Black Sheep (11 page)

He grabbed his laptop and headed behind the bar. Weasel, the MC’s vice president,
was already in Poppy’s office. Goose paused outside the door, listening, wondering
what the hell Poppy was going to ask him to do this time. Hoping it was better than
hunting for a bunch of stupid animals that were probably dead from the cold by now
anyway.

“No more half-assed fuckups,” Poppy was telling Weasel. “This time we do things right.
I don’t want to take any chances.”

“Not my fault.” Weasel was a small man, barely five-eight, but he made up for it by
being the nastiest son-of-a-bitch Goose had ever met. The guy was in his forties,
had a shaved head displaying his Reaper tatts, and a line of ex-wives and -girlfriends
a mile long, each skankier than the last.

“Did I ask whose fucking fault it was? Goose,” Poppy bellowed. “I said, get your ass
in here.”

Goose popped through the door as if he’d just arrived. “Sorry, had to grab my laptop.
Whatcha need?”

“There’s a fed coming to town. Nosing around. Thinks we have something to do with
some law student that’s gone missing.”

“You want me to find the student? See if I can track him online?” Goose asked. Computer
searches were much more his forte than hunting lions and leopards through the mountains.

“No,” Weasel said, yanking on the lapels of his leather vest as if shaking off an
insult. “I’ll take care of her.”

“Wait.” Poppy leaned back so far his desk chair creaked. “You can do that?” he asked
Goose.

“Sure. Give me her name, Social if you’ve got it, and I can dig up her latest credit
card charges, maybe even phone records, GPS if her car has it, you name it. Plus,
if she uploads a photo to Facebook or anywhere, I can tell you when and where that
picture was taken.”

Poppy inclined his head, obviously impressed. “Guess having a geek around can come
in handy. Weasel, catch him up with the info he needs.”

Weasel frowned as he dug in his pocket for a paper. “Want me to take care of the fed
while brainiac here sits on his ass surfing porn?”

“No. I want you to keep looking for the girl. She gets found, the feds get off our
backs. We don’t need no extra attention with the poker run this weekend. And you”—he
aimed a finger at Goose like he was pulling a trigger—“take your fancy toy with you
and work on finding where this girl has been and where she might go while you tail
this fed and bug her room, her phone, her car, anything you can get your hands on.
She’ll be staying at the VistaView so you need to get cleaned up before you head over
there. No colors.”

The VistaView? The tribal casino was the one place usually off limits to the Reapers—a
way of keeping peace with the locals without scaring off the tourist trade. Most of
the Reapers didn’t have the cash to lose gambling, anyway.

“Sure thing, Poppy.” Goose turned to leave, then turned back. “Why do the feds think
we have anything to do with this law student going missing?”

Poppy played it cool, not a flicker of emotion in his expression. But Weasel tensed.

“We don’t have anything to do with her going missing,” Poppy said. “But apparently
she stopped here on her way out of town, I dunno, asking directions or something.
We got to be proactive, get ahead of things. Last thing we need is trouble with the
feds. That good enough for you?”

“Yeah, sure. Knowing she was here helps me start track her movements. Did anyone see
what kind of car she was driving? That’d help, too, if it’s new enough to have GPS
on it.”

Weasel answered. “Honda Accord, about ten, twelve years old at least. I think it was
dark red, hard to tell, it was night and she was only here a few minutes.”

“You talked to her?”

“Yeah.” Weasel turned and glared like Goose was asking for a three-way with his old
lady or something. “I talked to her. Told her how to get to the interstate. She drove
off and that was all.”

Poppy handed Goose the slip of paper Weasel had given him. “Here’s all the info you
should need.”

“Okay, I’ll get right on it.” Goose left the office but didn’t shut the door the whole
way. He glanced at the paper. Lena Hale. Age twenty-six. Black. Five-nine, one forty,
brown hair, brown eyes. Social Security number, car registration info, address, phone
number. How the hell did they get all that from a thirty-second encounter? And why
was the club interested in some law student from Durham?

