Chapter 5
Chapter 5
H ank was a hell of a good man, Adrien thought—he knew Adrien knew the terrain they were traveling better than he did, and despite the case being “his” territory, he was more than ready to step back and let Adrien take the lead.
And Adrien thought Hank had to be in his early fifties, at least. But he must have been one of those cops who hit the gym fairly frequently. He could keep up and he could maneuver like a man half his age.
“Hold up!” he said suddenly.
“What—” Hank began.
“Airboat. He’s taken off in an airboat. I just heard the motor. We’ve got to get back.”
“Yeah, well, we can get to your airboat, but if this Carl guy just took off from this direction—”
“There’s a shortcut,” Adrien told him.
“How the hell do you know this area so damned well?” Hank asked, turning in response to Adrien’s shift in direction.
Adrien glanced back at him, shrugging. “My dad was an ecologist, born in the area, too. He used to come out here with his friends, and sometimes he took us kids on what he liked to call ‘bare-knuckle’ camping. And Mike Buffalo and I, my family, some of his friends, some of my friends, all became friends, and it was before everyone in the world had a pack of cell phone games, so . . .”
“You got to know the wetlands,” Hank said. He laughed. “I grew up in Miami, almost downtown, and it was the jungle of cars that I got to know. Vicky is actually better at all this than me. She spent lots of time out at Shark Valley, her favorite thing to eat was pumpkin bread at the old Miccosukee restaurant that used to be on the trail . . . and she likes most creatures.”
“Yeah. Seems she’s good with dogs.”
“She does love them. She doesn’t have one now, though. I mean, we’re local, but . . . problems sometimes straddle counties down here,” Hank said. He shrugged, studying Adrien for a minute as they reached the airboat. “Too bad you’re not staying around. You two have a lot in common.”
Yeah, it seemed they did. And, yeah . . .
“She’s not married?”
“No, there’s a story behind her dedication.”
Adrien had started the motor; he wanted to hear the story. But it had to wait. They needed to catch the man who was apparently causing havoc across the state. But he was more than curious about Vicky Henderson. He wished . . .
That they’d met at a party, a bar, even online? Somewhere they might have just met with friends, laughed, talked....
Carl, or aka Carlos. It was imperative they stop the man.
He maneuvered the airboat carefully over a patch of mangroves that were barely below the water’s surface.
But once he had done so, they were clear. To his credit, Hank hadn’t winced when he’d challenged the risky ground.
“Now where?” Hank shouted over the throb of the motor.
“Northwest—toward the road!” Adrien shouted. “Keep an eye out and . . .”
“I can still hear the other airboat through that cypress stand, I think!” Hank told him.
Adrien listened intently. Hank was right. They were south-east of their quarry, he determined. The man was getting close to the road.
And probably close to a vehicle, and when he reached that vehicle, they’d lose him. . . .
“Hang tight!” he warned Hank, flipping hard through severe shallows again.
The sound of the second airboat was suddenly gone.
They burst into the canal that ran by the road a minute later.
Just in time to see the beige sedan bursting from zero to sixty in a matter of seconds.
But not so quickly he didn’t get a partial on the plate.
“Damn!” he swore, pulling out his phone. And to his relief, miracles did happen. He was able to get a signal.
He knew Eames would get the info out to every Florida agency and the bureau, as well. He spoke quickly.
As he finished the call, Eames promised him a car would be along ASAP.
He looked back at Hank.
Hank was grinning. “Impressive. I only got the first two characters on the plate. You got four of them!”
Adrien shrugged. “I was a hair closer,” he said.
Hank nodded. “So, we wait. Not long, but . . . I have a few stories I can tell. Now, bear in mind, Vicky is my partner, a damned good cop, but more. She’s family. She spends part of her holidays with us, never forgets my kids’ birthdays, and reminds me to get my wife flowers on our anniversary. But I can see the sparks flying—”
“What?” Adrien asked. “I mean, she’s admirable, yes—”
“Oh, son, there will always be this thing called human chemistry. But! Mess with that girl, and you mess with me. Well, except, you’ve met her. Mess with her, and she’ll mess with you, all on her own!”
