Golden Trail (26 page)

“What the fuck?” he whispered, moved his
fingers from the indicator, kept a distance and followed.

His eyes went back to the dash. Twelve oh
nine. Where the fuck was she going at twelve oh nine?

He followed her into town, she turned left
on Green, he trailed her and drove passed her when she turned into
the Christian Church parking lot.

“Fuck me,” he muttered, now knowing what she
was doing out at twelve oh nine. He swung the next left, continuing
to mutter, “Rocky, baby, I find you lookin’ for trouble, I’m gonna
turn you over my knee.”

Layne rounded the church and blacked out his
headlights as he took the alley and entered the church parking lot
from the back. He saw her Merc parked in the far corner under a
tree. At least she’d parked smart, with the tree shrouding her car
from light and her vehicle being black, you had to be looking to
see it.

He scanned the lot and the church and saw no
Rocky.

He parked by her car, unbuckled his
seatbelt, leaned to his glove compartment and pulled out a Maglite
and a pair of black leather gloves. Then he got out of his car,
pulling on his gloves and walking through the parking lot like he,
personally, owned the church and he found the side door slightly
ajar. She hadn’t left it that way on purpose. The latch hadn’t
caught when she slipped through.

He opened the door just enough to steal
through and stood still, no alarm, no beeps warning him to enter
the code. He turned and saw the white of the security box by the
door, the panel looking in the dark like it was hanging down. He
flipped on his Maglite, shone it on the box, saw the panel was
hanging down but didn’t see any wires protruding. He traced the
door with his Maglite and found the sensors on the door, their
wires intact. He leaned into the security box and saw the lighted
display saying “unarmed”.

How did she disable the alarm?

He moved cautiously through the vestibule
outside the sanctuary and remembered coming to this church with his
mother. He hadn’t been there in years. He also remembered Rocky
came to this church with Merry, Cecilia and Dave. And lastly, he
remembered, when Cecilia died, Dave quit bringing the kids.

He kept the Maglite pointed down but forward
and made his way through the vestibule, saw it and stopped,
flipping off the Maglite.

There was a windowed room but the window was
internal, no windows to the outside. Layne tried to remember and he
thought it was an office, the windows facing into the vestibule.
From it, a dim light shone.

He moved there, around the corner to the
opened door and saw Rocky sitting on a desk chair, a file in her
lap, her head bowed over it, deep in concentration, her gloved
hands moving the papers, a small Maglite between her lips.

He felt at the wall and switched on the
light.

She let out a small scream and pushed back,
rolling the chair across the small room and slamming against a
filing cabinet, her head snapping back, the Maglite falling out of
her mouth and clattering to the floor as she stared at him with
lips parted, eyes huge.

“Hey sweetcheeks,” he greeted.

“What are you…” she swallowed, looked out
the window into the vestibule then back at him. “What are you doing
here!” she hissed.

“Funny, that’s what I was gonna ask
you.”

She flipped the file shut and stood. “Layne,
turn out the light!”

“No windows to the outside, no one knows
we’re in here, no one can see the light and I need it so I can see
you when I throw you over my shoulder and,” he leaned forward and
barked, “
haul your ass outta here!
”

She jumped toward him and lifted a hand.
“Keep your voice down!” she whispered.

“Baby,
no one knows we’re here!
”

“Okay, so keep your voice down because
you’re
freaking me out!
”

He leaned back and crossed his arms on his
chest. “I know what wouldn’t freak you out, Roc, bein’ at home in
your bed where you’re supposed to fuckin’ be.”

“Layne –”

“How’d you disable the alarm?” he asked.

“Disable the alarm?” she asked back, looking
confused and, fuck him, he was pissed but he had to admit she
looked cute.

“Yeah, Rocky, it’s a church but every place
has shit to steal. This place has a security system. How’d you
bypass it?”

“I punched in the code,” she told him.

He stared at her.

Then he repeated, “You punched in the
code.”

“Well…” she said, “yeah.”

“How’d you get the code?”

“Layne –”

“Are you
not
gettin’ that I don’t let
shit go?” he asked. “How’d you get the code?”

