He could smell her perfume.
She was everywhere, her presence filled every damned centimeter of the room.
“Fuck,” he whispered.
He walked back down the hall, tipping his chin up to Jonas when he saw his son’s face wore so much concern, it had already turned haggard. Tipping his chin was the only thing he could do to communicate to his son as the fear clawed at his gut. He walked down the back hall to the mudroom, down the stairs. He saw his weight equipment and remembered, just the week before, working out when she was doing something in his office. He noticed she’d come out, leaned against the doorframe at the mouth of the hall and she’d been sipping coffee and watching him.
“Sissy,” she’d teased when she caught his attention. “You should come to boot camps with me. Tyler’d kick your ass.”
Jonas had been at school so Tate had made the decision to end his workout a different way, right in the hall. She didn’t complain. She liked him sweaty.
She liked him any way she could get him.
That fear clawed deeper and his calm slipped, his eyes got blurry, his mouth got dry.
“Focus, Jackson, fuckin’ focus,” he muttered to himself, his vision cleared and he moved through the dark, silent rooms and then came back to the weight room and stood still.
No forced entry. No signs of struggle. She wasn’t out on a quick, secret errand; she’d left the candles burning.
She’d opened the door to someone she knew. She wouldn’t disarm the alarm, unlock the door and open it to someone she didn’t know. She’d learned that lesson. She’d be cautious. Unless she knew who was on the other side.
Trusted them.
There were a lot of people Laurie trusted and they all centered around one place.
As he heard the sirens approaching, he pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket, flipped it open and called Krys.
“Hey Tate,” she answered.
“Who’s there?” he asked without a greeting.
“What?”
“Who’s at the bar?” he asked.
“Why?”
“Who’s at the fuckin’ bar, Krys?” he demanded.
“Um…” she hesitated, “Izzy, Bub, Jonelle, Jim-Billy, Nadine, Steg, Stoney –”
He’d asked the wrong fucking question.
He interrupted her. “Who’s not there?”
Another brief hesitation then, “You, Laurie… um,” she paused, “Tate, I wanna get you what you need but I don’t know what –”
“One of us, who’s not there, someone Lauren would trust.”
“Dad!” Jonas shouted from upstairs, his voice strong and scared at the same time. “The cops are here!”
Krystal heard him. “The cops are there?”
“Lauren hit the panic button. Jonas and I were out pickin’ up her Christmas present. We’re back. She’s gone.”
Silence and then Tate felt her terror coming through the line.
“No, Tate, no,” she whispered and he heard the tremor in her voice.
“What’s goin’ on?” Tate heard Bubba ask, his voice firm but distant, coming through Krys’s phone.
“Who’s not there, Krys?” Tate repeated.
“Tate –” she started.
“Who’s not fuckin’ there!” he roared.
He heard her phone jostling as he heard footsteps coming down the back steps.
“Tate?” Bubba was on the phone.
“Lauren’s been nabbed, it’s someone she knew. Look around, Bub, who’s not there?”
“Fuck, fuck, fuckin’ shit!” Bubba shouted. “Hold on, I’m doin’ a scan.”
“Jackson,” Frank said as he approached Tate.
“Give me a minute,” Tate said to Frank.
“Tate, buddy, no forced entry,” Frank said quietly.
Tate speared Frank with a look.
“Give me a fucking minute, Frank,” Tate ground out.
“Dalton,” Bubba said in his ear.
Dalton. Dalton was on when he’d fired Tonia but she was local, he had the rest of the night after the bar closed to pick her up and play with her.
Dalton was one of them. Good-looking. Easy smile. Not tall, not built but still lean and strong definitely bigger than the petite Sunny and what she was used to with Shambles. Lived local but not all his life. Moved there a few years ago. But outside of the fact he was a good bartender and dependable employee, Tate didn’t know one fucking thing about him.
Totally fit the fucking profile.
