Sunflower Lane Read online

  “Mrs. Hartigan, I can’t thank you enough! I’m very grateful.” Tears brimmed in her eyes and she had to swallow back a lump in her throat. “I’m bringing sandwiches and coffee, too. I’ll be there soon myself.”

  “I know Wes is out there searching. If anyone can find those boys, my son can. Oh, and my mother would like me to tell you that she’s praying for the boys and she is bringing an angel food cake she baked this morning. She thinks the angel food cake is good luck. She says angels are watching over them.”

  “I pray she’s right. Thank you, and please thank Mrs. Todd for me.”

  “Of course. The roads are slick, so do be careful, now.”

  She stared at the cell after Wes’s mother disconnected.

  Her voice hadn’t been fuzzy-wuzzy and filled with warmth, but it had been kind and very concerned. And her words had been, too.

  Annabelle spared a precious moment to call and update Charlotte just before she began packing up the car.

  Charlotte reported that she’d told the girls the truth and they were upset, and very worried about Ethan, but she’d given them a snack and would try to keep them calm until the boys were found.

  “I’ll call you as soon as we get them back.” Annabelle closed her eyes a moment, trying to envision Ethan racing into her arms—and praying it would prove true.

  “You’ll find them, Annabelle. Have faith. I do. The whole town is searching.”

  But that hadn’t helped Randy Kirk, she thought after she promised Charlotte to keep her posted. Gathering up all the food and coffee, she began ferrying everything out to the car.

  She reached the Collier home in record time, despite the rain and wind and thunder. It was gratifying to see so many friends and townspeople streaming in to help. Sylvie told her that even Tess’s husband, John, had left her and their infant daughter, Fae, to come out and help search in the storm.

  For a half hour she distributed sandwiches, cheese and crackers, coffee, granola bars, and cookies. She was just heading back to the kitchen for more food when three more searchers came in, sopping wet and shivering. Martha Davies hurried over to them with blankets.

  “Oh, dear, these are the last of the dry blankets,” the older woman muttered.

  “That’s what I forgot to pack! Blankets!” Annabelle hurried into the kitchen and gazed at Sylvie and Ava in dismay.

  “We’re running a little short of them,” Sylvie admitted. “But I don’t think you should go back out in this storm. I can take some quilts off the beds—”

  “No, I’m going. I have at least a dozen packed away. Trish never threw out a blanket unless it was threadbare. She always said you never know when disaster will strike—”

  Breaking off, she shook her head. She didn’t want to think about how she’d let Trish down today. It hurt too much.

  “Can you handle things here? I’ll be back soon.”

  She had to keep doing something . . . something to help. She couldn’t stand still and wash out the coffeepot and have time to think about Ethan on that mountain. She just couldn’t.

  Moments later she was racing into the house on Sunflower Lane once more. Darkness had crept in, but the rain was lightening slightly. Her hair and her face were damp and cold, though, as she ran through the night—the air brisk from the storm.

  Shivering and chilled, she grabbed her hoodie from the closet and shrugged it on, then bolted up the stairs. Grabbing up a handful of neatly folded blankets from a storage trunk in the closet, she took the stairs carefully and started toward the door to load them into the car.

  At that moment, someone pounded on the kitchen door.

  Wes! Ethan!

  Hope surged through her and she dropped the blankets onto a chair in the hall and flung the kitchen door wide.

  “Did you find—”

  But a stranger stood there. A tall, strongly built stranger. He wore a black shirt, black pants, and an amused expression on a face that was handsome in a sleazy way she couldn’t define. She’d never laid eyes on him before.

  “Who . . . are you?”

  “Evening, Miz Harper.”

  His voice creeped her out. It was outwardly pleasant, but had an undertone that made her skin crawl. How did he know her name?

  “Who are you?” she asked again. “What do you want?”

  Then she spotted the stoop-shouldered man standing just behind him. He was older, his skin swarthy, with a hard, bony face, reminiscent of a skeleton. Thin, stringy gray hair, and the darkest, emptiest black eyes she’d ever seen.

