Whispers of Fate: The Mistresses of Fate, Book Two (24 page)

37

TYLER DIDN’T REALIZE
right away that Tavey was gone. He’d called his captain, explaining the situation and asking him to send investigators and the coroner out to his uncle’s house, and was walking to the truck when he realized that Tavey wasn’t there.

“Tavey!” he shouted. “Tavey!”

He ran a hand through his hair and cursed, remembering what he’d said. If he’d thought for two seconds, he wouldn’t have accused her. She’d been recovering from her head wound yesterday. Not that a headache would have stopped her if she’d been determined.

She hadn’t been, though. He’d asked her to trust him and she had. She’d trusted him to look into Summer’s disappearance and he’d paid her back by cursing her.

“Where the fuck did you go?” He walked to the side of his car and looked down the drive as far as he could. He didn’t see her and she hadn’t been gone long enough to reach the first bend. A small flicker of light, blinking and then gone, caught his attention. It was on the edge of the woods to the west, toward Tavey’s property.

Fresh horror filled him.
She wouldn’t.

He pulled open the passenger door of his truck, cursing. His glove box was open, his flashlight and backup weapon were gone.

She would. He knew her. The most stubborn human being on the planet.

“Shit,” he cursed, and slammed the passenger door, running around the front to get behind the wheel. He pressed redial on his phone as he turned around.

When his captain answered, he explained what had happened and that he was heading back to the Collins residence.

“Downs, in the past hour, you’ve called to say we have a dead body, a kidnap victim, a missing person, and now a crazy rich woman just walked into the woods with your gun?”

Put it that way and it sounded pretty bad.

“Yes, sir,” he said simply.

“Find Tavey Collins,” his boss ordered. “We have men looking for Bessie Weaver. We found her car in the Fate business district, near Tavey Collins’s dog store, as a matter of fact. This is my formal request for her security footage. We’ll take care of your uncle. You just find Tavey. Clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Tyler said, and hung up. It was what he intended to do anyway, but it was always helpful not to have to go against orders.

He drove quickly back to Tavey’s house, hoping she’d just come back there and not gone off searching, but he was guessing there were two places she would go. She would either head to her grandfather’s cabin, hoping to find something there, or she’d find a way to get to the Cherokee Paper Mill.

He didn’t see how she was going to make it without a car, not walking through the woods.

When he pulled up to Tavey’s house, Christie and the Triplets were outside with their dogs.

“Tyler.” Christie threw herself at him and he hugged her, looking over her head at the three sisters.

“Did Tavey call here?”

They nodded. “She called for Atohi. He’s still talking to her.” Ro pointed to the kennels.

Tyler ran down the flagstone path; he could hear dogs barking ahead. He could see Atohi gearing up one of the dogs, only it didn’t look like one of Tavey’s tracking dogs. This was a massive German shepherd.

“Atohi,” he called, yanking open the gate and walking quickly toward the man. “Where is she?”

Atohi stood. “She is going to the paper mill, where the girls were taken last year, where they found the bodies. I am going to her grandfather’s cabin. Bessie is likely being kept at one of the two.”

“How is she getting there?” Tyler asked incredulously. “Through the woods? It has to be miles.”

Atohi nodded. “She would be foolish to do such a thing.”

Tyler cursed. “She’s crazy. I . . .” He paused. “What did you tell her?”

“I told her a truth I should have told her long ago, a truth about her father.”

“He was alive for all those years. Is he still alive?”

“No.” Atohi shook his head. “He’s not, but his legacy is still causing hurt.”

“Where is he?”

“Where he belongs,” Atohi muttered darkly. “I would worry about getting to the paper mill. It’s a dangerous place.”

“How can I—” Tyler stopped again, a thought suddenly occurring to him.
She isn’t going to walk through the woods.
Tyler blinked. His uncle had a 1974 Dodge Charger that he kept in mint condition even though he never drove it. The keys were on a hook in the kitchen, visible to anyone who walked in the house.

“I’ll be damned,” he said suddenly, and ran back down the path to his truck.

38

TAVEY PRESSED THE
gas pedal, darkly pleased at the roar of the engine as she headed away from her property and onto the highway that led west, and then curved around northeast, past the service road that led to the paper mill.

She wished she had Dixie with her, for no other reason than the comfort the dog would provide.

Her phone rang as she drove. She glanced at it—Tyler. She rejected the call, pressing the gas a little faster.

It rang again and she ignored it, ignored him, ignored the tears that made her eyes burn. She blinked them away, watching for the turn down the old service road. It was difficult to find, even in daylight. She didn’t see it until she’d already passed it, so she made a quick U-turn, ignoring the blare of the horn from a car behind her. It shot past as soon as she was out of the way, two motorcycles following behind.

Tavey didn’t pay them any attention, but she couldn’t ignore Tyler’s truck, which was turning onto the service road as she came back.