“Go to the office, check the back schedules, timecards. Find out if he was on the night Neet was murdered and if he was on the night that girl got done in Chantelle.”
“You remember dates?” Bubba asked and Tate knew he was on the move.
“Check the internet. Get Krys on it,” Tate ordered.
“Don’t have broadband to the bar, bud,” Bubba said quietly, he was in the hall.
“Someone in that bar has got to have a phone with internet access and if they don’t, we got a fuckin’ phone, make calls. Find the dates, check the schedules, I want info in ten minutes, Bubba, faster, you can do it. And pull his application, fax it to me.”
“Got it,” Bubba replied and Tate heard the disconnect so he flipped his phone closed.
“Dalton?” Frank asked.
“Jonas!” Tate bellowed. “Come down here!”
“Tate, Dalton?” Frank repeated.
“Call the Feds,” Tate demanded instead of answering as his son ran down the stairs.
“Dad?” Jonas asked.
“Computer, Bub. Go fire it up. Now,” Tate ordered and Jonas took off toward his office.
A couple more officers were coming down the stairs as Frank kept talking.
“Tate, buddy, now think about this. This might not be what you think. It might not be May-December. It’s Christmas, Laurie could be doing anything. I get you’re tweaked, Neeta, Tonia. But Lauren isn’t his type and you cast suspicion on someone in something like this –”
His vision got blurry again and his hands clenched into fists as his body leaned into Frank.
“You hesitate one more fuckin’ time when I tell you to do something, I swear to fuckin’ Christ, I’ll rip your goddamned heart out. Call the fucking Feds!”
Frank stared at him for half a second, then lifted his hand to the radio at his shoulder, pressed the button and muttered, “Dispatch, we need a 10-18 call to Special Agent Tambo. Suspected May-December activity at Jackson residence. Out.”
Tate heard Jacinda in Dispatch reply with a shocked, “Jackson residence? Out,” but he wasn’t listening. He was walking to his office.
* * * * *
Lauren
“You shouldn’t have fought me, Laurie,” Dalton whispered. “Why’d you fight me?”
I tasted my cloth gag and blood.
This was because I’d woken up in Dalton’s truck, sorted out my head, realized I wasn’t bound and then opened the door, rolling out to the earth even though the truck was speeding through the hills. This did not feel good and I suspected I did myself damage but I still got up and did my best to make a run for it, straight through the spiky pine and leafless aspen of the hills surrounding where Sunny had been attacked.
Dalton had caught me. He knew those woods. I didn’t.
Then he’d beaten the shit out of me no matter how hard I tried to fight back, he bested me and dragged me back to his truck. He cuffed my wrist to the door and then he’d driven me here.
Here.
I closed my eyes and turned my head away because, in a line, their hair was in plastic baggies nailed to the walls.
I saw Tonia’s gleaming black locks, Sunny’s shorn, frizzy, ash blonde hair.
And Neeta’s thick, lush dark brown.
I felt the sick slide up the back of my throat.
“He lives up there Laurie… bet my fuckin’ life on it, he lives up there. He knows that spot. He knows those woods. Bet my fuckin’ life he lives up there. He hunts up there. That’s his spa
ce. It’s his.”
Tate knew where I was, he had to know. He’d find me, he could do anything for me, he’d find me.
Please, God, let him find me.
“I didn’t want it to be you,” Dalton told me. “I didn’t. Fought it Laurie. But you should have married him before you moved in. Good girls get married, Laurie. They get married before they move in and let men touch them. I could handle it but then you let Jonas live with you. You and Tate, fuckin’ each other constantly, right when his boy was there. His boy. I see it. See the way you two are together. Barely able to keep your hands off each other. Your tongues down each other’s throats every chance you get. And I heard about it. You goin’ down on him in the mornin’.” He sucked in breath. “Jonas could see you, he could hear you. And I know he did. He did. Hedidhedidhedid.”
I swallowed back the bile then yelped behind my gag as I heard the fabric tearing and my head snapped around to look at him.
