Wolfhunter River (Stillhouse Lake #3)(96)

He pauses me with one massive, upheld hand that he folds into a fist. I freeze. Then I hear the creak in the floorboards. Shit.

I meet Mike’s eyes. We silently have a conversation, and he nods.

I’m faster.

I throw myself flat on the floor, noise be damned, and sweep my arm under the couch. I only find one of the guns and a pile of dead cockroaches. My fingers crunch a couple as I grab the gun, but I barely notice. I stay on the floor, braced against the couch, and am dimly aware of Miranda’s motionless legs beside me; my focus is on the hallway that leads into the room.

A face appears in a blur, checking corners, and it’s about six inches above where I was looking. It draws back fast, and it takes me a second to place it, and then I try to slow my racing heartbeat. Shit. “Fairweather?”

“Cade?” he asks, and when he comes around the corner, he’s holstering his gun with careful, obvious motions. “What the hell is this?” He takes it in with a cop’s precision, stopping for a second on each still form to absorb information. “Is she dead?”

“Yes,” Mike says. I can’t answer. The past wraps us together in red-hot barbed wire, a painful trap that I knew I’d never quite escape, but I never wanted this. I never wanted her to die afraid and imprisoned like this. She deserved better. Everyone does. “That one shot her.” He indicates Walnut, over by the fireplace. “They’re all alive.”

Fairweather nods and takes a small compact radio from his belt. He recites the address into it and says he has two wounded. Then he hesitates, looks at the two of us, and says, “I’m bringing two men in who have information. Headed in now.”

He puts the radio back. I realize I’m still aiming the gun at him, and I wonder for a second just why I haven’t put it away, but that flash is paranoia, not rational thought. I hand the gun to Mike, who puts it in the small of his back. I dig under the couch and grit my teeth, because there are living cockroaches under there too; I shake them off and pull out another weapon. Too late, I realize that I’m probably putting my fingerprints on the gun that’s killed Miranda; odds are, it’s either this one or the one I held earlier. Shit. Not that I think Fairweather’s on the Wolfhunter PD’s payroll, or Carr’s, but . . . it nags at me.

Fairweather crosses the room and checks each of the still bodies. Then he looks at the two of us and says, “Come on. My sedan’s out back, official TBI car. I’ll get you somewhere safe out of here. I’ll send the county cavalry out here for these men, but not until the two of you are safe.”

“We need to get Gwen and the kids,” I tell him. “Stop at the Sparks house, get them out, and head for the border.”

He doesn’t like that, I can tell, but he nods. “Let’s go,” he says. When I hesitate, he sighs. “Come on, Sam, do you trust me or not?”

His gaze is on me and the gun in my hand.

I don’t want to, but I put it away.

We follow Fairweather out of the house, and he takes appropriate precautions before waving us to the cruiser. “Down,” he tells me and Mike as we pile in. Mike groans. He’s still bleeding from cuts, and badly bruised from a beating. “Low as you can get.”

I slide down into the passenger-side footwell. Mike, with difficulty, stretches out on the backseat. “Don’t tell any of the locals,” I tell Fairweather. “We don’t know who to trust.”

The detective glances down at me. “You’d best start at the beginning,” he says. “Because last I knew, you all were looking to clear Vera Crockett. Who are they?”

“We still are. Marlene was killed by either Weldon or Carr,” I tell him. “She knew about a wreck that happened out on the highway outside of town, right near the forest. She helped clear it all up.”

“And?”

“And there was a dead driver, and a tied-up little girl in the back.”

He looks grim. “Jesus. Ellie White.”

“The kidnappers’ plan didn’t include a bad-luck head-on collision, and the police chief and tow-truck operator deciding they’d just struck gold. When was the ransom paid?”

“Thirty million dollars, paid four days ago,” he says. “Wire transfer to an offshore bank.”

“My guess is two geniuses here organized that and got some local banker in on the scheme to clean the cash. They could provide proof of life. The original kidnappers couldn’t.” There’s a siren coming. Getting louder.

“Stay down, cruiser’s coming.” Fairweather slows, stops, and rolls down his window. “Hey, what’s the commotion about?” He has to shout to be heard over the siren. It cuts out.

“Escaped prisoner,” I hear another voice say over the idling of two engines. “Vera Crockett, if you can believe that.”

“Haven’t seen her, but I just got back in town,” Fairweather says; it’s a classic mix of truth and fiction. “Just heading for the station right now.”

“Watch your back. People around Vera Crockett got a habit of dying on us.”

That’s slick, I think; the cop is already laying the groundwork for getting rid of all of us.

The chat goes on a minute or so, and then Fairweather rolls up his window and drives on. I hear Mike groan in the backseat. “You okay?” I ask.