“Shit,” she cursed, and turned down the overgrown rut behind him, knowing he could see her in his rearview mirror.

He drove along the road until it was blocked by a fallen tree and stopped, turning off his truck. Tavey did the same.

He was already approaching when she set one leg outside the car. She ignored him, picking up the flashlight and the gun from the seat next to her.

She turned on the flashlight and stood, keeping her face deliberately away as he walked closer and then closer still. He reached her just as she slammed the door closed. Tavey was expecting him to shake her, as he’d done in the past. Yell at her. Instead he hugged her like he’d hugged her after she’d hurt her ankle, holding her arms pinned to her sides as he pressed his cheek against her head.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, pulling away enough so that he could tilt her chin up. “I’m sorry, Tavey,” he said again.

Tavey wanted to punch him.

“Whatever.” She urged him away with a shove of her shoulder. “Let’s see if we can find Bessie.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” Tyler said, following her as she walked past his truck toward the mill, holding the flashlight low so she could check for obstacles.

“I own this place,” she said viciously. Her money had never given her more pleasure. “I was going to search it.” She didn’t care about pissing him off now. He could kiss her ass. “You’re the one trespassing.”

Tyler didn’t know whether to believe her or not, but he was inclined to. He didn’t see any reason why she’d bother to lie about it.

“Tavey, this is dangerous. We don’t know who’s out there.”

Tavey whirled on him, shining the light in his eyes. “Don’t talk to me about dangerous. I will not lose one more person I love, do you hear me? I won’t have it.”

“Then don’t give up on me,” he said simply.

Tavey stared, horrified. He would throw that at her. Use that against her?

“Don’t . . . just don’t talk to me,” she said hoarsely, gesturing with the flashlight. “Let’s find Bessie.”

Tyler had already pulled out his weapon, realizing that nothing short of tackling her to the ground and handcuffing her was going to change her course of action.

“Let me go first, then, Tavey. Let me have the flashlight. I don’t want you hurt.”

She considered him, then turned away, keeping the flashlight pointed at the ground as she walked with deliberate, ground-eating strides.

Tyler followed her, keeping his weapon up, knowing they were exposed, but he couldn’t hear anything other than normal forest sounds. There were no engines, no voices.

He covered Tavey as best he could while they walked. She seemed to be following something, tracks of some kind.

He caught up to her, continuing to look around, keeping his weapon out and up, and trying to watch his feet at the same time. He managed to glance down at one point and saw the motorcycle tire tracks. Tavey was following them. The crazy woman didn’t have the brains God gave a damn possum.

“Tavey—”

“Shut up,” she muttered, pointing ahead, where the tracks they were following disappeared into the brush.

“There’s an old caretaker’s house back there,” she whispered. “I saw it on the survey from the purchase documents.”

Tyler didn’t remember anything about a caretaker’s house from the FBI investigation. “Are you sure?”

“No.” She shrugged. “It may not still be there.”

Tyler had a bad feeling that it was. He moved in front of her and took the flashlight. “I’m going first,” he ordered, and left her to follow as she would. “Try not to shoot me.”

“I’d like to shoot you,” Tavey said under her breath.

They pushed their way slowly through the trees, Tyler using them as cover as often as possible. He wanted to turn off the flashlight but didn’t know how they would get through the trees without it.

He didn’t see the house at first, just an enormous mound of vines. The glint of the flashlight on a piece of broken glass clued him in, however, and he realized that the house had been entirely overwhelmed by the forest.

Tyler walked to the building and shoved aside a section of the vines, making his way under them. He held them up for Tavey; they fell like a curtain behind her. They were enclosed in the sharp-smelling leafy dark. He played the flashlight over the building, revealing the frame of a window, its panes long since broken. He leaned inside. Tavey did the same next to him. There was a large room with an enormous hole where the fireplace had caved in and crashed through the floorboards.

“I’m going in,” Tavey said in a low voice and handed him the revolver as she bent and lifted one leg over the bottom of the frame. She ducked under and followed with her other leg, staying close to the wall since the floor was clearly unstable. She held out her hand for the revolver. Tyler gave it back to her against his better judgment and followed her inside, praying that the floor would hold him.

Once they were both inside, Tavey nodded to the flashlight and the gun in his hand. “The floor isn’t going to hold you if you walk any closer to the edge, and you can’t crawl easily with a gun. Give me the flashlight.” She held out the revolver for him to take.

Tyler handed over the flashlight, but he held on to her wrist when she handed him the gun. “Be careful,” he ordered, his blue eyes seeming gray in the glare of the flashlight.

Tavey’s hostility faded as she realized that he was in danger, that they were both in danger of falling through the floor.

