Out of the Shadows Read online

  Just when I thought I’d go insane, I saw him.

  The screen door banged open again and two men dragged Devon outside, one under each of his arms. His head hung low toward his chest, and he was barely supporting his own weight.

  Oh God . . .

  They dragged him down the ramshackle stairs of the wooden deck and into the forest of trees behind the trailer lot. I thought frantically of what to do. Was he dead and were they taking him into the woods to bury him? Or was he alive and were they going to finish him off?

  I couldn’t let them kill him. I had a gun and the added advantage of them not knowing I was there.

  There were too many of them for me to take on at once. This would require a bit more finesse than going in there, gun blazing.

  I hurried back to the car, searching the rank interior until I found something I could use—a ratty scarf. Quickly jerking up the shirt I was wearing, I used the thin scarf to tie my weapon against my side, tightly knotting the fabric so it wouldn’t slide. Then I grabbed a puffy vest emanating so much weed aroma, I could hardly stand it. I pulled it on and, as I’d hoped, it concealed the lump.

  Panic made my hands shaky and it took longer to accomplish all this than I’d hoped. Taking a deep breath, I headed for the trailers.

  The steps creaked underneath my feet as I climbed them, then I banged on the screen door. The front door was open, and I could hear a television playing loudly in another room.

  At my knock, footsteps hurried toward me, bare feet slapping against the worn linoleum.

  A woman came into view, a baby clad in only a sagging diaper on her hip. She wore a pair of stretched-out gray sweatpants and a T-shirt so worn the emblem on the front was nearly invisible. She looked me over in one quick pass, not opening the screen.

  “Who’re you?” she demanded. The baby was fussing and stuck a fist into her mouth. She looked maybe eight or nine months old.

  “Um, I’m Mackenzie,” I said. “Mac for short.”

  “Whaddya want?” Her accent was thick hillbilly, which is different from redneck. Most people think they’re one and the same, but they’re not. Regardless of her accent, her second question was no less rude than her first.

  “My car broke down,” I said, echoing a trace of her accent as I waved vaguely toward the road. “Was hoping I could use your phone.”

  “We don’t have one,” she said curtly. “Sorry. You can keep walking. I think there’s a house up yonder. They’s got a phone.” She stepped back like she was going to shut the door.

  “Wait.” I held up a hand and she paused. “I’m real tired,” I said, improvising on the spot. “Been driving all night. Do you think I can crash here for just a bit, then I’ll walk up later on?”

  Her gaze narrowed suspiciously and she studied me. I looked as innocent and tired as I knew how and finally, she gave a reluctant nod.

  “Alrighty then,” she said. “C’mon in. But this is only for a bit, ya understand? Ah got things ta do.”

  “Yeah, no problem at all. Thanks.”

  She pushed open the screen door and I grabbed it as she turned away. Before going inside, I glanced at the woods where the men had disappeared with Devon. They hadn’t returned.

  Inside, the television was blasting Spongebob and a little boy about four years old lay on the floor in front of it, asleep. The kitchen had piles of dirty dishes in the sink and a pot of something brewing on the stove.

  I followed the woman and she led me to a blue sofa with sagging cushions. With her free hand, she grabbed a pile of unfolded clothes lying across the seats and shoved it to one end. A black dog of indeterminate breeding with a limp came up to me and nuzzled my hand as I stood there.

  “Ya can rest here,” she said, once she’d cleared a spot. “I’m Liza, if’n ya need anythin’.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be fine.” I patted the dog, who’d begun to whine softly as it looked at me. That’s when I noticed the milky eyes and realized the dog had to be blind.

  Liza paused, her face betraying surprise as she looked from the dog to me and back.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “This here is old Maisie,” she said. “She been around for almost twenty years. Blind as a bat, but she knows when folks is sick. Real sick.” Liza’s expression turned sympathetic as she looked at me. “I reckon you do need your rest if you’se sick. Take your time, honey. I’ll be in the back trying to git this one ta sleep if ya need me.”