“As soon as he finds her, you take care of business. No fuss, no muss, you understand?”
Poppy said to Weasel. Goose leaned forward, straining to hear more details. It was
his job as enforcer to take care of club business, not Weasel’s.

Unless they were talking about killing the law student. God, he hoped not.

“And the fed?” Weasel asked.

“We need to know how much she knows and who else she’s talked to first. Then we’ll
decide.”

Decide? As in possibly killing a federal agent? The muscles in Goose’s neck bunched.
No way in hell would he let that happen.

“It’s a plan.” A chair scraped back. Goose took his cue and hustled back out to the
bar. He was working on the laptop when Weasel emerged.

“Haven’t found her yet, hotshot?”

Goose shook his head. “Just setting up search parameters so it can run while I head
over to the VistaView and start working on the fed. Oh yeah, they got a name?”

“Tierney. Caitlyn Tierney.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Emotions churned through Caitlyn as she drove west toward the Smoky Mountains, but
she boxed them up to be dealt with later. She had a case to work.

The Butner chaplain couldn’t have known it when he reached out to her last night,
but Caitlyn had a good deal of experience with missing persons cases—which was actually,
despite Hollywood, fairly unusual for a FBI agent, especially now when ninety percent
of the Bureau’s resources were devoted to counterterrorism and financial crimes.

Caitlyn’s first assignment after the academy was working with a multi-agency FAST
team: Fugitive Apprehension Strike Team. After that assignment she’d been transferred
to Boston, where she worked the Violent Crimes Task Force before being loaned out
to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children after Katrina to locate
kids taken by predators who’d used the storm to cover their actions.

But she never thought she’d be searching the mountains where her dad had taught her
to hunt. It was eerie, as if things were always supposed to be this way. Her dad teaching
her how to track and shoot and most of all to think like whatever animal they were
after. The FBI fine-honing those skills, even though they’d intended to forge her
into an entirely different kind of hunter. And now Eli Hale, the man who’d shaped
her life, who’d started her on this path, sending her back home to search for his
daughter.

A shiver shook her but it had more to do with the sun slipping behind the mountains
and the spitting snow than anything else. She cranked up the heat, turned on the defroster,
and pressed down on the accelerator.

She’d left a message for Uncle Jimmy at the casino and he called her back just as
she headed down Route 19 through Maggie Valley. She pulled off into the empty parking
lot of Ghost Town in the Sky to talk to him.

“So you’re coming for a visit? What a great surprise. Can I ask what prompted this?
I figured we’d never see you back around these parts ever again.” He and Aunt Lacey
had brought her cousin Bernie for a visit a few times when Caitlyn lived in Pennsylvania,
but she and her mom had never returned to Evergreen. Not while she was growing up,
at least. Jessalyn had gone back for Lacey’s funeral ten years ago. Caitlyn wasn’t
sure if she ever made the trip from Charlotte to Evergreen any other time. If so,
Jessalyn had never mentioned it.

“I’m trying to trace a missing girl. Lena Hale.”

“Lena—you mean Eli Hale’s youngest?” Disapproval sharpened his tone. “Why would she
come here?”

“I don’t know, but her roommate said she was heading to Evergreen and she’s gone missing.
Would you check your records and see if she stayed at the resort?”

“I guess I could. But there are plenty of other hotels around here now that the VistaView
has become such an attraction.”

Hard to imagine Evergreen needing more than one hotel, but a lot could change in twenty-six
years.

“Thanks, I appreciate it.”

“No problem. There’ll be a room ready and waiting for you when you get here. Just
tell the girls at the front desk to call me soon as you arrive.”

“There’s no need to make a fuss—”

“Nonsense. You’re family. And I haven’t seen you since you graduated college. Can’t
wait to see what a real-life hotshot FBI agent looks like in person.” He hung up before
she could protest.

She pulled onto the highway, mountains north, south, and west of her, their shadows
darkening the road. No turning back now.

*   *   *

Lena huddled in the far corner of her prison. For the first time since they’d taken
her, she allowed herself to break down. Not just cry. Hit bottom. Hard. She sobbed
and screamed and begged for mercy, hugging her knees to her chest, rocking back and
forth so hard her head banged against the wall.