“Look, I—”
“Okay, you don’t want to hear the stories?” Hank asked him.
He looked up at the sky. Crystal blue now. The air was warm but kissed by the water that lapped gently against the airboat from the canal. The world around them was green with the thick grasses and the trees, and only the cries of wading birds could be heard now and then. Down the canal, an alligator slipped smoothly back into the water.
There was nothing to do but wait. And, hell, yes! He wanted to hear the stories....
He just.
He couldn’t appear too eager!
“Um, sure,” he said casually. “We are just sitting here now. Tell away!”
Vicky paused for a minute, leaning against the wall to gather her thoughts.
Kasey Richardson’s parents and her older sister had arrived.
Kasey was now safe in the arms of her loved ones, and Vicky could head back out on the road. She had felt so torn, knowing the victim had needed her, but also determined they catch the man who had caused the trauma in her life. She couldn’t resent the time she had spent with Kasey. Of course, the girl had been terrified. She had clung to Vicky like glue until they’d reached the hospital, and she’d still demanded hysterically that Vicky stay with her....
Until her family had arrived.
Vicky reminded herself they had to be thankful. They had found both women alive. And she had to admit that a lot of the good—and finding the missing women had been very, very good—that had happened had been because of their federal agent, her “cowboy.” He was far more than she had estimated him to be. All right, to be fair to herself, she hadn’t known he was law enforcement when she had first seen him, and she’d been playing the same game.
She pushed away from the wall. It was time to head back to the waiting room and speak with Eames. She could get back out there—get back to Hank and Adrien. Of course, the entire state of Florida was on the alert, and she was probably the only one who thought it important she get back out on the road to pursue the man named Carl. But she wouldn’t be alone even in finding her old partner and her strange new partner. Lance had gone back out, but Mike Buffalo was waiting for her, and she had tremendous faith in his capabilities. She was surprised on the one hand that she hadn’t met him until now; but in her two years as a detective with the county, the crimes she had worked had been along the coast, in the cities, including the drug-related homicides she and Hank had recently worked. They had been trying, but at least those involved had all been in on the crimes.
Finding the missing women who had been innocent had seemed more difficult, and yet . . .
So far, they’d had the best results.
Except the man causing it all was still out there.
“You want to speak with Richard Trent again?”
She jumped at the question. She didn’t need to go to Eames; Eames had come to her.
“I—we already spoke with him. Then—”
“Right after surgery. Maybe he’s a little more talkative now. They’re going to move him soon, and he knows he’s being held and about to be arraigned on many charges.”
“I want to—”
“I know. Mike says he’s got transport everywhere, and he’ll get you to Hank and Adrien. Who, by the way, just lost the perp on one of the access roads. But Adrien caught part of the tag, so we have everyone and his brother out there looking for that tag,” Eames told her. “Vicky, we’re going to get him. I’m not sure if Richard Trent can help any now that this Carlos guy is on the run, but—”
“He will have something or he won’t. I will be quick,” Vicky promised.
Eames pointed down the hall. She knew the room. If she hadn’t already been there, she’d still know it, because four uniformed officers were standing guard in the hall.
She nodded to Eames, who motioned to the officers, and Vicky walked down to the room, thanking the officer who opened the door for her.
Trent groaned when he saw her.
“You again.”
“Hey, I can help you, you know,” she told him.
“Oh, right, yeah! You want to help me—after I wanted to make sure you were prepared for a new . . . lifestyle!” he said. He’d moved some, and he winced with the effort. Surgery hadn’t been easy on him, she was sure.
And she was human. He might have killed her .
And he was lucky. Adrien was a good and decent agent—and a good aim. Richard Trent was down, but not dead because of it. He would do his time.
Vicky was glad, of course, he was alive. Like Adrien, she had sworn an oath to preserve the law.
But she couldn’t help being just a little bit glad the man was in pain.