“Well…” she trailed off and looked into the
vestibule.

“Raquel,” he warned.

Her eyes shot to him. “Okay, well, do you
know Sharon Reynolds?”

“Do I need to know her for this story to go
faster?”

Her eyes narrowed but she kept talking. “She
works in the office here.”

“And?” he asked when she didn’t go on.

“And, she also works in the office at the
school. She’s part-time for both.”

“Ah,” Layne said, his head tipping back and
his gaze hitting the ceiling.

“Anyway,” Rocky said sharply and Layne’s
eyes went back to her.“I remembered her complaining once that the
pastor is a security freak and changes the alarm codes so often she
never remembers them. She comes in every once in awhile when no one
is around and has to punch them in and she’s gotten them wrong so
many times and set off the alarm, now she writes them down and
keeps them in her wallet.”

“Reason one for the pastor to be a security
freak and reason one to lose his office lady,” Layne noted.

“Layne!” she snapped.

“So, you got the code how?”

“I, um…” She stopped and bit her lip.

“Baby –”

She interrupted him quickly. “When everyone
in the office was at lunch, I went to her desk and got into her
purse.”

“Fuck me,” Layne whispered.

“No one saw!” she cried.

“Okay, how’d you get the door open?”

“Shouldn’t we be, I don’t know, taking
pictures of the personnel file or something?” she asked.

He dropped his arms and took a step toward
her.

She took a step back, putting her hand up
and saying quickly, “Okay!” She dropped her hand and explained,
“Sharon’s always losing her keys. She’s famous for it. She leaves
them everywhere. It’s crazy. So, um… while I was in her purse, I
uh… kinda nabbed them.”

Layne closed his eyes.

“It’s okay,” she assured him and he opened
his eyes. “She was going on and on this afternoon about how she,”
Rocky tucked the file under her arm, lifted her hands and did air
quotation marks, “
lost
her keys and tomorrow I’ll just,” she
did air quotation marks again, “
find
them.”

All right, it was safe to say he was
done.

“Rocky, what’d I tell you about this shit?”
he asked.

“Layne –”

“Put the file back and get your ass to your
car.”

“Layne –”

He leaned into her. “Do it or I
carry
your ass to your car.”

“I think he’s doing something to the girls,”
she whispered and Layne leaned back.

“Come again?”

She shook her head and stepped forward. “I
heard it today, in the bathroom, two freshmen talking through the
stalls. One of them is Alexis McGraw. She’s a pretty little thing
but about twenty years older than she actually is. She comes to
Youth Group here and I heard her bragging about sharing her gum
with the Youth Minister.”

“So?”

“It had been chewed.”

Oh fuck.

“And they didn’t use their fingers when they
handed it off,” Rocky finished.

Damn.

“Could she be lying?” Layne tried but not
holding much hope in the attempt.

Rocky took in a breath. “She’s older than
her years and she’s dying to grow up and she’s obvious about being
impatient for that to happen. So, yes, she could be telling tales
but with that, and the rest of the stuff I’m hearing, I can’t sit
on this but I also can’t start a witch hunt either if it’s just a
bunch of overenthusiastic kids who really,
really
like
Jesus.”

Layne studied Rocky while his mind went over
what he knew.

That ‘burg was in the bible belt and
religion was vital to that community but that didn’t translate to
the roster of the Youth Group at the Christian Church that had been
skidding by with around ten or fifteen members for the last thirty
years adding over fifty new recruits in the last six months, most
of them girls.

Fuck.

Layne made a decision, turned to the copier
just inside the door and switched it on.

“What are you doing?” Rocky asked.

He turned back to her and held his hand out
for the file. “We could take pictures, sweetcheeks, but it’d take
forever, the copies would suck and we got a copier right here. Hand
me the file and see if they keep attendance records for Youth
Group.”

She stared at him a second, eyes wide. Then
she gave him the dimple. Then she handed him the file and whirled
around, her ponytail flying, and opened a filing cabinet
drawer.

* * * * *

“I don’t see anything here,” Rocky noted and
Layne looked at the back of her head.

