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  “I’ll be watching you, Guy.”

  Guy looked at the warning ticket in his hand as Jones drove off. There wasn’t anything he could do to help Cal and Kelly now—except walk to the auto parts store and pick out a new taillight.

  Guy hammered out a short text explaining the reason for his delay and began walking toward Hal’s Auto Parts Store one block down from The Register. He knew time was the commodity that mattered most when it came to helping Cal, but Jones had just shortened his supply of it.

  Chapter 42

  Dawkins’ patrol car zoomed up the driveway of Walker’s house. Only five minutes before, Dawkins and rookie deputy Willie Warren had been attacking a plate of ribs from Ray-Ray’s when Sheriff Jones radioed for them to check out a disturbance at the Walker place.

  After Dawkins was in the car, Sheriff Jones called him on his cell to let him know that the “disturbance” was actually the location of Statenville’s hottest fugitive, Cal Murphy. The sheriff was tipped off to Cal and Kelly’s whereabouts and the two snoopy reporters were about to be arrested on more trumped up charges.

  Without any reason to believe the situation was dangerous, Dawkins took his time getting out of his car. He sent Warren around the back of the house to make sure the elusive reporters didn’t make an attempt to escape. Lacking familiarity with Cal and Kelly, Warren unholstered his gun. He wanted the two fugitives to know he was serious.

  Meanwhile, Dawkins sauntered up to the door and rang the doorbell. Then he waited. If anyone was home, they weren’t moving about the house. Silence ruled the air.

  “I know you’re in there, Cal,” Dawkins yelled. “Don’t make this any more difficult than it has to be.”

  No response.

  Dawkins began pounding on the front door.

  ***

  When the sedative wore off, Cal guessed it hadn’t been that long, but he couldn’t be sure. Sitting in a pitch black room fastened to a chair with your mouth taped shut offered few ways to get any answers—if there was anyone else in the room to get answers from.

  He grunted as he tried to shout Kelly’s name. Nothing.

  With no light, he couldn’t see if she was even in the room, much less if she was all right. Cal figured with Kelly’s smaller frame, she would take a little longer to awaken from the sedative. But Cal knew she was there. He could smell her. All day the sweet smell of her perfume had reminded him that the thrill ride they were on had become more about protecting her than extracting the truth from a well-guarded mystery.

  After doing nothing but sitting in the dark and trying to piece together the disjointed events of the day, Cal felt Kelly begin to stir.

  She began her muffled cries for help, too.

  Cal responded with a few of his own.

  The pointless exchange went on for about a minute until they both realized communicating was impossible without the ability to make a cognitive sound. Being bound to a chair back to back in a dark room didn’t help either.

  They went five minutes without even a grunt or a stir coming from either one. Cal decided not to fight Walker either. It was clear that pleas for mercy were more helpful than lecturing him for the mistreatment. Cal still wasn’t sure what Walker was doing, but he concluded that his interest was in removing him temporarily from this investigation rather than doing bodily harm. The chances were aplenty to do that, but Walker continued to side with mercy over murder. This, too, puzzled Cal.

  Only the occasional scuffle of feet moving outside the door broke the silence.

  Until Cal and Kelly heard someone pounding on an exterior door.

  Immediately, the room filled with muffled screams from the immobile reporters. The voice that accompanied the pounding on the door was a familiar one.

  Chapter 43

  Dawkins grew tired of waiting. He knew Warren might do something stupid if the tension continued to build. Just as he resolved that he was going to get the battering ram out of his car and pull Cal and Kelly from the house, Dawkins heard muffled screams. It sounded like someone was in the house.

  Dawkins ran to his patrol car and popped the trunk to retrieve the battering ram. He yelled for Warren to join him in the front. Warren came scrambling around the side of the house.

  “What is it, Dawkins? What’s going on?”

  “I heard some screams coming from the house, so whoever is in there may not be voluntarily. We’re going to have to bust the door down and find out what’s going on. You ready?”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Just stand back here and cover me while I knock the door down. Then follow me in and be ready for anything. Got it?”

  “Yep. Let’s do it.”

  “OK. Stand back.”

  Dawkins needed three heaving blasts from the battering ram to bust open the door. He dropped it and rushed into the house, drawing his weapon in case he met any strong resistance. Warren followed. He handled the gun as if it was the first time he had been in a potential combative situation since becoming a deputy – because it was his first time.

  The muffled screams hadn’t stopped since Dawkins first heard them. For two straight minutes he had heard what sounded like pleas for help. Dawkins and Warren raced down the hall on the left side of the house, looking for a room that might contain the voices. No luck. Then the right side. Nothing there either.

  Warren froze and looked down.

  “I think it’s coming from the basement.”

  Dawkins nodded.

  “Good work, rook.”

  Dawkins located the door to the stairs and flipped on the light switch. The cries continued as they rushed down the stairs. They were getting louder.

  The basement was unfinished. The lighting was roughed in, as were some of the walls. It didn’t even have a cement floor in some parts, as dirt served that function.

  As Dawkins and Warren crept through the empty space, they located a single door in the back corner of the room. The cries were coming from there.

