COLLATERAL CASUALTIES (The Kate Huntington mystery series) (26 page)

            Again he buried his face in her curls. She felt him take in a long shuddering breath. After a very long time, his body relaxed into sleep.

~~~~~~~

            Kate’s growling stomach woke her the next morning. She was alone on the air mattress. The fragrance of cooking eggs made her stomach grumble again. They never had gotten around to eating dinner last night.

            In the front room, Rose stood by the hot plate, scrambling eggs in a large skillet. When she spotted Kate, she said, “Took me half an hour to scrape the crud off this thing. The toaster’s beyond redemption. We’ll have to settle for plain old bread. Won’t be fancy but it’ll fill us up. Water in that pan is hot,” she tilted her head toward the other sideboard of the sink, “if you want to make yourself some tea or instant coffee.”

            “Where is everybody?” Kate asked.

            “Skip and Dolph are checking on the guards. Rob and Sue are getting some fresh air. Told them to stick close to the cabin.”

            “Want me to set the table?” Kate asked.

            “Yeah. I called Mac last night. The kids are doing fine. A little homesick, but Liz and Rob’s mom are keeping them occupied.”

            Kate nodded. She set out paper plates and plastic forks, a loaf of bread and the tub of margarine. Pulling the cots over to the table to serve as benches, she sat down on one of them.

            A wave of longing for her children threatened to overwhelm her. She closed her eyes for a moment and imagined she was hugging them. She felt her lips curl into a smile when her imaginary Billy squirmed off of her lap.

            Rob and Sue came in. They took seats at the table as Rose scooped eggs onto several of the plates. She went back to the hot plate and broke more eggs into the pan. “Don’t know if this food’s gonna last more than a day. After we’ve eaten, I’ve gotta feed the guards.”

            “Hopefully we’ll only be here another day or two,” Kate said.

            Dolph and Skip came through the door. Kate patted the empty end of her cot and Skip joined her. She kissed his cheek, then dug into her food.

            He poked at his.

            Rose brought the skillet to the table again, dishing out eggs for Dolph and herself. She dumped the rest from the pan on top of the yellow heap already on Skip’s plate.

            “What are you doing?”

            “That’s your second serving. Eat it while it’s hot,” Rose said.

            Skip took a bite, then poked some more. Kate shot him a look out of the corner of her eye. Rose put the skillet in the sink. She sat down at her place and glared across the table at him.

            “Eggs are excellent brain food,” Kate said. “They promote the production of the neurotransmitter that helps us concentrate.” She knew full well her pretense that she was just making conversation was fooling no one.

            “I think you’d better eat up, son,” Dolph said. “Your womenfolk are ganging up on you.”

            Skip started shoveling eggs into his mouth. His attitude was that of someone digging a hole to bury his dead dog.

            Rob complimented Rose’s cooking. She thanked him. After that, they gave up on table conversation.

            When they’d finished eating, Kate gathered the empty plates into a pile. “Rose needs to feed the guards, but first we should figure out how much to tell them?”

            Rose was about to respond when the door swung partway open. Three guns came out. Manny’s head appeared around the edge of the door.

            “Don’t do that, Manny,” Rose said. “You almost–”

            “We got company,” Manny interrupted, his voice cheerful. “Our neighbor from down the road.”

             He paused until the guns had disappeared, then nudged the door all the way open. Sid Pierce was standing behind him.

            “Come on in, Mr. Pierce,” Kate said, faking a smile.

            “Call me Sid, ma’am,” the old man said. “I just wanted to stop in and say howdy.”

            “Then I’m Sally Mae, Sid.”

            Rob snickered softly. Kate located what she thought was his shin under the table and kicked it gently.

            “Ouch,” Dolph said.

            “Sorry,” Kate whispered. “I was aiming for somebody else.”

            Sid Pierce was looking around the room. He let out a low whistle. “You sure do have a bunch of folks crammed in here.”

            Kate spread her hands in a what-can-you-do gesture. “This is what happens when you tell your friends you’ve found the perfect place to get away from the craziness of the city.” She turned to Manny. “Did you and Claude catch any fish?”

            She was counting on his quick thinking. This was, after all, a fishing shack.

            Manny did not disappoint her. He blinked twice, then said, “No, but the others are still trying.”

            Rose got up. “You’ll have to settle for eggs then.” She reached into the cooler for the second carton.

            “Lordy, how many people ya got stayin’ here?”

            Kate gave Sid a rueful smile. “I didn’t realize the place was quite this small when I said, ‘sure come on and join us.’”

