Chapter 12
Kendra couldn’t believe Matson offered to bribe them to let him go. Grayson just shook his head and parked in the police department’s parking lot. He hauled Matson out of the SUV.
“We have a job to do that we get paid for by turning you in,” Grayson said. “So no, a bribe isn’t going to work.”
Once they turned Matson over to a police officer, Grayson said, “Have a nice stay.”
Kendra smiled, and they left the police station. “I told Rowland that we’re going to Billy’s mother’s house. He responded that the men watching the place would let us take over surveillance, but they’ll be nearby if Younger shows up.”
“That’s good news. If we have to deal with two of them, the stepfather and Billy, we’ll probably need backup.”
“Yeah, I’m glad for it. He said the deputies will take a bathroom break, get something to eat, and return.”
“Okay, sounds like a good idea.” He entered Billy's home address into his GPS. After a thirty-minute drive, they finally arrived at the house, parking close enough that they could see it from there, but not too close.
They saw the other two men, the undercover cops, and waved. The guys waved back and took off.
“I really want to go to the door and make sure the kid didn’t sneak out of the house, climb his fence, and take off through a neighbor’s backyard.” Grayson tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel.
“Then they would know we were watching them. But since he is under house arrest and he’s wearing an ankle monitor, he should be there.”
“I suspect he already knows the police were here watching him before. I would hate to think we’ve been watching the house and he’s already gone.”
“Do you want to see if he’s there?”
Grayson thought about it and then finally said, “Yeah. We’ll just say we’re here to see how he’s doing.”
“I’m sure he’ll love that.”
They got out of the SUV, locked it, and then walked in the direction of the one-story brick home. A curtain was pulled back and then dropped back in place.
“Someone knows we’re coming.” Grayson knocked on the door.
“I’m going out back this time.”
Grayson frowned. “Maybe we should do the same maneuver as we did at Matson’s ex-wife’s house. That way, if the kid slips out back and gets unruly with me, I can call out to you, and you can come help me with him.”
She smiled. “All right.” She poked her finger at his chest. “If he’s armed, don’t take any chances.”
“Right.” Grayson went to the gate, opened it, and went inside the backyard.
Rowland called Grayson just as he entered the backyard.
“Hey. Billy’s GPS-designed ankle monitor was removed, and we were immediately alerted.
I called my men who were watching the house, but they said you had taken over the watch for a short break.
His bond has been revoked, and you need to arrest him if you can locate him before he disappears. ”
“Okay, we’re on it.”
“The deputies you relieved are on their way to help, too.”
Then they ended the call
“No one is answering the door,” Kendra said, joining Grayson.
“He’s gone. He took off his monitor.”
“Great. Just now?”
“Yeah. Rowland’s department just got an alert.”
“I’m going back out front to check just in case he takes off through the front door.”
“I’m checking all the back windows and the back door,” Grayson said.
Kendra raced back to the front door.
Then Grayson checked out all the windows on the back of the house. One was open, and he smelled that Billy had climbed out through there. He called Kendra. “He went out a back window. I’m following his scent to the fence.”
“I’m joining you.”
Grayson hurried off in the direction that Billy had gone. Once he reached the fence, Kendra dashed across the backyard to reach him. “He climbed over the fence here.” Grayson gave her a boost up, helping Kendra over it, and then followed her.
A black rottweiler came at them, snarling and barking.
He was only defending his territory, but they needed to cross the yard safely and didn’t want to get bitten.
Kendra growled at the dog in her fiercest bear growl that she could make.
Grayson quickly did the same. Even though any human could learn to imitate a bear growl, they had it down pat.
The dog stopped snarling at them and just watched them. Kendra and Grayson backed away from him, eyes averted so as not to challenge the dog, and finally reached the gate. Then they opened it and closed it before the dog could get out.
Grayson expected the dog to slam into the gate, but he didn’t. He hadn’t made a move toward the gate. Grayson kissed Kendra and squeezed her hand. They made a great team.
Then they followed Billy’s scent and saw him getting into the passenger seat of a red Chevrolet sedan. How many cars did Younger own? Or had he stolen it? Then they saw Younger at the wheel.
