Читать книгу An Accidental Family - Darlene Graham - Страница 7

THE FACE OF HIS BROTHER rose up to haunt Seth Whitman as he crouched alone in the dark. For some reason he always envisioned Lane the way he looked in the old black-and-white photo that hung on the wall of the field house, a cocky seventeen-year-old football hero, immortalized along with every other All-State player to graduate from Tenikah High. There was no black-and-white portrait of Seth’s face up on that wall, and he was glad of it. Since the day Coach Hollings had ripped his picture down, Seth had been the outsider and always would be.

The snap of a twig somewhere in the dark rock formations that surrounded him snuffed the memories. Alert to any sound that might be the movement of humans, he listened but heard nothing except the throaty roar of the river below, and from behind, the tinkle of seeping water inside the caves.

He eased back down into the dark niche to resume his vigil.

His sweat-soaked uniform chafed like leather beneath his Kevlar bulletproof vest as the fingers clutching the stock of his shotgun tightened into a choke hold. An old hatred burned suddenly alive again in the pit of his gut.

He sensed the presence of his brother’s murderers as palpably as he sensed the dying traces of summer in the air. Waiting for them was excruciating.

He swiped at a trickle of sweat slithering down his throat. The temperature had spiked above a hundred today, rare in the densely forested mountains of southeastern Oklahoma, even in August. When it got this hot, the trees seemed to wilt and the sandstone cliffs and winding blacktop roads refused to release their heat even after the sun slid behind the ridgelines. He’d bet his pickup that the temperature hadn’t dropped ten degrees since sundown.

Another twig snapped.

He pinpointed the sound to one of the smaller caves up the ledge, and made his way to the entrance with the deadly focus of a mountain cat. He shielded himself behind a rock, leveled his shotgun at his shoulder and yelled, “Freeze!” as he snapped on the halogen light mounted on the gun.

Snared in the cone of light were three boys. Middle school age, maybe ten or twelve. One looked slightly older. They were huddled just inside the mouth of the cave, the one in front wielding a knife in his bloodied hand. The way the big one pressed the other two back with one arm, glaring at Seth, reminded him of the time he and Lane had trapped three baby raccoons when they were kids growing up in these Kiamichi hills. The coons had toddled into the trap in one hungry clump, and when Seth bent down to peer into the cage, the male had herded the two little females behind his back and hissed. Seth and Lane had collapsed laughing.

But this wasn’t funny. The Slaughter brothers were up in these caves somewhere, and now he’d stumbled on a bunch of freaked-out kids.

“Police,” Seth said calmly. “Drop the knife.”

“Police, my ass,” the bigger boy snarled. “You want this knife, buddy? You come and get it.” Seth realized the boy couldn’t see beyond the glare of light.

He switched on his shoulder mike. “Jake, come in.”

When the radio crackled back with Jake’s voice— “Any sign of the Slaughters?”—the boy looked astonished.

“Drop it,” Seth repeated. The kid tossed the knife at his feet.

Seth hit the mike switch again. “No, but I found three kids in a cave. One’s hurt. Come on around.”

The boys looked roughed up—dirty, sweaty, scratched. The big one had bled all over the knife. The smaller two were bound, hands behind their backs, with duct tape.

Seth sheathed the shotgun at his back as he approached them. “Are you kids from the camp?” Big Cedar Camp was for troubled youth, but these guys looked too shell-shocked to be a threat.

“You’re a cop?” The tall one’s voice was deep one second, high-pitched the next. He was a good-looking kid, with even, darkly Hispanic features and well-developed muscles. Right now he was as agitated as the devil. “Then listen! Some creeps tied us up! You got to catch them.”

“First things first,” Seth said as he used the knife to cut the tape off the other two. One was thin as a reed, with messy brown hair and frightened brown eyes. The other was a little chunk—curly red hair, deep-set blue eyes that had a spooked look about them. Neither one said a word, but as soon as their hands were loose they started flashing sign language.

