Chapter 44
forty-four
. . .
LANE
Trey and I spent all weekend gathering evidence to support our claims against Addie and Johns.
Trey did all the techy, deep-web stuff while I conducted good old fashioned police work by making a lot of phone calls.
It took all of Saturday and Sunday, but by the wee hours of Monday morning, we’d collected enough to neutralize them both and get Sutton out of jail.
At the ass crack of dawn, Trey and I found ourselves in the mayor’s office with the prosecuting attorney, going over everything we’d discovered.
“What are you asking for here, Sheriff?” the prosecutor demanded. The guy was a few years younger than me but not local, having been brought to town after meeting his wife, who had grown up here. He stood, ass resting on the edge of the mayor’s desk, arms crossed over his chest.
“Charges to be brought against Addie and Johns,” I said in a tone that suggested I thought that was obvious.
“You want me to charge your undersheriff and a highly decorated member of the FBI.”
“Yep.”
The prosecutor laughed. “You’re insane.”
“We have the proof!” I said, shaking a sheaf of papers. “What more do you want?”
“I want to not have to go to war against the fucking Federal Bureau of Investigation!”
Okay, that was fair, but there was no getting around it.
“There is an innocent woman currently behind bars because of what these two people have done,” I said, stabbing my finger into the portraits of Addie and Johns we’d attached to the dossiers Trey had put together.
“What’s Johns’ motive here?” the mayor asked.
“Best I can come up with is that he wants my job.”
“It’s an elected position,” the mayor said, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Yeah, I never said he was the sharpest tool in the shed.”
In my opinion, Johns was a certified moron to think he’d get away with it. Based on the timeline of events Trey and I had managed to put together, the whole thing had been poorly thought out and executed—which surprised me, given it seemed Addie had been at the helm.
Finally, the prosecutor sighed and said, “Bring them in.”
I was out of my seat and rushing from the office in a flash, Trey hot on my heels.
“Where are we headed?”
“The department seems like a good place to start,” I said. We left the truck parked where it was and walked the few short blocks separating the department from City Hall.
Inside the building, I waved to Bertie and swiped me and my brother into the back. Yet again, all sound vacuumed out of the bullpen at my appearance.
“Anyone seen Johns?” I asked.
“He left on a transport,” one of my younger deputies answered.
Icy dread slid through my veins. “Sutton?” He nodded. “When did they leave?”
“About twenty minutes ago?” he replied, not sounding entirely sure.
“Fuck!” I shouted, and several people startled.
Trey gripped my shoulder, squeezing hard enough to force some sense back into me.
“Where is he taking her?”
“Boise.”
As quickly as we arrived, Trey and I raced out of the station and back to my truck. He was barely inside before I peeled out of town, tires screeching as I turned off Cassia onto the main road, heading north.
I was damn near strangling the steering wheel as I pushed the speedometer higher and higher, going too fast for the slick winter roads, not that I gave a fuck.
There was a chance this was nothing more than a routine transfer.
It made sense that Addie would file the charges—however fucking bogus they were—in Boise.
According to her, that’s where the assault had occurred.
Johns could just be doing his job.
But I didn’t buy that for a second.
My gut instinct was telling me something was very, very wrong.
An intuition that was proven correct a moment later when a vehicle appeared up ahead, coming our way.
I recognized the paint job instantly, that brown two-tone color scheme the sheriff’s department had used since the seventies and never bothered to update, even with the purchase of new vehicles.
Trey clocked it too and with a raised brow said, “He only left twenty minutes ago?”
“Not nearly enough time to get to Boise and back,” I said, catching his meaning.
My truck was wired with a few Kojak lights for emergency situations that occurred when I was off shift, so I flipped them on and pulled over to the side of the road. I half expected Johns to blow right by us, but he pulled over on the opposite shoulder, got out, and crossed to me and Trey.
“Sheriff. Trey.” He nodded at each of us in turn with his hands shoved deep in his pockets, the portrait of nonchalance. “What’s—”
Whatever else he’d been about to say was cut off by my fist ramming into the center of his face.
A sickening crunch filled the space between us as his nose shattered, and blood spurted, flowing freely from his nostrils down his face.
“What the fuck!” he shouted, recovering surprisingly quickly and coming at me, fists raised.
