d promised Detective Gray she’d stay through the end of the week. Even if she hadn’t made that promise, it would be a real pain to try to change her schedule at the last minute. She’d already planned the walk-through with her landlord so she could get her deposit back and turn in her keys.

When Lauren had called, Ashley confessed some of the general information about the shooting, but she’d kept most of the details to herself. Lauren was on a week-long cruise she’d planned for well over a year. Ashley didn’t want to upset her friend and ruin her fun. She also didn’t want Lauren to call Ashley’s family about the shooting and get
them
upset. There’d be plenty of time to tell them what happened
after
she got back home to Nashville.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Lauren asked. “You’re even quieter than usual. Maybe I should cut my vacation short and go there to be with you.”

“Don’t you dare. You’ve had this trip planned forever and I doubt they’d refund your money. Besides, by the time you got off the ship, hopped a plane, then drove forever through the boonies to get way out here, I’ll be back home.” She forced a note of cheerfulness she didn’t feel into her voice. “Now tell me, which tropical island are you touring right now?”

Lauren hesitated, as if she was going to argue, but she finally let out a long breath. “All right, you win. I’ll quit bugging you, for now. Today the cruise ship took us to a little place right outside Jamaica.”

“Nice.”

Lightning flashed again, much closer this time. Ashley jumped and let out a little squeak.

“Oh, yeah, you sound fine to me,” Lauren accused. “Don’t you want to talk about what happened?”

“Sure. Let’s talk about the SWAT detective guy who rescued me. He was really hot.”

“Not-so-subtle way of avoiding the topic, but I’ll bite. How hot was he? Scale of one to ten.”

Ashley plopped down on the couch and tucked her legs beneath her. Lauren would probably drool over Detective Dillon Gray’s broad shoulders and trim waist. She’d love his dark, wavy hair that seemed a bit too long and untamed for a cop. And she’d probably squeal over what Ashley thought of as sexy stubble that formed a barely there goatee, mustache and dark shadow that ran up his jawline. He looked the way she imagined a man might look after lounging in bed with his lover for days without taking time to shave.

As enticing as all that was, Ashley knew her friend wouldn’t appreciate what Ashley thought of as Dillon’s best feature—his kind smile—and the gentle way he’d held her hand when she’d desperately needed the warmth and contact of another human being who wasn’t trying to kill her.

He’d given her the strength to hold herself together. Without the kindness and patience he’d showed to a stranger, she probably would have lost it and imploded into a mass of nerves. Somehow, with him there, focusing those thickly lashed blue-gray eyes on her, she’d managed to keep her composure.

“Ash, come on. Scale of one to ten. Rank him.”

She idly traced little circles on the arm of the couch with her fingertips as she debated her answer. If she ranked Dillon too high, Lauren would probably pester her to call him and try to wheedle a date out of him. So instead of saying “ten,” which was spot-on, she lowered the number.

“A six, I suppose. It was kind of hard to tell with all that body armor on.” She didn’t bother to mention she’d seen him later without the armor. “Maybe a seven. Yeah, I could stretch it to a seven.”

“Seven? That’s not hot. That’s lukewarm,” Lauren scoffed. “What’s his name?”

“Dillon Gray.”

“Hmm. Dillon’s good. Not too keen on Gray, though. Sounds kind of morose, depressing. Maybe I’ll change his name when I embellish the story to my cruise ship friends at dinner.”

Ashley laughed. “You do that. Oh, darn it.” She jumped up from the couch and headed into the kitchen.

“What’s wrong?”

She dug into the cabinet under the sink until she found a large metal mixing bowl. “Looks like that roof repair last week didn’t hold. There’s a healthy drip coming through the living room ceiling again.”

“Dang, girl. I told you to argue with the landlord about using cheap roofers.”

“I know, but I’m leaving in a few days, so what does it matter?”

“It doesn’t, as long as the roof doesn’t come down on you.”

“Maybe it’s not the roofer’s fault.” She placed the bowl under the leak and peered up at the plaster ceiling. “As hard as it’s been raining, even a good roof might leak right now.”

“You are way too nice, as always. If it were up to me, I’d call the landlord and...”

“And what?” Ashley repositioned the bowl. The drips were coming faster now. Getting some sleep tonight wasn’t looking like a good prospect, not if she had to keep emptying out the water and listening to the pinging sound of the constant drips. She crossed back to the couch but paused when she realized her friend still hadn’t answered.