  A man without a soul, she thought, chills prickling her spine.

  “We’re here on business,” the old man said, and she caught the heavy Spanish flavor of his accent.

  Fear breathed along her skin. She tried to slam the door, throwing all her weight against it, but the tall man grabbed it and pushed it wide, then shoved her backward. As she grasped the kitchen counter to keep from tumbling to the floor, both men slipped quickly into the kitchen.

  The older one closed the door behind them.

  Then he clicked the lock in place and turned back to stare at her.

  That was when Annabelle read the hate glinting in those cold, dark eyes. She took in the cruel set of his mouth. And knew in that instant these men had come to hurt her, maybe kill her. She knew it as if they’d spoken the threat aloud.

  As terror shuddered through her, the tall man pulled out a gun.

  “Doc, over here!”

  Carefully, Wes set Jimmy down on the Colliers’ couch.

  The house was still packed with friends and neighbors. They’d all broken into whoops and applause when the sheriff told them the boys had been found and were on their way down the mountain.

  Dave Collier, Rafe Tanner, and his brother Travis had been the first ones to meet up with Wes and the boys at the trailhead. Dave took his son in his own arms, and began carrying him slowly down the mountain through the rain as Wes guided Ethan close behind.

  “They should go to the hospital,” Travis Tanner said as soon as the boys were in the house.

  “Jimmy needs to, for sure,” Rafe agreed.

  “He needs this ankle set,” Sylvie whispered, kneeling beside her sobbing son.

  “Both boys should be checked for exposure.” Ben Adkins spoke up. He’d been enjoying a cinnamon bun and coffee in A Bun in the Oven earlier that afternoon when he’d heard about the missing boys, then had driven out to join the volunteers streaming to the Collier place, asking whether there was anything he could do to help. He’d been handing out water and food ever since.

  Now everyone looked at him in surprise, for though he’d grown up in Lonesome Way, these days he was a newcomer. Still, most everyone knew who he was by now, and they all nodded at his words, spoken with the absolute authority of a man accustomed to leadership.

  “I agree with Ben.” Ava handed Deputy Mueller a cup of coffee—the poor man looked exhausted after having spent more than four straight hours on the mountain. “You can’t be too careful with children.”

  “Right. They both need to be checked out.” Wes took a quick inventory of the room. “Where’s Annabelle?”

  Sylvie glanced up from where she was kneeling, talking quietly to both boys. “She went home a while ago to get more blankets. I’m not sure how long ago, but I’d have thought she’d be back by now.”

  Frowning, Wes pulled out his cell phone as Dave lifted his son again to carry him out to the car.

  “Tell you what, Dave—can you take Ethan, too? Annabelle and I will meet you there,” he told Jimmy’s father. “I’m going to call her now and tell her we’ve got the boys.”

  He knelt beside Ethan first. “You okay with that, buddy? Your aunt and I will meet you at the clinic pronto.”

  “I want to go with you.”

  “We’ll be right behind you. As soon as I meet up with y
our aunt. She’s worried and I know she’s going to want to see you right away.”

  Ethan nodded, his face weary from his ordeal. “Okay, I guess. But if it hadn’t started r-raining . . . and Jimmy didn’t f-fall, I bet we could’ve found the treasure.”

  Wes gently tousled his hair. “I’ll let your aunt tell you what she thinks about that, buddy.”

  As soon as he had Ethan comfortably buckled into the Collier truck, wrapped in a quilt with Sylvie riding shotgun on both boys, Wes checked his phone. He’d tried to reach Annabelle several times, but she hadn’t picked up—or called him back.

  With a flicker of unease, he punched in her number again as he roared away from the Collier home, heading toward Sunflower Lane.

  Two minutes later, she still wasn’t picking up. What the hell?

  Worry chafed at him as he drove. She must be frantic about the boys and she had no idea yet that they were safe. Had she gotten into a crash driving to or from the Collier place? His chest tightened with fear at the thought.

  He called again. No answer.

