9:14 A.M.
MOUNTAIN LION, GEORGIA
Having driven the length of Main Street to get a feel for the small town, Jacob doubled back and angle-parked the Chevrolet in front of a brick building with a wall of glass windows facing the street. A sign above the establishment’s green and white awning read Paw Prints Diner.
Stockwell pivoted in her seat and studied her surroundings.
Retail businesses lined both sides of the street. Half the stores were open while the other half were either boarded up or displaying ‘for sale’ signs. Foot traffic was minimal. Main Street’s two traffic lights cycled through their colors. One or two vehicles passed beneath the signals.
She spun back around. “This place seems dead.”
Jacob checked his watch. “Maybe things don’t get hopping until later in the day.”
She faced him with raised brows, “Hopping?” before glancing at the few patrons inside Paw Prints Diner. “I think the best this town can hope for is to...drag a leg.”
He snorted out a laugh and grabbed the door handle. “Let’s split up. You take,” he motioned, “the right side. I’ll take the left.”
Stockwell grinned. “Not our usual? Left and low...high and right?”
The two agents had developed a system for ‘hot’ entries into buildings and dangerous situations—she covered everything left and below them while Jacob’s responsibilities were threats coming from the right and above.
“I thought we’d shake it up.”
“Ooh. You’re a wild man.”
He flashed a smile and went deadpan. “Okay. We show the pictures of the missing girls and find out if anyone has seen anything.” He pointed straight ahead. “Skip the restaurant. We’ll meet there at say...12:30ish?”
“Sounds good.” She pushed open her door.
“Hey, Stockwell?”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s,” he gave the world outside his window another inspection, “let’s keep our badges out of the equation for the time being.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“My experience with places like these is,” he wagged his finger, “once one person knows something, everyone knows that same something not too long afterward. And I’d like to see what we can discover before people realize two feds are investigating a string of kidnappings.”
She nodded. “We can always go nuclear later on, but it’s hard to back down from that.”
“Exactly.” He put his shoulder to his door before righting himself and extending his right hand. “I almost forgot.”
Her brows coming together at first, they reversed course, as she closed her door, took the offering, and bowed her head.
He touched his chin to his chest. “Saint Christopher, you inherited a beautiful name, Christ Bearer; a result of the legend that while carrying people across a raging stream, you also carried the Child Jesus. Pray for us to the Lord our God that we may shelter from evil those who bear our company. Amen.”
“Amen.”
Jacob and Stockwell exited the Suburban, both making sure their shirts covered their firearms. In Jacob’s case, his red patriotic t-shirt hid a small four-inch version of the full-size Coonan 1911-style 357 Magnum he usually wore in a shoulder holster. They gave each other a quick nod and went in separate directions.
*******
THREE HOURS LATER...
12:34 P.M.
PAW PRINTS DINER
Jacob and Stockwell claimed a corner table offering privacy from the other patrons. The nearest customer, his nose buried in a laptop, sat next to the front door, three tables down. From their vantage point, they could see their vehicle and most of Main Street.
With a corner of the restaurant on his four o’clock, Jacob looked at his partner over the menu in his grasp. “I shook the trees, but nothing fell. You?”
“Same.” She opened her menu then glanced out the windows on her port side. “However, I get the feeling things aren’t right around here. People are skittish...like—”
“Like they’re hiding something.”
She faced him. “Yeah. When I showed people the pictures, I got nothing...until I said they had been kidnapped. Then their faces changed. I saw something in their eyes—like recognition—but...”
Jacob watched a mid-fifties woman in a white apron slide a whole pizza into a warming tray on the counter.
“...but it was different. I can’t put my finger on just what it was.”
“Let’s put a pin in this.” He sat straighter while the pizza woman approached, her skinny legs supporting a robust upper body. Her head seemed to rest directly on her shoulders.
“Welcome to Paw Prints. Can I start either of you off with a beverage?”
“I’d just like a glass of water,” Stockwell spied the woman’s name badge, “Marci. Actually, do you have bottled water?”
“Sure do, hon.”
“I’ll take that.”
Marci extracted a pen from her short and curly, gray-speckled black hair and scribbled on a notepad she had extracted from an apron pocket. “One BW for the young lady.” She spied Jacob. “And for you, dear?”
“I’ll take a,” he hesitated, “I’ll take a BW as well.” He leaned left and lifted a finger toward the counter. “Is that pizza you just brought out fresh?”
“Hot, too.”
He ogled Stockwell.
She tipped her head from side to side once and closed her menu.
He gave the server the ‘peace’ sign, “We’ll take two pieces each,” then gave up his menu.
Marci took the plastic-covered bi-folds, “Good choice,” and pivoted. “Be back in two minutes.”
Five minutes later, Jacob had finished his first slice and was a bite into his second. “So, back to our discussion,” he swallowed his food, “I agree with you. I’m picking up on a...”
Outside, a rumbling pickup truck, rock-and-roll music blasting from inside, made a left turn and parked two spaces to the left of Jacob and Stockwell’s rental.
“...on a,” Jacob zeroed in on the four men in tattered jeans and ripped t-shirts pouring out of the vehicle, “a strange vibe.”
Stockwell turned her attention toward the commotion.
The shaggy-haired, bushy-bearded ragtag band headed straight for the diner.
Both agents noticed the pistols strapped to each man’s right outer thigh.
Jacob beckoned his partner, “Get over here,” then made room for her at the table.
She stood, spun her chair ninety degrees, and sat on his ten o’clock.
The foursome pushed their way into the restaurant and stopped two feet inside the doorway.
