Chapter 12
Avery keyed in the address of the boarding house into Grant’s maps app on his cell phone and sat back, anxious to start the search.
In less than five minutes, they arrived at the abandoned boarding house, a two-story wood-framed building with peeling paint and sagging eaves.
Wooden slats had been nailed over the windows and the front door.
Grass stood knee high in the front yard, and a giant oak grew so close to the structure that one of the branches had scraped shingles from the roof.
Grant parked, reached beneath the seat and pulled out his handgun and a flashlight. He got out of the vehicle, walked to the rear of the car and opened the trunk.
When Avery joined him, he handed the gun and flashlight to her and dug out the tire iron. “Might be handy for prying the boards free on the door.”
She nodded and followed him up the front steps, carefully avoiding the rotten wood on the third riser.
Grant checked the boards over the front door. The nails held fast.
“Let’s check the rear before we escalate to breaking and entering,” Avery suggested.
He nodded and led the way back down the steps and around to the back,
Weeds were higher in the backyard, but they’d been trampled in a path around the side to the rear door. No boards covered this entry.
Grant met Avery’s gaze.
She held the gun steady, moved to the side of the door and nodded.
Also standing to the side of the door, Grant reached for the knob, twisted it carefully then pushed it open.
Light fell in a wedge across the old wooden floor covered in dust and leaves.
Grant held out his hand for the gun and passed the tire iron to Avery, motioning for her to stay while he entered.
Avery frowned, not liking that he was taking lead when he wasn’t legally on the case. But it wasn’t the time to argue.
With the gun in hand, he slipped through the door and to the side, out of the wedge of light. Moments later, he motioned for her to enter.
She stepped through, turned on the flashlight and shined it around the room.
Dust swirled in the beam as she studied what had once been the kitchen, with its old porcelain-coated stove, a large metal sink and warped wooden countertops. Trash littered the floor in the form of empty soda cans, crumpled cigarette packages and food wrappers.
Grant led the way into what had probably been the dining room, now empty but for a couple of broken chairs and more trash. In one corner was a frayed sleeping bag, the stuffing pulled out of holes and scattered across the floor. A mouse skittered out of the bag and into a hole in the wall.
Avery fought the urge to run back out the back door. She’d been in worse places. A mouse wasn’t what was going to kill her.
They quietly moved from room to room. A staircase led to the upper floor. Beneath the stairs was another door, leading into a basement.
Avery’s pulse quickened. Though she hadn’t noticed any other footprints in the layer of dust on the floor, she couldn’t rule out this basement. What if it had another entrance they had yet to discover?
Once again, Grant, holding the gun, was first down the steps.
Avery followed close behind, shining the light around him as best she could.
The stairs were narrow and steep, leading down to an earthen basement beneath the house.
Wooden shelves lined one wall with a few dust-covered canning jars with questionable contents that had been abandoned with the building.
The floor was dirt. The space was really too small to house a still. If the women had been here, they would have had dirt particles in their hair along with the barley.
“This isn’t the place,” Avery whispered as if speaking loudly would stir up ghosts.
“I agree, but we should at least check the upstairs and the shed behind the house.”
Avery led the way up the stairs, shining the beam of the flashlight down on the steps for him to benefit from the light.
They spent another few minutes on the upper story, finding more food wrappers, beer cans and old blankets.
“I imagine either someone homeless or local teens once used this place to hide out or party,” Grant surmised. “But I’d say it’s been a while.”
Avery nodded as she stepped out into the late afternoon sunshine, glad to be out in the fresh air.
The shed behind the house leaned to the right. The door hung loose; the boards were a weathered gray. Inside were a few rusted tools and a broken wooden crate.
“Okay then, on to the next place.”
Once back at the vehicle, Avery keyed in the address and sat back. “This place is a couple of miles out of town.”
His cellphone pinged. Avery glanced down at the screen.
“Incoming text from Swede. He says his tap into the electric company’s database identified several addresses with spikes in their electric bill from last year to this.
He listed the addresses.” Avery checked the addresses against those they’d collected at the courthouse.
“Only two match. One is on the same road as the address we’re heading for now.
” She looked at the notes on that one. “The house belongs to a Richard Atkins, purchased over thirty years ago. Electric usage jumped by over fifty percent from this time last year.”