~~~~~~~

            Skip was beginning to think more clearly. Maybe there was something to Kate’s eggs as brain food concept. An idea was hatching. He stood up and stretched. “I think I need to work off that second helping. Come on, Sid, I’ll walk up to your house with you.”

            Halfway to the main road, Skip stopped walking. “Sid, I gotta tell you something but you can’t tell a soul. Lives depend on it.”

            Sid turned to face him, eyebrow cocked, waiting.

            As Skip had suspected, the old man was no dummy. He knew there had to be more to the story when that many people were sharing a two-room shack.

            “All of those folks back there,” Skip said. “They’re involved, one way or another, in a big trial coming up. A drug trafficking ring. Two of them are witnesses, two are lawyers. The rest of us are guarding them. Fred’s letting us use his place as a safe house until right before the trial starts. These drug lords are ruthless. They’ve already killed three people who could’ve identified them.”

            Sid was nodding. “Best place in the world to hide in plain sight is around here. Way off the beaten track, but we get ’nough tourists an’ summer folks that we don’t pay much attention to strangers.”

            ‘Well, if these guys figure out where we are–which is unlikely, we covered our trail pretty good–but if they do come around, they’ll stand out. They’re Hispanic.”

            “Well, now, not nec’sarily. We see Mexicans ’round here. Work for the rich folks in Chestertown doin’ yard work and such. They don’t live out this way though. But folks wouldn’t pay all that much mind to a car load of ’em drivin’ round.”

            “These guys aren’t Mexican. They’re Colombian.”

            Sid looked at him as if to say,
What’s the difference?

            “I doubt they’ll be wearing work clothes, and they may be a bit taller and lighter skinned than the Mexicans you’ve seen.” Skip opted not to get into the whole Central/South American class system that was based not just on money but on how much Spanish versus Indian blood the person possessed. “They may look more like a white person with a tan.”

            “Gotcha. I’ll keep an eye out.”

            “That’d be great. Let me give you my cell number. If you see anybody coming around that looks like that, don’t try to talk to them. Don’t even let on that you’ve noticed them. Like I said, they’ve already killed three people.” Skip had pulled out one of his disposable cells to get the number off the back.

            Sid surprised him by producing a state-of-the-art iPhone. He plugged in the number that Skip read off.

            “Tell your wife to avoid them if she sees them, and to let you know right away. But you can’t tell her all that background. It’s highly confidential. My boss would skin me alive if she knew I was telling you all this. But I could tell we didn’t fool you for a minute with our ‘we’re just here to get away from the city’ routine.”

            Sid nodded. “I’ll tell the missus I heard some Hispanics escaped from prison and might be headin’ this way. That way if she sees ’em, she’ll skidaddle inside and call the police.”

            Skip tried to think of a way to discourage calling the police. Then again, if the bad guys were driving down the lane, the cops showing up might be a good thing.

            “Thanks, Sid, and I’m sorry we brought this possible danger to you.”

            “Shucks, boy, don’t ’pologize. I haven’t had this much excitement in a helluva long time. By the way, which one of them gals is your boss? Sally Mae?”

            “No, she really is my wife. I was afraid to leave her at home for fear these guys would kidnap her, use the threat of hurting her to make me lead them to the witnesses. The one cooking breakfast is my boss.”

            “You’re pulling my leg. That little gal!”

            Skip grinned. “I’ve seen that
little gal
take down men twice her size. I tried arm-wrestling her once. She won.”

            Sid gave him a skeptical look.

            “Okay, that time I
was
pulling your leg, but I’m serious about her taking down the big guys. It helps that they tend to underestimate her.”

