Forbidden (Southern Comfort) (36 page)

If he could just get to his radio…

But his cell phone was closer to his hand.  And at this point, closer seemed like a good plan.

Sliding fingers slick with his own blood toward the phone clipped onto his belt, Josh cursed, quite baldly, as the ripping pain nearly destroyed him.  Grinding his teeth together, he called up every reserve of strength he could manage to push a button. 

He thought it was redial – hoped, prayed – but given the blood in his eyes and the pain waving his vision, he could have hit nothing at all.  But he hit it again, hoping against hope that it would go through.  Given his incapacitation and the spotty coverage in the area, he figured his chances were fifty/fifty. 

He also figured that his chances of whoever shot him coming out from the house and adding a nice little tap to the head for insurance were considerably higher.

Super.

He could have the ignominious distinction of being the only deputy in the history of the Bentonville sheriff’s department to ever be killed in the line of duty.  Maybe they could build a monument to that absurdity in the form of a nice bronze statue in the town square.

Distantly, through a haze of pain, Josh heard his phone make the connection.  Hope bloomed, even as he gave into the darkness once more.

CLAY
was on the phone with Sheriff Callahan, asking him what, if anything, he knew about Rob Johns, when his phone alerted him to a call waiting.  A quick glance determined it came from Kathleen, and he excused himself to take it.  “You have a license plate number?” he asked in lieu of a greeting.

“We have a partial. There was dirt or something obscuring the last two digits on the plate, but the rest of it looks to be South Carolina tag 801-D…”

“CK,” Clay completed for her, running his fingers through his hair as he paced.  “I remember it because… well, for obvious and juvenile reasons, it caught my attention.  Shit.  I didn’t want to send you off on a wild goose chase in case I was wrong, but I saw that truck in Bentonville.  In fact, I almost ran over the driver as he crossed the street.  His name is Rob Johns, and I just got an address on him from the sheriff.”  He rattled it off to Kathleen.  “The entire Bentonville sheriff’s department is currently unaccounted for or unavailable, so we need to get somebody over there quick.  If you want to issue a BOLO, the man’s about six foot, dark brown hair, overweight… although I wouldn’t put much stock in that description.  He’s obviously proficient with disguises. 
Shit.
”

Across the room, Kim’s cell phone jangled, and she pounced on it and looked at the number.  “It’s Harding.”

“Kathleen, I’ll call you right back.”  Clay hung up on Tate’s cousin, because he really wanted to talk with Josh.

“Hello,” Kim said for the second time.  “Deputy Harding, are you there?”  A beat passed, and then another, and then she looked at the message window on her phone to see whether the call had been dropped.  “The line’s still open,” she told Clay, looking up from her position at the desk.  “But he’s not answering.”

Clay held out his hand and she passed him the phone.  There was the distinct, slightly fuzzy sound of an open connection, but no human noises to be detected.

Until Clay heard a soft moan.

He tossed his own phone to Kim.  “See if you can get them to triangulate Harding’s location through his phone.  Whatever happened, I’m pretty sure he’s hurt.”  And wasn’t that just great?  This day was definitely going down in the record books as the shittiest ever.

Then he pressed his mouth back to the receiver.  “Harding, this is Clay Copeland.  Can you hear me?  Are you able to tell us where you are and what your status is?”

Silence followed again, and Clay listened to it echo as Kim placed the call he’d asked her to make.  Then he looked at Maureen and quickly crossed the room.  “Listen to this,” he handed her Kim’s cell, “and let me know if you hear anything.”  Then he asked to borrow her phone, dialing Kathleen’s number at the station.

“Maureen?” she answered it as a question.

“Nope.  Clay.  We’re playing pass the cell phone.  A call came in on Agent O’Connell’s cell from one of the deputies over in Bentonville, and it looks like he might be in some kind of distress.  Did you get anything on the plates?”

“Yes, but it didn’t match either the name or the address you gave.  It came back as registered to one Alma W. Walker, Bentonville address.  Could be either the vehicle or the plates were stolen.”

Something about that just didn’t fit.  “Our man’s too careful to be driving around with stolen anything.   Alma Walker might be the pseudonym for his old lady identity.  Although if he was out around town as Rob Johns, being seen driving that truck, he had to have a plausible explanation for it in case he was ever pulled over.  Sheriff Callahan said that he was some kind of property manager or caretaker, so that might be it.”

“So which address do we raid first, the one for Rob Johns or Alma Walker?”

Clay considered a moment.  If the identity the man used for snatching Max was the old lady’s, then it was more plausible that he would have taken Max to Rob Johns’ residence, thinking it would take the  authorities a while to make any sort of connection between the two. Which it would have, if Clay hadn’t seen the man get into that vehicle.  Of course it was also entirely possible that the man had another identity, another residence, and another vehicle which they knew nothing about. 

“Start with –”

“Walker!”  Maureen burst out, surprising Clay out of what he’d been about to say.  “The man on the phone just said the name
Walker!”

CHAOS
reigned.

Between the Charleston PD, what Bentonville sheriff’s department deputies they’d managed to locate, and the contingent of federal agents, three different law enforcement agencies were now rushing to the Walker farm.  Clay was on the phone with Kathleen, telling her to make sure the officers on her end didn’t come in with sirens blaring, because this was obviously not the kind of man who was going to give up peaceably when cornered.  In fact, Clay believed that type of situation would only make him more dangerous.

Kim, who was driving at something approximating the speed of light, talked to the Special Agent in Charge of the local RA, updating him on the situation, and on the phone he held to his other ear, Clay listened for sounds of life from Josh Harding. He’d roused himself enough to tell them he’d been shot and was lying in front of a barn on the Walker property, but for the past ten minutes Clay’d heard nothing.  No talking, no moaning, no hint of breath.