“Yeah.” The bigger kid nodded as he read his friends’ signing. “They’re twins or brothers or somethin’. Look-alikes. Big red beards.” He made a pulling motion at his chin.

There were more hand signals from the other two. “Yeah. Real weirdos,” the Hispanic kid agreed.

Seth knew, without even hearing the description, that the kids were talking about the Slaughters. “What are you guys doing up here?”

The Hispanic kid shot his comrades a guilty look. “We didn’t mean no trouble. We just sneaked out to explore the caves, and next thing we knew, those guys caught us and tied us up. They’re way back in one of those caves up there.” He pointed up the cliff. “Aiming to dig up those bones,” he blurted, before his eyes shifted, and he clammed up.

Seth narrowed his gaze at the kid. He suspected some kind of lie here. How would the boy know what the Slaughters were aiming to do? Seth would get to the truth sooner or later. He usually did. The last seven years had been one long pursuit of the truth. Many times he had searched this endless warren of caves, looking for bones himself. And many times he had come up empty-handed, ending up staring out over the valley, torturing his mind, seeing Lane’s young face on that wall.

If Seth could find those bones, he’d have the evidence he needed to nail the Slaughters for Lane’s death. The famous missing motive. The defense attorney in the Slaughters’ manslaughter trial had argued that the twins had no motive to intentionally kill a cop. And Seth was never allowed to tell the story of his last conversation with his brother to the jury. “Inadmissible hearsay,” the judge had ruled. That’s when Seth had started to give up on the law. Or rather, that’s when he’d begun to use the law like a weapon to punish the Slaughters.

Although the kid’s statement did not surprise him, it sickened him. So Lane was right. And now Lonnie and Nelson Slaughter had returned to this high, rock-embedded cavity in Purney’s Mountain to finish what they’d started. The place was shaped like a giant grotto, with jagged, towering walls of layered sandstone black with age, etched by seeping water and pocked by caves that had hidden the brothers’ dirty secret well—until now.

“They hit Maddy on the head,” the boy said urgently. “He’s hurt bad.”

Sure enough, the skinny kid had a pretty sizable goose egg developing under his tousled brown hair. Seth checked the big one’s cut hands, too. Then he hit the button on his shoulder radio for dispatch.

“Amy, come in. I’ve intercepted some runaways from Big Cedar Camp. One’s got a bad bump on the head and another needs stitches. Send paramedics with transport, bottom of Purney’s Mountain.”

Jake arrived, wheezing and out of breath from the climb. Unfortunately, Seth’s partner didn’t keep himself in shape the way Seth did. There were a lot of guys like Jake in Tenikah, former defensive players on the football team. Encouraged to bulk up as teens, they found their muscle turned to fat they couldn’t shed as they aged.

“Now here’s a fine situation,” Jake drawled as he eyed the three frightened youngsters.

They got the kids’ names. Dillon. Maddy. Aaron. Found out the reason the big kid was doing all the talking. Maddy was deaf and mute. Aaron was just plain mute. “He don’t talk to nobody. Not never,” was how Dillon explained it. So that’s what all the hand signals were about.

They could describe the Slaughters, but they couldn’t tell Seth which cave they were in. “It’s dark back in those caves,” Dillon said, “and they was dragging us around like feed sacks.”

The kids had escaped because Dillon was sporting a contraband knife. “But I couldn’t fight ’em both,” he explained. “So we waited, and when those guys went back to finish digging up the…uh, we put our backs together and Maddy wiggled my knife out of my boot and cut my hands free.” That explained the lacerations. “I cut our feet loose and we ran. We hid in here when we heard a noise. We thought you was some more bad guys.”

“Good thinking,” Seth said. But now they had to get the kids out of here. “Jake, you take them down. I called for an ambulance.”

“You’re not going after Lonnie and Nelson by yourself,” Jake challenged. Seth knew this was coming.

“You have a better plan?” He pulled his shotgun out of the sling. “If somebody gets shot trying to escape, so be it.”

“You know how that’ll look? You bringing the dead bodies of the two guys who killed your brother down off this mountain? Seth, it could cost you your badge—”

“Then they can have my badge.”

