Cowboy Save Me: By Judith Lee (Tiller Brothers Book 1) (16 page)

Cody yelled, “We’re not leaving unless the marines are home so they can keep an eye on them.”

The Sheriff knew who they were talking about and knew the Swenson brothers had been keeping an eye on Jenny, along with the deputies he had driving by.   “Don’t worry, Cody, we’ll make sure someone is on look out tonight.  Hope Tammy’s not wearing her gun tonight since she’s so drunk.  She’d probably shoot her foot off.”

The Sheriff got out of the truck and went over and asked Jared for his cell phone number so he could text him that the girls got home alright.  He asked them to stay parked and to keep the noise down until he could escort the girls’ home.  Then he’d be back to make sure Jared passed the Breathalyzer test.

He jumped back in the car and did a U-turn with his lights still on.  The girls had already turned the corner and were out of sight.  He sped up to see if they had gone into the condo, it was only around the corner.  When the sheriff pulled up, Jenny was sitting in the street crying.  Her condo was on fire.  He couldn’t find Tammy anywhere, and Jenny was too upset and crying too hard to give him any answers.

The sheriff called Jared and told him he better get there quick, he needed his help to get Jenny to talk to him.

The truck came peeling around the corner with rubber flying.  They all jumped out.  Cody took one look at Jenny and started running toward the burning condo.  The Sheriff grabbed him and threw him to the ground.  Cody was swinging, and kicking to get free and it took the two brothers to hold him down.  He was screaming, “Tammy, Tammy!”

Jared was holding Jenny and trying to get her to calm down so he could find out what had happened.  She was still shaking, but she had finally quit hyperventilating and screaming.  He was soothing her hair and holding her.

“Okay honey, now slowly tell me, where is Tammy?”

“My house was burning…and he came out from behind the house…” she sobbed, “… and pushed me down and grabbed Tammy.”  Although her words were still slightly slurred Jared could understand her.

Tears were rolling down her cheek.

“Shh…sweetheart, I gotta ya.  Who grabbed Tammy, was it Marcus?”

“Yes,” her eyes were filled with terror.

He yelled over to Cody that she wasn’t in the house.  “Marcus’s got her.”

All the brothers crawled closer so they could hear what Jenny was saying.  Cody leaned down and kissed her forehead.

“John Swenson came out of his house and went after Marcus,” she gulped in air trying to catch her breath. 

They all looked over to where the Sheriff was leaning over John who was unconscious in the street.

“Tammy got away when Marcus was fighting John, but then Marcus pulled a gun out of his pocket, and shot him.  Only it just sent sparks and electricity into John.”

“He had a tazer, go on Jenny.  Where did Tammy go?”

“She ran to her car and took off, I think toward the ranch.  Since you weren’t following us anymore I think she wanted to catch up with you.”

Cody groaned. 

“Then Marcus jumped in his red truck and took off after her and then the Sheriff came around the corner.”

Jared picked up Jenny and headed toward their vehicle and yelled over at the Sheriff that Marcus was following Tammy and they had to go get her.

All the brothers piled in the truck.  Jared put Jenny in the front seat next to him and they took off peeling around in a circle headed toward the ranch. 

Cody was mumbling almost incoherently that Tammy was drunk and she’d crash her car if Marcus didn’t get her first.  He was ripping his hands through his hair and trying to sober up.  Jared knew he was blaming himself for getting so drunk and making so much noise the Sheriff had to pull them over, otherwise he would have been right behind Tammy and Marcus wouldn’t have had time to try to grab her.

“Drive faster Jared!”  Cody yelled at him.

A car pulled out in front of them from a side road and Jared had to swerve to miss the car and he spun out in the street and hit the curb. The tire blew.

The Sheriff went by them with his sirens blasting and his lights on.

Cody reached into his pocket to call the Sheriff.  Parker answered and said he had all the police and his deputies on their way and they would get him.

There was nothing they could do but wait.  Cody smashed his hand against the back seat, again and again in frustration.  Everyone in the car was worried.  At the moment there was nothing they could do but hope the Sheriff got to her in time. 

A deputy pulled up and Cody got out and jumped into the vehicle and they took off.

