Side by Side

6

After the picnic ended, the group made their way back down to the house. Faith Ann and Rush led the horses to the barn to put the animals away.

While Sean put Olivia down for her nap, Winter and Alexa took cups of the coffee and went into the small den they called the office because there was a desk in it when they bought the place.

“Fallen Angel Farm is an interesting name,” Alexa said, raising a brow. “Some sort of a statement?”

Winter shook his head. “There’s an old graveyard that dates from 1806 just on the other side of that hill where we had lunch. Family members and workers who died here were buried there-slaves in a nearby plot. Most of the headstones are still there. There was a hand-carved stone angel there. During the Civil War the wrought-iron fence around it was melted down for ammo. Late in the war a company of Union cavalry used the angel for target practice. After they got bored with chipping hunks off her, they knocked her over on her back. She’s still lying where she fell, looking up at the sky.”

“Sometimes I wish all I had to do was to be lying out in the grass, looking up and watching the clouds drift by,” Alexa said. “I guess I was always too ambitious to relax. Or remember how to, if I ever knew.” She sipped coffee. “I was thinking the other day about prom night.”

Winter nodded. He remembered the night as clearly as if it had been weeks before instead of almost two decades back. How many times had he relived it?

“Why didn’t you call to let me know you were coming?” he asked Alexa.

“You start hunting again?” she asked. She was frowning up at a deer head mounted on the wall.

“While back. Rush, Lydia, and I like venison and Lydia said I needed to get off and clear my mind. I have Daddy’s old rifle and I enjoy the woods, the company of friends. Mama bought a cookbook with like nine hundred venison recipes in it. We were working our way through it one season at a time. Sean isn’t as fond of venison as the rest of us are. I missed the last two years and looks like I won’t make it this year. My friends may stop asking me to come if I don’t go soon.”

“You’re good about remembering your friends. I’m sort of counting on that being the case with you and me.”

“You need something, Lex, just ask.”

“I figured maybe you left the service because you wanted to get away from the. . excitement.” She smiled crookedly.

“I was a little tired of seeing the darker side of people. Last year Faith Ann’s mother was murdered for no more reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. When Millie was killed, Faith Ann saw the car run her and Hank over. And I was forced to kill someone.”

“I know the killing weighs heavily on your soul, Winter. Eleanor used to tell me about what the Tampa thing did to you.”

He shrugged. “You can get a bloody mouth before you know it.”

“Bloody mouth?”

“A perfectly good farm dog kills a chicken and he gets a taste for the blood. There’s nothing to do about him because it’s something that becomes part of his nature.” Winter tried to smile, but failed. “The weight a kill puts on your soul is a good thing because it means you’re human. What made the difference-why I really retired-was that last time I killed I didn’t mind it-I didn’t even feel remorse. It’s not that I liked it, but I didn’t feel any more than if that person had been a deer.”

He smiled, because just saying it had lifted a burden. He smiled, too, because after twenty years of not doing so, he was telling Alexa things he couldn’t bring himself to tell Sean or Hank or anybody else. She seemed to sense that and she smiled, too, and put her hand on his wrist. Time melted away and the Alexa he was looking at was again the skinny sixteen-year-old castoff he had loved with all his heart.

“Luckily, I’ve never taken my weapon out of the holster except on the range,” she told him. “Winter, I came to ask you for something that you might not be able to say yes to. If you can’t, I’ll understand.”

“Tell me what’s wrong, Lex.”

“I need your help for a few days.”

Winter nodded, still waiting for the request.

“It’s a job.”

He was silent.

“Yeah,” Alexa said. “See, I’m trying to save the lives of a woman and her infant son. In the process there could be the kind of trouble you have dealt with in the past. I need your instincts, your. .” She faltered.

“My gun?” Winter felt a hollow burning in his stomach. His ability with a weapon was a natural talent; it was also a curse.

“Yes, that, but also your instincts, your man-hunting skills. I need what makes you exceptional at this sort of thing.”

“Alexa, the Bureau has plenty of people who can do what I used to do far better than I can.”

“Nobody in the Bureau can touch you, Massey. We both know exactly how good you are. I don’t deserve your famous modesty crap. Save it for somebody who doesn’t know you.”

Winter felt himself bristling at her accuracy. He had been very good at being a deputy U.S. marshal, and circumstances had demanded that he go far beyond the parameters of that job in handling some very sticky situations. His skills had kept him alive, but he’d also been extremely lucky, which wasn’t a skill anybody could call on. “Lex, your Immediate Response Team can handle anything you face.”

“Damn it, Massey! If I could call in the IRT, I wouldn’t have come here to beg you to help me with this. Do you think I would pull you into a dangerous situation if I had any other choice?”

“Lex, last time out, I could feel the odds shifting, and a professional who should know warned me that I was operating out of my depth in a world of monsters like him. And I knew he was right about part of it, and wrong, too. I am fully capable of operating in his world, but I had to decide whether I would let go and join his world-with the monsters-or stay in this one. I know how good at this crap I am, Lex. But I owe it to Sean, Rush, and Olivia to stay alive.”

“You’re right, Winter.” Alexa smiled weakly as she searched his eyes with hers. “You have too much here to chance sacrificing it for two strangers. But I had to ask. It all seemed so perfect in my mind. The two of us side by side again. The only person I know I can totally trust with my life. Someone who will stay on goal and succeed no matter what other people throw at him.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” he asked again.

“Wasn’t something I could discuss over the telephone. And because I guess I thought you couldn’t refuse me if I was sitting with you when I asked.”

“Alexa, I’m a civilian now. No badge. Even if I wanted to help you, I couldn’t do it legally. Why can’t you involve the Bureau? Locals?”