“What about Rainey?” the Dillon kid interrupted.

“Rainey?” The two cops turned on him.

“Our counselor from camp. Rainey Chapman. She might be out looking for us right now. She’s done it before. What if those guys find her, too?”

“That settles it. I’m going up.” Seth turned the volume down on the mike. “I’ll stay in touch by radio.”

Jake gave him a grudging nod. Then he and the boys went one way—down—and Seth went the other—up.

Rainey Chapman. As Seth crept along the ledge, he tried to imagine what kind of woman would go tearing through these woods alone in search of three runaway boys. Whoever she was, he would have to get to the Slaughter brothers before they got to her.

He turned to peer upward over one shoulder, toward the edge of the high cliff that surrounded him in a dark horseshoe. A late August moon rose high above the ridge, and against its white spotlight, Seth couldn’t make out any movement under the black cowl of trees. But if the Slaughters were in one of these caves, they could only get out by coming down this ledge, or by using ropes to scale back up the cliff. If the woman came looking for the boys in the caves, she’d have to skirt this ledge, as well. He positioned himself strategically for either occurrence and waited again.

It seemed as if he’d spent half his life waiting, trying to assemble the pieces of a puzzle that refused to fit. He’d waited for Lonnie and Nelson Slaughter to get out of prison. Waited for them to come back here and make a move. Waited for the day—or the night—when they’d lead him to the last piece. This day. This night.

He ran a sweaty palm over his thigh again. His quad muscles were knotting up like bundles of barbed wire. He’d pulled them good scrambling up over the boulders at the base of the cliff in the dark. But years of ignoring rodeo injuries had disciplined his body well. If only he could ignore the memories churning through his mind.

His decision to avenge his brother’s death had seemed so cold, so clean at the time. But now that it had come down to this—hiding in these rocks, ready to kill or be killed—the weight of it all closed in. He glanced at the badge that gleamed dully in the moonlight like a shiny lie.

Despite certain well-honed skills, Seth didn’t feel like a lawman. He knew that in truth he was nothing more than a predator, seeking one thing and one thing only—now going on seven years past. Sometimes he could actually feel his fingers closing around the Slaughter brothers’ beefy necks.

A stealthy sound from above made his spine tense.

Slowly, he eased up, clutching the shotgun, and stepped out of his cave, listening.

The skin on the back of his neck prickled as he heard labored breathing, then a harsh curse, then excited shouting. “Lonnie! The kids got away!”

A second guttural voice hissed a foul curse. A ray of light flared over the edge of the cliff and Seth flattened himself against the rock. “We’ll have to catch ’em later. We gotta get the stuff up first.”

Rustling. Grunting. The strained voice calling, “More rope!”

Seth saw a rappelling rope bouncing out over the side of the cliff not twenty feet to his left. By damn, the fools were right above him.

As he listened to the crunch of boots on the wall of rock above, a new sound demanded his attention. Someone down the slope, gasping for breath. He spotted the flare of another flashlight ricocheting off the rocks below, as a female voice—high-pitched, hysterical—called out, “Dillon! Is that you up there? Dillon! I see your flashlight! Answer me!”

Great. Now the little counselor, or social worker, or whatever she was, shows up. Seth focused on the flare of the light as it grew brighter, closer. She was on the ledge now.

He eased himself around a boulder and in the next instant she “turned into his hand,” as bull riders liked to say. Before she could lurch away, he’d clamped her firmly in the vise of his arms. With one hand clasped across her mouth, he dragged her backward into the small hole in the wall.

She flailed wildly, skinny arms and legs and the flashlight dangling from its wrist strap all whacking him in the arm, in the head and certain other places that made a man grit his teeth. When he removed the hand from her mouth long enough to wrest the flashlight out of her grip, she screamed, “Boys! Help!”

He flicked off the light, tossed it on the ground.

“Let me go!” she howled.

“Shh,” he hissed as he clamped the hand back over her mouth. With the shotgun pressed across her middle like a crowbar, he forced her to be still against him. She was so small that he could have broken her in half if he had a mind to, which only galvanized his urge to protect her.

