Fatal Judgment (32 page)

He swept the light over the chair and the base of the support joist. At first he saw nothing. But on a second pass of the joist, he thought he detected a slight variation in the color of the wood near ground level.

Dropping down to balance on the balls of his feet, he took a closer look.

“Did you find something?” Mark joined him.

Jake indicated the lighter-colored ring on the beam. “That’s been rubbed.”

“As if someone was tied here and was trying to get away,” Mark theorized.

“That’s my take.” He flashed the light along the edge of the wall, where it met the floor. A small, irregular shape half wedged under the joist caught his eye. Pulling his knife off his belt, he flipped it open, got down on his hands and knees, and handed the flashlight to Mark.

“Shine it there.” He pointed to the object.

As the light illuminated it and Jake leaned in, he realized what it was.

A fingernail.

Using the knife blade, he worked it out. Flipped it over. Stopped breathing.

“She was here.”

“How do you know?” Mark bent down to take a closer look.

“That’s the color of the nail polish she always wears.”

Rising, Jake exited the cabin, motioned the two highway patrol officers over to join the group, and gave them a quick update.

“We need every available law enforcement person in a fifty-mile radius on this,” he concluded. “But I don’t want anyone moving in unless it’s a life and death situation. The marshals need to handle this rescue and arrest. You guys”—he gestured to the representatives from the highway patrol—“contact the police in the area and alert them to the situation. Todd, call Matt. Get the ETA of the rest of our people. Mark, can you do the same for your agents?”

The other man was already pulling out his BlackBerry. “I’m on it.”

Jake angled toward Todd. They were on the same SOG assault team and had worked together on a number of dicey assignments, including high-risk arrests and search warrants. Todd was one of the best snipers in the group. And after a week of advanced training, his skills would be razor sharp.

“We may need you on this one.”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

In general, Jake felt the same way. He preferred arrests that went smoothly, where no one was hurt.

But as he looked back at the cabin where Liz had been imprisoned, he really didn’t care what happened to Reynolds.

All he cared about was saving Liz.

Whatever it took.

“Hey, Colin . . . do you hear that?”

Stubbing out his cigarette on the wet ground, Colin readjusted the slippery, waterproof jacket insulating his rear from the damp wood of the downed tree and shot Brian an annoyed look. “You need to chill, man. Even if we get caught, what are they gonna do? Throw us in jail for skipping out of school after a couple of classes and smoking in the woods?”

“No. But we could get into big trouble for that.” Brian nodded to what was left of the six-pack sitting between them on the dead tree. They’d finished most of it in the car while they sat out the rain, pulled off the road behind some pine trees a quarter mile down the little-used rural route. But it was better to smoke in the open. That way there’d be no telltale smell in the upholstery. So they’d left the car and hiked down a ways until they’d found a good place to sit.

“Trust me. No one’s gonna find us. I told you, I’ve done this before. Cutting out early is no big deal. We’re only missing lunch, study hall, and two—”

“Shh.” Brian leaned forward, his posture tense. “I hear it again. It sounds like tires on gravel!”

Humoring his paranoid friend, Colin pretended to listen as he pulled another cigarette out of the pack. All he heard was the chirp of the birds, the rustle of the dead leaves still clinging to the trees, the . . .

He froze. Now he heard it too. And it was getting closer.

“Okay. We’re outta here. Grab the beer.”

As Brian scooped up the plastic holder with two cans still attached, Colin pocketed the cigarettes. The crunch of gravel grew louder, and before they could flee, a dark blue car came into sight.

The only good news was that it wasn’t a police cruiser.

Muttering a word he knew his father would smack him for—even if he was sixteen—Colin grabbed Brian’s arm and yanked him down behind a cluster of scrubby cedar trees.

“We’re gonna have to wait until he passes. I don’t want him to spot us.”

Beside him, he heard Brian’s rapid breathing. Felt him shaking. Disgusted, Colin shook his head. Brian was too skittish for this kind of clandestine stuff. He’d have to pick his drinking buddies more carefully in the future.

“Chill, Brian.” He leaned close and whispered the instruction in his companion’s ear. “As soon as he gets past us, we’ll take off for the car.”

It was a good plan. Colin had every confidence it would work and they’d escape undetected.

Until the car pulled to the side of the overgrown gravel lane, behind a stand of evergreens that hid it from the road, and rolled to a stop.

Less than twenty feet from where they were hiding.

Colin would have said that word again, except a man got out of the car, and he was afraid the sound would carry.

Burrowing deeper behind the cedars, he peered through a tiny opening. The driver was an old guy, with gray hair. He was looking around, as if checking to make sure no one was watching him. The same way he and Brian had done when they’d picked this spot.

But why should an older guy be worried?

Unless he was doing something illegal. Like dumping trash, maybe. That was against some kind of ordinance. His dad had talked about the problem at dinner a few nights ago. Lots of people ditched stuff that wasn’t easy to get rid of, like broken washing machines, along the road.