  I was at a loss as to what to say other than, “Thanks.” I sat cautiously and watched as she headed down the narrow hallway to the back of the trailer. Maisie lay down at my feet, her unseeing eyes still fixed on me, a low whine coming intermittently from her throat. It was odd behavior from a dog, and likely some old wives’ tale, but still unnerving.

  The woman and her kids were sitting ducks for me to use as hostages, and for a split second, I thought about it. It wouldn’t be hard to do. But then I thought of Devon, and knew he wouldn’t want me to do that, no matter how much danger he was in.

  The door flew open and in came the guys who’d taken Devon along with three more. They were talking.

  “ . . . in the shed for now, ’til we figger out what to do—”

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  One of them had spotted me and stopped short. The rest of them swung their gazes my way as one, their expressions ranging from curious to downright malevolent.

  “I-I’m Mac,” I stammered. “Liza let me in for a while. My car broke down up the road, but she didn’t have a phone for me to use.” My pulse was racing with fear and adrenaline, but hope flickered at what I’d overhead. Devon was in the shed.

  Please still be alive, I thought.

  One of them stepped forward, marking himself as the leader of the rather motley crew. They ranged in age from what I guessed to be around eighteen to mid-forties. The leader fell somewhere in the middle.

  “You from around these parts?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I’m from Kansas. Just traveling through to visit family in Florida.”

  “Why ain’t you on the highway?” He sounded suspicious and my nerves ratcheted higher.

  “I’m not in any hurry.” I shrugged. “It’s family, ya know? Only so much time I can take listening to my ma tell me to get a job.”

  The leader got a crafty look in his eye. “Really? You lookin’ for work?”

  Not knowing where this was going, I went with it. “Yeah. You know of any?”

  The guy glanced at his buddies as though communicating something, then looked back at me.

  “I’m Jeb,” he said, holding out his hand, which looked none too clean.

  Eww.

  I took it anyway, keeping the handshake as brief as possible and concealing my distaste.

  “We’re looking for someone to fill a position,” he continued.

  My eyes widened and my heart skipped a beat. God only knew exactly what kind of position they meant.

  I cleared my throat. “Um, you mean like a job? Doin’ what?”

  “Deliveries,” he said. “We do deliveries in places that aren’t the best. Lots of cops around. They see one of us, they get suspicious. Profiling and shit. But they see you . . . a pretty little thing who looks like she couldn’t hurt a fly . . . why they’d just be leavin’ you alone, I reckon.”

  I pretended to think about it. “So . . . how much would I get paid?”

  Jeb glanced at his buddies again. “Five hundred a delivery,” he said.

  I felt my jaw drop open and I shut it with a snap. “That’s a lot of money,” I said. “What exactly are ya’ll delivering?”

  “Nothin’ you need to worry about,” Jeb said.

  Yeah, right.

  “Just drive to where we tell you, wait for the truck to be unloaded, take the envelope they give you, and drive back,” he said. “Think you can do that?” His tone had turned slightly belligerent and threatening.

  “Um, it doesn’t really sound like my thing,” I said, g
etting to my feet. Now that they were all in here, I’d take a chance on getting Devon out of the shed.

  “Have a seat . . . Mac,” Jeb said, shoving me hard in the shoulder and pushing me back onto the couch. “We’re not through with you yet.”

  I sat down hard, bracing my hands on the cushions, and didn’t take my eyes off him. Adrenaline was hitting me, the rush of cold felt like I’d been dipped in ice water as I stared at the five men looming over me. I didn’t want to think of just how badly this could go.

  “We know you’re with that man we caught sneaking around,” Jeb said. “We have lookouts everywhere. You gotta, with what we do.”

  I decided it wasn’t worth trying to play dumb. I didn’t need time. I needed to know that Devon was okay. “What did you do to him?” I demanded.

  Jeb’s grin was malicious. “Don’t worry about him. He’ll survive. Probably. But if you don’t do as I say, I can guarantee he won’t.”