“It’s okay,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m a cop.” He folded his arms tighter around her and was relieved when her struggling ceased. He held her backside pressed against his trunk in that fetal embrace for a few endless, tense seconds while he listened to Lonnie and Nelson above, yelling curses and scrambling away, back up the cliff. Then came the sound of a rattletrap engine firing to life, tires spinning away on a gravel road.

When at last there were no more sounds, Seth maneuvered his foot to scrape her flashlight within reach. He bent to snatch it up, switched it on and twisted the ray around so he could get a good look at her.

He raked the beam up and down her slender form. She was fully clothed—jean shorts, baggy white T-shirt, running shoes. No visible blood. But she was covered in dirt, and every inch of her was trembling. Her long blond hair was a tangled mess. She wasn’t wearing any makeup or jewelry, as far as he could see. Except for some scrapes and the dirt, she looked like a woman who’d just climbed out of bed. Even with terror contorting her features, he could see she was a genuine beauty.

And she was strong, too. She managed to wrench one hand free, tearing at his fingers on the shotgun.

“Woman!” He thrust the gun up high, out of her reach. “This thing’s loaded.” He flicked the safety on. “Listen to me,” he demanded, but held his voice to a harsh whisper. “I said I’m the law. And those weren’t your boys up there. Those are dangerous men who’ll likely kill us if they find us in here.” He turned her jaw toward the glint of his badge in the oblique light. “I am not gonna hurt you.”

“Mmmfp!” Her eyes bugged at the badge. She twisted her face against his hand and looked into his eyes, trying to speak.

“Okay. But keep your voice down. They could circle back.”

She nodded and he slid his hand away.

“A c-cop?” she coughed out. Her face was flushed and her full lips looked parched from thirst.

“Yes.”

“Well, you scared the hell out of me!” For a second Seth thought she might hit him, but instead she whirled to face him, and clutched the bulletproof vest in both fists. He reared back. He wasn’t used to people messing with his person, at least while he was on duty. “Lady—”

But she only yanked him harder. “You have got to help me…the boys… I can’t find them!”

She started babbling ninety miles a minute about the three boys, how she’d found their beds empty again, how they couldn’t be far. About pennies on the railroad track. About getting lost in the caves. The woman was near hysteria. For one irrational second a shot of adrenaline hit Seth as he wondered if the Slaughter brothers had harmed her. Harmed her the way they’d harmed KayAnn Rawls.

“Did they hurt you?” He shone the light up and down her body again. No welts. No cuts and bruises from a beating.

“Who?” She winced as he shoved her hair back to get a better look at a scrape on her forehead.

“Those men.”

“No!” She batted his hand away, seeming annoyed by his examination. “No one’s hurt me. You’re not listening!” Her voice rose. “Some little boys are missing!”

He lowered the flashlight. “Keep your voice down. The boys are fine.”

Her jaw dropped. “The boys—”

Seth pressed the switch on his shoulder mike. “Jake. Come in.”

Instantly, his partner’s voice crackled in response. “Where are you, buddy?”

“In a cave. I’ve got the counselor. I’m bringing her down. But the Slaughters got away. Call for some backup to intercept them. Probably coming down Purney’s Road.”

“Got it. I haven’t gotten much out of the kids. The talkative one clammed up. And I don’t know sign language.”

Rainey Chapman seemed to be still recovering from her shock. “The boys are…? You’re…? You mean you found them already?”

“Yes. They’re in an ambulance, at the base of this mountain.”

“Oh, thank God!” She pressed a palm over her heart, wilting with relief. He steadied her with a light hand to her back. She was shaking worse than his aunt Junie’s nervous poodle. The counselor looked up at him and her eyes grew wide as something hit her with such impact that he could see, even in the oblique light, their unique green shade. “Did you say they’re in an ambulance?”

“One of the boys got a bump on the head. Nothing serious. One’s got some cuts on his hands. They’re more scared than hurt. They’ll be okay.”

