Chapter Six
FAMILIAR GROUND
Rainwater hissed beneath the tires as they headed east.
The storm wasn’t big enough to flood the highway yet, but the cold rain was steady.
Whip rested one hand against the wheel while headlights slid across slick pavement ahead of them.
Beside him, Axel continued flipping through the case file.
The ease between them had settled once he’d gotten them talking again.
Thank fuck.
If he had to drive another mile with that strained silence between them, he was going to shoot somebody. So, he’d started talking shit, and Axel hadn’t missed a beat.
Some habits didn’t break that easily.
Good.
He’d gotten tired of the silence.
Axel flipped another page in the file.
“Guy really thought everybody forgot about him.”
Whip kept his eyes on the highway. “Marshals don’t forget.”
Not when it came to kids.
“We don’t,” Axel agreed. “Fucker’s gonna pay for what he did to those girls.”
Silence settled heavily between them for the rest of the drive.
Some things didn’t need discussing twice.
Paisley finally appeared through the rain nearly an hour later.
The town wasn’t big enough for strangers to go unnoticed, but the task force SUV didn’t draw much attention turning off the highway this time.
Most people around here already knew exactly who they were.
The sheriff station sat half a block down beside the aging brick post office.
Grady looked up from behind the counter the second they walked in.
Whip hadn’t seen him in months, but Detective Grady Collins still looked almost exactly like he had through the years, green eyes sharp beneath dark hair threaded with early gray, broad through the shoulders, looking tired.
Grady looked one bad week away from needing a vacation he’d probably never take.
“Finally,” Grady muttered, pushing back from his chair. “Whip. Axel.”
“That bad?” Whip asked.
Grady huffed a laugh and came around the counter to shake hands.
“Sheriff’s out checking a property south of town,” he said. “Figured Boone would send you two eventually.”
“Any luck?” Axel asked.
Grady exhaled hard through his nose.
“No,” he admitted. “You know this son of a bitch knows these ranch roads better than we do.”
“Yeah.” Whip glanced toward the wall crowded with maps and paper.
One map already told half the story. Too much open land. Too many places to disappear if locals stayed quiet.
Grady wasn’t saying much, but the tension rolling off him said enough. The locals were staying very quiet.
The sheriff’s office conference room was an old break room that somebody shoved folding tables into years ago and never fixed afterward.
Whip dropped his bag on a chair and took a seat. Axel did the same before they got to work going over the information gathered by the Sheriff’s office.
Rain rattled steadily against the windows while heater vents pushed stale hot air through the cramped space hard enough to dry out Whip’s throat.
“Hey. But there’s fresh coffee,” Grady promised.
That would certainly help. Most investigations ran on coffee and stubbornness anyway.
County maps covered half the table already. They had access to all the things, roads, ranch land, forest access, and old hunting trails.
Grady walked over to the whiteboard with a marker tucked behind one ear while familiar faces sorted paperwork nearby.
“I don’t need to introduce these two,” Grady said, nodding toward the back desks.
“No.” The corner of Whip’s mouth quirked.
Scott Mercer and Tina Morales both looked exhausted, tired in the way people got after spending three straight days chasing somebody through bad weather and open country.
Whip understood that feeling.
“Hey, Tina,” Axel said, dropping into one of the folding chairs beside the table and immediately pulling papers from the nearest stack.
Tina looked up with a grin. “Still flirting with anything in a skirt, Axel?”
Axel shot Tina a wicked grin.
Damn it.
Whip ground his teeth hard enough to feel it and turned toward Grady before Axel could answer.
“What do you have?”
Grady tapped the map with one thick finger.
“Clay Cutter’s buddy owns land.” Tap. “Ranch out here.” Another tap farther north. “Ex-girlfriend rents a trailer outside Summer Lake.”
“Places already searched?” Axel asked.
“Twice,” Scott said from the other side of the table.
“And he still slipped you?” Axel asked without looking up from the paperwork.
Scott’s jaw flexed.
Tina answered before he could. “Somebody’s warning him.”
Axel’s attention lifted to her immediately.
Tina glared across the table. “Small town. I worked fast food with Clay years ago. You should know, y’all went to school with him.”
“You hit him on the football field a few times too,” Scott reminded Axel.
“Not hard enough, apparently,” Axel muttered.
“It’s a small world,” Whip said. He’d lived here long enough to know small towns remembered everything.
Nobody argued.
“What’s the buddy’s name?” Axel asked.
“Frank Delaney,” Grady answered.