“Lauren, are you still there?”

Silence.

She pulled the phone away and looked at the screen. Great. The call had been dropped. She plopped down on the couch and dialed Lauren’s number. No ringing. Nothing. Maybe Lauren’s phone wasn’t the problem. She tried to get a dial tone, but it was like the phone was...dead.

Weird, that had never happened here before. The storm must have shorted something out, or maybe knocked down the nearest cell tower.

She tossed the phone down and grabbed the TV remote off the coffee table. Casting a disparaging glance at the drips rapidly filling the bowl across the room, she yanked the blanket from the back of the couch and wrapped it around her.

Thunder boomed again, this time sounding more as if it was from the back of the house than from overhead.

She paused with her finger on the remote’s power button. Wait. There hadn’t been any lightning that time. She slowly lowered her hand. Another sound came from behind her, down the hall.

Someone was inside the house.

Chapter Three

Dillon wrestled the steering wheel to keep his Jeep on the road. The last time he’d seen a storm this bad, the bridge over Little River washed out, stranding an entire Cub Scout troop on Cooper’s Bluff, the mile-long, uninhabited island smack-dab in the middle of the river. Thankfully the mayor had learned his lesson from that fiasco. This time he’d paid attention to the weather reports and Cooper’s Bluff had been evacuated earlier this afternoon, the bridge closed until the weather broke. Since the storm wasn’t expected to ease until tomorrow morning, the entire police department was on standby for storm-related emergencies.

Which was why Dillon was out in the middle of the blasted thing.

This was a hell of a way to spend his evening after facing off with a crazed shooter earlier today and spending the next hour listening to his boss’s tirade about chain of command and following orders. Dillon had been on the verge of telling his boss to take a hike and walking out when Thornton received his first call from the weather station, warning him the storm was going to be worse than originally thought. Thornton had immediately called for all hands on deck. Everyone had to be ready to go if and when a call for help came in.

Dillon would have rather stayed at the station and worked on the workplace-shooting investigation. But he had a four-wheel drive with a winch, which meant he was in high demand to help stranded motorists escape rapidly rising water on some of the more isolated, two-lane roads. He’d spent the past six hours pulling half a dozen vehicles out of swollen ditches. Now his shoulders and back ached and all he wanted to do was pop the top on an ice-cold beer, lie down in his recliner and sleep.

The squawk of his cell phone had him clenching the steering wheel even harder. He ignored the first ring, irrationally hoping whoever was calling would call someone else instead, preferably someone who hadn’t been working solid since sunup and was bone weary.

But when the phone rang again, his shoulders slumped and he answered, “Gray.”

“Detective Gray, this is Nancy, nine-one-one operator. I have Lauren Wilkes on the line. She specifically asked to speak to you. Something about her friend possibly being in trouble. Should I patch her through?”

Dillon let out a long sigh. That cold beer would have to wait a little bit longer. “Go ahead, Nancy. Thanks.”

“Pleasure.”

The line clicked twice.

“Miss Wilkes, Detective Gray is on the line,” the operator said. “Go ahead with your emergency.”

“Emergency? Well, ah, yes. Thank you.” The young woman’s voice sounded nervous. “Detective Gray? Are you there?”

“I’m here. How can I help you?”

“I feel a little silly. I’m not sure anything is really wrong, but after what happened this morning I’m kind of nervous. I mean, there’s the storm and all and maybe phones do that sometimes but I remember she told me your name and so when—”

“Miss Wilkes,” Dillon interrupted. “Take a breath.”

“What? Oh, yes. Okay.”

“Tell me why you called.” He pulled the Jeep to the side of the road. It was too dangerous trying to talk on the phone and fight the wheel in this wind and rain.

“It’s my friend. I was talking to her and the phone went dead. I tried calling her back, over and over, but the call doesn’t go through. I was wondering if you could check on her. I’m, ah, not close by, so it’s not like I can hop in the car and go over there.”

Dillon thumped his forehead on the steering wheel. “Ma’am, if the Smoky Mountains were by the ocean I’d call the storm we’re in right now a hurricane. Storms this bad always knock landlines down.”

“Oh, well, it’s not a landline. It’s her cell phone. Do storms knock those out, too?”

He straightened in his seat. “Not usually, no. I suppose something could have happened to a cell tower.” Although he couldn’t remember that ever happening around here before. He grabbed the notebook and pen lying in the console. “What’s your friend’s name and address? I’ll do a wellness check for you.”