“I will,” she whispered, and lowered herself to her knees, crawling to the edge of the hole and carefully shining the light downward. The sound of angry chittering made her freeze. She pointed the light in the direction of the sound and gasped when she saw a man’s body, his white face marked by gaping holes. She felt bile rising in her throat when she realized that something had been eating him. She swallowed and forced herself to play the flashlight over every corner of what looked like a basement. It had been systematically dug up, leaving piles of dirt and bricks that had clearly been shifted and tossed in a desperate effort to locate something that had long ago gone missing.

Were they looking for a body?
Tavey wondered.

Once she felt like she’d seen everything, she backed up until she felt the steady, reassuring presence of Tyler against her hip.

She eased into a squat. “There’s a body. A man. He hasn’t been here that long.”

“Do you recognize him?”

“No,” Tavey said quietly in return, “but that doesn’t mean anything. There are animals. Maybe raccoons.”

“Perfect,” Tyler muttered. “Let’s go. I don’t think Bessie’s here.”

“No,” Tavey agreed. “Atohi was going to my grandfather’s cabin. We should get over there.”

“All right. You go first.”

Tavey stepped back out of the window and accepted the guns when he held them out to her. Tyler followed and they made their way back to the cars.

“How long will it take us to get there?” Tyler asked, opening the driver’s door to his truck.

Tavey was looking at her cell phone. No signal. Of course.

“It would be faster if we went through the woods,” she said simply, pointing in the general direction of the cabin. She had a good memory for maps, and Abraham’s car had one of those old dash compasses. They could make it if they were careful. “It’s only a mile and a half that way.”

Tyler was incredulous. “No fucking way, Tavey. That’s insane.”

“Stop,” she hushed him. “Either way we’re going through the woods. You remember the cabin. That murdering rapist was holed up there last year. This way we won’t have to drive all the way back around to my house and then up. We’ll cross down.”

“It’s pitch-black.”

“We have the lights.”

“You are crazy,” he said, but he didn’t look like he was refusing. “There’re some water bottles in the back of the truck,” he said, “and a backpack and some blankets behind the seat. They were my dogs’. They’re probably covered in hair.”

“Only way I like ’em.” Tavey was already moving.

IT TOOK AN
hour to make their slow way through the woods in the direction of the cabin. Occasionally the signal in Tavey’s phone would blink on, and she’d check their position on the GPS against the cabin, redirecting their course.

“This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever agreed to,” Tyler muttered repeatedly. Tavey ignored him. The closer they got to the cabin, the closer they were to finding Bessie—and the truth about her father, maybe even about Summer.

They hadn’t even seen the cabin when the loud, rapid-fire bark of an angry dog echoed through the trees. Tyler moved faster, keeping the flashlight low, not wanting anyone to see their approach.

The dog continued to bark, leading them even more effectively than the GPS.

They saw the lights first, shining through the curtained windows, but the sound of a gunshot made them both freeze and drop to the forest floor. It smelled of pine needles and overturned dirt. Tyler stopped Tavey from standing with a hand on her arm.

“Stay here,” he ordered and turned off the flashlight. Tavey heard him as he scrambled up, sneaking through the barely moonlit dark to the wood-framed walls of the cabin. She chewed on her lip and followed slowly after him. She was angry with him. So angry with him. But not angry enough to want him dead.

There were two more shots in rapid succession and a woman screamed. Jane? Bessie?

Tavey worked her way around the house, trying to move quietly so that Tyler wouldn’t notice her behind him.

She heard a loud crash, like a door being kicked open, and hurried to the front of the cabin.

“Cherokee County Sheriff,” Tyler boomed. “Put your hands up.”

Tavey crept up the two short steps onto the porch and moved to the broken door, her revolver in hand. She was breathing deeply through her nose, her heartbeat loud and thunderous in her ears, making it difficult to hear.

Tyler’s back was to her. He had a gun pointed at a handsome man with dark hair. She vaguely recognized him as Mark Arrowdale.

There were two people on the floor in the living room, their bodies fallen over each other like they’d been executed.

Mark was holding Jane securely in front of him, a gun pointed at her head.

Atohi’s rescued shepherd was standing a few feet away to her right, favoring his right leg. Blood matted the fur and she thought he might have been shot. He was growling, his eyes trained on Mark.

“Here’s how this is going to work,” Mark said, his face sweating profusely. It was clear he’d had training, though. The gun in his hand didn’t shake or waver. “I’m going to move toward the door. Let me pass and I’ll release Jane. Get in my way and I’ll blow her brains out and then yours.”

“You’d be dead right afterward,” Tyler replied. “Let me take you in and we’ll work this out.”

“No, we won’t work this out,” Mark disagreed, making his way toward the door, toward Tavey.

The dog growled. Mark kicked at it, never removing the barrel of the gun from Jane’s head. The dog, his reflexes slowed by blood loss, tried to bite at his leg, but missed, and Mark’s kick hit him hard in the head. He went down.

Tavey was furious, and when his back was to her, she shot him in the leg. Bastard.