Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 131387 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131387 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Her sweet red pickup wasn’t in the front of the cabin or the carport.
Not a surprise.
If you drove into town, even if it was for a quick errand, you found other errands to run to make it worthwhile to drive into town.
Hutch ignored the tightness in his chest when he saw she wasn’t home, parked, got out, and did what he had to do. Namely walking the perimeter of the woods to see if he could find tracks or surveillance cameras.
He found tracks all right, in the south wood, and they were not a woman’s.
Fortunately, he didn’t find cameras.
He headed back to his truck, peeled off his wet fleece, got in, pulled out of Mabel’s and drove onward three quarters of a mile until the dirt lane that led up to his house came into view on the opposite side of the road to Mabel’s.
He had two logs planted vertically on either side of his lane. Both had signs that said Private Property in orange neon on black.
Pretty much everyone on this patch had the same.
Poachers poached.
Tourists were invariably idiots.
But most people could read.
When he got home, he parked his truck, took his gear inside, stowed it, then changed his jeans, pulled on a clean, dry fleece, got his dog and went back out to the dual line of chain link, sectioned fencing that served as his large dog pens.
Plenty of room in each for a dog to roam, but in the back, right corner was a small, insulated shed that had plenty of old blankets inside for warmth.
They’d been fed in the morning, it wasn’t time for their second feeding, but he checked water bowls, took a few out for exercise and drills, gave them some love, put them back and headed to the house.
He sat at his kitchen table and pulled out his phone.
He’d thought about it on his hike, made his decision, and as such, called Rus.
“How’s it going, Hutch?” Rus answered.
“Took a hike with some long range binos. Shit is hinky at The Lion and The Lamb.”
Rus said nothing.
“The Feds aware of these fucks?” Hutch asked.
“Do you know Mabel Adams?” Rus asked in return.
“Yes.” Hutch didn’t hesitate to answer.
“As a neighbor and someone you wave to on CR 10, or something else?”
“I’ve fucked her.”
“I’m right now getting your intensity,” Rus muttered.
“That note was fucked up, Rus.”
“Agreed.”
“She’s alone, and the women who go into that compound never seem to come out.”
“Something we know. But as far as we know otherwise, they aren’t doing anything illegal.”
“How would you know if no woman was let out to tell you?”
“As much as it fucks me to say this, I know I don’t have to explain the concept of probable cause to you.”
Goddamnit.
“I thought you said you were giving her Hannibal?” Rus inquired.
“She and I had a chat. She doesn’t want Hannibal. She wants Tonks.”
“Tonks?”
“A red husky at the rescue who’s named after a fictional witch in a kids’ book.”
He heard Rus sigh.
“Okay, this is the situation, Hutch. You’re trained to solve problems. You get intel, command makes a decision, you get your orders, you act, no questions. That isn’t how it goes in law enforcement. Now, as much as it fucks me to say this, which, I’ll admit, it fucks me a whole lot more, we come in after shit goes down.”
He was giving a good man a hard time about something where that good man’s hands were tied.
And Rus might not be as tweaked about this as Hutch was, even so, that note had tweaked not only Rus, but Harry, Polly, Karen, Sean, Raul, and the entire Fret County Sheriff’s Department.
“This dog…Tonks, is it not gonna serve our purposes?” Rus asked.
“Huskies are pack animals. They form strong bonds. That dog has sat, unwanted and unloved, in a cage for three weeks. She’s freeing her. Anyone fucks with her, training or no, Tonks will lose her shit.”
“That’s good, yeah?”
Hutch didn’t answer Rus’s question.
He stated, “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
“Join the club, Hutch. Keep an eye on her. But for fuck’s sake, don’t get caught on that bluff.”
Hutch tried not to be insulted.
He felt better about it when Rus mumbled, “Who am I talking to?”
“You know anything about that legal tangle the Flannery family got into with Lars Enstrom?”
“I know it’s an issue for a civil court.”
“Can you tell me how a guy provides for maybe fifteen other guys, perhaps the same number of women, kids, having trucks, ATVs, a house for each, a church, and I could go on, by selling jam?”
Another sigh from Rus. This one heavier.
“All right, man. I wasn’t going to tell you this because the only thing Harry gets free and breezy with is deputizing the Bohannan twins whenever he has a problem only those two geniuses can solve. But as far as I know, he hasn’t deputized you. But just to say, after that note, we’re poking around. We don’t know a lot about these people. We don’t need to trip any triggers that will end in tragedy. So we’re going real quiet, which means real slow. We’re looking into the Flannery suit. We’re looking into a lot of things. And if the Feds need to be called, we got a good rapport with them. We’ll call them. No hesitation. Yeah?”