They ran after the car but knew they would never reach it in time. Grayson took a picture of the license plate and texted it to Rowland.
“We’ve got to get to your vehicle,” Kendra said.
“The fastest way is through the backyard with the aggressive dog in it,” Grayson said.
“Bear growls worked before.”
“Maybe the dog will have gone inside by now.” Grayson ran for the gate, and once he pulled it open, he peered around the yard. He didn’t see the dog, but it could be in the side yard out of their view.
Then someone came out with a shotgun. Okay, he didn’t blame the owner for protecting his property when Grayson and Kendra were trespassing.
They both brought out their bounty hunter IDs, and Kendra hurriedly said, “We’re after a fugitive. He came through your yard from the house behind yours and got into a car. We’ve let the police know to put a BOLO on the car, but we need to get in ours to pursue him. This is the quickest way.”
The homeowner lowered his shotgun. “So you’re going to climb my fence?”
“Yeah, if you allow us to. His stepdad and he are getting away.” Grayson knew they needed to go.
“What did he do?”
“He’s working with his stepdad to kidnap young girls and women.”
“Go. Hurry. Catch the bastard.”
“Thanks.” Grayson and Kendra ran for the fence, and he gave Kendra a foot up again.
Once they were over the fence, they ran through the backyard of Mimi’s home and reached the gate, then threw it open, hurried into the front yard, and raced for Grayson’s vehicle.
As soon as they were in the SUV, Grayson tore down the street, but he was certain they had delayed too long. He also knew that if they had to go around the block to reach his vehicle instead of going through the neighbor’s backyard, they wouldn’t have made it as quickly.
Rowland got back with them. “I’ve got some guys out looking for the car.”
“We’re in my vehicle, searching for it too. What did you learn about the car?” Grayson asked on Bluetooth.
“It was stolen an hour before you called.”
“Great.”
“I know,” Rowland said. “Younger is working on adding to his rap sheet. So is the kid.”
“Sorry that we missed him.” Grayson was so sick of missing out on grabbing these guys.
“Yeah, we all feel the same way about two of them.”
“Hey, I see the car.” Grayson turned off the road the car was on now. “They’re heading toward the Canadian border.”
“We’re on our way.”
Grayson was glad to see the stolen car and hoped they could stop Billy and Younger before they reached the border.
Grayson kept giving Rowland updates on their location as they followed the car.
Then the car turned off down a side street.
“They saw us,” Grayson said.
“Go down the next street. He’ll probably head north again on the next street over, but if he’s watching for us, he’ll see we didn’t follow them.”
“I should let you drive,” Grayson said.
She laughed. “Yeah, I’ve had a ton of cases that I had to follow like that. Hopefully, the police will put up some barricades and stop them before they cross the Canadian border.”
“The closest and primary 24-hour border crossing from Kalispell, Montana, to Canada is the Roosville crossing. That’s located about 60 miles north via US-93,” Grayson said.
They got a call from Rowland. “We’ve got men up at the Roosville crossing, and also at Chief Mountain crossing, but we haven’t seen any sign of the vehicle.”
Which could mean that Younger and Billy ditched the car. They might even have had a car elsewhere, and they switched to it.
“Border Patrol has been made aware of Younger and his stepson possibly trying to cross the border, but that they might have another vehicle by now,” Rowland said.
“They know the car he had been driving was stolen, so if he ditched it and stole another vehicle, I told them to be aware of it and ask for the vehicle registration, car insurance, anything that would prove that Younger isn’t the owner. ”
Kendra motioned toward an apartment complex with covered parking. Grayson drove into the parking lot and saw the red car they had been following. “Hey, Rowland, we found the red car at one of the apartment complexes.”
“I’ll send a couple of officers over to check it out. Do you think Younger actually has an apartment there?”
“Not sure. We’re going to park and see if we can smell their scents when they left the vehicle.”
“Okay, good luck. Stay safe.”
Grayson parked in the guest parking, and he and Kendra got out of his vehicle.
They headed over to the car. He knew that if Younger was living at the complex, he could be watching the car.
