Chapter Three
The moment Jack said someone was following them, Caroline jerked her body around to look out the back window of his truck. She groaned, no doubt seeing exactly what Jack had caught sight of.
A black four-door sedan with a heavily tinted windshield.
The fact that it was a car made it stand out in a place where most folks drove trucks. Maybe a crazed groupie/killer wannabe hadn’t gotten the memo on that, and had failed to blend in.
Jack hadn’t had a choice about requesting backup.
He’d noticed the sedan pulling out of a ranch trail just moments after he had driven past it.
Of course, it was possible this wasn’t someone after Caroline, that it was just a driver in the wrong place at the wrong time, maybe even someone who’d gotten lost, but Jack couldn’t risk not having an extra gun if something bad went down.
Or rather, if something worse was going down.
The bad had already happened.
There was no scenario Jack could come up with that made Kingston Morris showing up just yards from the safe house a good thing.
Which was why he should have called for backup even sooner.
Unfortunately, Jack had let himself get distracted with Caroline’s bombshell.
Now that he’d remembered he was a lawman and not her former lover—or the son of a murdered sheriff—he would press her more on why she’d lied.
Press her more, too, on the bits of so-called evidence from the night his dad had been killed.
For now, Jack just kept an eye on the car behind them.
“Are Caroline and Lucille okay?” Teagan asked. “Are you okay?”
“So far.” Jack wanted it to stay that way.
“Do you think it’s that guy, Kingston Morris, who you asked me to run?” Teagan added.
“Possibly.” But the more honest answer would be “Yes.” It would be hard to believe it was a coincidence that an Eric groupie to appeared on a security camera and then someone else showed up on this remote stretch of the road.
“There’s no immediate threat,” Jack added to his partner, “but I want backup in place.”
“Understood.”
Jack opened his mouth to give Teagan some instructions as to what he needed her to do, but Caroline tugged on his arm to get his attention.
At first he thought that was because she’d seen the person behind that dark windshield, but she merely stared at him.
No one had ever accused him of having ESP or even being tuned in to nonverbal cues, but he got this one all right.
Caroline didn’t want him to mention that she’d gotten her memory back. Since he couldn’t see why Teagan would need to know that right at this exact moment, Jack nodded. Obviously Caroline was good with the nonverbal, too, because she blew out a breath of relief.
“I need you to run the plates on a black sedan for me,” Jack continued with Teagan. He could hear his partner typing away on her keyboard. No doubt arranging for the backup he’d requested. But she could multitask, too, so he rattled off the license plate number to her.
“It’s a rental car,” Teagan said just moments later. “I’ll find out who rented it.”
Jack was betting the person who’d done that had used an alias.
Well, unless Kingston or the person in the sedan was truly an idiot.
That wouldn’t make this situation less dangerous, because Jack knew from experience that idiots could kill just as well as smart people.
The idiots just didn’t tend to get away with it, but that didn’t make their victims less dead or instances like this any less lethal.
The seconds seemed to drag before Teagan came back on the line. “Lee Zeller’s in the field about twenty miles from you. He’s the closest marshal for backup.”
Jack kept his speed at a steady pace and considered his options.
Zeller wasn’t one of them, and he glanced at Caroline to see if she agreed.
Judging from the way her forehead creased, she did.
Which meant she’d been doing some investigating and had likely hacked her way through the filters in multiple files.
He was getting better at picking up the unspoken stuff.
“Bad choice for backup?” Teagan asked Jack when he didn’t respond.
Teagan could read him. She’d been Jack’s partner for two years and had read all the files on his father’s murder.
Zeller had been involved in an investigation that Jack’s father was running at the time he was gunned down.
Sex trafficking. Zeller hadn’t been a suspect in that case.
Heck, there’d been no hints of any wrongdoing on his part, but Jack didn’t like the way these particular lines had intersected.
Because it would only rattle Caroline even more, he didn’t want anyone from his father’s investigations playing backup for him.
Well, no one who wasn’t family.
That was going to tighten Caroline’s forehead, too, and break some rules, but that car behind them certainly wasn’t putting her at ease, either. Ditto for Lucille. Both women had turned to watch it again.
“I need to make another call,” he told Teagan. “Get me the name on the rental car.” Jack hung up and hit the button on his steering wheel.
“Call Kellan,” he instructed his phone.
As expected, Caroline whirled back around while shaking her head.
Frantically shaking it. There was no need for her to repeat her warning that while she thought she could trust Jack, she didn’t feel that way about other cops.
Or anyone else with a badge and a police radio who could maybe listen in on their conversation.
So, while he waited for the call to his brother to connect, he gave her proof for why she should want Kellan in on this.
Jack sped up.
So did the car behind them.
When he slowed, the sedan followed suit. It let Caroline know that there could be a real threat behind them. Maybe it was Kingston. Maybe hired guns paid for with Kingston’s trust fund. It could be someone who wasn’t even on their radar, who’d used Kingston as a dupe.
Whatever this was, this situation could get ugly.
In fact, the only reason it probably hadn’t already was because the driver was waiting until they reached the road leading to Longview Ridge.
It was wider and didn’t coil around like a rattlesnake.
It would be easier to make a move there.