How had her father withstood twenty-five years of being locked away?

She was still angry at him—and furious at herself for believing in him. After all,
he’d never lied about what he’d done. It was her blind faith, passed on by her mother
and Vonnie, that had led her to believe in his innocence.

He’d been so angry with her when she’d visited him a few weeks ago, wanting to take
his case to the Innocence Project. She’d never seen him like that, not in her entire
life. He’d stood up from the table, drawing the attention of everyone in the visitation
room, and yelled at her. “Once and for all, just leave it be,” he’d said, his face
flushing to the point where she worried he might have a stroke. “I killed the man,
Lena. I’m right where I should be. I’m guilty, goddamn it!”

He’d stalked away, leaving her speechless and alone.

Alone. She’d spent most of her life feeling that way—never fitting into her mom or
sister’s well-rehearsed dance. Vonnie and her mom always returning from a visit to
Dad, talking about their last visit, planning their next. Like he was somehow still
a part of their family.

For years Lena had played along. After all, he was the only dad she knew, and having
him in her life was a lot more than many of the kids she grew up with in the Hayti
district of Durham. Most of her schoolmates never saw their fathers or even knew who
they were. At least Eli tried to play the role, always interested in her life, giving
her advice, asking for details, staying involved.

Until Mom and Vonnie were killed. While going to see him. Leaving Lena alone. Truly
alone. And she finally realized what a farce they’d been caught up in. Yet she’d clung
to the misguided belief that she would be the one to save him, to bring him justice.

Stupid. Justice had nothing to do with it. After losing her mother and sister, she
just wanted to be part of a family again. But that wasn’t going to happen. Life was
life in the federal system. Her dad would never be anything other than who he was:
a killer, available only when he earned enough points to allow visitation.

She’d thought she’d toughened herself. That she could face life alone. Become the
family hero. If she couldn’t clear her father’s name, at least she could help to restore
the family legacy.

The idea came to her while researching the freedmen case that went before the Cherokee
Supreme Court and through the federal district courts. At first it’d been a simple
article for the law review, dissecting the historical foundation and current implications
of the courts’ decisions.

But when she’d discovered the Hale name included on the roster of Eastern Band freedmen
families, it became more. A way to find family she’d never known she had. She needed
that sense of connection, of legacy. Something she could pass on to her own children
one day. Something to prove she wasn’t really alone.

Her rocking slowed. So did her tears. As she quieted, she realized the thrumming noise
pounding through her head wasn’t her pulse, but rather the sound of fists banging
against the outer wall. Frenetic at first, but now slower, softer. As if the chimps
on the other side wanted to soothe her fears.

Maybe they’d also been drugged and stolen away. She wished she knew how long she’d
been here—anything to orient herself. If the drugs had kept her unconscious longer
than a few hours, she could be anywhere in the world.

She scooted back to the hole in the wall, trying to be quiet so she didn’t create
another frenzy among the chimps. Were they imprisoned together in a zoo? Held captive
by some kind of deranged collector-slash-serial-killer?

Or had she been taken somewhere where chimps ran free?

Peering through the hole, she received few answers. It was now dark outside, but there
was enough moonlight that she could see movement as two—three—no, four chimps crossed
the space in front of her peephole.

At least she knew it was night. She could start to keep track of the days.

The air was cold, smelled of Christmas trees, wood fires, and snow—just like in Evergreen
where she’d been taken from that dive biker bar. Never should have gone there, but
the man she was looking for worked there and she’d been anxious for answers. She shivered
and hugged herself again, this time for warmth. At least she wasn’t in some remote
African warlord’s compound.

Which left her still alone, still without any hope of rescue—no one would be looking
for her—and still without any answers to the biggest question of all: Why had they
taken her?

One last sob escaped her, this one born of terror that hollowed out her insides, leaving
her collapsed on the floor. She stifled it with her hand, not because she was afraid
of her captors hearing it, but rather because she knew if she heard it echoing through
her tiny prison, she’d never find the strength to get back up again.