“Hurts, huh?” she asked sweetly.
“You can’t play that on me anymore!” he snapped.
“Play that?” she asked. “I’m not playing anything. I didn’t say I was sorry that it hurt you.”
That actually made the man smile. “How we ever thought you . . . well, never mind!”
“Where did Carlos go? You must have some idea.”
“Taking care of business,” Richard Trent said.
“Where?”
“I don’t know. And you’ll never get the girl—”
“No one told you?” Vicky asked him. “We already found the young woman you gave to old Carlos—or Carl. She’s safe. And I’m sure she’ll have a great deal to say about you!”
He looked scared for a minute—just a minute. Then he slipped back into his mask of hardness.
Maybe he knew that his “goose was cooked.”
“You won’t find him. He knows the Atlantic, he knows the Straits of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. He knows Miami-Dade County, Broward County, Collier County. You name it, he knows every county in this state. Oh, yeah, and he must have been a Boy Scout. He knows the wetland, federal, state, tribal, and private like no other out there.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Vicky said sweetly. “So, I figure that until he can get to one of those waterways, he’ll be hiding out in ye olde Florida-style jungle.”
“I didn’t tell you that.”
“Yes,” Vicky said sweetly, “you did.”
With a quick smile, she turned and left the room. She could hear him swearing oaths as she left the room. The officers on guard smiled at her.
“You didn’t pinch the punk, did you?” one of them asked her.
“Didn’t go within a foot of him, or even throw anything at him. I promise,” she said.
Eames was waiting for her—as was Mike.
Mike Buffalo had two cups of coffee and handed one to her.
“Anything?” Eames asked her.
“Whatever this Carl’s different enterprises might be, I believe he’s been practicing them for a long time. Trent said he knows the state and every aspect of it better than we do. He’s been drug-running a long time, I believe, and moved into supply and demand when the money sounded so good he wasn’t about to resist. Some of that is what I’ve surmised, of course, but I think I’m right,” Vicky said.
“And from what has happened, I agree you’re right,” Mike offered. “We’ve heard from Adrien and Hank—he isn’t far from where he was. Florida Highway Patrol already found the car—abandoned. He knew he was seen; he knew law enforcement would be after him in that car. So, Detective Henderson, shall we?”
“She needs ten minutes,” Eames said, producing a bag. “I had an officer get into your locker and pull out your bag with your fitness training clothing—and your high boots. Better for running around in the wetlands.”
“What a great thought, and thank you!” she told him.
“I’ve been assured that—”
“Yes, I know how to walk through a mangrove swamp, sir, and thank you! I’ll be two minutes!”
She was more like five minutes, but she was fast, racing into the ladies’ room to change. She emerged realizing she should have thought of better clothing herself.
She figured she couldn’t dwell on her lapse; she could just be grateful she was going to be better dressed for the pursuit.
“Ready,” she said, reappearing. She turned to Eames. “Sir—”
“Go. I’ll see your things are brought to the station. So far, seems you and Hank and our Fed and tribal friends are making a good team. We do need to bring this criminal entrepreneur down before someone else winds up in the crosshair,” he said. “Tech is working on this—seems like there are a lot of questions up and down the state about things that have gone on. Time to put it together and tie it down.”
She nodded. “Sir, with all of us out there—”
“Just be careful. This may well be more than one man who knows his way around.”
“Yes, sir.”
She turned with Mike, and they went out to his car. She smiled as she settled into the passenger’s seat.
“What?”
“I’ve never been in a tribal car before,” she said.
“Much like any other,” he assured her.
“Better than that. It is the first time I’ve been involved in something that includes every agency in the state—and beyond,” she told him. “I like it. But . . .”
“But?”
“I have a feeling that just as we have all kinds of help, so may he.”
“A sound possibility. Okay, they’re about twenty minutes up—”
“So, great. Time for you to tell me about the rock band,” she said.
Looking straight ahead, Mike grinned. “High school. We started off our sophomore year. By the time we were seniors, we were actually being paid to play.”