“We should check that one first,” Grant said.
Avery adjusted the address on the map application. “It’s one of the occupied homes. We might need a warrant to look around.”
“Doesn’t hurt to ask the occupants first.”
“As long as they don’t shoot first,” Avery murmured.
“Text the sheriff our location,” Grant said.
Avery did and sat back, studying the roadsides, the houses scattered along the way and the fields with cattle grazing peacefully when women were being murdered in that county.
The GPS led them to a rutted dirt road with trees and underbrush crowding the tracks.
“Think we should park out here and walk in?” she said.
“I think we should drive past, park up the road and walk back in,” Grant said.
“You realize we’re in Texas.” Avery cocked an eyebrow. “We can be legally shot for trespassing.”
“Then we go in stealth mode,” he said.
“There’s another dirt road ahead on the left,” Avery pointed.
Grant didn’t slow. “First, we need to let the car behind us go by.” He slowed on a straight stretch to allow the vehicle to pass.
The driver slowed as well and didn’t pass.
“Okay, we’ll have to turn on the next road to lose him,” Grant said and increased his speed.
Avery pointed ahead. “There. I believe that’s another county road on the right.”
Grant applied his turn signal, slowed and turned onto the paved road.
The car behind them continued straight.
After a few hundred feet, Grant found a place to turn around and headed back the way they’d come, finding the dirt road Avery had noted before, and they pulled far enough off the main road so the car wouldn’t be easy to see.
He grabbed the gun from where he’d stashed it beneath the seat and glanced across at Avery. “Ready?”
“Are you sure you want to do this without a warrant?” she asked.
“We can sneak up, check it out from a distance. If it looks suspicious, we can leave and come back with a warrant.”
She nodded. “Since you’re the Navy SEAL, you can lead, I’ll follow.”
Grant led the way through the woods, paralleling the highway until they neared the dirt road the GPS had indicated. There again, he paralleled that road, keeping low and in the shadows.
Avery followed, mimicking his movements.
They’d gone several hundred feet deeper into the woods when the dense underbrush thinned.
Grant held up his hand in a fist, indicating they should stop. He knelt next to a tree, using a bush for concealment. The sun had dropped below the treetops, casting them into deep shadow, while the clearing remained well lit.
Avery joined him and dropped to her haunches.
An old farmhouse with peeling white paint sat in the middle of the clearing.
Behind the house was what appeared to be a greenhouse that looked new compared to the weathered exterior of the house.
“That could explain the spike in electricity usage,” Grant said, “if they’re using grow lights inside.”
Avery frowned. “It looks like the house has a trap door to a basement on the side. Based on the size of the house, I doubt the basement was big enough to house the equipment necessary to brew beer or whiskey.”
“What about the old barn behind it?” Grant asked.
“We’d have to get inside to find out.”
Grant moved backward, deeper into the underbrush.
Avery hurried to catch up. “Where are you going?” she whispered.
“To the back side of the barn,” he answered softly, moving swiftly and silently through the trees.
Avery did her best to follow as quietly as the SEAL, admiring how he made it seem so effortless. The man moved like a lion stalking its prey, in complete control of his every move and sexy as hell.
Damn, she’d missed him. Giving him up before Operation Orchid had been the hardest thing she’d ever done. But she’d known that he would have been as much a target as she if the Elite had discovered her deception.
Could he ever forgive her for dumping him for her job? Was there a future for her with Grant in it?
For now, she had to be satisfied being with him. After they caught the killer, she would see where their roads led.
They made a wide circle around the perimeter of the clearing. As they came even with the back of the barn, Grant, in the lead, eased closer. They moved slowly and steadily until he suddenly stopped and murmured a curse beneath his breath.
Avery froze.
Grant glanced down at a thin line that looked like fishing line, barely visible in the shadows.
“Avery,” he whispered. “Go back the way we came,” he said so softly she could barely hear his words.
“Not without you,” she said in an equally quiet tone.
“Too late,” he said. “Get down.”
Avery dropped to the ground, flattening her body against leaves and fallen sticks.
Grant didn’t drop down like she did. Instead, he shoved his gun into the back of his waistband and straightened, raising his hands above his head. “Don’t shoot.”