Catherine willed her uncle to answer the phone but it simply rang endlessly. She alternately tried her sister’s cell and clung to the door handle. Branches whipped the car as they flew along. She didn’t need to give Garrett directions. He’d know where her uncle lived. She and her sister had been unable to stay in their family home in nearby Durnsville after the murder, so they’d moved in with Uncle Orson. Garrett had shown up at the mountain house countless times with questions, endless questions, but he’d never answered hers.
Porter Stone killed our father. Why won’t you believe us?
Garrett hadn’t, not completely. For some reason she couldn’t fathom, he’d not been fully convinced of Stone’s guilt even after the arrest. Hence his last-minute interview with Stone just before his arraignment. Hence Stone’s dramatic escape from custody. Hence her family’s decade of terror. If he’d believed her back then, how different things might have been for her and her sister.
Garrett’s fingers strangled the wheel, rocks pinging the chassis. When his phone rang, he answered via Bluetooth.
A woman’s voice blasted through the speakers. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Someone from Security Hounds. Probably his sister, one of the two listed on the website.
Garrett told her their destination. “I’ve got Molly, er, Catherine Hart with me on this call.”
The long beat of silence was telling.
Garrett looked at her. “It’s my sister Steph. She works for—”
“I know.” Catherine kept her gaze lasered out the front window. Just get to Uncle Orson and Antonia. She willed him to go faster but they were already on the edge of safety for the winding road.
“Garrett,” Stephanie said, “You need to stop right now and let the police handle this. I just got more details. Stone injured a cop when he escaped. They were moving him to a less crowded facility when he got free and made his way here. Cops will recapture him.”
“We have to make sure her uncle is—”
“No, you don’t,” Stephanie snapped. “They’re cops and that’s what they train for as you fully well know. Red lights, sirens, Kevlar, the whole bit. You’re a—”
“Civilian.” A vein jumped in his jaw. “Steph, just roll Security Hounds to the bridge on Silver Creek. See if they can find a scent article to track Stone if it becomes necessary. At least secure the scene until a cop arrives. I’ll report in when I can.”
“Garrett...” Her voice dripped with warning.
He ended the call.
Catherine knew Garrett probably agreed with his sister, that their mission was pure folly. But Garrett’s opinion didn’t count. His family was still intact and the remainder of hers was hanging by a thread. Once they got to Orson’s he could wait outside, follow the rules, do whatever he wanted while she took care of her own.
Garrett yanked a glance at her. “Are you sure you’re not hurt? My sister will get an ambulance rolling—”
“I’m okay.” But her neck stung and her body ached from diving to the ground. Minor pains compared to what she’d experienced emotionally. The dog in the back snuffled in her ear and licked her, and she reached out to push him away but found herself stroking his massive neck instead.
“Back, Pinkerton,” Garrett said. “Sorry. He’s the friendliest dog you’ll ever meet, but he’s a licker.”
She regretted the animal’s withdrawal as he obediently flopped down on the back seat. She could use a friend.
“Your sister Antonia’s a year younger than you, right?”
She nodded. “I’ve only seen her a handful of times in the last ten years. We’ve been in hiding.”
He frowned. “Threats? From Stone?”
“Yes. We changed our names, moved to different cities, but somehow he found Antonia everywhere she tried to set down roots. Sent her letters and texts. Broke her car window. Threatened to kill her and me too, like he’d killed my father. My uncle helped us start new lives.” If you called what they’d been doing living.
Garrett’s mouth twitched and she heard him exhale. “I didn’t know. After I resigned I was kept out of the loop, officially.”
Resigned, probably shamed after Stone escaped his custody before the arraignment. She shifted. Sad, since Garrett had seemed to her to live and breathe the job. For a moment she considered the gravity of wearing a badge. She could commit colossal mistakes in her line of cyber work, nowhere near the stakes for a cop. One slip and a killer went free. The thought subsided again under a pile of anger and resentment. “When I heard from my sister last month that Stone had been arrested, I thought we were finally safe, and now he’s managed to escape again.”
How did he feel with the weight of guilt that must be bearing down on him? The foot of the sloped road beckoned and Garrett tackled it fast, but not fast enough to suit her.
“My uncle was threatened by Stone too, to divulge our whereabouts. Phone calls from untraceable numbers.”
“Any ideas why Stone was so determined to get to you?”
She darted a look at him. “Isn’t it obvious? Revenge that our testimony was going to put him away forever. That and he was obsessed with my sister, upset that she didn’t want to date him and angry at my father for trying to run him off. He’s not going to rest until we’re all dead.”
He took in what she said, mulling it over, which irritated her more. What other motive could there be?
A siren wailed in the distance. “Cops are close.”