“Oh, would you, please? That would be awesome. And if you’ll call me back and let me know she’s okay, I’d really appreciate it. I mean, we’ve been friends forever. I kind of get worried—”

“Ma’am, the name and address?”

“Oh, right. Sorry. She’s renting a house at 1010 Little River Road. Her name is Ashley Parrish.”

Dillon stiffened. Every cell in his body went on alert. Cell phone towers could go out, he supposed, but it was a hell of a coincidence for that to happen to the woman who’d survived a workplace shooting just this morning. He tossed the notebook and pen in the console and whipped the Jeep back onto the road.

“Tell me everything that happened,” he said, fighting to keep the vehicle straight as he jostled the phone and headed back toward Little River Road. Ashley’s house was only five minutes away. “Don’t leave anything out.”

In the rough weather, it took six minutes instead of the normal five to reach the right road, and another two minutes to reach the long, winding driveway that led to Ashley’s house.

A few inches of water covered most of the gravel, but his four-wheel drive clung to the road like a billy goat. He parked next to the front porch steps, figuring he’d save himself some soggy boots by avoiding the puddles in the yard.

He shook the raindrops from the last outing into the storm off his ball cap, shoved it on his head and threw the car door open. He slammed it shut behind him and jogged up the steps. Lights were on inside. He rapped on the front door. A few seconds later he rapped again, and rang the doorbell.

Nothing.

“Miss Parrish?” he called out. “It’s Detective Gray. We met this morning. I need to speak to you.” Another knock, but again, no sound or movement from inside.

The mild alarm he’d felt after talking to Lauren Wilkes was giving way to genuine concern. The little hairs on his neck were standing up. He drew his gun and held it down by his side as he stepped to the front window. He could glimpse the room through a slit in the curtains, but not enough to really tell him anything.

His boots echoed hollowly on the wood as he strode across the porch. At the corner of the house, he leaned around, looking toward the backyard. Pitch-dark. The landlord needed to get some lights out here, especially since the house was so isolated without any neighbors close by. He headed back to the steps to get a flashlight from his Jeep so he could walk the perimeter of the property.

The sound of a powerful engine had him jerking around.

Headlights flashed and a truck roared from the side yard. It raced past him, its tires throwing up huge sprays of water that splashed onto the porch.

There were two people in the truck. The passenger turned and looked right at him, her eyes wide, her face pale as her hands flailed ineffectually against the glass.

Ashley Parrish.

She definitely wasn’t in that truck because she
wanted
to be.

Dillon crouched on the porch and fired off two quick shots at the truck’s tires, hoping to disable it before it gained much speed.

The truck jerked to the side but kept going. Damn this rain and wind. He wouldn’t normally miss a shot like that. Taking the stairs two at a time, he hopped into his car, wheeled it around and floored the accelerator.

The Jeep fishtailed on the wet gravel. Dillon cursed and let up on the gas, then took off at a slower speed. The headlights from the truck bounced crazily as it turned at the end of the drive. West, it was heading west.

He grabbed his phone and pressed the button for dispatch as he barreled down the driveway. Nothing. He held the phone up. The light was on and he’d pressed the right button, but the call hadn’t gone through. Must be the bad cell tower, as he’d thought earlier.

After making the turn at the end of the drive onto the paved road, he floored the gas again. The truck’s taillights were barely visible up ahead in the pouring rain. There weren’t any streetlights out on this old rural two-lane. But he didn’t need more than his headlights to tell him what he already knew. The road up ahead was full of dangerous, sharp S-curves. If the driver of that truck kept his current speed, on this slick, wet road, he’d likely end up in a ditch or plow headfirst into a tree.

* * *

A
SHLEY
CLUNG
TO
the armrest and braced her other hand against the dashboard. The rain was falling so hard the windshield wipers couldn’t keep up. The truck’s tires kept slipping on the wet road, making the bottom drop out of her stomach.

“Please slow down,” she pleaded. “It’s too dangerous to drive this fast in these conditions.”

The driver raised his gun and pointed it at her without taking his gaze from the road.

She swallowed and held her hands up in a placating gesture.

He shoved the gun between his legs and put both hands back on the wheel, the veins in his forearms bulging from the effort it took to keep the truck on the road.

Ashley glanced in the side mirror. The lights from Dillon Gray’s Jeep were barely visible in the distance, but he was steadily gaining on them. She didn’t have a clue why he’d gone to her house, but he was the answer to her prayers. If he could catch up and somehow manage to get this eerily calm stranger to stop the truck...

