Chapter 20
Bess
“What are you doing?”
I ignore Savvy’s snarl and buckle up.
She was going to take off without me. So, when I poked my head out and saw her running for her cruiser, I didn’t think twice and took off after her, pulling open the passenger door just as she was jumping behind the wheel.
“It’s my brother in that van,” I point out as she peels away from the curb to give chase with sirens and lights going.
“Hugo’s gonna fucking kill me,” she mutters as she grabs for her radio. “Unit seven in pursuit of vehicle involved in a kidnapping. Heading southbound on Elm east of Victoria following a white Ecoline cargo van, license CJ95093. At least three suspects, armed and dangerous, and one victim.”
As my ears roar with a cacophony of noise—including the adrenaline-fueled pumping of my own blood—I’m beginning to question the wisdom of this endeavor.
My friend—albeit Edwards County’s sheriff and therefore skilled as well as armed—is very pregnant, and I have no weapon nor skill to be of any consequential use.
But from the way Savvy is bent over the steering wheel, whipping around corners in dogged pursuit of the speeding van and barking directions into her radio, I don’t think anyone could get her to stop now.
Something hits the side mirror on my side with a crack, splintering the top of the molded frame.
“Shit. Get down,” Savvy yells, shoving at my shoulder. “All the way down, they’re shooting.”
I immediately undo my seat belt and make myself as small as possible under the dashboard, clutching my purse, which suddenly starts ringing. Reaching in, I find my phone and answer.
I don’t get a chance to say anything more than hi, because it’s Hugo and he immediately starts yelling.
“What the fuck do you guys think you’re doing? Are you trying to get yourselves killed? In case you didn’t notice, you’re under fire. Tell Savvy to fucking fall back, we’re coming up right behind you.”
“O-okay,” I stammer.
I’ve never been really intimidated by Hugo, but then again, I never heard him this furious before. Just as I prepare to relay the message to Savvy, the cruiser makes a sharp turn and I lose my balance, slamming headfirst into the center console.
Then there is a squeal of tires, followed by another abrupt turn, tumbling me to the other side.
“Bess? What the fuck, Bess? Answer me!”
A little disoriented, I scramble to find the phone that slipped from my hand in the chaos. As soon as my fingers encounter the familiar silicone casing, I grab on and bring it to my ear.
“I’m here, I lost my balance.”
“Who are you talking to?” Savvy fires in my direction.
“It’s Hugo, he says he’s right behind us and for you to drop back.”
She darts a quick glance in my direction and I catch her wince, right before she returns her attention to the road.
“Tell him to pull up beside us. The idiots are turning up the dirt road to the old quarry. They’re heading into a dead end.”
“Put me on speaker,” Hugo barks in my ear.
I do as he asks and slide my phone on top of the laptop mounted to the center console, so he and Savvy can yell at each other instead of me. Reaching up, I gingerly explore the side of my head I banged with my fingertips, it feels wet, and I discover split skin over a nice goose egg. Wonderful.
But my attention snaps back to Savvy when I hear her curse.
“Fuck, he’s jumping.”
Jumping? Who’s jumping?
I couldn’t stop myself from poking my head up to look for myself if I tried, just in time to see Ken hanging off the open door of the van bumping through the gates of the old quarry in front of us.
Then my blood freezes as I watch him let go in the middle of the open quarry, his body almost bouncing off the hard ground.
A scream is torn from my chest as Savvy hits the brakes to avoid hitting him, almost knocking me over again in the process.
Her sharply issued, “Stay,” slides right off my back as I reach for the door handle and stumble out of the vehicle.
Savvy gets to Ken first, her weapon drawn. Dismissing any potential danger, I drop down on my knees next to my brother’s still body.
“Jesus, Bess,” my friend grumbles behind me.
I do a quick scan of Ken’s body for blood or, God forbid, holes. Then I gently swipe at the shock of graying hair so I can see his face and am surprised to find his eyes open.
“Are you okay? Ken?”
“My leg.”
The words are ground out through clenched teeth.
I turn around to take a closer look and this time I notice the dark stain spreading on the inside of his pant leg about thigh height.
