“You. Inside. Let me see your hands.”
No response.
She rounded to the rear of the SUV and lifted the gate. The backseat had been folded forward and two men lay side by side. Still, neither moved nor reacted to the light she aimed at their faces. She nudged one leg. A soft groan. The guy on the left. His eyes opened, glassy, unfocused, then closed again.
Took her a couple of minutes to decipher what she saw. Both men out. One, the guy on the right, wore pale blue boxers, an oversized gray tee shirt, barefoot. She saw a smear of blood along the left side of the shirt.
What the hell?
She needed backup.
CHAPTER 54
“We’re on the way,” Cain said, the satellite phone to his ear.
“So is Hack,” Cassie said. “Up 43. Maybe three or four miles.”
Harper now drove, Cain shotgun, Buck in back. A mile up the road, Buck said, “Those mailboxes. I remember them.”
Cain saw them. A row of seven or eight boxes, lined up along the left side of the road near a gravel road that spurred off. For the cabins that were up that way, no doubt.
“From that night?” Cain asked.
“Yes, we came this way.”
“Makes sense given where I found you.”
“I remember because of the bright red one on one end and the white one with that oil-rig-looking stand.”
“That might help us find the cabin.”
“We turned right up here. Maybe another half-mile.”
They flew past a paved road.
“Right there,” Buck said.
“You sure?”
“Mostly. It was dark and I was busy with Dennie, but it sure looks like what I remember.”
“Once we see what’s what with Cassie, we’ll head back this way.”
Flashing blue lights painted Cassie as she stood near the rear of a black Lincoln Navigator. The driver’s door stood open and a man sat crumpled against it in the roadway. As Harper parked on the opposite shoulder, Cain saw two forms in the SUV’s rear compartment.
“He drew on me,” Cassie said as they walked up. She pointed toward the front. “Didn’t leave me much choice.”
“Good shooting,” Cain said, eyeing the corpse.
“I don’t know how. My hand was shaking so badly I thought might shoot my own foot.”
“But you didn’t,” Cain said.
“He almost took care of that himself. He got off one round. Missed my ear by a gnat’s ass.”
Cain looked toward the two men in back. “Who’re these guys?”
“That’s Dennie and Jessie,” Buck said.
Hack rolled up and climbed out.
Over the next twenty minutes a lot happened. The dead man’s wallet revealed he was Robert Buddy Myrick. Memphis address. Buck didn’t know him. Had never seen him. One of Dalton’s crew, no doubt.
Buck examined the two men.
“How’re they doing?” Cassie asked.
“Dennie’s wound’s still intact. Only a little bleeding along the suture line. Jessie will be out for a while yet.”
“What’d you do to them?” Harper asked.
“The miracles of modern medicine,” Buck said. He smiled. He told of Dalton going to meet the other guys. “I knew that if I was going to escape it had to be while Dalton was gone. I gave Dennie a little morphine and Versed. Then I managed to get Jessie to drink a Manhattan with me. Of course, I added a little chloral hydrate.” He shrugged. “The original Mickey Finn.”
“Where’d you get that?” Cassie asked.
“At the pharmacy. While I was gathering everything I might need to patch up Dennie, I ran across it in the narcotics cabinet. Thought if I was truly lucky, I’d get a chance to use it.”
“Clever,” Harper said.
“Or desperate.”
An ambulance pulled in behind them followed by another vehicle. Officer Rick Fowler stepped out. While the medics loaded Dennie and Jessie, Cassie brought Fowler up to date.
“You ride back with the medics,” she said to Fowler. “In case these clowns wake up and get antsy.” She looked at Buck. “You think you can find this cabin?”
“Maybe.”
She nodded. “All right. Let’s take a crack at it.”
Hack and Fowler pulled their cars well off the road and locked them. Harper rode with Cassie, Cain took The Rig—Buck up front, Hack in the rear seat.
CHAPTER 55
Buck’s recall proved to be spot on. Particularly given the circumstances last time he was up this way. Probably explained how he got through med school. Cain turned up the road they had seen earlier, just short of where Buck had pointed out the collection of mailboxes. Buck asked him to slow down and after a half-mile or so told him to stop.
“I think this is it.”
“The dirt road?” Cain asked.
“It sure looks like it.”
Cain continued another hundred feet and pulled to the shoulder. Cassie eased up behind him. Everyone stepped out.
“You think this is the place?” Cassie asked.
“That’s my best guess.” Buck looked back that way. “If so, that road or drive or whatever it is, is barely passable. It winds a couple of hundred yards up into the trees. Like I said, the house is well hidden.”
“I don’t know this place,” Cassie said. “Didn’t even know anything was up that way. Didn’t see a mailbox either.” She rubbed her neck. “Maybe it’s abandoned.”
“It’s not,” Buck said. “Older couple. You’ll find their bodies in the garage.”
“Really?”
Buck nodded.
Cassie sighed. “These are very bad actors.”
“Dalton is, for sure,” Buck said. “Scary as hell.”
Cassie looked at Cain. “You think they’re still in there?”
“Probably not. With Dennie packed up and sent off and Buck getting away, they’d have to assume we’d find this place.”
Cassie glanced up the dirt pathway. “Maybe they’re on the way to Memphis.”
Cain gave her a look.
“You don’t think so?” Cassie asked.
“He doesn’t,” Harper said. “I don’t either. If the plan was to cut and run, why bring in others? Just hit the road and disappear.”
Cassie hooked a thumb in her belt. “I agree.”
“Which means they have something else on their agenda,” Cain said.
“Dalton had some business to take care of,” Buck said. “I don’t know what. He never said specifically.”
“Take out a couple of witnesses,” Harper said.
Cain nodded. “Unless Jason is helping them.”
Harper shrugged. “They’ll get around to him sooner or later. Maybe, after he helps.”
“They