“And you played—”
“Drums. Still play them, still love them.”
“Cool. And—”
“Adrien was on guitar,” Mike said.
“Ah.”
“Have him play for you sometime,” Mike said. “What about you?”
She shrugged. “Well, I can’t play a guitar or the drums,” she said.
“But you knew you wanted to be a cop from the get-go?” he asked her.
She leaned back for a minute. They were on the highway. The drive was smooth, and it felt good just to close her eyes.
“I knew from high school. Before that . . . I wanted to be a veterinarian when I was five—but then I found out you couldn’t always save animals that were sick. What else did I want to be?” She hesitated and then shrugged. “Probably the usual things at one time or another, but when I was in junior high, my mom was home alone when a man broke in and nearly killed her—except a cop saw that our front door was ajar and saved her. I was a kid, scared to death about what might have happened, and I became friends with Sergeant Jean Farrell, the woman who saved my mom and arrested the guy who had broken in. I knew she had basically saved my life, as well, and I wanted to grow up to be just like her.”
“Now that makes perfect sense.”
“I also loved criminology, the science of it, the way that science just continued to grow, allowing us to find criminals through DNA, tiny fibers, profiling . . . except . . .”
“Except?” he asked her.
“Well, we know there is a man out there, and all the science in the world won’t really help us right now. I could be partially wrong on that; they may get an I.D. on him through prints or something that he left behind in the car. But even if we know who it is—will that help us catch him?”
“Knowledge is going to help us. Knowledge of the area,” Mike assured her. “And we’re almost there.”
She laughed softly. “There—where?”
“I’ll pull off in a few minutes. There’s an old—I do mean old—ranger station, from the days when the park began. It was abandoned years and years ago. That’s where Adrien and Hank were heading, and I think Lance has already caught up with them.” He glanced at her. “Not ESP. Adrien got through to me on his cell.”
“Ah.”
“Interesting,” Mike said.
“What is?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Adrien’s story is like yours. He had a friend who nearly died from a drug overdose—Adrien was the one to find him and get him to a hospital. The kid lived, and the dealer—lacing everything heavily with fentanyl—was caught because of an FBI sting. Adrien got his friend to rehab—and became friends with the agent who had orchestrated the sting.”
“I guess when we see what good can be done. . . .”
“Yeah. Especially when we get it all together, cover all the bases.” He glanced at her.
He turned off the main road to a smaller paved road.
And then on a dirt road that ended in a tangle of trees and brush.
“We’re on foot from here,” he said.
“Great,” Vicky said. But she laughed when he looked at her worriedly. “No, no, seriously, I’m fine. I wouldn’t be out here if I thought I’d be a drawback rather than a help! But . . . where are we going?”
“Another lean-to straight out from here, left over from I don’t know when,” Mike told her. “It’s not much, but . . . we need to brainstorm. This man must know half the state is after him. And he must suspect that at least some of us know what he knows about shelters in the area, and maybe places to find help.”
Stepping out of the car and into the cypress prairie, Vicky thought about a recent documentary she’d seen on the “river of grass” that was the Everglades. She looked ahead and saw nothing at all—but she followed him as he wound through cypress trees stretching to the sky around them, through a shallow pool, and through more trees to see what remained of a roofless structure.
“And here we are,” Mike announced.
Before they reached it, Adrien stepped out to greet them.
“You made it!” he said.
Hank and Lance followed him out.
“Yeah, and you guys are just sitting around?” Mike asked him.
“Hell, no!” Hank said. “This guy,” he said, indicating Adrien, “has created a map for us, and we’ve been weighing the possibilities. All right, Florida Highway Patrol is on all the roads that could really get someone out of here. Carl is going to need to go north or south to reach an area. Of course, we can hope that a python gets him. Gator, diamondback . . .”
“Yeah. We can hope a creature gets Carl—and not us!”
“We are in the rainy season,” Adrien reminded them. “Avoid alligator holes, keep an eye out. Come and see the map, and we’ll split up to cover north and south.”