I was on a dirty mattress on the floor, the mattress covered in brown stains. Blood. Old blood. Tonia all but died here. Neeta did die there. And God knew who else.
I was bound and I was gagged, my hands tied over my head to an old, rusty radiator, my legs, opened wide, tied to huge, wide screws fixed to the floor.
“You shouldn’t have let him hear you, Laurie,” Dalton whispered and then the blade sunk into my side and my cry of pain was muted by the gag.
His mouth came to my ear as the blade slid out.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
* * * * *
Tate
“I’m gettin’ nothin’,” Tate said to Bubba who was standing at his back.
Bubba and Krystal had shown up five minutes ago. Bubba had had to drive like a wild man to get up there as fast as he did, all the while talking to Tate on his phone, giving Tate the info he had.
Dalton was off for two days when Neeta was done, he was off when Sunny was attacked and he was off when the girl in Chantelle was brutalized.
Krys had brought the application with them but Bubba had given him the details on his way up the hill, Krystal reading the data to him in the truck and Tate had been running the info through his databases for the last fifteen minutes.
Dalton Caulfield McIntyre didn’t exist. His address was in town but it was a fucking warehouse. He didn’t own a car. He didn’t own property. He didn’t have a record. He didn’t pay taxes. He didn’t have a fucking driver’s license. He didn’t even have any credit history.
Tate knew Dalton had a truck and a bike and Tate knew Krys, and now Laurie, withheld taxes on Dalton’s wages but for some fucking reason none of this showed anywhere.
Dalton McIntyre was a black hole.
He only had a bank account into which they transferred his pay and how the fuck he got that without any apparent ID was anyone’s fucking guess.
Except it had a second name on the account, not McIntyre, first name Michael, last name Simpson, middle name, eerily, Caulfield.
So Tate ran Simpson and got shit. Same thing all around. No taxes, no license, no credit, no car, no property. Nothing. Not one fucking thing. Except a birth date, born in County Hospital, the same hospital where Tate was born, a hospital twenty minutes away, Simpson’s birth date nearly thirty years ago. His birthday July eighth and Dalton’s birth date on his application stated August seventh.
Transposed.
So who the fuck was Michael Simpson?
No wonder the Feds never got close. Both of them, Dalton and Simpson, totally off the grid.
Tate swiveled in his chair and leaned forward, putting his elbows to his knees and his head in his hands.
“Think, Jackson,” he muttered to himself, “think.”
He felt movement and looked up to see that Deke’s mammoth frame was filling the door. Then Tate’s eyes went to Bubba.
“I made some calls,” Bubba mumbled.
“Came by to see if we had to lock you down,” Deke announced.
“No one’s fuckin’ lockin’ me down,” Tate returned.
“You holdin’ your shit?” Deke asked.
“Yes, I’m fuckin’ holdin’ my shit,” Tate clipped in answer.
This was true. The part he didn’t share was that he was barely fucking holding his shit.
Deke surveyed Tate then looked at Bubba. “Wood’s organizing search parties at the garage. You comin’?”
Bubba glanced at Tate then he looked to Deke and said, “Yeah.”
Deke’s eyes moved to Tate. “You?”
Tate stood up. “We’re combin’ the hills where Sunny was attacked.”
Deke nodded. “Wood’s already got boys headin’ that way. They even got fuckin’ quadrants. He’s all over it.”
“Feds didn’t find anything up there,” Bubba noted.
“That don’t mean there’s nothin’ to be found,” Deke replied.
“Krys got Jonas?” Tate asked Bubba and Bubba nodded.
“Stella’s on her way up,” Deke added.
“Let’s go,” Tate muttered and headed out the door.
Krys and Jonas were in the living room when they arrived. Both sets of eyes flew to the three men as they hit the dining area.
Jonas shot off his chair and ran to Tate, slamming into him headlong and throwing his arms around Tate’s middle.