Fear cinched her nerves tight. What if they were too late?
Around a turn, the black bars of the wrought-iron security gate came into view. Her heart dropped. She could not hold back a whimper. Pinkerton responded with a whine and another lick to her neck. The gates were open, tire tracks showing where a vehicle had rutted the mud. Stone had indeed gotten there ahead of them.
“How did he get in the gate?” she called over the roar of the engine.
Without answering, he stomped on the gas and drove their car through, the landscaped grounds a blur as they roared up the drive. There was another vehicle there with a Protection Services logo on the side. Whose? No sign of her rental car unless it was parked around the back. Perhaps Antonia had arrived in a taxi or Uber?
Please, no. Don’t let Antonia have made it here yet.
The front doors were open, one swung wide to reveal the entryway and a sliver of the den, her uncle’s favorite room, with the wide windows that framed the purple Cascade Mountains.
The open doors...she could hardly process. Her hand was on the seat-belt buckle before they stopped.
“Stay in the car.” Garrett slammed it into Park, engine still going. “Wait for the cops.”
He didn’t give her time to answer before he was sprinting across the lush grass, a gun he’d pulled from a holster out and ready. He stopped at the entrance, darting a look inside before he vanished into the interior.
Lord, please... But she’d stopped asking God for much the night her father was murdered. Gotten the message loud and clear that He wasn’t listening. She was rigid in the seat, the window rolled down, the smell of pine thick in her nostrils.
A woman’s scream pierced the air, high, shrill, mingling with Pinkerton’s plaintive howl.
Electric shock rippled her body. It came back in a rush, her father lying on the tiled kitchen floor, blood pooling from a head wound, his eyes closed, one hand outstretched as if he was trying to protect his daughters one last time. A scream, so sharp and primal, rang out that night and she’d not realized it was her own. That scream still echoed in her memory and mixed with the one she’d just heard.
Antonia.
Heedless of all logic, good sense and Garrett’s command, she leaped from the car and sprinted for the open front door.
Garrett had cleared the den when the woman’s scream exploded from upstairs. He swiveled his weapon, trying to both track the corners where any attacks would most likely originate and keep the heavyset woman in his sights. She stood frozen on the top step, her hands raised, palms out; the box she’d been carrying tumbled halfway to the bottom.
“Who are you?” he shouted.
She hadn’t gotten out a reply when Catherine sprinted through the door, stopping so fast her sneakers squeaked on the tile. No way. Another civilian on scene and he still had no idea where Stone might be.
“It’s my uncle’s housekeeper, Vivian,” Catherine said from behind him.
Vivian was shaking. “I was in the attic, packing some things up for your uncle’s wife. I heard someone shout. I...”
Garrett’s nerves were about to explode. “Come down the stairs and both of you go outside. Right now.”
Catherine ignored him. Her face was pale as milk, tears brightening her navy eyes. “Where’s Uncle Orson?”
Vivian shook her head. “I don’t know. He was in the garage when I got here before I went up to the attic.”
“What about my sister?” Her voice broke on the last word.
She shrugged helplessly. “Antonia? I haven’t seen her for years. Is she back?”
“Both of you out,” he repeated through gritted teeth. “Now. Please.”
Vivian obeyed but Catherine was already sprinting to the door that no doubt led to the garage. He wasn’t going to convince her to act sensibly, rationally. The best he could do was to try to protect her.
He ran after her and slammed a palm out to shut the door the moment she tugged at the knob.
She turned on him. “Get away from me. I’ve got to find my uncle and my sister.”
He elbowed her behind him. “At least let me go first. If he’s behind this door with a knife or gun, we’ll both find out soon enough,” he snapped.
That made her go still and he was able to maneuver them both to the side. Crouching low, he flung the door open and edged in, once again darting a look immediately to the corners of the room first, then scanning. Sunlight flooded in through the open garage, stinging his eyes. The rental car Catherine had driven was parked cockeyed, the sides scraped and marred, but no sign of Stone, Orson or Antonia. He exhaled and she pushed in behind.
“No one here,” he said. The tire tracks on the drive hinted that Stone had appropriated a vehicle from Orson’s garage and escaped that way.
His gaze traveled to the tools scattered on the painted cement floor—a wrench, a screwdriver. Hers did too, then her fingers went to her mouth. No way her uncle had left his immaculate garage in such a state unless he’d been forced to.
He could hear entry now, officers pounding through the house. “Stay still for a minute, okay? The cops are coming.”
He holstered his weapon and stood with his hands up. Cops poured in—Officer Hagerty, a long-timer he’d worked with on a few Security Hounds cases, and two other younger officers hired after he’d quit the Whisper Valley force.
