We just needed a few minutes. Just long enough to get the family untied and out the window.
“Be right back,” he said, then, an instant later, “Okay, they are all untied, and the team is lifting the children out now.”
I fought the spike of elation and found I didn’t have to fight it too hard. One of them kicked me in the gut. He was trying to get me off the porch. They’d decided to tie me up and put me in the shed to die, but no one wanted to pick me up, probably thanks to my inspired decision to pass out in my own vomit. It was also an excellent rape deterrent.
My hair was a mess of tangles. And, sadly, the aforementioned vomit. It stuck to the blood on my face so that even if I’d wanted to see, I couldn’t have. The man kicked me again to roll me another couple of feet. Tears pushed past my lashes as the pain ricocheted through me. He finally gave up and picked up one of my booted feet to drag me across the wooden porch.
“He’s going to pull you off the edge,” Angel said. He started to panic. “The side of the porch is at least a five-foot drop. The fall will break your neck. Hold on.” He must’ve done his disappearing act again. He came back almost instantly with “They’re coming down the hall.” He sounded more excited than afraid. “Get ready to run.”
But did the FBI have all the Vandenbergs out? I needed to know.
“The big one is turning around,” he said, the panic filtering back into his voice again. “I think he heard something.”
I groaned and pretended to come to for a moment. I gave a halfhearted kick at the man trying to wrench my foot off. It gave me the perfect excuse to protect my head when he pulled me off the porch. I landed with a thud that knocked my breath away, but I’d curled up a little and protected my head from hitting the side of the porch and my neck from being broken, landing on my shoulder instead.
“You did it,” Angel said. “You got their attention.”
Then, in an act that defied my imagination, it was so fast and so decisive, three shots were fired almost simultaneously through suppressed rifles. I opened my eyes and scraped at the hair in front of them in time to see the one next to me crumple into a heap. Through the porch slats, in my peripheral vision, I could see the other men crumple at the exact same time, as though the whole thing had been choreographed.
The team had killed them. A sniper in the trees across the road took out the one closest to me, and the team who’d entered from the back got the other two. All headshots. All perfect.
I scrambled away from the guy closest to me and, yep, threw up again.
A female agent brought me a bottle of water as Angel played with the Vandenbergs’ German shepherd and an EMT saw to my self-inflicted wounds.
“Agent Carson?” I asked.
She nodded and sat beside me on the back of the ambulance.
I laughed softly. “We’ve already met.”
“Yes, we have.”
“You came into the diner yesterday. Why didn’t you introduce yourself?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “I couldn’t have told you anything anyway. And I didn’t need anything else from you at that moment, so…”
“I get it. Love ’em and leave ’em.”
“That’s the kinda girl I am.”
It was nice talking to her. Comfortable. Like an old pair of jeans —
“But I still have to arrest you.”
— that had been rolled in a cactus plant. “No shit?”
“No shit. You interfered with an ongoing investigation —”
“Yeah, but you were only investigating because I told you to.”
“There is that. I’ll talk to my superiors and try to get your charges reduced.”
I was hoping for dismissed.
“You cut yourself up pretty bad,” a man said from beside me.
I turned to see Bobert there. He handed me a cup of coffee, and I kind of wanted to make out with him.
I took a sip, then asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Giving Agent Carson a hand.”
“Can you convince her to drop the charges?”
“Drop them?” he asked, taken aback. “I was going to see if she’d pile on a few more. Obstruction of justice.”
“She has that one.”
“Endangering a law enforcement agent.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Unlawful use of a… sharp, rusty object.”
“You know what?” I said, stopping him while I was ahead. “I’m good with her charges. It’s okay.”
He chuckled. “Wait till you see Cookie. She is not happy.”
It was my turn to be taken aback. “You told her?”
“Only because I want to continue being married to her.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, mumbling to myself. “The name Cookie does not strike fear into my heart. How bad could it be?”
The moment I said it, a loud shriek that carried over the land far and wide and made children of all ages cringe and dogs whimper sounded from my left.
“Janey Doerr!” it said. It knew my name.
Cookie came stomping up, and for the first time I was a little afraid of her. “What the fuck?” she asked, her eyes filling with tears. “What —? How —? I can’t even —!” Then she pulled me into her arms, unaware of how painful it was.
I looked at Bobert. “What the heck did you tell her?”
“The truth,” he said, the turncoat.
“Janey,” she said, holding me at arm’s length, then pulling me back in for a bone-crushing hug. Literally. She was crushing my bones, and I was pretty sure she was doing it on purpose.
Agent Carson spoke again. “You’ll have to thank Mr. Pettigrew for me, Detective.”
“I sure will,” Bobert said. “He gave it his best shot.”
I straightened my shoulders and tried to speak. It was a pretty good effort, given that no air would pass through my windpipe. “What about Mr. P?”
Bobert grinned. “He was trying to put you off coming out here.”
I gasped. For a really long time. “He was in on it?”
Cookie let go, then questioned her husband with an arch of her brow, equally curious.
“Yes, he was,” Bobert said.
I felt so used. So betrayed. So utterly out of the loop.
“I have to admit,” Agent Carson said, “we didn’t even know about this cabin until you asked Detective Davidson to look into it. You led us straight to them.”
“So you’re dropping the charges?”
“Not on your life.”
We watched all the activity while the EMT finished bandaging my wounds and gave me a tetanus shot. The cut on my foot from last night was already healing. Hopefully this would heal just as quickly. Must’ve been a vitamin freak in my previous life. Probably ate green shit. Stuff that rhymed with ale and… ettuce.
“Hey,” I said, elbowing Cookie to get her attention.
It was her turn on the oxygen mask we found in the ambulance. She pulled it off with a sucking sound and a questioning shrug.
“That’s the guy.” I stood and walked slowly forward, stunned to my toes.
“You’re just doing this because it’s my turn,” Cookie said.