Chapter Sixteen
It was the screaming that Charly heard first.
Woman…blood curdling sound.
She tried to sit up. The gag in her mouth was too tight. She listened. She’d heard something. Screaming, she was certain of. But a popping sound before that. Gunshot, she thought.
Please don’t let it be Briana.
She rocked herself to her side and tried to see through the darkness. There was something happening outside.
Paul had tied her up while Laney yelled at him about how the hell they were going to fix all this. Paul had said something about putting her with the others. Charly had a sick feeling she understood exactly what that meant.
A sound at the door had her heart stuttering.
Were they coming back?
Had they decided to kill her instead?
The door opened and someone stumbled in, hit the floor. Charly drew back against the wall. Her heart thundered.
The light came on…the brightness blinded her. She tried to force her eyes open…to see.
Paul Grant was on the floor. Blood on his face. He raised his head and stared at Charly.
“Charly!”
Her attention darted away from the man she had thought was her friend to the one at the door.
Billie.
He was here.
Tears spilled from her eyes.
He was suddenly kneeling next to her. He removed the gag. Relief flooded her.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded. “Martin.” She cleared her throat. “Martin is in the other room. He’s hurt.” Her gaze locked with Billie’s. “Bad, I think.”
Billie’s jaw hardened. “I need a knife.”
He got to his feet, grabbed Paul by his collar and dragged him toward the kitchen area as if he were a rag doll. Billie opened and closed drawers until he found a knife, then he dragged Paul back to where Charly was.
“Move,” he warned the man, “and you know what will happen.” Then he turned to Charly. “Hold your hands up.”
She did as he instructed. Careful not to get the sharp edge of the blade against her skin, he cut through her bindings. She rubbed her wrists. Relief rushed through her. “Thank you.”
He did the same at her ankles where the ropes were especially tight. She stretched her feet, grateful to be free. Thank God. Thank God.
Then he handed the gun to her. “I need to check on Martin. Don’t take your eyes off Grant. If he moves, shoot. Shoot until he stops.”
Charly took the gun in both hands, held it tight, the business end pointed at the man who had betrayed her…who had been ready to turn her over to human traffickers. “Gladly,” she snarled.
Paul held up a hand. “You don’t understand.”
Fury streaked through her. “Move your mouth or hand again,” she spat the words at him, “and you’ll regret it.”
Billie came back into the room, Martin leaning heavily on him. “EMS is on the way,” he told Charly. He ushered Martin into a chair.
In that single instant of stupidity that she looked away, Paul grabbed for the gun.
She pulled the trigger.
The air flew out of her lungs.
Blood bloomed on her longtime friend’s upper arm. He howled in agony.
Billie came over, pushed the gun and her hands downward since she was still holding it in a firing position. Then he knelt next to Paul and inspected the injury. “You’ll live.”
Charly managed to draw in a gasp of air. Thank God. As much as she hated the man right now for what he’d done, she didn’t want to be responsible for his death.
“Where,” Billie asked, his hand flat on the other man’s injured shoulder, slowing the flow of blood, “is my sister?”
Charly held her breath…prayed they were about to hear that she was alive and close by.
When Paul only stared at him, Billie’s fingers tightened on the man’s shoulder and the bastard cried out. “You do not want me to do what I am prepared to do to get that answer,” Billie warned.
“A shipping container.”
He rattled off the number and the address. Charly knew the place.
“If you’re lying to me,” Billie promised, “I will make you regret it.” He loosened his grip on the injured shoulder.
Paul gasped for air. “Unless they’ve taken them already,” he said haltingly, “she’s there.”
“We have to hurry,” Charly said, fear throttling through her.
The door suddenly burst open. Charly instinctively turned the gun in that direction. Laney Rogers stood there, the rifle belonging to Charly in her hands. She glared at Billie. “You’re a dead man.”
“Shoot,” Billie said under his breath as he raised his hands in surrender. “Now!” He rolled to the right.
Charly pulled the trigger.
Laney fell to the floor, issuing those bloodcurdling screams again. Charly had shot her in the calf. The rifle had flown from her hands. If she’d pulled the trigger, she hadn’t pulled it hard enough because the weapon didn’t fire.
