Wounded Animals (Whistleblower Series Book 1) (11 page)

I liked to come to the open space to think sometimes, and I’d been out here a lot since I’d learned I was going to become a father. The mountain view of my adopted home had always given me so much peace.

As I descended the hill, taking in the dim outline of the mountains to the west, I caught a whiff of something, a little too similar to what I’d smelled in my bathroom two days ago and the back seat of my car last night.

A gravel jogging trail cut through the grass near the bottom of the hill, and a couple hundred yards away, I spied a mangy dog. Some kind of mix, furry like a husky but forward-leaning like a pit bull or a boxer. It made eye contact as it trotted along the trail.

I looked in the direction it was heading and put a visual to the smell I’d already found. Dead coyote, laying on its side in the middle of the gravel. Its stomach had been torn open, with entrails and blood splayed out in an arc around the body. A puddle of red on the patchy snow.

The dog moved right past me to get to the coyote. When it reached the carcass, it sniffed and prodded various body parts with a nose. I was grossed out by the prospect of the dog eating dead coyote bits, but I also couldn’t seem to look away.

Growling. Not from the dog, but from somewhere around the curve of the hill, which I couldn’t see.

The mutt trotted back a couple steps. Looked at me.

From over the hill, a pair of pointed ears materialized. Then, a furry round head and an elongated snout. Before I took in the size of the body, my first thought was
wolf
. But no, this was another coyote. Maybe coyotes were smaller than wolves, but I didn’t want to discover if they had the same brand of razor-sharp teeth.

Kept my head low and did not make eye contact. I was ten feet from the stray dog, who was next to the carcass. The live coyote was thirty feet past that, and slowly rounding the curve of the hill toward us.

The dog eyed me, then the approaching beast.

Then the dog left the dead animal and backed toward me, growling at the approaching coyote and putting itself between us. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

The coyote’s eyes flicked between the two of us, still approaching. Bared its teeth. Snarled right in tune with the mutt, who was now growling so hard its entire body was shaking.

They came face to face, eyes locked, only a couple of feet apart, and still ten feet away from me. I took a step back, not wanting to run and trigger some prey chase instinct.

The coyote snapped the air in front of the dog but did not close the space between. Looked like some kind of prison yard
no, you back down first
contest. The dog stayed in place, with a constant low rumble of a growl. His teeth were bright white.

The coyote lunged, and the surprise movement knocked me off my feet. A blur of dark and light fur flashed in front of me. Teeth and snarling and yelping and snapping.

I scooted back and looked up the hill to the houses overlooking the open space. I knew I should have run for it then, but I couldn’t move. I had to see what was going to happen.

The blur normalized when the coyote pinned the dog to the ground, by the neck. The dog, trapped, met my eyes. There was fear there, some kind of desperation or paralysis. At that moment, I understood the wild beast’s pain. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do but wait for death.

I expected the coyote would bite down and rip through the dog’s neck. This mutt had probably done the same thing to the dead animal near them. Like he was some kind of coyote hunter, ridding the world of those pests one at a time.

I didn’t wait any longer. I scrambled across the hill and threw a shoulder into the coyote, knocking him off the mutt.

The coyote leaped back, yipped once, and ran around the hill where it had come from. Just me, the dead coyote, and the dog remained. A sudden silence pervaded the open space as the sun crested the houses behind us and lit the grassy hill.

The dog took a few crooked steps away then faced me. A string of bloody saliva dripped from its mouth. One of its ears had been mangled and half-chewed.

The dog shook, flinging blood and spit in a vicious circle, then it paused a moment. With a snort, it trotted down the hill toward the park.

I was alone in the quiet of the open space. I stood up, wiped some mud off my gloves, and started back up the hill. Everything had happened so fast, but I knew I’d just endangered myself to save the life of a stray dog, for reasons I didn’t understand.

***

I hopped in the shower, grimacing as the soap ran down my back wound. It might have needed stitches, but it was too late for that now. I didn’t have any desire to spend several hours in the emergency room, trying to come up with an excuse that didn’t involve me being sliced up by some crazy guys at the top of Eldo Canyon.