  Swearing under his breath, he suddenly remembered that a call had come in two hours ago. The number belonged to Walt Carruthers. Walt had left a voice mail, but Wes hadn’t had a chance to check it out yet.

  “Now what?” He had a bad feeling as he peeled down the wet back roads toward Sunflower Lane. He clicked on the voice mail message.

  “Wes, bad news. You need to watch your back. Call me when you get this.”

  Wes swore. He knew in his gut that this day was about to get worse as he punched in Carruthers’s number, the rain lightening now to a faint gray drizzle.

  “What’s up?” he asked brusquely as soon as his former boss picked up.

  “Hate to tell you this, but they got Sutton. It was ugly.”

  Sutton? Shit. Wes’s stomach dropped. His hand clamped like a vise around the phone.

  Rick Sutton had been his second in command on the mission that left Diego’s son riddled with bullets in a garbage-strewn alley. Sutton was good. Almost as good as Wes.

  He gritted his teeth.

  “Where’d they get him? When? And how the hell did they find him, Walt?”

  “From all we can tell, Cal Rivers tracked him down night before last in Seattle. Sutton was home with his family. Gated community. Security system, the works. They still got in—and . . .” His former boss cleared his throat.

  “They killed Rick’s wife, too, Wes. Left the kids alone, sleeping in their beds upstairs, but they shot both Andrea and Rick with a silencer.”

  Cold shock swept through him. Icy, rigid, mind-numbing shock. Along with fury. For a moment, he couldn’t speak.

  An ugly silence hung in the air as his mind filled with images of the night a few years back when he’d gone out to dinner with Rick and Andrea in their Seattle suburb. She was a kindergarten teacher, pretty, sweet, and smart. She’d ordered chocolate mousse for dessert, shared it with Rick. They’d held hands under the table.

  Iron-hard rage pumped through him.

  “When did this happen? You sure it was Rivers?”

  “An undercover cop happened to be filling up at a gas station a mile away from the killings—he remembered a man and a vehicle pulling in earlier for gas and cigarettes. The guy fit the description given by a neighbor who apparently saw Rivers leave the Sutton house. They both described him to a T, even the baseball cap that mostly hid his face. Rivers ditched the vehicle within a half hour after the approximate time of the killings. No prints. There’s an APB out, but . . . it’s Rivers. He’s long gone by now.”

  Wes’s eyes narrowed. He’d talked to Rick only a month ago. Had he mentioned to his former partner that he was headed home to Montana for a visit? If he’d told anyone, it would have been Rick. . . .

  “If he found Arroyos and Sutton, you’re next on his list, Wes. You were the team leader and all. They’re working their way up the chain of command, saving the best for last. Wes . . . you still there?”

  “Not for long,” he rasped. He had to leave Lonesome Way. Now. As soon as he made sure Annabelle was okay, he’d make a big enough noise to lead Rivers far away from her and those kids.

  He couldn’t go to Wyoming yet and team up with Scott Murray, either. Scott had a family, too. He needed to lead Rivers into a trap and turn the tables.

  End this once and for all.

  His mind was already spinning out plans. Figuring a route that led far away from anyone he knew or cared about.

  “I’m hitting the road, Walt. Thanks for the heads-up.”

  “Keep your eyes open,” the other man said grimly.

  Wes was already shoving the phone in his pocket. He tried Annabelle again, the knot of worry in his chest tightening by the moment. Could Rivers have tracked him already, have found out he was in Lonesome Way, and where he was staying?

  The bastard definitely could’ve traveled to southwest Montana from Seattle by now—especially if he had Diego’s resources.

  Suddenly, Annabelle not answering her phone took on a whole new meaning. His muscles clenched with tension. Fear clamped in his gut, cold and hard as a boulder. If that son of a bitch even touched her . . .

  Wes floored the truck and whipped down the road. Everything else was forgotten.

  Annabelle’s face swam in his mind, lovely, gentle, and full of laughter. It was a face he cherished. A face he loved . . .

  The tension of the night had cleared for him the moment he found Ethan and Jimmy safe, but now it returned tenfold. He sensed a cloud of death descending.