When he was within range, I struck again, relishing the burn as my knuckles split open against his jaw. Johns stumbled backward but still didn’t go down.
Instead, he regarded me thoughtfully, as though finally coming to terms with what was happening here. Finally realizing I knew.
He grinned, and blood stained his teeth.
“Where is she?” I asked before he could say anything.
“With Addie. Probably already dead.”
A third punch knocked him out cold.
For a moment, I stood over him, wishing like hell I could beat the life out of him, but that wouldn’t do me or Sutton any favors in the long run. Instead, I spit on him—exactly as he’d spit in the face of all the men and women who had dedicated their lives to upholding the law, not breaking it.
We were ignoring how hypocritical of me that was.
Though I hated wasting time on him, I lifted Johns up and dragged him back across the road, stuffing him behind the wheel of the van.
Then I stalked back to Trey.
“Gonna need you to hit me, big brother.”
“What? Fuck no.”
I lifted my hands, making a come on gesture before dropping them again, letting them hang loosely at my sides. “C’mon, Trey. This needs to look like self-defense.”
“You’re insane.”
“Please stop acting like you haven’t always wanted to—”
My head snapped back with the impact of his fist. He’d caught me on the jaw, and I worked it around, tongue probing my mouth to make sure none of my teeth were loose. For how wiry he was, my brother packed one hell of a punch.
“One more.”
Trey obliged, though I could tell from the look on his face a moment before that he really hated me for it.
This time, he hit near my temple, and the thin skin above my brow split open, blood trickling down the side of my face.
“Let’s go.”
Back in the truck, Trey rooted around in the glove box and came away with a stack of napkins from the diner, handing them over. I shook a couple free and pressed them to my forehead.
“Fuck you for making me do that.”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
I had no idea how. There wasn’t anything I had that Trey could want, but I’m sure he’d think of something.
As we traveled further north, I couldn’t hold off the despair that crept in, threatening to suffocate me.
“Fuck,” I breathed. “I should have kept him talking. I should’ve at least found out where they were going.”
Trey ignored me, and I side-eyed him to see him tapping away at his phone screen.
“What are you doing?”
“Tracking Addie’s phone.” He quickly flashed the screen to me. “They’re still on this road. Roughly twenty miles ahead, moving north.” Then, “Wait. Looks like they stopped.”
I pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor.
There was no way in hell I was losing Sutton again, not when I’d just gotten her back.
I’d responded to countless vehicular accident scenes over the course of my career, but none of them had ever taken my breath away like coming upon this one.
The guardrail protecting drivers from a fairly deep ditch had busted out.
It gaped open, the remaining ends mangled.
Screeching to a halt, I barely remembered to put the truck in park before Trey and I threw ourselves out and approached.
The sight at the bottom nearly brought me to my knees.
The black SUV was, miraculously, resting on its wheels, though based on the disturbance of the lingering snow and brush on the hillside, it had rolled several times on the way down.
Its roof was caved in, the windows I could see shattered, the sides, rear, and front ends crushed like tin cans.
With zero regard for my own safety, I threw myself over the ledge. Though I slipped and slid all the way down, I managed to stay on my feet until I reached the vehicle.
I approached the front seat first, where I found Addie slumped behind the wheel.
Her head lolled against her chest, and there was blood everywhere.
Was she breathing? I couldn’t tell, and though it went against everything I stood for as a law enforcement officer, I couldn’t make myself reach out and touch her to check for a pulse.
Trey reached my level and pushed me out of the way. “I’ll check on her,” he said gently. “Find Sutton.”
Nodding, I moved away from him, peeking into the backseat and not seeing her. But there was no sign of her when I walked the perimeter, either.
“What the fuck?”
Trey’s eyes snapped to mine. “What?”
“Where the hell is she?”
“Look again,” he encouraged me, then hooked his thumb toward Addie when he pulled his hand out of the car. “She’s alive, by the way. I’ll call nine-one-one.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.
My second look at the backseat still didn’t reveal Sutton, and I was about to back away, to venture further into the surrounding area and start calling for her when something caught my eye.
A flash of orange.
The same color as the hoodie of mine Sutton had been wearing Friday when she showed up for dinner.
Sticking my body halfway through the window, I found her curled into the fetal position on the floor in an impossibly small cavity behind the passenger seat.