Hagerty holstered his weapon. “House is clear. Got a guy outside, detained.”
“Stone?” Catherine said.
Hagerty narrowed his eyes at her, trying to figure out her involvement in the situation. He’d transferred in as Garrett had resigned so he’d probably only heard snippets. “No. Name’s Tom Rudden. Says he was here to meet Orson about repairing the security system.”
“Did he see what went down?”
“Says he arrived to find the gate and the door open. Called nine-one-one and waited. Heard a car around back, maybe a shout. Wasn’t going to put himself in harm’s way. Smart.”
The pointed comment was directed at them both. His cheeks flushed. “I had reason to believe her uncle and sister were in immediate danger from Porter Stone.” He explained the details.
“Security guy wants to talk to you,” one of the officers said to Hagerty.
Hagerty nodded. “How about we all leave this scene so our evidence people can do their jobs?”
They followed him out to the front, where a large, sandy-haired man with a paunch stood in a T-shirt and jeans, the security company logo on his sleeve.
“This is Tom Rudden,” Hagerty said, by way of introduction.
Tom nodded, leaning forward eagerly. “I was here to do a repair of the security system for Mr. Hart. Gate was acting up. Bummer, right? Too bad we didn’t do it last week, huh?”
Garrett winced at the tasteless remark.
“Did you see my uncle?” Catherine demanded.
“Nah. Just talked to him on the phone. I rolled up and figured I’d better check out the open front door so I parked. Before I got inside I thought I heard a shout. Went around the side yard to check and I hollered to ask if everything was okay, but no one answered so I called nine-one-one. Thought I heard a car leave out the back garage area.” His eyes widened. “So what happened? Someone hurt?”
“We’re looking into that,” Hagerty said smoothly. “Mr. Rudden, you told an officer you saw something that might help?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Saw it when I was in the side yard. Didn’t touch it, of course, you know, for evidence purposes and all that.”
He led them to the fringe of budding rhododendrons that overlapped the lawn. “Caught on these bushes. Saw it glinting. See?” He pointed eagerly to a gleaming band, the kind that women used to gather the hair back from their foreheads. It sparkled with faux jewels that caught the light and sent it dancing in all directions.
He noticed Catherine jerk, as if she’d taken a blow to the middle. He reached for her arm, feeling her tremble.
“What is it?” he said softly.
“That’s my sister’s,” she whispered. “I sent it to her for Christmas.”
Garrett shook off his inertia and raced to his car, then turned off the engine and let Pinkerton free. “Got a job for you, Pinky.”
He clipped on a long lead and guided Pinkerton over to the hair band Hagerty had photographed and dropped into a plastic bag. Without a word Hagerty gave it to Garrett. He crouched next to Pinkerton and offered him the opened bag.
The dog shoved his head into the bag, snuffling up gulps of air.
“Can he track my sister?” Catherine said.
“He can track anyone.” At least until the point they got into an automobile. Even bloodhounds couldn’t help much then.
Hagerty bent his head to listen to his radio. “Do you know the make and model of your uncle’s car?”
Garrett felt Pinkerton staring at him, wondering why humans were so irritatingly slow.
“He has an SUV—gray,” Catherine said. “He told me on the phone when we spoke last that he bought it for his birthday.”
Hagerty passed the info along via his radio.
An officer hustled over. “Clear. No one’s on the property except the housekeeper. Her husband brought her to work early this morning. Side camera caught someone leaving in an SUV. No visible passenger.”
No visible passenger. Orson and Antonia could have been rendered unconscious or bound and put in the trunk.
“We’re canvassing now, got an APB out for the car.” Hagerty patted Catherine on the shoulder.
He heard her swallow hard. Her uncle and sister missing. A nightmare come to life again.
“I’ll track with the dog. Antonia might have gotten away, run into the woods. Orson too, maybe.”
Hagerty nodded. “I’ll let my people know. Text when you have something.”
“Find,” he told Pinkerton firmly.
The dog lurched so mightily Garrett almost lost his footing as they beelined for the woods to the east of the house. He heard Catherine fall into step behind him. There was no use telling her to wait with the cops. If it had been any of his siblings—Stephanie, Kara, Chase, his adopted brother, Roman—he wouldn’t have waited either.
They jogged to keep up, the dog plowing through the tall grass, speeding several yards, stopping for an abrupt sniff that almost had Catherine stumbling into Garrett from behind, then another sprint.
He could read the signs, the erect tail swishing in an excited pendulum motion, the increased speed, the low canine rumble.
They were getting close.
To what?
Antonia, alive and well?
Gravely injured or worse?
All he could do was hold the leash in a death grip, trust his dog and pray.