Her lips trembled as if she were struggling not to cry. “No, they won’t. You don’t know these children. They shouldn’t have been running around in these woods. I should have called—” Her eyes grew wide. “Who called the police?”

“Nobody. We were up here on a manhunt and came upon the boys by accident.”

“A manhunt? After those men?”

“I was hoping to apprehend them. Unfortunately, I didn’t get them before they tied up your boys.”

She gasped. “Tied them up?”

“With duct tape. Luckily, the kids escaped. Like I told you, those men are dangerous.”

“But why would they tie up the boys?” She stared at him with a look of wild-eyed horror.

“Because the kids saw some things they shouldn’t have seen, some things those men have been hiding for a very long time, I’m afraid.”

“Hiding something? What?”

“I’ll explain once we’re safely out of here.” Once he decided how much she needed to know. He pulled on her arm.

But she resisted, pressing a shaky hand to her temple. “Oh, this is all my fault. Those kids have suffered enough trauma without this.”

Seth frowned. A little on the dramatic side, wasn’t she? She was the boys’ counselor, not some savior, and certainly not the one who’d caused the trauma that had put the boys in her care in the first place. “Aren’t you being a little hard on yourself?”

“No. I should never have tried to find them by myself.” She started to tremble so hard he feared she’d collapse.

He slid an arm around her shoulders. Not the most professional thing to do, maybe, but he wasn’t inclined to let the poor little thing shake her teeth out without offering some support. His days as a cop were about done, anyway.

“I’m sorry.” She yielded in his arms as she reflexively turned to his chest.

He reached around and pressed the arm that held the shotgun to her back. He could feel her pliant softness even through his bulletproof vest. The rest of her felt as delicate as a bird. Suddenly the air inside the small cave felt too close. Suddenly Seth’s skin grew prickly with sweat.

“Come on.” He flicked the flashlight off and guided her to the fresher air outside the cave.

She had started to cry.

“It’s okay.” He held her firmly, feeling out of his depth. Crying females always made Seth want to hightail it to the barn, but he had to deal with this one. He had to find out exactly what this Rainey Chapman knew, what she’d seen. And he had to protect her. “Don’t you think the kids had some responsibility in this deal?” His voice was gentle as he ducked his head to look her in the face. “Nobody forced them to run away from the camp. They’re not exactly little.”

“They’re not adults, either,” she sniffed. “He looks mature, but Dillon’s only thirteen. And Maddy and Aaron are only eleven. They are children.”

“They look like pretty good-sized boys to me,” he said.

She straightened away from his embrace and her voice took on a note of fierce protectiveness. “These are damaged children who need special care.”

“Like some boundaries, maybe? They’re plenty old enough to know not to sneak out of the camp.” Seth was thinking about how he and Lane had both held down odd jobs by that age.

“Age has nothing to do with it. You can’t expect children to accept boundaries until they feel loved.”

Seth didn’t agree. He believed in accountability, even for kids. But this was hardly the place for a philosophical debate.

She mistook his silence for disapproval. “You can think whatever you like, but I am the one who’s responsible for these children. And it was I who handled this all wrong.”

Seth could understand how she was blaming herself for running off in a panic and searching for the children in the dark woods on her own, without notifying anyone. That was definitely a stupid thing to do. What he couldn’t understand was why she’d done it. But there would be time to sort out all the details when they got to the bottom of the hill.

“We’ve got to get you out of here.” He stuffed the flashlight in his vest and took hold of her arm, leading her forward on the ledge, craning his neck to look down the slope. “The moonlight’s too bright. They might see us on the footpath. We’ll have to stay under cover of trees. Think you can climb back down between those rocks?”

“I came up that way, didn’t I?”

He turned, and in the moonlight he could see her eyes. Again it struck him that they were very pretty.

“Just get me to that ambulance.” She met his gaze dead-on, even though there was quite a difference in their heights. “I need to see the boys right away.”

He was thinking how climbing up the open footpath with a flashlight and going down between the huge boulders in the dark were two different things, but all he said was, “Stay close then.”