***

Tammy was having trouble driving.  The car was swerving from side to side, and she hit the warning strips on the edge of the road several times.  She tried not to overcompensate but her vision was blurred and she was really trying hard to concentrate.  She knew she should pull over but it was too late.  Already she saw the headlights behind her and he was gaining on her.  She had dropped her purse so she didn’t even have a phone.

Then she remembered that Cody had put a spare phone in the console.  She lifted it up, almost causing her to drive off the road, and turned the phone on.  Cody’s number came up first.  She pressed the button.

“Tammy, are you okay?” he screamed into the phone.

“Cody, he’s after me and I’m not driving very good.  I’m so scared.”

“Hold on darlin’, the Sheriffs coming and I’m coming.  Don’t crash the car.  Go to the ranch and drive right to the bunk house, and don’t slow down, Pete and the boys are there.”

She swerved again and dropped the phone, but she managed to pick it up.

“I love you Cody.”

“I love you, too.  Don’t hang up just lay the phone down and use both hands on the wheel.  Be brave, we’re coming.”

Tammy laid the phone on the front seat and she yelled at the phone, “He’s right behind me but there is the road to the ranch.”

She wrenched the wheel to the right and swerved onto the dirt road.  She tried to remember to miss the hole in the road Cody was always warning her about but she didn’t react quickly enough and the car jerked and jolted to the right and flipped into the drainage ditch next to the dirt road. 

It happened so quick, like slow motion, and she was flying through the window and she landed in the water.  Coughing water from her mouth, she tried to rise up out of the sluggish water but she felt like she was stuck in muddy quick sand.

She felt herself being grabbed out of the water and she was thrown over someone’s back.  She tugged her head around and saw it was Marcus.  She started kicking and punching but he just ran to the truck and literally threw her in the front seat and her head hit the dash board. She saw lights going off behind her eyes.  Then blackness.

***

By the time Cody got to the crash scene, he’d already heard on the deputy’s radio that Marcus had gotten Tammy and they hadn’t found them yet.  He slowly got out of the car and walked over to where Tammy’s vehicle was laying smashed by the road.  The window was broken and there was blood on the hood of the car. He saw the phone lying next to the car and picked it up.  He put it to his forehead and closed his eyes.

Cody had heard the sounds of the crash through his phone. He heard the busting window and her scream.  Then the line had gone dead.

He stood by the car staring at it.  He heard another car pull up and his brothers got out of the car and joined him.

Dakota looked at the vehicle.  “She’s not dead Cody.”

“How do you know?” Cody’s voice was low and strained.  He was clearly in shock.

Dakota said, “She is alive.  If she were dead, he would have left her body here.  He only took her because she was still alive and we’re going to find her.  They’ve already notified every law enforcement officer in the state.”  Dakota and Cameron wrapped their arms around Cody, and together they led Cody back to the car.

“Let’s go home so we can figure out the best plan to go get her,” Cameron said.

Later that night of the abduction, the Sheriff had found the red truck a few miles down a back road and there were tire prints where another vehicle had driven off.  Since it had been several hours since Marcus had taken her, the Sheriff told Cody they could be anywhere in the state.

It was the most agonizing two weeks he had ever lived through and so far there was no sign of Tammy.  His mom had even come home to help.  Jenny was still hysterical most the time and Jared had his hands full just keeping her calm.  Dakota and Cameron were on the phone checking out every lead that was called in.  They’d gone on TV and offered a considerable reward for information that would lead to finding Tammy.

Cody sent Matt to Laramie.  Since he needed to be there training, at least Matt would be near Tammy’s parents should she show up there.  Her parents appreciated having Matt close by while they were waiting on news about their daughter.

If Cody ever found her, he was never letting her out of his sight.  He had already beaten himself up over the guilt he felt about the road not being repaired.  His ranch hands had been working on plowing the road and filling it with gravel and that morning they had gotten to within a quarter of a mile of where the accident had occurred before they had stopped for the day. If only Cody had started them on the road a few days earlier, the road would have been in good shape and she probably would have made it all the way into the ranch and been able to get help.

His family had been solid in their support of him.  Every night he walked to the family burial plot and talked with his father at his grave.  Matt had told Cody about Tammy’s story about her mom’s afterlife experience, and that Tammy believed in life after death.  Cody hoped his father would hear him and answer his prayers and somehow guide him to where Marcus had taken her. 

