Chapter Eleven
Eleven
Willits, California
This was horse country.
And weed country.
Ronan was well aware that illegal growers operated in this area. He and others from the sheriff’s office routinely did sweeps, but there was a lot of land and much of it was only navigable on foot.
Progress was never as fast as they wanted it to be.
He got out of his SUV, careful to close his door quietly. Sound traveled farther when it was this cold, so he took pains to be quiet as he got in the passenger side of Elle’s Tahoe.
She looked tense and her eyes were red, like she’d been crying. That troubled him and he wished it didn’t. He wished he didn’t find this woman so appealing, but he did.
They’d become friends over the past two weeks of nighttime conversations at the bluffs. Yet she’d still hidden things from him.
“Thank you for calling me,” he said quietly.
She glanced at him, her gaze clear despite her swollen eyes. “I said I would.”
That she had made a difference. He was no longer boiling on the inside. His temper was now at a low simmer. “What’s happened?”
“I put a tracker on Wendy’s car. Plates are stolen, by the way.
She’s driving a Ford Taurus but the plates belong to a Honda Accord reported stolen out of Santa Rosa two weeks ago.
I don’t know if they stole the Taurus or not, but I’m thinking yes, as the VIN on the dash was filed off.
She drove onto this road and turned off a little ways up.
I didn’t want to approach without y—without backup,” she amended, but she’d been about to say without you.
What was left of his anger fizzled. She might have hidden things, but she was transparent when she believed that she needed to be.
She was upset and he didn’t want to make it worse. But he also didn’t want her out here if her head wasn’t completely in the game. A breach of focus could be fatal.
“Thank you. That’s all good to know and I will ask more questions, but I meant, what’s happened to you? You’ve been crying.”
She drew a breath and let it out slowly. “Just a disagreement with Sara.”
“She knows you called me?”
“Yeah. She was…unhappy with me. She and I will figure it out later. Now my priority is finding Reece Miller and hauling his ass back to San Francisco.”
“He’ll be held in custody here first. For the murders.”
“True, but once he’s in custody, my job is done.
” She nodded once, like a punctuation mark.
“Really done. I’m not cut out for this level of intrigue.
” She held out her sat phone, which showed a tracking map.
“This is the Taurus. It’s parked about a mile from here.
We probably shouldn’t drive all the way up there. They might hear us.”
“We’ll walk.”
“Okay.” She drew a breath and squared her shoulders. “I don’t know what we’ll be walking into, exactly, but I have reason to believe there are armed growers in the area.”
He lifted his brows. “Reason to believe? Did you stumble onto something you shouldn’t have?”
“Yes. That was before we realized Miller might be following or tracking us on the coast.” She hesitated, then sighed quietly. “Before we found out that Dianne Foster was dead.”
Before they found out that Steve Garfield was also dead.
“Why were you looking here?”
She swallowed hard, then lifted her chin. “Reece Miller lived on a piece of property not too far from here after his release from juvie. He lived here for about a year and a half. That was more than ten years ago.”
Miller had lived here. That’s where he was for the eighteen months after juvie. Then realization dawned and, with it, a new wave of fury filled him. “That’s what Dianne told you. That’s what got her killed.”
Elle nodded, misery in her eyes.
He had to bite back angry words. If he’d known that Miller had ties to this side of the mountains, he might have caught him two weeks ago.
Or maybe not. Again, a lot of land, much of it only navigable by foot.
“Where exactly?” he asked, gritting his teeth.
She pointed to a spot on the tracking map.
It was about a half mile from the bright green dot signaling the Ford Taurus.
“Somewhere around there. Sara and I hiked the area the night before we met you at Judith’s inn.
” She tapped a point on Highway 20. “We didn’t realize this road was here.
It’s not on the map or we would have driven up this way.
We’d hiked about five miles when we met two men with guns and unfriendly attitudes. They came up behind us.”
A shiver of dread raced down his spine. “You could have been killed.”
“We would have been if Sara hadn’t told them that our office knew exactly where we were. Her wife tracks our phones.”
“The growers believed you?”
“I think it was a risk assessment on their part. If we were killed, our colleagues would be certain to come looking for us, bringing cops with them. If they let us go, there was a chance we wouldn’t tell the cops anything.
Sara can be convincing.” She glanced at the time on the dashboard clock.
