She gave him a half-smile back and Beckard thought, Damn, I poured that on pretty thick. Hopefully I didn’t scare her off.
“Got any bars?” Wade asked him.
He nodded. “Plenty,” he said, walking to one of the windows and pretending to look out while he dialed a number on the phone.
He glanced over his shoulder at the woman, catching her defiant glare. He was surprised she had given up trying to convince the kids. Then again, she was smart and probably figured out she had no chance of success. Or very little. After all, he was a pretty damn good liar and held all the cards. And now he had the shotgun, too.
The kids were milling about as he dialed, but he caught the small brunette watching him curiously, almost suspiciously.
She’s gonna be a problem, that one.
Someone finally picked up on the other end of the phone call, the voice coming through the speaker placed against his ear where only he could hear it. “The number you have dialed is no longer in service,” a computerized female voice answered. “Please hang up and try again.”
Beckard ignored the voice and said into the phone, “Hey, Diane, it’s me.” He paused briefly before continuing. “Yeah, tell the captain I ran into some trouble escorting that woman back to the station. We got into a car accident and she escaped.” Another dramatic pause, followed by, “I almost died but I’m okay, thanks to some kids at a cabin in the woods.” He threw a quick look back at Wade. “What’s the address here?”
Wade told him, and he repeated it into the phone.
“…please hang up and try again,” the computerized voice repeated for the fourth time.
“Yeah, as soon as you can,” he said into the phone, then wiped at a string of dirty sweat on his forehead. “Great, thanks Diane. I’ll wait for them here.” He ended the call, walked over, and handed the phone back to Rachel. “Thanks for letting me borrow it.”
She nodded and put the phone away with one hand, the other still wrapped tightly around Wade’s waist.
“What’d they say?” Sabrina asked.
“They’re sending two squad cars over to take us back,” he said before glancing down at his watch. “I guess two hours?”
“That’s a long time,” Wade said.
“The station’s about twenty miles up the highway, and they’re going to have to look for this place. I’m just glad they had enough people on the night shift to come get us. We’re usually pretty low on manpower after sundown.” He looked at the woman. She was still staring daggers at him from the floor. “She’s dangerous, guys. We have to be really careful with her.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Donnie said. “You got your shotgun back, and I’m sitting on her. What’s she gonna do?”
Beckard smiled. “Good point, Donnie.”
“What now?” Wade asked.
“Sit back and wait for my reinforcements to arrive. Then we’ll be out of your hair, and you guys can all pretend tonight never happened.” He touched his side for effect again. “Well, it’ll be a while yet for me, but it’s all part of the job, I guess.”
“Hey, Donnie, we packed that duct tape, right?” Wade asked.
Donnie thought about it, then nodded. “Back in the van, in my bag. Why?”
“So we can tie her up, since—” he turned to Beckard “—you don’t have your cuffs anymore, right?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what she did with them. Probably threw them into the woods.”
“He’s lying,” the woman said. “Don’t believe anything he says. He’s a killer!”
“Who?” the brunette asked.
“Him!” she shouted, staring at Beckard. “He’s dangerous!”
Beckard ignored her and said to Wade, “Can you go get that duct tape?”
“Sure,” Wade said. Then, he added, looking over at the woman, “Maybe we can use it to shut her up, too.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Beckard grinned back at him.
Chapter 7
Ten years of research, six years of training, and three years of getting ready for this moment…and this is how it ends. Sitting on the floor of a cabin in the woods, bound and helpless. It wasn’t even close to what she had imagined during all those lonely nights lying in bed alone trying to picture every scenario in her head; all the things that could go wrong and all the twists and turns that had to be accounted for. She had it all figured out.
Or thought she did, anyway.
And the night had started off so promising, too.
“What’s your name?” the small brunette asked her.
“Allie,” she said.
“What did you do, Allie?”
“I didn’t do anything,” she said, looking back at the girl who had just patched up the man she had spent the last ten years of her life trying to find, and having found, had just failed to kill.
It’s not over yet. You can still salvage this.
She leaned slightly forward, toward the girl. “He’s lying.”
“About what?” the girl, Sabrina, asked.
Not really a girl. A young woman. Twenty? Twenty-one? Young enough to be on break from college and old enough to actually be in college. The last time Allie was on a school campus, that was when—
No! Concentrate on the present!
There’s still a chance to save this!
They had sat her in one corner of the cabin with her wrists and ankles bound with duct tape they had retrieved from the van outside. The restraints cut off most of her ability to move and drove home her dire situation.
Ten years of research…
They had wanted to cover up her mouth to keep her quiet, too, but Sabrina argued in her favor. For some reason they listened to the girl, even the two big guys. Donnie, the jackass who had tackled her from behind and then sat down on her, and Wade, the tall lanky one with the blonde girlfriend.
“Allie,” Sabrina said, directing Allie’s attention back to her small round face. “You said he was lying. What’s he lying about?”
“About everything. Don’t believe anything he says. Every word that comes out of his mouth is a lie.”
She was in the living room with Sabrina, with Donnie in the kitchen to her right pulling meat cuts from a cooler and preparing a portable skillet. Donnie seemed disinterested in their conversation, as if none of the last hour was in any way out of the ordinary for him. Wade and Rachel had gone into one of the bedrooms in the back, while Beckard was in the bathroom “cleaning up.” He had been gone for two minutes, but soon he’d be back.
She focused on Sabrina. “He’s not who he claims to be.”
“Beckard?” Sabrina said.
“Yes.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s a killer.”
“You mean because he’s killed someone in the line of duty?”
“No. Because he’s a killer.”
Sabrina looked confused. “I don’t understand.”
“He’s not a cop.” She shook her head. “At least, I don’t think he is.”
“You don’t think he is?” Again, that look of confusion. Maybe a little suspicion had even slipped in there.
No, no, I’m losing her…
She struggled for the right words, but they were elusive. “In all the research I’ve done, nothing ever pointed to him being a cop.”
“Research? On Beckard?”
“He’s a maniac. Have you ever heard of the Roadside Killer?”
“No…”
“No?”
Sabrina shook her head. “We’re not from around here. This cabin belongs to Wade’s uncle.”
“The Roadside Killer is a serial killer,” Allie said.