Jonas was holding his shit too, but that hold was slipping.
“Dad,” Jonas whispered, his voice small and scared and Tate allowed himself in that instant to acknowledge what he’d known since he’d heard Frank’s voice on the phone and that was the fact that tonight someone was going to die and Tatum Jackson was going to fucking kill him.
“Goin’ out, Bub, lookin’ for Laurie,” Tate muttered, his hand moving along his son’s hair and down to curl around his neck.
Jonas’s head shot back. “Can I –?”
“No,” Tate cut him off.
“But –”
“I gotta go, Bub,” Tate told him.
“But Dad –”
Tate grasped him by his biceps, pulled him firmly but gently away and held on as he bent double and looked in his son’s eyes. His eyes. Eyes Laurie had told him, in the dark when they were in bed after he’d made love to her weeks ago, that she thought were the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen, both sets of them.
“Who’s my big man?” Tate whispered.
Jonas’s lip trembled.
Then he whispered back, “Me.”
“Look out for Krys,” Tate directed.
“Okay,” Jonas was still whispering.
Tate let him go but hooked him with an arm around his shoulders, yanking his son into his body and squeezing tight. Then he let him go again and his eyes swept Krys. She was standing and he saw her eyes were bright but her jaw was clenched. Gritting her teeth to keep back the tears.
“Be back with Laurie,” Tate told her.
She swallowed.
“Right, Tate,” she said.
They were out the door, Deke peeling off to his truck, Bubba to his, Tate to the Explorer when they saw lights coming up the lane. They stopped to see Shambles and Sunny’s VW van park off to the side. Both got out, Shambles ran to them, Sunny coming slower.
“Word?” Shambles demanded.
“We’re goin’ to look for her,” Bubba answered.
“I’m coming,” he turned to Tate. “Jonas?”
“In the house,” Tate answered and looked at Sunny. “He could use you.”
She didn’t even nod. She ran to the house.
Shambles ran to the passenger side of Bubba’s truck.
They all climbed in and went down the mountain.
* * * * *
Jim-Billy
He should have bought one of those cell phones.
He really should have.
But he didn’t and there was no time to spare.
He also shouldn’t drink so goddamned much.
But it was Christmas and every twinkling light, every swaying garland, every Christmas tree blinking in every goddam
ned window reminded him.
So he drank too much.
But not too much not to remember gabbing with Dalton ages ago, it had to be over a year, and Dalton telling him about his place. Jim-Billy hadn’t even thought about it, not then, not later when all that shit with the girls was going down. It was a nothing conversation he put out of his mind.
But Dalton had told him he didn’t have an apartment in town or a house. He lived in the hills, the hills where the hippy chick was attacked.
“My Ma’s old place,” he’d muttered.
And drunken Jim-Billy – hearing about Laurie when everyone at the bar was murmuring about it, panicking, the men heading to the garage – fear threaded its way through the alcohol drenching his system and he’d remembered pretty Jane Simpson who’d gotten knocked up in high school and had a boy. She’d lived up there with her folks until she got herself a man and she’d moved to Ouray to be with that man. And he remembered vaguely hearing word that she’d been killed, knifed to death by her boyfriend who swore he didn’t do it, swore he loved her, swore she was the love of his life even though he was charged and found guilty and went to prison for it. Everyone they knew, Jim-Billy remembered the talk filtering from Ouray, had been stunned. All those folks said Jane and her man were tight, they were in love, they meant the world to each other. And with Jane’s folks both dead by then, Jim-Billy remembered hearing her son had gone into foster care.
No one had lived up at that house for years.
Or at least they thought no one had.
Dalton was a good kid, everyone liked him, especially Tonia. Jim-Billy spent a lot of time in that bar and he’d noticed the way she’d looked at him. She’d crushed on him huge, always trying to catch his eye. Jim-Billy figured her clothing got scantier and her flirting got flirtier as she got more desperate to make an impression or make him jealous.