“There’s also a good chance that she’s going to be here within an hour or so. ”
“You asked her for backup? I thought she was going home because her wife is in labor.”
“She is supposed to be going home. And, no, I didn’t ask her for backup, because I’d already texted you. I specifically asked her not to come. She said she wouldn’t, but she doesn’t trust me anymore. I don’t know what she’ll do now.”
“She doesn’t trust you because you wouldn’t lie to me?”
“That’s part of it. I haven’t been happy in this job in a while and she picked up on that. It’s…well, not your problem. Let’s make a plan to take Miller into custody so that I can go home.”
The thought of her going home troubled him, and he wished it wouldn’t. But it still did.
Focus.
“Right,” he said. “The plan is for you to stay here and for me to take him into custody.”
She laughed, the sound flat and mirthless. “Sorry, no. I’m going to see this through. I may be conflicted on the basic morals of lying to people, but I am competent in my job.”
“I know you are. You’ve gotten me this far. Let me do the rest.”
“We’ve got a situation with a sick baby and a protective mother along with a man desperate enough to make them sleep in a tent in the winter. And to kill two people to keep them from talking to us again. This isn’t a one-person retrieval, Ronan. It never was.”
“If I make you stay, you’re going to follow me, aren’t you?”
“Yep,” she said. “Totally going to follow you.”
“Do you have a vest?”
She nodded. “In the back. I’ll be wearing it because the two guys with guns have them, too.”
“Their weapons?”
“Shotguns. That’s what they had when we saw them, anyway. I imagine they have a whole arsenal.”
He agreed. “Okay, so we go in together. If we feel it’s too much for the two of us to handle, we retreat and call in the SWAT team. If we feel we can manage it, you’re responsible for the wife and kid. I’ll take Miller down. And you’ll get credit for the retrieval,” he added dryly.
“I’m truly not interested in the credit. I just want this to be over with. I can’t touch the woman unless she interferes. I’m only authorized to arrest the skipper.”
He frowned. “You’re standing on procedure now?”
“I always do. That’s one of the reasons my boss and I disagree.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why don’t we play it by ear? If it’s safe for you to take Miller, I’ll step aside. If I feel like your life—or my life—is in danger, I’ll step in.”
She considered it, then nodded. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Willits, California
Monday, February 2, 12:05 p.m.
Elle stopped when Ronan, in front of her, held up one hand. They’d walked for a mile through the woods at a fast pace, and Elle was finally warm.
Importantly, her hands were warm, which meant her finger would be able to more reliably pull the trigger of the handgun she held at her side. Ronan had initially scowled at the firearm, but she’d shown him her concealed carry permit and he’d begrudgingly nodded.
He was letting her walk behind him with a loaded gun.
At least someone trusts me.
She peered around him, unsurprised to see the Ford Taurus parked in the middle of the single-lane road they’d been following. Although calling it a road was too generous. It was more like a wide trail, unpaved and gutted with potholes.
She was actually glad for the cold weather because the ground was frozen. Otherwise she would have been ankle-deep in mud.
Ronan retreated farther into the trees. They’d been moving along the edge of the road up until now, but this was the part where they had to be careful.
The last thing they wanted was for Miller and his wife to know they were coming.
They continued, keeping the road in sight while keeping themselves out of sight. Elle wondered if the illegal growers with guns knew they were here.
Probably not—because she was still breathing. They’d threatened to shoot her the moment they saw her again and she believed them.
Ronan stopped again and, stepping to his side, her breath caught.
They’d found them. Exactly where she and Sara originally thought they’d be.
A hundred feet ahead was the ramshackle house she and Sara had seen from the drones before they were shot down. Inside the house, sheltered on two sides by the remaining walls, was a tent. What was left of the roof would have hidden their campsite from the drone.
Outside the tent were a camping stove, a baby stroller, some cookware, two folding chairs, and a lantern.
She concentrated, listening for any sign of life. She heard nothing until a groan split the air. Not an I’m-having-sex kind of groan. It was an I-want-to-die kind of groan.
She and Ronan exchanged a glance before starting for the tent, side by side. He pointed to himself, then gestured that he was about to call out. She nodded, tensed and waiting.
This was the critical moment. When the target realized they were caught and fight-or-flight set in. Elle hoped the Millers didn’t choose to fight. There was a baby in that tent.