Jack was guessing the guy might try to run them off the road or else shoot at them.
Caroline’s eyes were already wide, and only grew bigger when she saw how closely the sedan was mirroring their moves. Lucille saw it, too, and she threw her small suitcase on the floor of the truck, no doubt to free up her hands. She drew her gun just as Kellan answered the phone.
“You’re on speaker,” Jack warned his brother right off. “And I have Caroline and Lucille in the truck with me.”
“What happened?” Kellan snapped.
“Kingston Morris, a possible groupie connected to Eric, showed up at the safe house, and now I think he could be following us. And no, you won’t find his name in our files.
That’s because Caroline only told me about him less than a half hour ago.
Apparently, Kingston visited Caroline’s office while Eric was there, and Kingston made a strong enough impression for her to remember him. ”
Jack paused to give his brother a second to let that sink in. It sank in quickly.
“She got her memory back,” Kellan concluded, and without even taking a breath, he added, “Dad’s killer?”
Jack had anticipated that would be the first of his brother’s questions. “She claims she doesn’t know.”
Jack figured the skepticism in his wording was going to piss her off, and it did.
But he didn’t care. She’d lied to him. And while her lie might not be responsible for the car following them, if he’d known the facts—all of them—he might have been able to pick up Kingston before it even came to this.
Even without having the details spelled out for him, it obviously riled Kellan, too, because he cursed. “Where are you? You need backup?”
“Yes to the backup.” Jack gave Kellan his location. “I’m heading to your office, so meet me.”
Jack didn’t wait for his brother’s assurance that he would do just that. No need. Kellan would get there as fast as he could. Maybe it would be fast enough, but Jack didn’t like the bad feeling that was slithering its way down his back. That turn with the straighter, wider road was coming up fast.
“You know how I feel involving your brothers in this,” Caroline snapped the moment he was off the phone with Kellan. “They could trust fellow cops who are dirty.”
“Lesser of two evils,” Jack reminded her, and just to prove his point, he slowed down. The sedan kept pace.
She made a sound to indicate she was considering what he’d said, but she didn’t argue. Caroline twisted back around to keep watch.
Jack considered just flooring the accelerator and trying to outrace this moron.
But that was risky. Curvy roads could lead to accidents, which would in turn make them sitting ducks.
Plus, the sedan engine might be souped-up enough that it wouldn’t have any trouble catching up with them.
Jack wanted to delay the showdown until Kellan was closer.
“Who’s Marshal Zeller?” Lucille asked. Her voice was a little shaky. So was she. But she was holding her own and didn’t look ready to panic. “Why didn’t you want him for backup?”
“Because he could be dirty,” Caroline grumbled before Jack could say anything.
As answers went, it was a pretty good one.
In her mind, Zeller could indeed be dirty.
The jury was still out on that for Jack, but if there’d been any red flags to find, Jack figured he would have found them by now.
That was because he’d dug and dug deep. Not just on Zeller but on any-and everyone connected to his father’s investigations.
“Zeller headed a sex-trafficking case that popped a little over a year ago,” Jack told Lucille.
Like the women, he still had his eyes on the sedan.
“One that involved some college students. One of those students, Nicola Gunderson, was abducted from a diner in Longview Ridge, and then she turned up dead. That’s how my dad got involved.
My brother Kellan too, since he was a deputy at the time. ”
“Oh, yes. I remember.” Lucille’s voice was a little tight, but Jack knew that wasn’t because she had something to hide or even any personal knowledge of the case. However, she did have plenty of knowledge about sex offenses since she’d been a victim of a violent rape fifteen years earlier.
Zeller wasn’t the only person Jack had vetted all the way down to ground zero.
Jack hadn’t considered Lucille’s past a concern, but rather he saw how she responded to it by cultivating her current assets.
She’d learned to protect herself and continued her nursing career, and Jack figured that was a bonus skill set when it came to choosing who would be staying with Caroline.
Right now, he appreciated that skill set very much, but he hoped he didn’t need Lucille to play backup.
“You’re taking me to the sheriff’s office,” Caroline concluded.
Jack couldn’t figure out a way to sugarcoat it. “I am.”
She sat there, obviously weighing her options as he’d done earlier.
She was smart. Smart enough to keep her mouth shut about regaining her memory because she didn’t know the snakes from the good guys.
And that meant she’d soon figure out that the only choice she had was to go with him to the sheriff’s office. That didn’t mean she’d like it, though.
Jack had to slow down as he approached the last turn that would take him to town. They were about six miles out now.
Not far.
With Kellan no doubt already en route, it meant he had only a couple more minutes before he could do something about this tail.
He wanted to question whoever was behind that wheel.
If it was Kingston, he would question him even harder, because maybe he, too, had been at the abandoned hotel the night Jack’s father was murdered.
Jack took the turn on the road, and while his attention hadn’t strayed from the sedan, he watched it even closer now. Though he soon figured out there was no need for watching, because the driver immediately sped up.
Hell.
Kellan was still nowhere in sight, but Jack got a glimpse of something he sure as heck didn’t want to see. The driver’s-side window of the sedan lowered. A hand came out. One holding a gun.
“Get down!” Jack shouted to Caroline and Lucille.
Not a second too soon. Because the shot slammed into the truck.