  The gun at my side felt as though it was burning a hole in my skin. My fingers nearly twitched to grab it and it took a supreme amount of self-control not to. I knew there was no way I could get to it before they realized what I was doing, but my panic wanted to overrule my brain.

  “So what do you want me to do?” I asked, glad that my words were even, betraying none of the fear twisting in my gut.

  “Come with me.” Jeb jerked his head toward the door and I stood. The men parted a path for us, falling in behind me when I passed by. I could feel their eyes on my back and it made my skin crawl, every sense on alert for one of them to grab me.

  Jeb took me behind the trailer, the path lit by the glow from the windows in the trailers flanking the path. A dog barked a few trailers down, which started another dog barking, then someone yelled at them. It was obvious no one was sleeping in this crazy place, even at this ungodly hour.

  The breeze moved the trees, and the whisper of the leaves was eerie. I had no idea if Jeb was really taking me somewhere to deliver what I assumed were drugs, or if they were going to do something else to me. The drugs were obvious once we went deeper into the trailer park. The telltale odors of rotten eggs and ammonia that usually emanated from a meth lab permeated the air. If it hadn’t been for some white-trash neighbors who’d spent every weekend from Friday night through Sunday cooking their favorite drug, I wouldn’t have known what it was. But once I’d smelled it, it wasn’t something I could ever forget.

  To my relief, Jeb led me to two parked cars: an old Dodge van and the SUV they’d stolen from us. The paint job on the van was peeling and duct tape held on the driver’s side mirror. He led me to the SUV.

  “Flynn is going to ride along with you to show you where to go,” he said.

  One of the men stepped up to us. He had a shaved head and a tattoo around his neck, some kind of line art I couldn’t see clearly. If I could’ve picked the least threatening of the bunch, Flynn would’ve been my last choice.

  “I can see why the cops might red-flag you,” I said dryly. The smirk on Flynn’s face faded. I turned to look at Jeb. “I’m not doing anything until I see that my friend is all right.”

  “You’re not in any position to be making demands,” he said.

  “I think I am,” I said. “You need to make this delivery. And I’m guessing the people you’re delivering it to won’t take it well if you don’t show up. The cops are watching for you so your operation is hanging by a thread. So I’d suggest you take me to see my friend.” All of this was a shot in the dark. But they’d taken a chance, stealing our SUV, and I hoped I wasn’t wrong.

  I held my breath, waiting, trying to appear more confident than I felt.

  “We could just kill you,” Jeb said with a shrug, “and dump you in the woods. Critters around here will have your bones picked clean by tomorrow night.”

  “Go ahead,” I said, looking him square in the eye. I took a step closer and lowered my voice. “Because if you’ve killed my friend, drug dealers are going to be the last thing you need to worry about.”

  And I meant every word. If Devon was dead—if this piece of shit had killed him—then he might as well kill me now because I wouldn’t rest until only one of us was left standing.

  Jeb must have read the look in my eyes because he studied me for a moment. At last, he gave a curt nod.

  “Fine. This way.”

  I struggled to keep the relief from my face as he led me into the woods. Only Flynn and one other man followed us, the other two remaining behind.

  We stopped in front of a metal shed with a guy standing guard by the door. Jeb nodded to him and he stepped aside, looking at me curiously. Jeb unlocked the padlock on the door. After what felt like forever, it finally swung open.

  It was dark inside and Jeb reached in, flicking a switch on the wall. When I saw what it illuminated, I gasped, then ran inside.

  “Oh my God, Devon,” I murmured, dropping to my knees where he lay on the packed dirt floor.

  He was unconscious, and I was glad of it. They’d removed his shirt and a bandage was wrapped around his chest. Dried blood flaked the pristine white, and I could see brown streaks against his skin. Scratches crossed his arms, from some sort of animal.

  “What happened to him?” I asked.

  “Bobcat,” Jeb replied. “There’s some that like to hang around these woods. The middle of the night, that’s when they go huntin’. Your man got off a shot but the critter was busy sinking his teeth into him when we found ’em.”

  I peeked underneath the bandage, careful to not disturb the wound. A gray, mushy substance was smeared on his skin and gave off a powerful odor.