“Can you be sure—” Vicky began.
“We can be sure of nothing,” Adrien said. “But . . . come on.”
He led the way into what remained of the shack. She was surprised to see there was a truck in it that seemed to have survived the elements for years. There was a large paper spread out on it, and just as Adrien had said, it was a map.
“How . . . ?” she murmured.
“We don’t know who or when,” Adrien explained, “but this ruin was used by someone we assume to be an ecologist, and he or she kept supplies out here. Flashlights, the map, a few books . . . all right, let’s look at the map.”
Vicky studied it, seeing the little areas that Adrien had marked.
She shook her head. “If he goes south, he’ll have to run into the Tamiami Trail and—”
“Yes, and Highway Patrol is there, but there are also a few places to find an accomplice. And even with FHP all over, there are about ninety miles where he might slip across and find transportation. If he gets across, he could appear to be a tourist at the Miccosukee village. . . .” He paused, looking at her. “Like I said, there’s nothing I’m sure about.”
“He has a plan; he’s had all this in place for years in case of trouble, most probably,” Mike said. “And remember, we’re not the only ones out here, so . . .”
Adrien looked at Mike. “If everyone is agreeable, I’ll take Vicky—”
“Hank, you head out with them,” Lance suggested. “Mike and I will move toward the north. You and I know where we are the best. Well, all right, Adrien knows what we know, but—”
“It’s good. The places shown are known structures or remnants of structures. We’re going to assume he knows what he’s doing, but he’s still going to need shelter now and then, especially if he thinks he’s going to confuse law enforcement or wait us out,” Adrien said. “So—”
“Hang on,” Vicky said, pulling out her phone and snapping a picture of the map.
“Good idea,” Adrien approved. “If we all—”
“How about Mike and I just take the map. Interesting to wonder about the person who left this all here. Someone who wanted to protect the ecosystem,” Lance murmured.
“And I’ve always been grateful to them,” Adrien murmured. “So, let’s move.”
Vicky glanced at her phone. No signal. “How are we going to keep in touch?” she asked.
Lance laughed. “Smoke signals? Just kidding. I picked up a couple of satellite phones; Adrien has one and I have one. We’ll know if anyone else is able to get to him first, as well.”
“All right, then,” she murmured.
Hank caught her arm as she started to follow Adrien. “Vicky, be very, very—”
“Careful,” she finished. With a smile, she started to follow Adrien.
They moved in silence for a while. “That first red mark on the map to the south is what we’re trying first?”
“You got it.”
“Wow!” Hank murmured suddenly. “Stop, stop! Oh, my God—look!”
They were all still. Vicky turned to see that Hank was staring in amazement at a beautiful cat that had paused through a thin group of cypress near their position.
“A Florida panther! They’re so endangered, people can look for years and never see them in the wild, there are only about a hundred and sixty in existence and . . .”
“Python,” Adrien warned quietly.
“The panther can outrun it—” Hank began, then added angrily, “if he can see it!”
“Have you run into a python out here before?” she asked Adrien.
“Yes.”
“And?”
He turned to look at her, frowning and shaking his head. “I shot it. I never liked killing anything, but we desperately need to solve the invasive snake problem. You used to see a raccoon out here every three feet. The invasive snakes have reduced that population by almost ninety-nine percent.”
“We can’t let it get that panther!” Hank said.
Her partner was a good shot, Vicky knew. But she was still surprised when Hank took careful aim through the grass and trees.
And shot the python.
The panther flew off; the snake went still.
Adrien winced. “Hank, the sound of the gunshot . . .”
“Oh.” Hank looked at them both apologetically. “I just . . . I never dreamed I’d get to see a panther in the wild.”
“Right. I’m with you at heart, man,” Adrien said. “But now let’s hurry. If our guy is out here, he’ll be moving again or . . .”
“Or?” Vicky asked.
“Planning an ambush,” Adrien said flatly. “Stay behind me, close behind me, and be ready for anything. Weapons drawn.”