Calder Pride (Calder Saga 5)

“Are you sure?”

“Would I be telling you to go back if I wasn’t?” Rollie used anger to cloak the sick feeling in his stomach.

Lath started to swing onto the shoulder of the highway, then changed his mind and stepped on the gas. “Forget it.”

“Forget it? Are you crazy?”

“It might take too long to find, and we need to get this van back before your coal-mining buddy finds out we borrowed it. Besides,” Lath grinned, “I kinda like the idea of Echohawk finding it.”

Rollie stared at him. “You are crazy.”

“Think about it. You know he’s gonna go straight to Calder with it. And you know Calder will start sweatin’, knowin’ that somebody was trying to kidnap his grandson. Think how much sweeter it’s gonna be when we do steal the kid.”

“But the note.”

“What about it? The FBI can run it through their crime lab from now until forever and never trace it to us. Hell, the paper and glue are the kind every kid uses in school, and you know damned well I was wearing gloves when I lifted them from your friend’s house. I had on gloves every time I handled ’em. The same with the newspapers.”

Rollie gave that heavy thought. “Echohawk is still gonna look at us.”

“You forget—we’ve been fighting that grass fire,” Lath reminded him with a wickedly smug look. “And even if he sics the FBI on us, they can comb our place from one end to the other and not come up with anything. That’s why I made sure we burned everything we used and dumped the ashes in the river.”

“That’s right.” Rollie breathed a little easier remembering that.

“Why, we’ll be so clean, they won’t even look at us when we snatch the kid for real,” he said, then laughed. “Don’t you know Calder’s gonna go wild waitin’ for a ransom call that we ain’t never gonna make. That’s what’s gonna fool ’em. They’re gonna think this is all about money.”

“In a way, it’s kind of a shame not to take it,” Rollie mused. “You know Calder’ll come up with it.”

Lath gave him a sideways look of scorn. “You’re crazy if you think Calder never saw that movie Big Jake. That money would get us caught for sure. And I don’t figure on anybody ever knowin’ that we had anything to do with the kid disappearin’.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Hell, I know I’m right.”

The plan seemed foolproof, even to Rollie. Only one thing still bothered him. Other than some vague talk about keeping the kid stashed in the root cellar until the heat died down, then maybe hauling him down to Mexico or Central America and dumping him in some remote village, Lath hadn’t said what they were going to do with him. Rollie knew the smart thing would probably be to kill the kid. The thought made him squeamish. Stealing the kid was one thing, but killing him was another.

But getting rid of the body could be an even bigger problem. He convinced himself that Lath knew that. As long as they kept the kid blindfolded, he could never identify them, which meant they could dump him off anywhere, anytime. He was sure Lath knew that, too.

Cat searched the rearing blackness ahead of them. They had to be close to Shamrock’s headquarters. They had to be. Quint was half-asleep in front of her, his weight sagging against her encircling arm while the mare’s head bobbed rhythmically with the pace of her quick-striding walk.

An instant later Cat recognized the solid black shape of the barn’s hipped roof jutting against the night sky. Relief trembled through her.

“We’re almost there,” she murmured to Quint.

A shrill neigh rang out, sharp with query. The mare nickered an answer and broke into a rocking lope, ears pricked in the direction of one of her own kind. Starlight frosted the edges of a board fence. The mare slowed before they reached it. Other hooves pounded to meet them, the sound preceding a collection of snorts and curious whickers as a trio of horses poked their heads over the fence to check out the newcomers.

When the mare stopped, Cat slid to the ground, keeping one hand on Quint until she could lift him off the horse. With Quint once again balanced against her hip, she stepped to the mare’s head. A bright light sprang out of the darkness, blinding her.

“Hold it right there,” a familiar voice barked as she threw up a hand to protect her eyes from the glare. Instantly the light swung away. “Cat! What are you doing here?”

“Uncle Culley, you don’t know how glad I am to see you.” A sigh rippled from her in a sudden release of tension. As succinctly as possible, she told him about the two men and her escape from the house, explaining that Logan had been called away to the fire. “I need to call him.”

“The power went out about a half hour or so ago.” He unbuckled the halter and turned the mare loose in the corral with his horses. There was a flurry of squeals and flying hooves as a new pecking order was established. “The phone should still work, though. Let’s go see.”

With his flashlight to guide them, they made their way to the house. She laid Quint on the living room couch and tried the phone. It worked. Jenna Grabowski, who usually worked the day shift, had been called in to man the phones at the sheriff’s office. As Cat had expected, Logan was somewhere on the fire line, and unavailable at that moment. She told Jenna what had happened and where she was. Jenna promised to pass the information to Logan as soon as she could track him down.

By the time Cat had hung up, Culley had dug out the old kerosene lamp, lit it, and set it on the kitchen table. The bright glow of it filled the small room and banished the dancing shadows to the far corners. Cat wandered over to a chair and briefly gripped the back of it. In silence, Culley watched the way she reached up and raked fingers through her hair, dragging it back from her face. It was a habit she had whenever she was nervous. Culley doubted that she even knew she did it.

He got an old jelly glass out of the cupboards and rummaged through the shelves until he found the bottle of whiskey he kept on hand for cold winter nights. He poured some in the glass, added a splash of water and some ice cubes, then took it to her.