If the man was still alive, it was just barely.

After concluding her conversation, Kim waited for Clay to finish his, and then risked taking her eyes from the road to glance his way.  “You think this guy – the one who abducted Max – is the other perp we’ve been looking for.” 

“Has to be.  It’s the only thing that makes sense, even though – holy
God
– I never would have predicted he’d do something like this.”

“So you think this is part of his revenge and retribution thing?  He took out his accomplice, who was stupid enough to allow himself to be made, took out the deputy who did the composite, and went after the son of the woman who ID’d the partner?”

Clay laid the open phone – their link to Harding – on his lap so that he could rake both hands through his hair.  At this rate, he’d be bald before morning.  But he needed to think, needed to figure this whole thing out. He had to get inside this asshole’s head so that he knew best how to help Max.

“Yes,” he admitted to Kim as he watched the outside scenery fly by, “that’s essentially what I think.  Although to be quite honest, it’s more extreme than I would have imagined.   Josh Harding – well, I think he just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, so the guy shot him. But with Max…”  Clay shook his head, looked at Kim.  “It’s like he didn’t just want to strike back at Tate, but he wanted to do it in the most painful way possible.  And he went to a lot of trouble to do so, at the risk of getting caught.  We’re talking about the sort of man who up to this point has avoided risky behavior, so that begs the question
why is he willing to do so now? 
That sort of thing reeks of some sort of personal connection, of prior knowledge of his victim.  It’s too extreme an act of retribution against a perfect stranger who’s pissed you off.” 

Kim seemed to swallow that piece of information like something akin to spoiled milk.  “So you think this man is someone who knows Tate? Someone she has some kind of history with?”

“I don’t know.”  Clay rubbed his eyes, went with his gut.  “Yes, that’s what I think.  Kathleen’s running everything they can on the old lady who owns the farm, to see if they can turn anything up from that quarter.  But I’m afraid if we can’t approach the situation at that farm stealthily – if it becomes a hostage situation – someone’s going to have to wake Tate and show her the second composite, to see if she recognizes the blond man from the diner.”  He remembered something she’d said to him once, about him being the latest in a string of gorgeous blonds that she’d fallen for.  He prayed to God that this man wasn’t one of them.  “We’ll need to know everything we can about this guy and what makes him tick if we have any hope of getting Max back unharmed.” 

Clay’s phone rang, and he flipped it open to continue his dialogue with Kathleen.

“We’re here,” she informed him, just slightly out of breath.  “We have our snipers moving into position.  No sign of life so far, but two members of the SWAT team just cleared the barn and made a positive ID on the blue pickup.  There’s also a late model minivan parked beside it.”

A minivan?  Interesting choice.  It was excellent cover for a man traveling with a young child. 

“Kathleen, find out if there’s a car seat in the back of the second vehicle.”

Clay could hear her muffled voice as she turned away to make the inquiry.  “Affirmative,” she told him after a moment.  “I guess that means he was planning to take Max out of here alive?”

“Not only that, but it means they’re both probably still there.  He’d want to move quickly, after shooting Harding, so our best bet might be to wait him out, have one of the snipers take him down when he heads out toward the car.”  But it was going to take nerves of steel for him to wait, knowing that Max was probably in that house.  Kathleen must have felt the same way.

“I want to bust that door down right now.”

“I do, too.  But that might endanger Max.  We need to be sure that the guy isn’t in there, holding a gun to Max’s head before we go alerting him to our presence.”  Clay listened to the silence coming from the phone on his lap and asked her another tough question.  “Any word on Deputy Harding?”

Kathleen sighed, and Clay could hear her tension.  “His position is such that he’s in full view of the house, and if we get near him we’ll give ourselves away.  I had to take a hard line with a couple of his fellow deputies, who wanted to run to his aid.  We can’t risk it, as you said, until we know what we’re dealing with inside.  But in all honesty, I’m not sure the guy’s alive.  There’s an awful lot of blood under him.”

Clay swallowed and looked at the phone on his lap, feeling a real pang of loss for the other man.  In the short time Clay had known him, Josh had managed to earn his respect.

But then suddenly, noise erupted from that phone, and Kathleen began
oh, shit
ting in the other.

“Kathleen?  What the hell’s going on?”

There was a barrage of voices, most raised in angry shouts, and then a very definite gunshot.

Two.  Three shots.

Between the two phones it was like hearing the situation in some kind of weird stereo.  “Please tell me that was one of the snipers.”

“Another of the Bentonville deputies is down.” Panic pitched Kathleen’s words.  “He ignored orders and went after Harding.  The first two shots came from an upstairs window, the third from one of our snipers, to get the gunman to back off.”  She made a noise that sounded an awful lot like a sob.  “I’d say our perp definitely knows we’re here.”

THE
situation had gone to hell in a hand-basket by the time Clay and Kim made the scene.  Federal agents descended in a flurry of dark-tinted vehicles while a mixture of sheriff’s deputies and Charleston PD tried to maintain some kind of perimeter. Gossip in small towns traveled faster than wildfire, and the curious were already flocking.  A hostage negotiator with the Charleston PD was trying to find out if there was a land line so that he could establish communication, as the name of the game was to keep the offender as calm as possible, and bullhorns were not the way to go.

Nor, of course, was busting down the door, which was what the remaining sheriff’s deputies were advocating.  They had two men down – one badly wounded, one maybe dead – and were on an adrenaline rush of anger and retribution.  Tempers were heated, emotions close to the surface, the whole situation a ticking bomb.  The man inside the house had created an incredibly dangerous situation for himself, because now he was not only a child abductor but a cop killer.

Every law enforcement official present wanted him dead.

None of them more than Clay.

But first they had to get Max out safely.