Sheriff Malone and several of his deputies suddenly poured into the cabin, stepping over and around Laney.
Charly only then noticed the lights flashing outside. EMS personnel were the next to crowd into the cabin.
Then everything started to happen at once. Martin was rushed away. Paramedics were seeing to Laney and Paul.
“He killed my husband,” Laney screamed.
“Kerwin is on his way to the hospital,” Malone assured her. “The paramedic thinks he had a heart attack but he’s stable for now. Laney Rogers, you are under arrest.”
While the sheriff read Laney her rights, another deputy was doing the same with Paul even as he was loaded onto a stretcher.
Billie grabbed Charly by the arm. He tucked the gun she’d used on Laney into his belt. “We have to go now.”
She nodded.
Just as they stepped off the porch, a voice stopped them.
“This part is mine,” Sheriff Malone said. He came down those steps. “I have cruisers en route to the port right now. Kerwin told me where to look before I let them take him to the hospital.”
“I have to be there,” Billie argued.
The sheriff nodded. “You and Charly can ride with me.”
Lake City Marine Transport
Lake Guntersville Park Drive, 11:42 p.m.
SHERIFF MALONE HAD the owner of the transport service on site by the time they arrived. They located the shipping container and the manager opened it. To Charly’s surprise, Sheriff Malone allowed Billie to enter first. EMS was standing by.
Thirty seconds later he came out with his sister in his arms. “There are two more in there.”
Billie carried Briana to the nearest ambulance, and a paramedic immediately started to examine her.
Charly’s knees nearly buckled as she watched the scene play out. Deputies carried the other two women out of their prison. All were loaded into ambulances and rushed away.
Sheriff Malone ushered her and Billie back to his cruiser. “We’ll follow them to the hospital.”
Charly reached for the rear passenger door. “You should ride up front, Charly,” he said. “We need to talk.”
Billie opened the front passenger door for her and then got into the back himself.
Charly wondered if she was going to be arrested for shooting Laney. But it was either shoot or be shot.
In the backseat, Billie was speaking softly to someone on his cell phone. She figured he was letting all the parents know he’d found his sister and her husband. Charly’s tears started to flow again. God, she was a mess.
When Sheriff Malone had maneuvered onto the street, he glanced at her. “After you and Billie left the office, Kerrick decided he had some things to say.”
She could only imagine what that jerk had said. “Is he going to testify about what they’ve been doing?”
“He can’t tell us a whole lot about the trafficking activities,” the sheriff explained, “but he had some interesting stories about other things.”
Charly braced herself. She had no clue but something about his voice told her it was a bombshell.
“The night your parents were murdered,” he began, “Laney came home all shaken and acting crazy,” he said.
“He didn’t pay much attention. But the next morning when he put his laundry in the basket—apparently Laney is a stickler about that—he noticed spots of blood on the blouse his mother had been wearing.
And beneath the blouse was a gun. He doesn’t know what happened to the gun, but he saw it.
Touched it. It wasn’t until later that day that he heard about your parents.
But he figured the whole scenario was crazy.
His mama couldn’t be a killer. But when I asked Kerwin, he started crying and the paramedics had to get him to the hospital so I couldn’t press the issue.
But I will because I’m taking his reaction to mean she did it. ”
Charly stared at him in disbelief. “Are you saying Laney Rogers shot my parents?”
“I’m saying it’s something I’ll be looking into. I just thought you should know.”
“I don’t get it.” She shook her head and faced forward. “Why would she do that?”
“I can’t say, but maybe now you can finally stop blaming me.”
Charly stared at the man she had often felt on some level had wanted her father out of the way. The man she worried hadn’t done his job to the best of his ability when it came to finding her parents’ killer. Was it possible that she and Jen might finally have closure on that nightmare?
She turned in the seat to check on Billie. “You okay?”
He nodded. “I am now. You?”
“Maybe. The jury’s still out.”
He smiled. She smiled back.
The best part of all this was that Briana and Martin were alive and out of the reach of the bastards who would have taken them away forever. And maybe Charly would have an answer to the question that had haunted her for sixteen years.
The bad part was that Billie would be leaving.
She turned around and collapsed into her seat. She wasn’t ready for that…at all.