Wolfhunter River (Stillhouse Lake #3)(103)

“Can’t do it now. We’ll see to that after we get Chief Weldon and that son of a bitch Carr.”

“You know about Carr?”

“Fairweather told us his suspicions. We got us a warrant to search his compound. If Ellie White’s there, we’ll get that poor child back for her folks, alive or dead.” The sheriff, who’s a beefy old guy with a Santa Claus beard and the eyes of a snake, walks away without another word. Mike and I both watch him go.

“You know,” Mike says, “if he’s been bought off, none of us are making it out of here alive.”

“They can’t buy everybody.”

“So you say.”

“Relax, man. You’ll live to print fake money again.”

“Do not make me laugh.” He sighs. “I’m sorry about Miranda. I didn’t like her. But I would have saved her if I could.”

“I know,” I say. I get up to my feet. Everything hurts, and I’ll be black-and-blue tomorrow, but for now, I’m steady enough. “Not your fault, Mike.”

“Where the hell you going?”

“To find somebody to take me to Wolfhunter,” I tell him. “I need to be sure they’re okay.”

I don’t get more than a couple of steps away before the sheriff comes back. He studies us for a few seconds, then says, “Come with me.”

Mike, despite the cuts and bruises, stands up too. “Where we going?” All the weapons we took off Zhao have now disappeared, like a magic trick. I don’t have them. But Mike’s probably a walking secret gun show.

“Carr’s compound,” the sheriff says. “Then we’ll go get your family.”



It’s a ten-minute ride; nothing’s far around here. The description of Carr’s place as a compound is accurate; it’s got fortified concrete brick walls, coiled razor wire on top of them, and some impressive floodlights on top.

The central gate’s been wrecked. It lies in pieces.

“What the hell?” I say.

“Our men got here to serve the warrant and drove into the middle of a damn war,” the sheriff says. He sounds grim. The situation warrants it. There are two Wolfhunter PD cruisers inside the gate with their light bars flashing, but nobody near them . . . until the sheriff’s car rolls farther in, and I start to see the bodies.

Two dead officers lying between the two cars.

There are two burning SUVs, and dead men all over the place, I realize. A guy lying at the base of the wall in old, cheap desert camo, which is just dumb out here in tree country. A cluster of four or five over by what looks like a barracks on the other side of the wall.

“What the hell happened?” I ask.

“Best we can guess right now, these people in the SUVs got here half an hour ago,” the sheriff says. “Full-on firefight ensued, with lots of casualties. Then Wolfhunter cops arrived, and they got killed getting out of their cars. We found Carr’s wives and kids hiding in a basement.”

“You did say wives, right?” Mike says.

“Plural. It’s a mess. Some kind of redneck doomsday cult going on out here with Carr as their high muckety-muck prophet. Turns out that old shit had himself a fine petty kingdom, until today.”

“Is he dead?” Mike asks.

“Haven’t found him yet, but this is a goddamn bloodbath. Far as we can tell, the men in the SUVs were hired guns, and they’re all dead too. They all shot each other to pieces. No idea who’s missing.” He eyes the two of us. “You got any info?”

“The men from the SUVs are probably the original kidnappers,” I tell him. “The crew that took Ellie White, maybe some extras they hired on for this job. They intended to get her back.”

“Maybe they did. We haven’t found any trace of her yet.”

“Have you talked to the wives?” I ask him.

“They don’t say anything. They just stand there, hands together. It’s damn unsettling.”

“So why would you bring us here?” I ask.

The sheriff sighs. “I hoped you’d have some ideas where to go from here. Nothing?”

“Nope,” I say. Mike shakes his head. “What about Chief Weldon?”

“In custody,” he says. “Weldon claims he left everything to Carr; he doesn’t know where the girl is being kept.” He heaves a sigh. “Well. FBI’s flying in on helicopters, they can take this with the TBI from here, I guess. It’s a real shame we got this close and couldn’t find that kid.”

It is.

And then I remember something. “Vee Crockett,” I say. “Vee Crockett told us her mother said the wrecks were buried. What if they buried the girl with them?”

“You mean old-school kidnapper-style, with an air pipe?” Mike considers that. “What’s the last place you’d look?”

“C’mon, Mike, look around. Everywhere?”

“That’s not how these guys think; they like to have their eyes on it all the time. Control freaks. They hide this stuff, but they also watch it. Under houses. Under heavy equipment. Under—” He pauses. “They got any heavy equipment?”

“Yeah,” the sheriff says, and points. “A backhoe, right over there, next to the trash heap.” Every rural property has its own trash heap.