            As Skip started back toward the cabin, the image of Jamal’s bright-eyed young face popped into his mind. He felt his jaw clench. He silently said a short but fervent prayer that God would protect Sid Pierce and his wife.

CHAPTER TWENTY

            Two of the guards sat at the table, wolfing down their breakfast. Rose was beating yet more eggs into submission in the skillet.

            She waved Skip over to the makeshift kitchen. “To answer Kate’s earlier question,” she said quietly. “I’m thinking the guards need to know what’s going on so they can do their jobs.”

            “Even that I’m suspected of murder?” he whispered back, not sure how he felt about sharing that little tidbit.

            Rose paused, her expression thoughtful. “Manny, yeah, and I think Lilly’s okay. These other two.” She shook her head. “They haven’t worked for us all that long. But it’s up to you. It’s your hide on the line.”

            “We’ll give these two the short version and send them back outside,” Skip said. “Probably worth having Manny and Lilly brainstorm with us about where to go from here.”

             Skip sat down at the table. He gave the two guards a sanitized synopsis of how he, Kate and their friends had gotten into this mess. “These guys are totally ruthless. They stop at nothing. They’ve already killed three people and tried to kill me.

            “I told the old man who lives down by the road a version of this,” he informed the others as well as the guards. “He thinks the bad guys are drug lords and we’re protecting witnesses for a trial that’s coming up. So if he’s running toward you yelling ‘they’re coming,’ take him seriously. And do everything in your power to keep him and his wife safe.”

            Claude’s expression hadn’t changed much as he’d listened. “Got it, boss.”

            The other guard’s mouth was hanging open. He closed it abruptly, then nodded.

            “Oh, and don’t call me boss if Mr. Pierce is around. My name is Steve and he thinks Rose is my boss.”

            Rose flashed one of her brief but gorgeous grins.

            The man’s mouth dropped open again. Skip stifled a grin of his own. He stood up and gave the guard a friendly pat on the shoulder. “You guys go back out and tell the others to come in, please.”

            Their eggs were a bit dried out but Manny and Lilly didn’t seem to care. As they tackled the food, Skip gave them a somewhat more detailed synopsis, including what he had told Sid Pierce.

            “And there’s one thing we’re not telling the other guys. The kid they killed, they set me up for it. One of my handguns was stolen a few days ago. They used it on the boy, then left it at the scene. There’s a BOLO out on me even though I reported the gun stolen.”

            “You can’t go in to talk to the cops,” Manny said. “If they hold you even overnight, that’ll give these guys time to get somebody on the inside to attack you.”

            “That’s our take on it,” Rose said.

            Skip turned to Lilly. “You got a problem with harboring a fugitive for awhile, until it’s safe for me to be back in circulation?”

            “Hell, no. This definitely smells like a set-up to stage a jailhouse hit,” she said. “And I’d bet my next paycheck those guys used gloves so the gun’s still covered with your prints.”

           
Gonna have to give these two raises,
Skip thought,
when this is over.

~~~~~~~

            Once they’d cleared the breakfast debris off the table, Rose punched Mac’s number into her phone, then hit the button for speaker mode.

            “Reilly,” Mac’s voice growled from the phone as she put it down on the table.

            “It’s us,” Rose said.

            “Liz around?” Rob asked.

            “She’s tellin’ the kids a story. They’re gettin’ restless, cooped up in the house.”

            The others didn’t notice Rob’s crestfallen look, but Kate did. She went over and sat on the cot next to him. “Use one of your phones to call her later,” she whispered, patting his hand.

            Rose was filling Mac in on the latest developments, including the BOLO on her partner.

            Mac muttered a curse. “You’re all safe? You there, sweet pea?”

            Kate was startled by the anxiety in his voice. It hit her how hard this must be for him, to be babysitting several states away while the people he cared about most were in danger. “Yes, I’m here. We’re all safe.” She wanted to say more but she knew she’d just embarrass him.

            There was silence on the line. Rose jumped in. “We need to figure out what to do next.”