“We go back too far for me to deceive you, Massey. I thought I couldn’t do this alone. I thought I had to have you to succeed. But I really don’t. You were my first choice, but I can go with a second or third.”

Her smile didn’t play. Winter saw the disappointment in her eyes.

“Tell me what the problem is,” he said.

“You know Judge Hailey Fondren?”

“I’ve been in his courtroom a few times on marshal business. Spoken a few times.”

“Night before last, somebody kidnapped his daughter, Lucy Dockery, and her son, Elijah, from their home in Charlotte.”

“So, you are here with the Immediate Response Team.”

Alexa shook her head. “The judge didn’t call the FBI,” she said. “He couldn’t without risking their lives, so he called me for help. . as a friend. I’ve known Hailey for years through the job. I knew Walter Dockery, his son-in-law, who was an assistant federal attorney.”

“Fondren going to pay a ransom?”

“This is not about money.”

“Revenge?”

Again, Alexa shook her head. “How much do you know about Hunter Bryce?”

“Ex-Army colonel. Charged with killing an undercover ATF agent. Something about a weapons deal.” Winter remembered something. “Hailey Fondren’s been trying Bryce on the murder charge.”

“Bryce was a Special Forces honcho, connected at the hip to Military Intelligence. He has powerful friends in the intelligence community, and he knows secrets about powerful people who don’t want him talking about them. His military records are mostly officially authored lies. He ended his career as a field functionary for M.I. in Afghanistan. Something happened there that should have ended in a court-martial and a life term for him and a couple of his men. Instead, Bryce was allowed to retire honorably.”

“I’m not a big fan of shadowy men with powerful friends. I’ve never found it smart to trust any intelligence agency, and that’s based on near-death experience.”

“Judge Fondren knows enough about Bryce to understand that his intelligence friendships extend into the Bureau, so he can’t risk any official FBI involvement in the kidnappings. Patrick Taylor, the ATF agent that Colonel Bryce killed, was a deep undercover agent who was known only to ATF personnel with top-level security clearances. Somehow Bryce found out about him.”

Winter had seen the headlines about the high-profile trial. He despised the political nature of the intelligence organizations and the fact that their concern for people’s lives and safety often ran second to what was best for the advancement of an individual agent’s career. And he knew far too much about the human vipers that thrived in the intelligence community den.

“Winter, the physical evidence against Bryce is overwhelming. His saliva was on Taylor’s face, his knife had Taylor’s blood under the handle, his boot prints were at the murder scene. Bryce declined any deals and waived a jury trial,” Alexa said. “I think he knew with one man to make the call, instead of twelve, exerting influence on that man was possible. So happens, he drew a judge whose soft underbelly is his family. Judge Fondren lost his wife and son-in-law in a car wreck a year back. Two days ago he got a call in the middle of the night telling him that his daughter and grandson had been taken. The caller told him that, unless he finds Bryce not guilty, Lucy and Elijah will be killed.”

“If it was my family, I’d cut Bryce loose.”

“If I can’t find them before Monday morning, he’ll set Bryce free. But. .”

“But what?”

“They’ll kill them anyway,” she told him.

“How do you figure that?”

“The people who did this for Bryce have nothing to gain by setting them free, and everything to lose. Hailey changes his mind, or Lucy Dockery says she and her son were kidnapped to make sure Bryce got a walk, and the decision to release him gets reversed. If the people who took the Dockerys have kept them alive, they’ll only keep them that way until Bryce is free on Monday. They might keep her alive in case they need to get her to speak to the judge before he goes into that courtroom.”

“The judge will raise hell when he doesn’t get his family back,” Winter said. “So either way, the kidnappers lose.”

“These people aren’t amateurs. They’ll make sure Judge Fondren never gets a chance to do anything.”

“They’ll kill him, too?”

“I’m certain of it. And the world is left with a mystery surrounding a disappeared daughter of a dead judge and her missing child.”

“But they’ll keep them alive until after court Monday.” Winter was thinking aloud.

“Odds fifty-fifty. They may keep the child alive to control Lucy. A mother will do anything to save her child. Lucy’s smart, but she’s been diagnosed as chronically depressed since her husband’s death, and she’s in the hands of violent people. She isn’t going to know how to outrun this kind of situation.”

“Sounds like you have it figured. Who’s your second choice for a partner?”

She shrugged. “I lied, Massey. There is nobody else. I can’t turn to anyone in the Bureau. This one is strictly off the books. The judge says he’ll make anything I have to do kosher after the fact.”

“You know I want to help you.”

“I know what I’m asking,” she said. “This is life-or-death, or I wouldn’t be here.”

“I have to think about my family.”

“Will you at least talk it over with Sean?”

“Talk what over with me?” Sean said. She had come into the room soundlessly, holding the pot of coffee.

“Alexa wants me to help her find a woman and a baby who’ve been kidnapped.”

Sean said nothing. She waited for one of them to go on.

“They’ll be killed unless I can locate them,” Alexa said.

“Lex is off the books,” Winter told his wife.

“Off what books?”

“Means no official involvement or support,” Winter explained.

“I can’t do it alone,” Alexa said. “If I could, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Will it be dangerous?” Sean asked. Her eyes were on Winter.

“We’re dealing with people who wouldn’t hesitate to kill us if we get close,” Alexa answered. “People who know how and don’t mind doing it.”

Winter said, “Alexa is sure they’ll kill the family if she doesn’t find them.”

“Damn it,” Sean said. She shook her head slowly. “Alexa asked you to help her, Winter?”

“I hated to ask, Sean,” Alexa interposed. “But I had to try.”

“Isn’t there anyone else you can ask?”

“There’s nobody like Winter, Sean. And there isn’t time to look for anybody else.”

Sean’s features were like stone. Then she leaned down and kissed her husband on the cheek. “Well, if that’s the case, you two guys better get moving.”