“Shut up, woman.”
“Where were they headed?” Mattie asked.
“I don’t know, I don’t know.”
“How long ago did they leave?”
“Fifteen minutes, maybe a half hour.”
“Who did this to your face?” Mattie asked Patrick.
With jaw set, he remained silent.
“Tommy did it.” The information burst from Fran as if she could no longer contain it. “He hit me, too.”
“Fran.” Patrick’s voice held a warning.
“I don’t care,” Fran shouted at him. “I don’t care who knows. We need their help. I’m sick of being afraid.”
Mattie realized that her own childhood experiences had colored her judgment, so she had not read this family’s situation accurately. “Think, Fran. Where would Tommy go?”
Fran became utterly silent, and her eyes lost focus as she forced herself to look inward, trying to dredge up some memory that would tell her where her children might be.
Molly spoke up, her face blanched, eyes wide. “I think he might take him to the Powderhorn.”
The Powderhorn mine had been abandoned decades ago, after a cave-in made it too dangerous to work anymore. “What makes you think that?”
“I heard Tommy tell someone that he’d been there a few days ago and how scary the place is. He said he wanted to scare Sean, teach him a lesson.”
“Why?”
“For being friends with you. For calling you just now about the drugs.”
Tommy must’ve caught Sean at it. She felt a sinking sensation as she realized how she’d failed the child.
“Did Tommy take your truck?” she asked Fran.
“No. It’s broken down.”
“What’s he driving?”
“A dark-gray Jeep Cherokee.”
“What’s the license plate?”
“I don’t know.”
Mattie remembered the SUV that passed her when she was jogging last night. “Where’d he get the Jeep?”
Fran looked at Patrick. He glared up at Fran in silence as if warning her not to say anything more.
“Molly, do you know where he got the Jeep?” Mattie asked.
“No. He showed up driving it in the middle of the night.”
Mattie decided she’d gleaned all the information she could for the moment, and she didn’t want to waste time trying to get anything more out of the family. “Robo, out.”
Robo gave her a look of doggie disappointment. He relaxed his position somewhat though he remained in a crouch.
“Deputy Garcia,” Mattie called.
“Yes, Mattie?”
“Take this family into the department for questioning and for their own safety. I believe the son Tommy may be involved in drug running, and I think someone here knows more about it. Call the sheriff, and let him decide how to handle it.”
Patrick’s face darkened.
“Will you go peacefully, Mr. O’Malley, or do I need to put cuffs on you?”
“I’ll go,” he said. “But you’re going to hear from my attorney on this.”
Mattie held back a sarcastic smile. She knew a bluff when she heard one.
“Can you handle this while I go after the kids?” Mattie asked Garcia.
“Sure.”
Mattie told Patrick to stand, and then she patted him down for weapons. Finding none, she let Robo escort him to Garcia’s cruiser. She shut him and Fran into the back cage while directing Molly and the baby into the front seat.
Moving over to her own cruiser, she loaded Robo into his compartment through the front. She buckled into the driver’s seat, reached for her radio transmitter, and keyed it on. She started her engine, pulling out into the street as she spoke into the microphone. “Dispatch, this is K-9 One. We’ve had a domestic dispute, and Officer Garcia is en route to the station with the family, including one adult male, one adult female, a teenage girl, and an infant. Notify Sheriff McCoy and tell him that any one of them, including the girl, may know something about our local drug traffic. I have not yet arrested nor Mirandized any of them. Got all that?”
“Sure, Mattie,” Sam Corns, the night dispatcher, said.
By this time, Mattie was turning onto the highway. She hit the switch to turn on her overhead lights, but she didn’t put on the siren. “I am en route code ten-forty to Powderhorn mine on a kidnapping in progress. Tell Sheriff McCoy that our teenage person of interest has kidnapped his younger brother for purposes unknown. Their mother fears for the child’s safety. The suspect is driving a gray Jeep Cherokee, license plate unknown. Family suspects he’s headed to the Powderhorn. Earlier this evening, the youngest child left a call for help on my cell phone.”
Mattie almost choked as she added this last bit of information, and she paused for a moment to collect herself. “Advise the sheriff that I may need backup at the mine.”
“Ten-four, Mattie. I’ll set things up for you.”
“I’ll call in when I get to the mine.”
By now, Mattie had accelerated to just under ninety miles per hour, and when she put down the transmitter, she nudged her speed up another notch. Her headlights pierced the darkness, and she hoped for clear highway up ahead without deer or antelope crossing her path. Her current speed wouldn’t allow for much brake time.
Moonlight lit the landscape as it had the previous night. Her speed ate away the miles, and soon Mattie was able to turn off onto the dirt road that led to the mine. This road was maintained by the county and in fair shape, but as she rounded the first curve, her cruiser fishtailed, the rear end fanning out in the gravel. Mattie slowed. The last thing she needed was to end up in a ditch at the side of the road. She’d be of little help to Sean sitting with her vehicle high centered.
Though Mattie couldn’t see farther than the beam of her headlights, she knew that this road ran straight for a while after the first few curves, and then it curved back and forth again as it climbed halfway up the first set of foothills in the mountain range. The opening to the mine was tucked deep inside a canyon formed by a creek bed, hidden from view until you drove right up to it. The mine’s tunnels honeycombed the mountain.
Once as a teen, Mattie had tried to explore a part of the abandoned Powderhorn. But her fear of close, dark spaces had gotten the best of her. She’d barely made it past the first fork in the main tunnel. She knew from what friends told her that there were so many tunnels in the mountain that they feared getting lost. On top of that, some of the shafts were flooded with at least a foot of water from an unknown source, probably an underground spring.
“If they’re up there, we’re going to need your nose,” she told Robo.
He stood, his eyes not wavering from the windshield. Mattie had never been so grateful to have a K-9 partner. If it meant going into a dark mine, she’d rather go in with Robo than any human partner.
It felt like it took forever, but barely twenty minutes had passed since she’d checked in with dispatch. She was approaching the tunnel entrance. As soon as she topped the last rise leading up to the mine, she spotted two vehicles, black shadows in the dark night. She reached for her radio transmitter and keyed it on.
“Dispatch, this is K-9 One.”
There was no response except for static. The hillside must be blocking her signal.
“Dispatch, this is K-9 One at the Powderhorn mine. I have a visual on two vehicles and need backup. Do you copy?”
Nothing but static.
“Shit!”
For a split second, Mattie considered turning to drive a half mile back to try to make her transmission but decided against it. Sean was inside that mine with an older brother who meant him harm.