But he suspected they had ditched it there and either had found another to steal, had parked another vehicle there that Younger and the boy had left in, or were on foot, heading to another location.
He felt the car’s hood. “Hot.” So they hadn’t left the car there that long.
A black Mercedes-Benz drove into the parking lot and parked behind the red car. The driver, a white-haired man in a black business suit, left his vehicle, looking angry, as if he was ready to slug Grayson. Grayson suspected the stolen car was in the man’s designated parking space.
Grayson offered his hand to the man. “I’m a bounty hunter, trying to track down the individual who left the car here. The police are on their way, and they’ll have it towed and impounded. It was stolen.”
The man shook his hand, the scowl on his face evaporating. “Oh, good.”
“Yeah, it might take a while though.” Kendra showed him a picture of the two people they were after—Younger and Billy. “Have you seen them in this complex before?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Do you have a live-in manager here?” Kendra asked.
“Yeah, on the other side of the complex.”
“Okay, thanks. Sorry about all this,” Kendra said.
“No, it’s understandable. We all have problems with guests coming and parking their cars in designated covered parking spots, so it’s a sore subject.”
“Totally agree with you,” Kendra said. “We need to talk to the manager to make sure that Younger hadn’t rented a place here,” she said to Grayson.
“Yeah, hope your day gets better,” Grayson said to the man as a couple of patrol cars pulled up.
They recognized Kendra right away and greeted her.
“Are you a witness?” the one officer asked the white-haired man.
“No, the car thief stole my parking space.”
“We’re going to see the manager,” Grayson said, since the officers were here to take care of the stolen car.
Then he and Kendra started to walk around the complex, following Younger’s scent, but the teen wasn’t there.
“They split up. Younger must have dropped Billy off somewhere,” Kendra said.
“It’s smart of them. And they can meet up somewhere else and take off again.”
Grayson and Kendra kept following Younger’s scent trail. He sure wished that the dad and stepson hadn’t split up. It just made it harder for them to grab both unless they ended up together again.
He wondered if the mother had been interrogated. Probably. He called Rowland and put it on speakerphone. “Hey, Rowland, Billy’s scent isn’t here. Just Younger’s.”
“Hell.”
“Yeah, I know. Were you able to speak with Billy’s mother, Mimi?”
“Yeah, we got a search warrant, and I’ve spoken with her. She says she doesn’t know where they’ve gone. I doubt that Mimi is telling the truth. She probably would do anything to keep them out of jail.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Grayson said. “I’m kind of surprised she didn’t leave with them.”
“They might feel she can help them better if she’s not with them.
And they may also feel that she won’t face charges if she isn’t running with them.
But the thing is, we can get her on aiding and abetting, and on obstructing.
We’re monitoring her phone and keeping an eye on her house and her movements,” Rowland said.
“Good.” Kendra headed in a different direction, away from where the manager’s office would be.
Grayson caught a whiff of Younger’s sweaty, worried scent, too, then. “Even though Mimi knows what her son and husband were up to.”
“Yeah. She might really believe that they’re innocent, just like a lot of families of criminals don’t believe that their loved ones could do anything wrong.”
“That’s true,” Kendra said. “Like women who have a jailhouse romance with a guy who killed his wife, but he’s a manipulator and conman, and he tells her he didn’t do it, someone else did, or it was an accident, and the prosecutor didn’t believe him.
Conmen are so convincing. She marries him, he gets released, and she begins to learn how abusive and controlling he is.
Sometimes the new wife manages to live, and other times, she’s the next one of his victims.”
“Hell, yeah. There’s a guy in prison for killing his girlfriend, and he had girlfriends all over the world, corresponding with him while he was there, who wanted to marry him.
Of course, they didn’t know he had tons of girlfriends.
Everyone was sending him money for commissary goods.
One was his fiancée, and she sat in on his trial the whole time, knowing he would be proven innocent.
He told them all how much he loved them, using the same spiel for each.
Until the prosecutor shared this information with all the girlfriends.
One wanted to rip another’s heart out,” Grayson said.
“Some of them realized he had used him.”
“And his fiancée?” Kendra asked.
“Dumped him.”