“Savvy, he’s bleeding.”
“Already calling it in,” she assures me. “Put pressure on it, while I get my kit.”
At this point I don’t even know what happened to the van and the armed kidnappers and I don’t care, I’m more concerned with the blood I feel slipping from between my fingers.
While Savvy goes to grab her first aid kit from the cruiser, I lean my full weight on my hands, trying to keep as much of my brother’s blood inside his body.
He moans in pain, and grabs one of my wrists with his hand, squeezing with surprising strength.
“Not a word, Bess,” he hisses.
“Ken…”
“I mean it, you can’t tell them.”
His face is scrunched up in pain but his eyes are pleading.
“This is crazy, Ken,” I argue. “We can’t outrun this and now it’s putting other people in danger. They were shooting at me; at people I care about.”
“I just got out, Sis, I can’t go back.”
Dammit, he’s killing me.
Blinking my tears back, I shore up my resolve.
“I’m sorry, I have to, Kenny.”
Time to end my guilty silence.
Hugo
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I just saw Bess jumping out of Savvy’s cruiser and darting for her brother, and I could do nothing. I don’t even have phone contact anymore.
Instead, I’m stuck in the passenger seat of a Bureau-issued Escalade with Mancuso behind the wheel, who is dead-set on going after the white van which just blew past us in the opposite direction.
What a shitshow this is.
I turn my body and strain against the seat belt to try and catch another glimpse of Bess as the fed seems to hit every fucking bump on this dirt road, but Savvy’s sheriff’s cruiser is blocking the view. I have no choice but to trust my boss to keep the woman I’m fast losing my heart to safe.
Who the fuck am I kidding? My heart was lost before I even knew how well she fits me in every way. The thought of anything happening to her makes me sick to my stomach.
At least I don’t have to worry about Carson.
I called him earlier and he said they were about two, two-and-a-half hours out.
I explained the situation, told him I felt it was safer for him not to come home, and floated the idea Savvy suggested of him crashing at Tate’s house.
I would’ve thought he’d jump all over that, being a teenage boy and all that, but he surprised me by asking Cody’s dad if it was okay for him to crash there.
I got the impression the boys had a good time this weekend.
I’m actually glad that’s the route my son decided to go. Since he and Tatum started dating, he’s been spending almost all his free time with her, neglecting his friends. As much as I like Tate, I don’t want Carson to lose his buddies.
“Heads-up,” Mancuso warns, giving me just enough time to grab onto the handle above the door before he whips around the wheel to turn a sharp left.
The van up ahead is swaying from side to side, making me wonder if the rough ride back there blew out one of their tires.
“Cavalry is here,” the agent mumbles, as a couple of our cruisers are speeding toward the van from the other side, lights flashing.
I guess the driver of the Ecoline panicked when suddenly the vehicle veers sharply, first to the left but then he overcorrects, and the van hooks to the right, careening off the shoulder and into the ditch below. It rolls a few times before coming to a stop on its roof.
I’m out of the SUV with my weapon in my hand before the wheels stop rolling and start sliding down the steep embankment on my ass. Mancuso joins me, and so does Rick Althof—he must’ve been monitoring a scanner at home and caught up with us—as we run toward the crashed vehicle.
The driver is crawling out of the window of the flattened cab, and the moment his feet hit the ground, and Mancuso yells, “FBI. Don’t move another fucking inch!” the punk is off and running, the fed on his heels.
“At least two left,” I call over to Rick, who is mimicking my cautious approach from the other side of the rear of the vehicle.
One of its back doors hangs open and a pair of legs is visible, but nothing seems to be moving inside. Still, armed and dangerous is not something to take lightly and if, as I suspect, these guys are Lotus Squad, they don’t shy away from violence, even against law enforcement.
“Sheriff’s office!” Rick yells, crouching down to give them a smaller target to aim at, should they start firing. I do the same. “You, in the van, come out, slowly with your hands high.”
The legs don’t move, and nothing else seems to either. If these guys were in the back of the van the entire time, it’s quite possible they were seriously injured or killed in that rollover. But I’m not taking any chances.