Their threat that I wasn’t to talk to the police probably extended to hospitals. Who else would turn up dead if I brought attention to myself?

So I’d have to grin and bear it. Which I did as I dressed for work. Not that I was planning to do any actual work, but I had to go there so I could look up Martin and warn him. No doubt in my mind that he was next on the hit list.

As I picked up yesterday’s pants, I found Shelton’s card in the back pocket. My eyes danced over the number listed at the bottom.

They’d told me they would work with me when I was ready to cooperate. So I was supposed to call this number and say I admitted defeat.

But if I did that, there was no guarantee of receiving any answers. Maybe I would call, but not until I found a way to get Martin to safety.

All dressed up, I walked out the front door just as Alan, clad in a bathrobe, was bending over to pick up his newspaper. He must have been the only person I knew under the age of fifty who still got a physical copy of the paper every day.

“Hey there, neighbor,” he said. “I’m still waiting for your wife to come over and check out my worm bin. Any chance you can ask her to stop by later?”

I broke out in tears. No idea why. The accumulation of everything that had happened over the last few days welled up inside me and exploded out all at once.

“I can’t,” I said.

Alan went white. “Oh shit. What did I say? Did I say something wrong?”

“Grace isn’t here. I don’t know where she is.”

He crossed the yard between us. “Oh wow, man. I’ve never seen you upset like this before. Do you mean you don’t know where she is like… she took off?”

“I think she might have.”

“No note or anything like that?”

I shook my head as he crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“Did you call her mom? I had an ex that used to run off all the time, and she always went to stay with her mom. Got to be predictable, you know, somewhere around the beginning of each season. Kinda funny, now that I think about it.”

“Of course I called her mom,” I said, and I heard vindictiveness in my voice. I hadn’t wanted it to be there, but it had burst from my lips without any effort on my part.

I took a step back. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say it like that.”

“Totally cool, Candle. Don’t even worry about it. If there’s anything I can do to help, give me a shout. You know where to find me.”

There wasn’t anything more to say, so he left me there in my front yard. I clicked the remote button on my car, then slid in the driver’s seat. Had Alan peeked and noticed the missing fabric in the back seat? If so, at least he hadn’t put me in a position where I’d have to stumble through some lie to explain it.

As I drove to work, it seemed like the image of Detective Shelton’s business card hung suspended on the windshield. The notion of calling the number and surrendering loomed large, bordering on irresistible. My hope of finding my wife on my own had dwindled from a fire to a tiny spark. Whatever they wanted from me, they were willing to kill more than once to send me a message.

No. First help Martin, then report Grace missing. I would do the right thing and keep all of this above-board. But then I thought about the kidnappers, and how they kept telling me not to contact the police.

Maybe I could focus on locating them instead. They’d said they didn’t know where Grace was, but that was probably bullshit. Find them and force them to tell me where she was.

There were too many unknowns. Too many things swimming around my head.

I parked outside my office building and raced inside. Had to get to my desk and look up Martin in the company directory.

As I lumbered up the concrete steps of the stairway, my phone rang. I slipped it from my pocket and checked the number. My Aunt Judy. I let it ring out and waited for the voicemail prompt to appear.

“Tucker, it’s your Aunt Judy again. I’ve left you a couple messages already. I don’t know if you’re out of town or maybe you’re on one of your camping trips and you can’t get to your phone, but if you hear this, we need to talk. It’s about your dad. I don’t want to discuss it on an answering machine, so please just call me as soon as you get a chance.”

Why was she so insistent that I talk to her about that asshole? With everything else going on in my life, the last thing I needed was more of that drama. Judy could wait until I’d gotten Grace back and settled the rest of this mess.

Swiped my card, lumbered up the stairs, and entered the third-floor cubicle zoo. It occurred to me that I hadn’t talked to anyone yet today, so the people glancing at me over the cubicles probably thought I was late. I held my head high and kept my face forward, not wanting to make eye contact with any of them.