  “What’s this?” I asked, indicating the stuff.

  “Medicine,” Jeb replied. “Our kind, which is the best kind. Keeps out the infection.”

  Good lord. Had they done a chant over him, too, and put in some eye of newt? “Did it knock him out, too?” I asked.

  “No. Morphine we give ’im did that.”

  Hmm. “So you . . . helped him?” I asked. He nodded. “Then why are you keeping him locked up in this dirty place?”

  Jeb looked me in the eye. “We aren’t about to let a gift horse get away,” he said evenly. “We could use you, and looks like we won’t have any trouble keeping you in line since we got him, too.”

  Nothing like laying your cards on the table, I supposed.

  “Now you’ve seen him. Let’s go,” he urged. Flynn pulled me to my feet. I jerked out of his grip.

  “Don’t touch me,” I snarled. Flynn’s eyes narrowed dangerously and he stepped closer, looming over me.

  “Leave her be,” Jeb snapped.

  Flynn froze, our gazes locked in a staring contest, then he backed down.

  “Let’s get this over with,” he growled, stalking by Jeb and out of the shed.

  I cast one last glance over my shoulder at Devon, then followed Flynn.

  I didn’t know how long Devon would be out, but if they’d given him morphine, then chances were it’d be several hours.

  It was up to me to get us out of this mess.

  Jeb led me back to the SUV and handed me the keys while Flynn got in the passenger seat. He was toting a huge handgun and another was strapped to his thigh. He saw me looking.

  “You ain’t in Kansas anymore,” he said.

  Tell me about it.

  “Keep an eye out,” Jeb warned Flynn, who nodded.

  I started the engine and Flynn directed me out of the trailer park. He didn’t talk much, just told me when and where to turn. Eventually, I was on a backcountry road, the tires throwing up gravel in the SUV’s wake.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. I’d been keeping track of the route as best I could, but was afraid I’d still get turned around in the dark.

  “Just drive.”

  My hands were tight on the steering wheel, but I kept my silence. To my surprise, though we were far out in the country, we were suddenly in a small town, seemingly sprung up out of nowhere.

  “Take a left at the light,”
Flynn said.

  Not hard directions to follow since there was exactly one stoplight in the town, dangling lethargically over an empty four-way stop.

  I took a left, noticing right away a dark police car parked on the side of the street ahead of us. Flynn must have, too, because he stiffened.

  “Drive normal,” he said.

  I shot him an irritated look. “No kidding.”

  “Pull in to that bar at the end of the block.”

  I did as he said, noticing several other cars and trucks in the lot. Nice, new cars, too, not the older kind usually found in a rural southern town.

  After I’d parked, Flynn said, “Let’s go.”

  I followed him up the steps of a short deck and into the building. The sign on the outside proclaimed the bar to be open until three in the morning, which seemed like overkill for a town this size. But once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I realized I might have been wrong because there were at least a dozen customers.

  Flynn paused, scanning the faces that turned our way, then directed me to a booth in the corner. Two men sat in the booth and a chill went up my spine. While Flynn and Jeb were all Deliverance, these guys were pure cartel types. Their eyes were cold and their faces hard. They glanced over at me, their gazes taking me in from head to toe, and it made my flesh crawl.

  “Flynn, it’s about time you showed up,” one of them said as Flynn slid into the booth. He was dark, from his hair to his skin to his eyes, and the clothes he wore were casual but expensive. I knew clothes, and he certainly hadn’t gotten his off the rack. He was handsome but exuded menace.

  Flynn grabbed my elbow and tugged me in with him. “We’ve had some heat from the cops,” he said. “Had to change plans tonight.”

  The man looked at me. “And is this your new plan?”

  Flynn nodded. “She’s new ’round these parts. Feds aren’t looking for her.”

  Oh, if he only knew . . .

  “Do you have the latest order?” the man asked. The guy sitting next to him remained silent, his gaze roaming from us to the rest of the bar and back. I assumed he was some kind of security.