I’m on the side of the door that is closed, providing me with a bit of cover from whoever is inside. As Althof continues to yell instructions to the suspects inside, I start approaching the back of the vehicle, hoping that since I can’t see anyone, they can’t see me at this angle either.
Once I reach the rear, I press my back against the door and inch my way to the open side, keeping an eye on Rick, who stands up and trains his weapon inside the vehicle.
I crouch low, giving myself an angle whoever is inside may not expect.
Then, with a sharp nod to warn Althof, I turn and move into the opening.
The guy whose legs were visible from the outside has his upper body wedged under one of those big metal tool boxes. No part of him is moving.
It takes me a second to locate guy number two. He must’ve been tossed into the cab and appears to have impaled himself on a metal or steel pole. This one is awake—wide awake—his eyes like dark saucers in a stark white face as he looks back at me.
“Do we have medical coming?” I yell over my shoulder.
“On the way,” Rick responds from right behind me.
Then he pokes his head over my shoulder.
“They look a mess.”
Twenty minutes later, the guy with the pole is in an ambulance, on its way to meet up with a Life Flight Network helicopter to take him to the level one trauma center in Seattle.
Mancuso came back just as the ambulance got here, half dragging the handcuffed driver, who only had minor injuries compared to his buddies. He went in the back of Lloyd’s cruiser to get checked out at the hospital in town on his way to the station lock up.
The third guy didn’t make it, his neck broken in the rollover. The coroner is on his way to pick up the body.
“You’re staying?” I ask Althof.
He nods. “I’m waiting for the coroner. Once he’s done, I want to poke around the van a little. See what I can collect. Feel free to get a head start on interviewing the driver. I’ll be in as soon as I can.”
Mancuso and I hop into his SUV and start making our way back to the station.
I already spoke with Savvy earlier, who assured me Bess was okay, and they were at the hospital with her brother, who’d been shot in the leg. I was glad to hear she was all right, but I’d feel a fuck of a lot better seeing it for myself.
“Actually, would you mind dropping me off at the hospital instead?”
Mancuso glances over.
“I just wanna check on things there.”
“Isn’t Sheriff Colter already at the hospital with Choi?” he asks, a hint of amusement in his tone.
“She is,” I confirm.
“And so is his sister,” he adds.
“Yes.”
“I’m guessing it’s her you want to check on,” he concludes, proving himself to be perceptive.
I guess it’s a good quality for an FBI agent to have.
“You would be correct.”
Ten minutes later, he pulls up in front of Silence Memorial Hospital to let me off. When I walk into the lobby, I spot Savvy right away. She sees me too. She’s standing by the front desk, on her phone, and points me in the direction of the waiting space on the other end.
It’s been less than an hour since I last saw her bolt out of Savvy’s cruiser, but that hour felt like an eternity. Long strides carry me across the lobby.
She notices me and is already getting to her feet when I reach her. She’s in my arms a second later, her head tucked under my chin, and her hands sliding under my jacket and around my waist.
We stand like that for a few moments, my heart quietly settling as I breathe in her scent. Then I lift my head and look down at her, noticing a cut and some bruising on the side of her forehead, just inside the hairline. I lightly touch the area with the tip of my finger.
“What happened?”
“I hit my head on the center console when I was ducking bullets,” she says dryly, like dodging gunfire is a regular occurrence.
Immediately I feel my earlier anger building again. Angry at Bess for putting herself in danger, and furious with Savvy for allowing it.
I turn my head to shoot an angry glare across the lobby.
Bess’s hand pats the middle of my chest.
“Get over it,” she urges. “I didn’t really give Savvy a choice, and given the chance, I’d do it again. What I couldn’t have lived with is letting my brother be carted off to be executed like a dog.”
“You put yourself in danger,” I grind out.
“I’m aware, and I’m sorry if you were scared for me, but I had no choice.”
I scoff at that.
“Of course, you had a choice.”
She shakes her head and looks at me with a sad expression on her face.
“Not really. You’ll understand when I tell you all of it.”