Irresistible Force (A K-9 Rescue Novel)(49)

She held her breath in fright as the movement reverberated beneath her  palms. Strange squeaky squealing sounds came from deep below her. More  slippage. Then the bottom fell out.                       
       
           



       

She was rolling over and over, bouncing and bumping, unable to control  her body or brace herself. There was nothing to hold on to. There were  only the sounds of her cries and the low rumbling like a herd of buffalo  crossing a plain.

The stop was more abrupt than the free fall. The pipe she was in slammed into something hard.

Shay's head whiplashed, hitting both sides of the curved wall. Then she was spiraling down a black hole.





CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The pickup truck that roared past James on the county road that led to  Lake Gaston sported a flashing dash-mounted emergency light. He noticed  the sticker in the rear window said: WARREN COUNTY VOLUNTEER FIRE  DEPARTMENT. It made his heart rate tick up a beat with impatience. Not  even the traffic was cooperating. Nothing he could see was on fire. Most  likely they were just out joyriding on a Friday night.

"Bastards," he muttered under his breath, allowing a trace of anger to  keep him focused and alert. Every minute delayed was eating at his  control. He knew when he found the man who had been stalking Shay he was  going to need it, every damned ounce.

He'd called the Warren County sheriff's office from Raleigh. The  dispatcher said the sheriff and his deputies were out, part of an  investigation over a hunting accident. She'd have someone check on the  cabin as soon as they could shake loose. So far, he'd heard nothing  back. Shay still wasn't answering, either.

Eyes locked on the road ahead, he blocked the feeling eating him up  inside whenever Shay drifted into his mind. He had wasted more than two  hours going all the way to Raleigh. He should have known better.

Raleigh police had been by Shay's place of work only to be told she no  longer worked at Halifax Bank. Nor was she at Logital Solutions when  they checked. Finally, as James was entering the city limits, a final  call came in that turned him north, toward the cabin.

Shay wasn't at home. But one of her neighbors had come over when she saw  a police officer at Shay's door. She told the Raleigh officer he was  the second law enforcement officer at Shay's door in two days. She also  told him that she had seen Shay packing her car earlier in the  afternoon. And then she related the incident about the run-over cat the  night before, and that Shay had been drunk when she did it.

Driving drunk. That didn't sound like Shay. Going to ground for the  weekend at the lake cabin did. Shay probably thought she was running  from the threat of a civil suit. If only he could warn her that she was  running from something much more dangerous. An ex-con with an open-ended  authorization to take care of her.

He hit the steering wheel with the flat of his palm. Why the hell didn't  she call back? Was what he had done, or not done, so unforgivable?

He had a suspicion that it was.

He pressed the gas pedal harder.

From the rearview mirror he saw a second vehicle coming up fast behind  him in the darkness with flashing lights and an earsplitting siren. This  was a fire department vehicle, a pumper.

Cursing under his breath, he pulled over, his cruiser's tires kicking up  gravel and red dirt as he hit the unpaved shoulder. He yanked the wheel  to bring him back on to the tarmac and floored it, gaining speed until  he was almost on the bumper of the truck.

Okay, so there was a fire somewhere. It wasn't much farther to the lake itself. The vehicles would have to turn soon.

A few moments later he saw through a thinned-out line of trees a small  orange glow off to the right ahead. The hair lifted on his nape. That  was the direction of Shay's cabin.

Something raw and wrathful swept through him. If the bastard had hurt Shay-

Bogart pushed his muzzle into the opening, and began to vocalize softly.  James took a breath. His partner was feeding off his heightened  emotions.

"It's okay, boy."

Sucking air until it whistled between his teeth, James struggled to rein  in his most savage emotions. This was not the time to lose control.  This was the time to think and act like a lawman. He and Bogart would  get the asshole. But they'd do it the right way.

He had to brake hard when the fire truck swung off the tarmac onto the  gravel lane that led to the cabin. When it pulled over near a red fire  hydrant, he shot past it.

There were already people in the yard, neighbors who had left their  homes to come and help. What filled his vision was the cabin. Smoke  poured through the open doorway while flames danced behind the glass of  the windows.

Dear God, don't let Shay be in there.

He slammed on his brakes, halfway out of the cruiser before he skidded to a stop.

His heart was pounding so loudly he couldn't make out any individual  voices, but he swept the face of everyone he passed looking for Shay.  Not here. Somehow he knew that. She wasn't in the yard. The only place  she could be was inside.                       
       
           



       

He didn't hesitate. He broke into a trot, heading straight for the door.

Someone checked him, throwing him off balance, and then a gloved hand pressed hard into his chest, forcing him to a stop.

He turned to shove the intruder off and saw a man maybe twenty years his  senior in seventy-five pounds of firefighting gear. Their gazes met, an  older unyielding purpose matching younger single-minded determination.

The fireman dropped his hand and pointed at his comrades from the  pickup, geared up and ready to go in. "This is our job. Let us do it."

"There may be a woman in there."

The man looked at James only a second longer, then shouted to his  companions, "Possible woman inside!" He turned back to James. "We were  told it was empty."

James noticed the firemen didn't head for the front door where smoke  billowed. They headed for the back of the house where there were no  flames or smoke visible. James followed. The man who'd stopped him  stayed by his side.

He'd heard other firemen say, "We fight from the unburned to the  burned." That meant getting behind a fire to keep it from spreading  through the structure, saving, if possible, what remained.

The kitchen was relatively free of smoke. Two firemen went in with hoses  while James spent the longest five minutes of his life waiting in the  yard for one of them to return.

When he did, the man made a motion with his hands that said they had not found anyone inside.

James moved forward, about to ask if they'd looked everywhere, but the  fireman beside him intervened again and met him eye to eye. "They  looked. Everywhere."

James nodded, shivering against the adrenaline rush of relief. Shay wasn't in the fire. But where the hell was she?

He waited a few long minutes, just to be certain, as the hoses did their job.

Finally one of the first to go in came out and walked up to James.

"No one in there. But there is evidence that someone was here recently.  There're groceries still in bags. Maybe she ran when the fire started."

That should have made James feel better but it didn't. If she'd run from  the fire, she would have called it in or gone to the nearest house for  help.

He turned and looked, and sure enough her car was still in the yard. Had  Shay been surprised by the ex-con? Had he kidnapped her and set the  fire to leave no trace? No scenario running through his thoughts was a  good one.

Something began to ache deep in his chest. It grew so quickly that a groan escaped him.

A hand fell on his shoulder. "You okay?"

He glanced at the older fireman who was still watching him.

"Yeah." And just like that James shut down. Time for emotion later. He  was a lawman and needed to do his job. He walked around to the rear of  the cabin.

"Did your people do this?" He pointed to the kitchen door, all but off its hinges.

The guy shook his head. "Someone did that for us."

"Right." James turned back to his vehicle to get Bogart. Shay and her  attacker must be somewhere out there in the darkness, shielded by the  surrounding woods. The thought that her stalker might have driven off  with her to God-only-knew-where was too much to contemplate.

As he neared his cruiser he saw a sheriff's vehicle pulling into the yard. It was Deputy Ward. He met the man at his door.

"I have reason to believe Shay's been abducted." James went through the key points quickly in an unemotional voice.

The deputy looked past him at the house, his face serious under the  light of the NightWatcher light. The firemen were winning. The fire  seemed to be all but out. "One of the neighbors from down the road just  made a 911. There's been a break-in. On the other side of these woods,  over by the parking lot of the public pier about three miles from here  if you drive around. Witness says the guy's armed. Could be unrelated."