He was sitting on her couch sifting through
Youth Group rosters and making note of names and how attendance
wasn’t inching up, it was shooting up, the vast majority of new
recruits female.

Raquel was cross-legged on the floor beside
his leg, head bent, the back of her neck exposed, an opened bottle
of fancy-ass beer in front of her and she was reading through the
personnel file on TJ Gaines, the Youth Minister.

“You’re not gonna see anything, Roc,
especially if it’s bogus, not until I run his shit through my
systems at the office tomorrow,” he told her.

Her neck twisted and her head tilted back to
look up at him.

“Do you think we should go back tomorrow
night, set up camera surveillance or something?”

Yep, she was cute.

“No,
we
aren’t gonna do shit. I run
him tomorrow, I find dirt or even that he lied on his application,
I turn it over to Merry or Colt or Drew and they run with it.”

“That’s it?” she asked, sounding
disappointed.

He grinned at her and somewhat lied. “Baby,
on TV, they make my job look exciting. Most of the time it’s done
either sittin’ at a computer or sittin’ somewhere else. The action
man shit is a stereotype based on total fiction.”

Her eyes dropped to his middle and, to hide
what that said, she quickly turned and grabbed her beer, tipping
her head back to take a sip.

When she put it down she turned back to him
and asked, “What if there isn’t any dirt?”

“There isn’t any dirt, we go deeper.”

“Cameras?”

“Cameras are expensive, it’d take forever to
set them up, I’d need the feeds to come into the office, I’m not
set up to do that and I don’t have the cash to get set up so I’d
need recording devices which are bulky, therefore hard to hide, and
someone would have to go and collect the DVDs. Each time I go in, I
court gettin’ caught. I’m good but the law of averages on that kind
of operation are never on your side. And, I go that way, I got
hours of DVDs to watch, most of the shit on ‘em not worth watchin’,
and I don’t have hours to waste.”

She turned her body toward him and rested
her bent arm on the couch beside him. “So what do we do?”

“Again,
we
don’t do shit,
sweetcheeks.
I’m
workin’ this case because you’re worried
and what
I’ll
do is send in undercover recruits.”

Her brows shot up. “Undercover
recruits?”

Layne leaned down, reached around and
grabbed her ponytail, giving it a gentle tug as he got close to her
face. “Jasper or Tripp. I’m thinkin’ Tripp. He’d do good at bein’ a
Jesus Freak. Not to mention, the Youth Group is filled with girls.
He’ll be all over that.”

Tripp would be all over that for the girls
but mostly Tripp would be all over it because his old man asked him
to do it
and
Layne would let it slip that it was a favor for
Rocky.

Her eyes got bright and she whispered,
“That’s brilliant.”

He let her hair go, handed her the rosters
and she took them. “Your job is to look over those rosters and call
me tomorrow with Tripp’s target.”

“His target?”

He nodded. “A girl, on those lists,” he
tipped his head to the papers in her hand, “who’s been goin’ to
Youth Group awhile. Not a new kid, someone who’s been around, could
have seen things, heard things.”

She nodded.

Layne went on. “And she has to be open to
Tripp. A shy or plain girl who’ll be flattered at attention from a
kid on the football team.”

She shook her head. “I’m not setting up some
girl to –”

He put his finger to her lips and she fell
silent but he felt her lips part under his finger as he watched the
intensity shift into her eyes.

In about a week, or, hope to God, sooner,
he’d kiss her after seeing her eyes get like that.

Now, he took his finger from her lips.

“I’ll coach Tripp, he won’t leave her high
and dry. This is a friendly operation with no collateral
damage.”

She was still looking at him with that
intensity in her eyes when she whispered, “Okay.”

“Now, it’s late, baby. Go get me a pillow
and a blanket and go to bed.”

Her back went straight and she asked,
“What?”

“Get me a pillow and a blanket, I’m sleepin’
on your couch tonight.”

She looked at the couch then at him.
“Why?”

“Because it’s after one in the morning, I’m
wiped and you don’t have any security sensors on your doors.”

She looked at the doors then at him. “But
–”