Except this guy’s car wasn’t big enough to hold anything like that.

Brian was shaking worse now, and Colin sent him a dark look. If he jiggled the tree they were crouching behind, it could call attention to their hiding spot.

He elbowed him and mouthed the word
relax
.

Not that it did any good. Brian looked ready to puke.

He was definitely off Colin’s fun and games list.

Peeking through the branches again, he watched the old guy circle around to the passenger side and open the door. He reached in, and a moment later a gray-haired lady appeared beside him. Her back was to him, but she was kind of bent over. Like maybe she had arthritis. Or didn’t feel too good.

The guy tugged her forward, toward the front of the car, and she stumbled.

The moan that followed sent a chill down his spine.

And when she turned so he could see her face, his heart did a weird stop-start kind of thing. She had a really bad bruise on her cheek, and her eye was kind of black. Plus, she didn’t seem to want to be here. The guy was dragging her along. Forcing her.

Something bad was going on.

“Colin.” Brian’s urgent whisper reminded him he had company. “Did you see that lady’s face?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think that guy did that to her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why would he be taking her back into the woods?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think we should call the cops?”

The couple disappeared down the gravel road, and Colin frowned. “They’ll be able to trace the call to my cell. How am I going to explain why I’m here instead of at school? I’ll be toast. My old man will ground me, like, forever.”

“Yeah, but that lady looks like she needs help. What if we find out later he did something bad to her, and we knew we could have stopped it? Man, that would be a boatload of guilt to carry around for the rest of our lives.”

Brian had a point.

“Look, you want me to call?”

As Brian pulled out his cell phone, Colin was tempted to let him take the heat. But that wasn’t fair. He’d been the one who’d come up with this idea and dragged Brian along with him. If anyone got in trouble, it should be him.

A woman’s muffled cry of pain echoed through the woods, galvanizing him into action.

Opening his cell phone, he tapped in 911.

She was moaning way too loud.

Martin picked up his pace. He should have gagged her before he pulled her out of the car. Not that anyone was around to hear her, other than maybe a few deer. But he’d silence her once they got to the lean-to. He didn’t want to run the risk of having anyone hear her scream. And without a gag, she’d be doing a lot of that.

The crude structure came into view up ahead, set back from the gravel road in the center of a clearing about a hundred feet in diameter. It sure wasn’t a place he’d want to sleep, exposed to the elements and all. But the owner belonged to some kind of mountain man group and liked to come out here in buckskins and shoot his black powder rifle and sleep in the open.

Go figure.

Still, he was glad he’d met Jeff in the café in Potosi, where he’d stopped for breakfast on one of his first weekend trips to his cabin a year ago. The place had been packed, and the guy had claimed a stool next to him at the counter. He’d been real friendly, and they’d struck up a conversation. When Martin had told him he owned property nearby but complained he didn’t have enough acreage to allow for good hunting, Jeff had invited him to hunt on his three hundred acres anytime. And he’d done so on a number of occasions. Jeff had also offered him the use of his “cabin,” then explained it was just a lean-to he used for protection from the wind or rain.

Who knew it would end up serving a higher purpose?

Arriving at his destination, Martin pulled the judge into the open-ended wooden structure and dumped her against the single sloping wall. After balancing himself on one knee, he fished in his pocket and withdrew a strip of cloth.

The judge’s head was lolled to one side, her eyes half closed, and when she opened her mouth to moan again it was easy to slip the cloth between her teeth, pull it taut, and tie it behind her head.

Her eyes flew open, wide with fear, as he gagged her. As if she knew the end was near.

It made him feel good.

Righteous.

Like a patriot.

Thanks to him, in just a few minutes there would be one less freedom-sucking judge to undermine America.

He pulled out two plastic restraints from the pocket of his jacket. With one, he secured her ankles together. She struggled a little, but an elbow to her ribs took care of that. She collapsed with a moan.

With the other restraint, he attached her wrists to a metal hook sunk deep into the wood of the lean-to above her head, where Jeff maybe hung a lantern or draped a canteen. As he stretched her arms up, she made a noise deep in her throat, and he glanced at her again. Her features were contorted with pain, her expression pleading. Like she thought he might take pity on her.

Fat chance.

No one had ever taken pity on him. Not the government. Not his employer. Not his father. Why should he feel one iota of sympathy for a corrupt judge who reveled in controlling people’s lives?

Backing out of the lean-to, he retrieved the plastic-wrapped bales of straw he’d hidden under cedar branches in the woods. Then he jogged back to his car to get his rifle—just in case—and to remove the plastic from the car seat and floor. Bundling it in his arms, he returned to the lean-to and stuffed it around the judge. In just a few minutes, any trace evidence or stray fingerprints would simply melt away.