Stockwell watched them out of the corner of her left eye. She lowered her voice. “I don’t like this, Jake.” Her right hand disappeared under the table to clench the hem of her blouse just forward of her holstered Glock.
Likewise, Jacob casually laid his right hand on his right thigh while picking out distinguishing features on the men. “If it comes to guns, I’ve got the ones with baseball hats.”
The lead man, the bill of an Atlanta Braves cap pulled down to his bushy eyebrows, scanned the folks eating, and nursing drinks.
She spied Braves, and another man wearing a hat with an AR-15 rifle emblazoned on the front, before focusing on the other men, her targets. “Copy that.”
Braves stopped panning when his eyes fell upon Jacob and Stockwell. He ambled toward their corner, AR-15 a step behind. Further back, the other two men fanned out.
His voice barely above a whisper, “We seem to have caught their attention,” Jacob took another bite of food.
Transferring more of her weight to the balls of her feet, Stockwell nibbled her slice up to the crust, dropped the inflexible dough onto her plate, and picked up her second slice. “That we have.”
Braves dragged a chair from another table, spun it around, and sat backwards at the agents’ table. “Good afternoon.” His smile showed gaps between blackened teeth. “Welcome to Mountain Lion, Georgia.”
AR-15 plopped his six-six, heavily muscled frame into a chair on Braves’ left, the chair groaning and creaking under the load.
The last two members of the posse stood guard a few paces behind their seated companions.
Braves lifted a finger toward Stockwell’s plate. “You’re not going to finish that? That’s the best part.”
She glimpsed the curved, dark brown rod. “Too hard.”
He snorted while plucking the breadstick from her plate. “A lot of women have said those exact words to me.”
The comment drew a round of laughter from AR-15 and the towering gents.
Feeling her cheeks warming, Stockwell pinched her pizza a little harder.
Jacob noticed. Calm down, Dee. They’re just words. “Is there something we can help you gentlemen with? Because we’d,” he noticed a few customers scurrying toward the door, “we’d sure like to eat our meal in peace.”
Braves bit off a length of the crust and used the rest as a pointer. “I hear you folks have been asking all over town about some kidnapped girls. You private investigators or something?”
Jacob ignored the query. “You’re really dialed in on what’s going on around here.” He gestured. “What’s with the guns? You the police?”
Braves sniggered. “Sure. We’re the police, all right.”
The men behind him let out another round of amusement.
“And, as such, we’re suggesting you stop pestering the good people of Mountain Lion with all your questions. Trust me. Aren’t any kidnapped kids in these parts.”
Jacob laid down his slice. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because,” Braves flipped the rest of the crust onto the table and stood, “we’re really...”
Jacob’s right hand inched closer to his Coonan.
Stockwell slipped fingers under her shirt and tickled her Glock’s rear sight.
“...dialed in, like you said, to what’s going on in our town.” Braves planted hands on hips and went from Jacob to Stockwell, his demeanor becoming all-business. “I suggest you two enjoy the rest of your lunch and just,” he slowly extended a flat hand toward the windows on his left, “keep on going to wherever it is you’re bound for.”
“Thanks for the suggestion, but I like it here.” Jacob gave the restaurant a quick peek, “Good food,” then glanced outside. “Quiet, too.” He confronted the male cohort in front of him. “The welcoming committee isn’t much to look at, though.”
Braves’ body stiffened, and his eyes narrowed to two slits. “Like I said,” he glimpsed Stockwell then focused on Jacob, “enjoy your food and be on your way.” A beat. “I don’t want to see you again.”
“No,” Jacob squinted at his adversary, his voice dropping to a low growl, “you don’t.”
Braves stared at Jacob.
Jacob stared back. “Stay out of my way...or things won’t end well for you.”
On his feet, AR-15 took a step forward.
Braves put the back of his hand to the man’s chest.
Ten seconds of tension.
Braves bobbed his head once. “You all have a grand day.”
The four men strode out of the diner, climbed into their truck, and left, their vehicle spewing noise pollution and rock-and-roll music.
“I guess it’s true what they say. There’s a first time for everything.” Jacob faced Stockwell and saw a quizzical expression overtaking her features. “I’ve never been run out of town before.” He grinned. “Kind of feels like we’re in an old Western, doesn’t it?”
Stockwell slid her chair back around to face Jacob. “What do you make of that little exchange?”
“Two things.” He took a swig of water. “We rattled someone’s cage, and that someone,” he gestured out the window, “tipped off those guys.”
She downed her beverage and affixed the cap. “And the second?”
“Our first assumption was right. People here are scared.”
“Of what, though?”
A voice: “Excuse me.”
In unison, Jacob and Stockwell turned their heads.
Coming up on Jacob’s seven o’clock, the man who had been sitting near the front door, working with his computer, stooped, stood, and placed a folded twenty-dollar bill on the table. “You must’ve dropped this.” He moved on.
“Thank you.”
The man shoved his computer into a backpack and left.
“Wait a minute.” Jacob frowned at the note. “This isn’t mine.” He eyed Stockwell. “Did you drop it?”
“Wasn’t me.” She shrugged. “Look on the bright side. Our meal’s paid for.” She poked her chin at him. “So, what do you think people are afraid of around here?”
He unfolded the bill. With a twist of his thumb and forefinger, he flipped the paper over.
She watched the creases in his forehead get deeper. “You still with me, Jake?”
Jacob whipped his head toward the window, leaned right, then rocked forward to see as far down the other side of the street as he could.
“What is it?”
Standing, he gave her the twenty-dollar bill, dug out his wallet, and headed for the counter. “We need to go.”
∞=∞=∞=∞=∞=∞=∞
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