Cody refused to believe that she was dead.   But he had no doubt Marcus was being brutal and sadistic to her. What kept Cody going was that he knew she was strong enough now not to give up.  He remembered what Tammy had told him about her last imprisonment and it was stuck in his head rolling through his mind like a movie on a continuous loop.  At night, when he did sleep which was very little, in his dreams he relived the horrors she had told him about during her captivity.

When he woke up from the nightmares most nights he rode his horse trying to release some of his anger and trying to get control.

The way he was right now he wouldn’t do her any good if he had to go rescue her.  But where was she? 

Where had he been hiding when he had started stalked her?  All the ranchers around Gillette had checked all their barns and storage units and found no sign that he had been there.  He checked with all the local hotels, especially the dumpy ones and still no sign of him.

That night the brothers had sat around the table and tried to retrace all the places where they knew Marcus had been.  Cody thought about Marcus following them in Cheyenne.  How had he found them there?  All he could figure is that he must have been watching Tammy and her parents in Laramie and had probably followed them to Cheyenne Frontier Days.

They had already known how Marcus tracked her to Gillette from the initial investigation. The sheriff’s office in Laramie had a hunch that Marcus might have been on the University of Wyoming campus where he used to work.  They scanned all the recording videos at about the time he got out of jail, and they had finally found Marcus at the University’s library.  He was recorded using the internet on their computers.  The Sheriff’s office had gotten a search warrant and traced his employee access code that erroneously hadn’t been removed from the system and discovered Marcus had been searching her employment and had found the announcement that she was a new hire in Gillette, Wyoming.

That explained how he found her in Gillette.  When the word went out to the community for help, the extension office’s clerk had called the sheriff to tell about the man who had needed to talk to Tammy about the grasshoppers eating his garden.  She said he acted like he’d already talked to her about it, and he asked for her cell phone number because he wanted to get some more information, and she told the Sheriff she had given out Tammy’s cell phone number.  Another employee remembered getting a call asking for Tammy from a man who wouldn’t give her his name and she told him she was on vacation.

Cody was convinced at that point, Marcus had gone back to Laramie to wait for her.  He knew her father went everywhere with her and kept his rifle in plain sight.  That had probably deterred him.  And then he had to have followed her to the rodeo and kept an eye on them and that night painted the word ‘slut’ on the door.

It gave Cody chills that Marcus must have followed them home and waited for the perfect opportunity while he stalked her wherever she went.  Cody knew he should have watched over her with more diligence. He should have kept her in his sights at all times.  And he most certainly should have stayed sober that awful night.

Cameron nudged his arm.  “Cody, do you think he is somewhere in Laramie?”

“I’m thinking that.  I wonder…” he thought for a few minutes. “The Snowy Range Mountains are located just outside of Laramie and there are lots of cabins in that area. He would know that being a professor at the University of Wyoming.”

This time of the season there was a very good chance many of the summer residents would have turned off their power, drained their pipes and headed back to warmer climate.  The winters were especially cold there and if you were there you would be snowed in until late spring.  Cody knew a few people who snowmobiled back in when the snow got over eight feet high.  He’d done it himself with a fellow student who had a cabin up there when he had gone to the University.

“Maybe Marcus has broken into one of those cabins.  It’s already snowed up there, but the roads are probably still accessible in some of the areas.”

“But Cody, if he’s familiar with the area he would know he’ll eventually get snowed in and he won’t have enough food to get him and Tammy through the winter,” Dakota replied.

“Unless he has been planning ahead and has stocked one of the out of the way cabins that looked abandoned for the winter.  We should call the Sheriff’s office and have him get in touch with the Game and Fish wardens and see what they think.”

“There are hundreds of cabins up there.  How can we pinpoint our search?” Cameron asked.

Jenny who had been sitting on Jared’s lap in the corner of the room said, “We can call the power company and see who is still using electricity.  Maybe we don’t even need a search warrant if we tell them what we suspect.”

Cody looked at Jenny, and said, “I think you’re right.  That’s a great idea.” He started feeling hope for the first time in two weeks.

She jumped up, “I’ll get on it first thing tomorrow morning.  I bet I can talk them into telling us what cabin is still using power and if that is a normal occurrence.”