She let out a yelp as the truck slid toward the ditch on their right.

Her captor let up on the gas. The wheels caught and spit the truck back toward the middle of the road.

* * *

D
ILLON
’
S
HEART
PLUMMETED
as the black pickup carrying Ashley Parrish slid dangerously close to the edge of the road for the second time since he’d started pursuit. At the last second, the truck straightened out and shot back toward the centerline.

He let out a pent-up breath and pushed his Jeep even harder, the engine whining as it struggled to catch up. His four-wheel drive was built for power, not speed, which was why he didn’t normally use it when on the job. And it wasn’t aerodynamic enough to make the curves without greatly reducing his speed. Neither was the truck up ahead. The ditches along this road might as well be cliffs, as steep as they were. And with all this rain, they were full of water, a death trap if the truck slid into one of them.

He tried his phone again, but it was no use. He no longer believed a failed cell tower was to blame. He’d gone too far from Ashley’s house for that to be the case. The driver of the truck had to have a powerful cell phone jammer. That would explain why Ashley’s call dropped when she was talking to her friend, and why Dillon couldn’t get a call through as he followed behind. His mouth tightened. Jammers weren’t cheap, and they were hard to come by. The man who’d taken Ashley had gone to a lot of trouble, and expense, to do it. This wasn’t a random abduction.

He debated pulling off the road to call dispatch for backup. But if he let enough distance pass between him and the truck to unblock his phone, he might lose their trail. He couldn’t risk it.

The road curved ahead, but no matter how hard Dillon pressed his Jeep on the straightaway, he couldn’t catch up before the pickup disappeared around the curve. When he rounded the bend, he slammed his fist against the steering wheel. The fool. The truck’s lights were visible up ahead, but not on the two-lane it had been on. Instead, the driver had turned down the side road that led to Cooper’s Bluff. And he was heading toward the low wooden bridge over Little River—the bridge the mayor had closed because the river was expected to top it.

Ignoring every sense of self-preservation he had, he pushed the accelerator all the way to the floor. The tires slipped. He cursed and let up on the gas, even though it nearly killed him to slow down.

The bridge was around the next curve, so he slowed the Jeep even more.

Taillights gleamed up ahead at a crazy angle.

Dillon’s eyes widened and he slammed the brakes, bringing his car to a skidding halt at the edge of the roadway. The last twenty feet of asphalt had washed away. The bridge was completely underwater, its support beams sticking up out of the angry, roiling waves like the skeleton of some prehistoric water beast. The truck had slid off the collapsed roadway, narrowly missing the bridge’s first support beam and sliding half into the river.

Dillon grabbed his flashlight and hopped out. He sprinted to what was now little more than a cliff, a fifteen-foot drop down to the strip of mud at the water’s edge. The front of the truck was submerged beneath the water, all the way up to the doors. The bed of the truck stuck up in the air, and even as Dillon watched, the truck slipped a few more inches into the water.

He took off, racing parallel to the shore until he found a break where he could climb down. His boots slipped and slid in the muddy, rain-soaked ground.

In the beam of his flashlight he saw Ashley frantically tugging at her seat belt, her frightened eyes pleading with him for help as the water sucked and pulled at the truck. Dillon waded waist deep into the churning water to get to her door. The window was still rolled up, probably electric and stuck. He looked past her. The driver appeared to be passed out over the wheel. A rivulet of blood ran down the side of his face.

Ashley managed to get her seat belt off and yanked the door handle, but it wouldn’t open against the current. She pounded the flats of her hands against the window.

“Turn away from the glass,” Dillon yelled.

When Ashley moved back, Dillon used the hard case of his flashlight like a hammer against the window. It bounced and thudded against the glass. He tried again and again but the glass still held.

The truck slid deeper into the water.

Ashley screamed.

The driver stirred beside her.

Dillon shoved the flashlight under his arm and pulled out his gun.

“I have to shoot the window out,” he yelled.

She nodded, letting him know she understood. She pulled her legs up onto the seat, squeezing back from the window.

Dillon aimed toward the corner, so his bullet would go into the dashboard, and squeezed the trigger.

The safety glass shattered but held. He slammed the butt of his gun against the window. This time it collapsed in a shower of tiny glass pieces. He started to shove his gun into his holster but Ashley dove at him in the window opening, knocking both the flashlight and the pistol into the boiling, raging water.