I punched the power button on my laptop and it whirred to life. Would take at least two minutes to get into Windows, so I thought I’d grab some coffee. Shake the cobwebs from my head. Since I hadn’t slept well last night and had already almost been mauled by a coyote today, this day wasn’t exactly starting off any better than the last few.

My mug had a little coffee stain on the bottom, so I stopped in the bathroom to grab a paper towel and wipe it out. Wasn’t going to bother with cleaning it in the kitchen.

I was so focused on walking and wiping that I barely looked up as I passed the Aspen conference room. But when I did, I saw something that made me drop my coffee mug.

My boss Alison sitting with two men in suits, who happened to be the same two men who had kidnapped me in front of the police station.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

My heart thumped against my ribcage so hard that I felt it in my throat. I was staring at the two men who had forced me into a car the day before, taken me to the edge of a cliff and grilled me about Kareem Haddadi.

I must have stood there, paralyzed, for a half minute or more before Alison noticed me. When she lifted a hand and waved me inside, a voice in my head screamed
run, Candle, run
.
Get out of this building and don’t ever come back
.

But I couldn’t do it. Whatever else might occur, these men had answers. And like everything else that had happened, it couldn’t be a coincidence that they were here today. I needed to find out what information they had for me.

I had beaten them once before, maybe I could do it again if I had to. As I opened the conference door, the two men smiled at me.

“And this is Tucker Candle,” Alison said, “who does most of our training. You might have seen him wandering around the Dallas office before, but he’s been based out of this office since his hire date. Candle, do you know Frank Thomason and Stephen Glenning, the director and executive VP of sales?”

Thomason was the one name I knew, and Glenning was the younger man. The driver. I cleared my throat to unlock speech. “I don’t believe so.”

Thomason straightened his tie and clasped his hands over the table. “We haven’t met, but I did see you at our office recently, out there among the cubicles. So many people coming and going because of all the new hires, but it was last week, maybe?”

“It’s a big office,” Glenning said. “I get lost trying to find the bathroom sometimes.” Glenning was keeping his arm below the table. I had broken his wrist less than twenty-four hours ago. His eyes looked a bit glassy, and I wondered if that was from some pain meds. I had sprained my ankle in a judo tournament six years before, and it hurt like hell for weeks. I hoped a broken wrist hurt just as bad.

Alison laughed at Glenning’s joke, with a little too much enthusiasm. She wanted to impress these people. I checked her shoes, and she was wearing the serious heels. Was this who she was running late to meet with the other day when she gave me the assignment to go to Dallas?

“Oh, yes,” I said, “I’ve been to the Dallas office quite a few times. It’s such an interesting place. Lots of nooks and crannies.”

Thomason smiled and stared me down. “Nooks and crannies, eh? Never heard that assessment before. I supposed maybe I’ll have to explore some more when I get back home. You can join us at the table if you like.” Thomason turned to Alison. “We’re also looking at expanding into a new space in Plano because we’re nearing capacity.”

“What are you doing here?” I said.

Alison glared at me. Naturally, I was supposed to want to impress them too, but I didn’t give a shit about that. Maybe she had no idea who these people were, or maybe she did. I’d never trusted her.

“Are you going to sit with us, or just stand there?” Alison said.

I dropped into a chair at the table, never taking my eyes off Thomason. He peered back at me with a self-satisfied look on his face. He could be smug all he wanted because I knew that yesterday, I’d kicked his ass and slammed him against a tree so hard I knocked him out. I longed for the chance to do it again.

Glenning lifted his hand from underneath the table, and his lower arm was wrapped in a flesh-colored soft cast.

“Wow, that looks painful,” I said. “What happened to your wrist, Mr. Glenning?”

Without missing a beat, Glenning chuckled. “Got a little over-zealous on the racquetball court couple days ago. I went scrambling after a ball and ended up punching the wall because I hadn’t realized how close I was to it. My wife kept telling me I was going to hurt myself, the way I played. Turns out, she was right. Always listen to the better half, right, Candle?”