Allison Brennan - If I Should Die

“We damn well know it’s them. It’s no fucking coincidence.”

“Adam,” Ricky whispered. “I hear cars.”

He motioned for Adam to follow him to the back door, where they could see two trucks winding down to the valley where the Fosters’ cabin sat. As they watched, the trucks rounded the last curve and turned their headlights to parking lights.

“We need to go,” Adam said. “That’s not Sean.”

Ricky grabbed his backpack and Adam pocketed his gun and put on his jacket. They slipped out the back and were on the porch when the trucks stopped out front.

Vehicle doors opened and closed. “It’s dark,” a man’s voice said.

Butch .

Butch was working hand in hand with Bobbie, but Ricky knew no family loyalty from his uncle would save him.

Adam motioned to the edge of the porch. The house was on a slope, so they had to crawl under the railing and lower themselves down, falling the last four feet.

They crawled up the slope so they could observe the driveway. There were three men. “That’s Tim’s truck!” Adam said.

“Shh,” Ricky admonished.

They both looked for Tim, but the guy leaning against the driver’s door was Andy Knolls from the Gas-n-Go.

“Butch, search the house,” ordered Gary Clarke. “Andy and I will walk the perimeter. Bobbie wants the kid alive, but he’s a little prick. If I find him first, I’m going to teach him a thing or two about loyalty.” Ricky hated Gary. He wasn’t from Spruce Lake; he was loyal only to Bobbie.

As they watched, the men disbanded. Fortunately, Andy went in the opposite direction of the slope they were lying against.

On the deck above them, Gary said, “We wait until the kid gets here-or Rogan. Whoever comes first. Bobbie wants Rogan for leverage, but either way, we can’t go back empty-handed.”

Adam and Ricky crawled along the slope at an angle so that when they emerged on the driveway, they weren’t in the direct line of sight from the house.

Adam squinted at the driver’s side of Tim’s truck. “That looks like blood.”

“Was your brother at the lodge?”

“He was looking for you at the mine.”

Ricky didn’t know how Bobbie’s crew knew he was here, but he couldn’t think of any logical reason for Adam to turn him over to his aunt. And if it was Jon Callahan, why send him here in the first place or give him a gun?

“It’ll take us twenty minutes to circle around to the ATV, but it won’t take long to get to the mine entrance,” Adam said.

Ricky hesitated. Adam said, “We can’t stay here. He’s my brother. I’m not going to bail on him. He needs help.”

Ricky followed, still unsure what to do, but he didn’t want to wait around here. “You need to warn Sean about Gary and Butch. Where’s your cell?”

“In the house. Yours?”

“In my car.”

“We’ll get it when we pick up the ATV, tell Sean what happened, and find Tim.”

Ricky hoped he wasn’t making a mistake to trust Adam but he didn’t see that he had a whole lot of options. They bolted across the driveway and disappeared into the dark.

In the lights of the emergency vehicles, Sean saw his Cessna upside down in the middle of a small field. His heart tightened so fast he thought a heart attack couldn’t be more painful. He jumped out of the truck and trudged across the field, barely registering that Patrick was behind him. Patrick was Lucy’s brother and loved her as much as Sean did.

But he couldn’t. No one loved Lucy like Sean. She was not dead. There had been no explosion, no fire, just the downed plane. She was unconscious maybe. Injured. But alive. She had to be alive.

“Hold it!” the fire chief called. Sean ignored him.

The pilot’s door was open, the cabin empty. A temporary feeling of relief washed over him, immediately replaced by fear that they’d been thrown out on impact.

“Stop!” the chief called.

Sean told Patrick, “There’s no one inside.”

Patrick smoothed things over with the chief. “I’m Patrick Kincaid; that’s Sean Rogan. It’s his plane. My sister was inside.”

“I’m sorry, you still can’t be here.”

“The pilot is a federal agent.”

The chief frowned. “This is still a crash site.”

While Patrick diplomatically argued with the fire chief to buy time, Sean walked around to the back of the plane. The plane had cut a deep path in the field. He saw the boulder it hit that caused it to flip over. But he didn’t see a body. The rudder was completely broken off the tail from the crash, and he distinctly saw two bullet holes in the rear body of the plane.

Patrick approached. “I bought you two minutes. Noah and Lucy aren’t here. They’re okay.” Patrick was trying to convince both of them.

“The plane was shot down.” Sean pointed to the holes.

Then he noticed that the small external storage compartment was open. His duffel bag was missing.

“They’re in trouble,” Sean said, “otherwise they wouldn’t have left.”

He bent over to inspect the cockpit and spotted the thermal imaging camera. He didn’t know if it had survived the crash, but he grabbed it.

“Let’s go find them,” Sean said to Patrick.

The chief called after them and Patrick turned around to hand him their business cards. “That’s how to reach us. I’m sorry, we have to go.”

Patrick drove while Sean checked the camera for damage. The case had protected it, in addition to the fact that this was one of the best-made, sturdiest devices Sean had ever worked with. He turned it on. The camera stored thirty images on its chip, and Lucy had taken six pictures that clearly showed evidence of marijuana greenhouses. The camera also marked their exact longitude and latitude.

“Paul Swain didn’t lie to me. There are four warehouses.”

“ Four ? Do you know how much pot you can grow in just one?”

“Oh, yeah, this is major. And this is just first pass. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more. There has to be a lot at stake for Bobbie Swain to return to town. Or she’s just a psycho bitch.”

Sean’s cell vibrated. He looked down, hoping it was Noah or Lucy, but instead it was a code that told him someone was pinging his radio frequency. He switched his phone to radio and said, “Rogan here.”

“It’s Noah. Your plane was shot down but we’re both okay. Can you track this signal?”

“Yes.” He started typing on his laptop to run GPS, which he had in almost all his equipment. He directed Patrick to follow the signal to Noah’s location. “Right at the main road.”

“We’re holed up in someone’s house. They’re not home, but the bad guys who shot our plane sent dogs after us and we can still hear them. I don’t know how long I can hold them back.”

Patrick turned on the highway and floored the gas.

“I have you. Five minutes. Keep the line open. How’s Lucy?”

“Bumps and bruises, nothing broken but a little skin.” He paused. “I’m sorry about your plane.”

“I can replace the damn plane.” He paused. “But if you even think about borrowing my Mustang, think again.”

Sean heard Lucy laugh in the background and a weight lifted off his chest. She was alive, she was fine .

Patrick turned right on an unpaved road, following the GPS guide. Sean wished he knew the area better, because he could find a shortcut. But he couldn’t risk it in the dark.

Over the radio, he heard dogs.

“Noah?”

There were shouts, and Sean heard Noah order Lucy to cover the rear. Someone was pounding on the door.

The two of them couldn’t secure the house alone.

Noah shouted to make sure Sean could hear, “Four dogs and four or five suspects.”