  Dawkins jammed his shoulder against the wall just outside the door. He looked at Warren, who had taken up a position across from him by the door.

  “You ready?” Dawkins whispered.

  “Let’s do it.”

  Dawkins flung open the door.

  ***

  Cal and Kelly agonized over their potential savior. The person who was about to walk through the door could either be a friend or foe. But in either case, their situation was about to change.

  They never stopped screaming for help, even beneath sealed lips.

  Finally, a light pierced the room’s darkness, giving Cal a better idea of his situation. Until that moment, all he knew was that he was bound to a chair on a dirt floor with Kelly behind him. But room dimensions or other objects in the room? Cal had no idea about the true nature of his environment.

  Despite a strong desire to get out of his chair, Cal’s anxiety heightened with each passing second. What if their savior wasn’t really a savior? What if he was more like a tormentor? He cringed as the door opened.

  Chapter 44

  Dawkins squinted as he peered into the room. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness as he felt around for a light switch. He finally found one and flicked it on. The man lying on the floor looked unfamiliar to him.

  The man squirmed around, attempting to say something but to no avail as the duct tape over his mouth suppressed any potential successful communication.

  Dawkins knelt down beside the man, whose hands were fastened behind his back with duct tape as were his feet.

  “Who are you? And what are you doing here?”

  Dawkins ripped the duct tape off the man’s mouth.

  “I’m special agent Chris Cooper from the FBI. Help me up!”

  Dawkins flashed a wry smile at the moment only he would find comedic. Then he got serious.

  “Not until you answer my second question.”

  “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m squirming on the floor trying to convince Barney Fife to
help me out.”

  “You’re a funny man, Agent Cooper. I always thought Barney Fife would be the one squirming on the floor, duped by someone else—not the one in charge of the situation.”

  Cooper’s biting edge softened. “Just help me up, OK?”

  “I want some answers first.”

  “I don’t really have any for you. I’m here handling an internal situation.”

  “It doesn’t look like you’re handling it very well.”

  “Enough with the wise cracks. Just get me untied, OK?”

  Dawkins and Warren began freeing Cooper, who didn’t demonstrate much gratitude once he was on his feet.

  Despite the runaround Cooper gave him, Dawkins was determined to get some more answers.

  “Let me see your badge, Agent Cooper.”

  Cooper dug into his pocket and pulled out an official FBI badge.

  Satisfied with Cooper’s credential, Dawkins pressed on.

  “Do you know Buddy Walker?”

  “I already told you that I’m not at liberty to say anything. I’m only here handling an internal matter.”

  “Well, we got a tip that Walker was holding someone hostage, which is why I’m even here saving your sorry self. So, if your Walker is that internal matter you’re talking about, I’ll be happy to let it remain your problem and drop our investigation. Otherwise, I’m going to make your life miserable. So, what’s it gonna be?”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you anything else. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get going.”

  Cooper headed toward the basement stairs with Dawkins right behind him.

  “Great. I’m sure Judge Johnson won’t mind issuing a search warrant for Walker’s house, seeing that we have plenty of probable cause—and the fact that the Judge is my uncle.”

  Cooper stopped his march up the basement stairs.

  “Look. Please don’t start causing any trouble. You have no idea who you’re messing with. If you jeopardize this operation, I have my own ways of dealing with you. And I promise you won’t like them.”

  Dawkins bowed up.

  “Is that a threat? Because you’re in my town now, not some big fancy city where the FBI walks all over local law enforcement. We’re the law here.”

  “It’s your grave, Barney.”

  Cooper chose to make that his parting salvo and continued ascending the basement stairs.

  Dawkins made his final appeal, which came out more like a threat.

  “Boy, it would be a shame, Agent Cooper, if you got arrested for trespassing.”

  Cooper didn’t look back as he reached the top step and opened the door. He began sprinting for the front door.

  “Let’s go,” Dawkins said to Warren as they scrambled after Cooper.

  By the time Dawkins and Warren made it to the front yard, all they saw were the taillights on Cooper’s Cadillac Escalade.

  Dawkins kicked the ground in disgust. Cooper’s arrogance grated on his last nerve. He had untied Cooper only to be mocked, lied to and humiliated.

  But Dawkins didn’t really need a definitive answer from Cooper. He was no Barney Fife. He now knew that Walker was a federal agent, too.

  Chapter 45

  While on the run since lunch, Cal feared his next encounter with Guy. But when he saw Guy’s face after he busted through the door, feelings of terror gave way to relief.

  Guy ran over to his only two staffers worth more than a pile of two-day-old newsprint and ripped the duct tape off their mouths.

  “Thank God you found us!” Cal said. He hugged Guy, who never looked like he wanted a hug—and still didn’t in this tense moment.

  “Enough with the mushy gratitude. What have you two have gotten yourselves into?”

  “We’re still trying to figure it all out,” Cal said.

  “Tell me what you know so far, starting with why you’re in Buddy Walker’s barn.”

  “We’re in Buddy Walker’s barn?” Kelly asked what Cal was thinking.