As they climbed over the first of the large boulders he heard her suppress a little yelp. Instinctively, he reached back to her. “You okay?”

“I just slipped.”

“Here.” He bracketed her waist with his hands and helped her down. She felt like a tiny doll in his grasp. Her hot breath brushed against his temple as he lowered her to the ground, and he was startled by a surge of attraction.

He set her a respectable distance from him and decided keeping her engaged in talk would calm her—and him—down. “Ms. Chapman—”

“How do you know my name?” she asked.

“The boys. They figured you’d come looking for them.” He glanced back up the dark wall of rock that rose above them. “What made you come all the way up here, anyway?”

“I’ve found them here before. Twice, actually.”

“Doing what?”

“Exploring the caves.” She sighed and swiped at her sweaty brow.

“Did you see anyone else on either of those nights?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“And what about tonight?”

“Nothing except the lights. I should have realized the boys’ flashlights wouldn’t be that bright. But all I could think about was finding them so I could get them back to camp before Lyle realized they were missing.”

“Lyle Hicks?” Seth had dealt with the officious jerk, who made a big deal out of the fact that he was in charge at Big Cedar Camp. The guy’s body language always screamed “hostile.” He crossed his arms like an umpire, issued demands, didn’t like to be inconvenienced. Seth could imagine the effect a guy like Lyle had on wayward boys. He decided that for Lyle Hicks, the embarrassment of having three kids picked up by the cops would undoubtedly be more of an issue than the kids themselves.

“Lyle.” Rainey lowered her head. “Lyle and I aren’t exactly singing on the same page of the songbook. I guess you know that most of the boys who end up at Big Cedar are wards of the state. All have behavioral problems. Many have physical problems, as well. I try to help them, but Lyle, he only wants to warehouse them. He’ll never let me live this down.”

“The guy’s a prick.”

Rainey’s head snapped up, the expression in her green eyes keen now. “Yeah. He is, actually. But how’d you know?”

“We’ve been called about incidents at the camp before. Lyle seems to be more worried about damage control than the kids. Once he asked me if the media monitored our police radios.” Seth took her hand and led her on. “Is Lyle the reason you didn’t report it when the boys ran off?”

“Partly. I thought it would be enough to chastise them.”

Chastise them? If it were up to Seth, he’d chastise their backsides. Coach Hollings and his famous paddle flashed to mind.

“You have to understand how harsh the system can be,” she added. “I didn’t want them to end up… I thought I was keeping them safe with me.”

“Right.” Seth’s tone was sarcastic. “Safe.”

He had pulled her along until they reached a dropoff. He lowered himself over the edge and put the shotgun on the ground to help her down off the rock. When she had her footing, he picked up the gun and pulled her into a narrow cleft between two giant boulders. “Stay close,” he said. “It gets a little rougher now.”

The claustrophobic passage was pitch-black and so treacherously steep that they were forced to half scramble, half slide down.

Rainey used her free hand to steady herself against Seth’s back, and her touch communicated tremors of fear.

“Can’t we turn on the flashlight yet?”

“No. Even between the rocks a beam might be seen. I know where I’m going.”

Seth could find his way through these passages with his eyes closed. From the time he was old enough to ride a bike, he and Lane had explored every nook and cranny of this part of the Kiamichi Range. And he had made many trips up and down this exact passage in the years since Lane’s death, sensing that the answer he sought— KayAnn Rawls’s bones—lay up at the top of these cliffs.

KayAnn Rawls. Her name filtered through the dark passageway like an echo that he couldn’t silence. KayAnn Rawls. The trouble had started with KayAnn Rawls. For years, Seth had made it his mission to find out what had happened to Lane’s girlfriend on the night she’d disappeared. He told himself he did it for Lane’s sake. But lately he wondered if he’d carried this obsession around for so long he couldn’t let go of it even if he wanted to.

And now these boys were involved in this mess. And this woman.

“We’re okay,” he reassured her. But in his mind he had to add, for now. Because navigating down this treacherous path was sure to be the least of their problems.