  But his eyes glittered hard as jade in the darkness and he took the turns fast, flooring the truck, gripping the steering wheel in iron fists, and rocking through pinwheel turns on the country roads. He knew that every second counted.

  No one he loved was going to die tonight. Not if he could help it.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “Get out of my house. Both of you.” Annabelle’s gaze was pinned to the tall man’s face. She tried very hard not to look at the gun.

  “Not going to happen, sweetheart.”

  The old man pushed forward, swearing, as her cell phone rang again from inside her purse on the kitchen chair.

  “Don’t touch that,” the old man ordered once more. Grabbing the purse, he dug for the phone, dropped it to the floor, and stomped on it with his heel until it cracked.

  “Now, pretty lady, where’s McPhee? Tell us and you won’t be harmed.”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about. You’re in the wrong house.”

  The old man’s eyes glistened with contempt. “Don’t you lie to us. People who lie to us get hurt very badly.”

  “I’m not lying.” Annabelle heard her voice trembling and she reminded herself she had to stay calm. Fear needed to be channeled into calm—and then action. She needed to keep her mind focused. Clear.

  “A man was staying in the little cabin behind my house, but he moved on a few weeks ago. I live alone.”

  “You’ll die alone, sweetheart, if you don’t tell us the truth,” the tall man growled, his voice rough with impatience. “There’s kids here. We saw a ball in the yard.”

  Stepping forward before she could move, he pressed the butt of the gun against her forehead.

  It felt cold. Deadly.

  For a moment Annabelle’s knees trembled so badly she thought they wouldn’t hold her. She could smell his sweat and see in his eyes that he was enjoying this moment, drawing pleasure from her fear.

  “Give her ten seconds and no more,” the old man rasped. He stood beside the other man now, both of them confronting her.

  There was nowhere to run.

  “All right. I’ll tell you where he is. Just put the gun down.” She allowed her voice to quaver pitifully. And took a small step backward.

  “Talk. Now,” the tall man ordered. But he low
ered the gun.

  “He headed out to meet someone in Butte. He mentioned the name of the man he’s planning to meet with for a few days—I can’t remember it—but I . . . I wrote it down on a piece of paper.”

  As she started to reach into her pocket, the tall man scowled. “Stop right there. I’ll get it.”

  “No. Please don’t touch me. It’s just a slip of paper. . . .” She froze at the warning in his eyes.

  He moved closer. With the gun still trained on her, his free hand stretched down toward the pocket of her hoodie.

  He was so close she could see the dark swirl of black and purple vampire tattoos scrawled below his neck. So close she could smell his sweat and see the sheen of his skin. She felt her blood thrumming in her ears as he moved even closer, his fingers grabbing at the pocket of her hoodie.

  It was now or never.

  Springing into a whirl of action, she shoved his gun hand up and away with her left hand exactly as she’d been taught, then rammed her knee hard into his groin at the same time. Then she slammed her closed right fist into his Adam’s apple, using every ounce of her strength.

  The big man tumbled backward with a groan of agony that echoed through the kitchen.

  “Bitch! You are dead!” the old man screamed, leaping forward. He was faster and spryer than he looked, Annabelle realized with a gasp. But terror made her faster. Her fingers had already dipped into the pocket of her hoodie and she yanked out the Mace. One quick blast right between the eyes as she’d been trained to do and his scream nearly burst her eardrums.

  She stepped back, her breath hitching in her throat, as the old man covered his eyes with his scarred, dark-veined hands, still shrieking even when he fell to his knees. She was about to dart toward the big man and give him a super spray from the canister before he could shake off the pain, but then she saw movement and realized that a third man was running in from the living room.

  With a cry, she spun toward this new threat.

  It was Wes! Relief made her gasp as he moved like a bullet, mowing down the tall man, who’d just staggered to his feet. Wes punched him in the face, then slammed a fist into his stomach. As the man doubled over, Wes gave him a brutal chop to the back of his neck and his opponent slumped to the floor like a sack of rocks.