  “I once considered buying this property when it was up for sale three years ago. Ten secluded acres on the edge of town. What’s not to love? I remember this place well, so I just figured if something shady went down, it would happen out here. You can’t see this structure from the house. Besides, I saw Dawkins’ squad car at the house when I drove by.”

  “Dawkins? Here?”

  “He was when I drove by, but he’s a worthless deputy and wouldn’t think of checking here. But talk fast just in case.”

  Cal wasted no time in recounting the events of the past six hours in efficient broad strokes. Regurgitating the who, what, when, where and why for every school board meeting and middle school girls basketball games enabled him to spell out the big picture without wasting words. He figured since Guy was a newspaper man, he could fill in the blanks himself.

  Just as Cal was about to tell Guy about finding crystal meth at the Cloverdale plant, he stopped.

  “What is this place?” he asked.

  Lost in the excitement over their rescue, Cal and Kelly had hardly noticed their surroundings. Guy’s revelation that they were in Walker’s barn satisfied their initial curiosity to their whereabouts. They didn’t even inspect the room.

  The room was a sizable 20 feet by 20 feet, likely a large tack room at one point. With dirt floors and wooden walls, the décor was rustic. A mirror framed in an old saddle hung on the far wall, a relic that probably survived from the property’s previous owner. But it wasn’t the mirror that arrested Cal’s attention. It was the out-of-place dry erase boards.

  Each wall had at least two boards with chemical equations scribbled all over them. It looked like gibberish to Cal. He hated organic chemistry. Equations and rudimentary molecular structures appeared like ancient hieroglyphics. What did all of this mean?

  While Cal stood staring at the board, he hoped something from that class would come back to him. It didn’t. Fortunately, he wasn’t the only one in the room.

  “Uh, Cal, this is big stuff,” Kelly said. She stood slack jawed, staring at the boards and awaiting Cal’s response.

  “I was hoping either you or Guy would know what this is, because I don’t remember a thing from college chemistry class.”

  “This is really big stuff, Cal.”

  Cal was growing annoyed with Kelly’s foreboding and redundant statements.

  “Spit it out, Kelly!”

  “I think I might know how those kids died.”

  “What? They overdosed on drugs?”

  “Nope. It probably wasn’t an overdose—and it wasn’t an accident either.”

  Chapter 46

  Gold hated feeling out of control, yet at this moment, it was as if his hands were tied behind his back while in the driver’s seat of a speeding sports car headed for a 45-degree turn. Off-road danger was imminent. Could he survive?

  Statenville had survived plenty of scares under his watch. New snooping citizens. Disgruntled employees. Curious trespassers. They could all be persuaded. Brandish a handgun or flash some cash—whatever the situation called for. In most situations, the person developed an immediate case of amnesia. There was an unused rocky quarry in a secluded canyon for everyone else.

  But a federal agent? Working at Cloverdale Industries? With access to every room? This was far beyond a simple breach.

  Gold had implemented rigorous “background checks” for all new employees. He even checked his current employees at the time. Everyone understood the sacred secret that they kept. Should it get out, it not only meant that they lost their healthy paychecks, but they would also likely go to federal prison for a long time. He underscored the serious nature of their “business” every opportunity he had at closed corporate gatherings. But Walker, the innocent basketball coach needing a few hours to help support his elderly mother, passed his background check without as much as a raised eyebrow. He had a few run-ins with the law, but nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to make Gold suspect Walker wasn’t who he claimed to be.

  Yet Gold�
�s failsafe had been eluded and now he was dealing with his nightmare scenario. Not only that, but Walker had been working with another agent. How much the other agent knew was a wild card. If they were really working together, Walker wouldn’t have likely tied him up. At this point, Gold had to take a risk. Without one, life as he had crafted it for the good people of Statenville would be gone forever. One misstep and Statenville would turn into a rural ghost town like every other small town in America that hadn’t figured out a way to beat the gloomy economic times. But Gold only told himself that to assuage his conscience. He knew it was never really about Statenville or its people.

  He took a deep breath. Hyperventilating wouldn’t allow him to think clearly.

  Then he stopped and smiled. It was in moments like these that he patted himself on the back for adding every local law enforcement personnel to the Cloverdale Industries payroll. It was strictly a cash payroll with laundered money hand delivered weekly in an unmarked envelope. It bought Gold the extra help he needed when he needed it.

  Right now, he needed it more than ever.

  ***

  Walker sped toward Cloverdale Industries. His long deep-cover assignment was almost over. It would already be over if Cooper had his way. Not everyone at the FBI’s Salt Lake field office agreed with Walker’s tactics. In fact, most people didn’t. Going off script and using unorthodox – and at times, illegal – methods to achieve his assignment didn’t make him popular.

  But when Cooper showed up and began leveling career-ending accusations, Walker knew he had to overstep protocol bounds to get the job done. He wanted out of the hellhole he referred to as Statenville. And if he had his way, every TV station with a news crew within 500 miles would descend upon this podunk town and cover the story of the year. He didn’t care that he would never get any credit for single-handedly taking down the Northwest’s biggest drug cartel. His just reward would be seeing the Statenville city limits sign vanish in his rearview mirror never to be seen with his own two eyes ever again.

  However, there was still plenty of work remaining in order to get released from his assignment.