“Truck spotted south of Paisley Thursday morning,” Scott added. “Registered to Delaney.”
Whip studied the map quietly while radios crackled somewhere deeper in the station.
“We’ve got Silver Lake, Paisley, and back county roads,” Whip said.
“That means seasonal hunting cabins and too much fucking empty land,” Axel added.
“That’s where deputies lost him?” Whip asked Grady.
Grady nodded once. “County roads split three different directions south of town.”
“But the buddy’s ranch got searched Tuesday,” Whip said.
“Yeah.”
Whip leaned back slightly in his chair.
The timeline didn’t fit cleanly, like finding one set of boot prints crossing another from the opposite direction.
Unless Cutter doubled back west through county land after deputies started tightening roads near Summer Lake.
Axel looked over immediately, already tracking the same thought.
No surprise there.
“He’s circling familiar ground,” Axel said.
Whip nodded once. “He’s not running blind.”
Cutter was staying close to places he knew—hunting roads, ranch land, old trails cutting through miles of empty country deputies couldn’t lock down fast enough.
Places locals would hesitate to tear apart unless they absolutely had to.
It was a smart move and one he would’ve made himself if he were in the same situation.
Not that he’d ever gone down that road.
Well… except for the candy bar he’d swiped from Mr. Metzler’s desk in third grade.
Crash had busted his hide.
Lesson learned.
“He’s using hunting trails,” Axel said, drawing his attention and flipping through another page in the file.
“That’s what I was thinking,” Tina answered immediately.
Axel leaned back slightly. “That explains how he keeps slipping roadblocks.”
Whip watched Axel process the information.
Axel tracked people.
He tracked movement.
Like lining up two halves of the same trail.
Between them, the scattered pieces of the case slowly started fitting together, like landmarks emerging through fog.
Places Cutter knew well enough to disappear into before anybody thought to look twice.
Three years ago, deputies had rescued several young girls from an abandoned trailer outside Silver Lake.
Dirty. Scared. Hungry. One had been raped.
Cutter had slipped away before law enforcement arrived, carjacked a young man during his escape, murdered him, and vanished into Canada.
The FBI had built the trafficking case. The Marshals got the warrant.
Grady started marking search areas across the map in red ink. Tina circled locations while Scott dug through another stack of reports thick enough to bend at the corners from handling.
The whole room carried that stretched-thin feeling law enforcement offices got after too many hours chasing the same problem.
Some thirty minutes later, Whip frowned down at the empty jerky bag sitting beside the maps before looking over at Axel.
“You take the last jerky?”
Axel didn’t even glance up from the paperwork in his hands. “Yeah. Thought maybe starvation would improve your attitude.”
One of the deputies barked out a laugh.
Whip ended up snorting before he could stop himself.
“Smart ass,” he muttered.
Axel actually looked proud.
Grady tapped another spot on the map. “Half the county’s hunting land sits off County Road 12.”
“So do most of our tow calls,” Scott chimed in.
“Y’all remember Axel got a truck stuck out there senior year,” Whip said, leaning back in his chair.
“That fence came outta nowhere.”
Scott frowned. “There ain’t fences in the middle of the road.”
“Exactly. Suspicious,” Axel said, stuffing the last piece of jerky into his mouth.
Tina giggled.
Scott just looked disgusted.
“He lost an argument with a ditch two weeks later,” Whip snorted.
Axel shrugged. “Ditch was aggressive.”
Tina covered a laugh with her hand while Scott looked seconds away from developing a migraine.
Grady just shook his head like he’d heard worse from Axel before.
Whip hid a grin behind his coffee.
Outside, storm clouds settled heavier over Paisley while Grady started gathering maps into uneven stacks for the morning search.
Cutter knew the land.
Knew the roads.
And somewhere out there beyond the storm and dark ranch country surrounding Paisley, Cutter was making the area work for him.
Sooner or later, Cutter was going to make a mistake.
And when that happened?
He was going to slap the cuffs on the child rapist and make sure he spent the rest of his life in a deep, dark hole.
Beside him, Axel flipped the case file shut with a tired sigh.
“Let’s call it.”
Axel was right. They’d squeezed everything they could out of it. Sitting here going over the same information wouldn’t get them anywhere closer to Cutter.
“Agreed,” he said, tossing the file he held onto the table.
Axel tossed the empty jerky bag toward the trash and missed by nearly a foot.
“You owe me some jerky.”
“Do not.”
“Yes, you do. I didn’t get one piece, as usual.”
“Don’t start,” Axel grumbled.
Whip grinned.
He was absolutely going to start.