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)
“Yeah.”
“Feel better?”
He did not.
While they were going real slow and quiet, Mabel was a short hike from those nutcase’s north gate.
And they’d been watching her.
“Three things I got for you,” he said. “One, they got a lot of lumber. Upright, tarred log fence around that entire property, big piles of firewood. They’ve cleared a massive space, and you know we got trees, but my guess is, they got wood burning stoves in their units, so they use a lot of wood, and unless they’re hell on wheels with that fuckin’ jam, they’re poaching lumber from somewhere.”
“Gotcha.”
Rus’s tone was serious because in those parts, it didn’t matter which side you were on in the political spectrum, they took lumber seriously.
The environmentalists would tie themselves to a tree before they’d let it come down.
On the flipside, trees equaled money.
“Second thing, they got a fortified shed, southeast end of the property,” Hutch told him. “Heavy duty lock.”
“Fucking hell,” Rus murmured.
“Position of that shed, number of men on that compound, it’d be iffy to get to it without getting caught.”
“Then don’t do something stupid.”
“I didn’t intend to. But you find probable cause to get on that land, you make sure that shed is in the warrant.”
“You’re heard.”
“Last thing, I did a walk through the perimeter of Mabel’s place. No cameras, but there’s been foot traffic back and forth. Not a lot, but it’s there. Even if we knew it was, now we know it is. That note is from them.”
“Noted.”
Good.
“I’ll let you go,” Hutch said.
“If this makes you feel better, they sneeze in the wrong direction, slow and quiet is a memory. Harry is getting a warrant.”
That didn’t make him feel a lot better.
But at least this time it made him feel a bit better.
“Thanks, man. Now letting you go.”
“Come to the club for a meal. The food’s the best in the county, and Lucinda always foots the bill.”
Lucinda Bonner was the owner of the Bon Amie Club.
She was also Rus’s woman.
They were not married. What they were, were committed for life.
“You’re on.”
They hung up and Hutch, with Hannibal loping at his side, went to get his laptop.
He took it back to the kitchen table, and after a few scratches behind his ears, Hannibal slid with a groan to lie at Hutch’s feet.
Hutch opened the laptop, the search engine, and he began.
The thing was, fifteen minutes later, he had nothing.
Not that first thing.
There was an actress named Mabel Adams. There was a teacher and principal from Horace Mann in Boston who wrote books on educating kids with special needs named Mabel Ellery Adams. There was an artist who died in 1957 named Mabel Adams. There were obituaries for a variety of other dead women named Mabel Adams. And a variety of live ones who were not the Mabel Adams he picked up at The Link and followed home to fuck.
No pictures. No social media accounts. No blue ribbon awarded at some junior high school track meet.
He dove deep and…
Nothing.
He had no social media, but he had a business, he had a website, he had a past, and unfortunately, that shit either had to be on the Internet or just was.
“The fuck?” he whispered, fifteen pages deep on the search engine results.
On page seventeen, Hutch made another decision.
He nabbed his phone, thumbed through the contacts and hit go.
Lee Nightingale answered on the third ring.
“Hutch, brother, it’s been a while.”
Lee Nightingale was the best private investigator west of the Mississippi, maybe east of it too. He and his crew had three branches in three cities in three states: Denver, LA and Phoenix.
He could find anybody, no matter how good they were at hiding.
And he could find out everything about you, no matter how hard you worked to keep it buried.
“You know that marker you owe me?” Hutch asked.
No hesitation. “Yeah.”
“Name’s Mabel Adams. Address on her rental, four four five oh County Road Ten, Misted Pines. My guess, late twenties, early thirties. Five eight. Lean but stacked. Brunette. Hazel eyes.”
And she gives phenomenal head. And I swear to fuck, when she watched me play, I wasn’t sure anymore if it was me or her who wrote my songs. She went toe to toe with me, maybe not knowing I was a former SEAL, but she couldn’t miss I could handle myself, and she had the balls to do it all the same. Oh yeah, and I pulled some seriously stupid shit with a Post-it note when I left her beautiful naked body, thick, soft hair and knockout face in her bed.
“How much you want?” Lee asked.
“I want it all.”
“Give me a few days.”
“You got it.”
“Later, brother.”
“Later, Lee.”
They disconnected, Hutch put down his phone, then he headed out to put more dogs through drills.
And pen them up after giving more love.
NINE
Sourdough
Mabel
Suffice it to say, by Sunday afternoon, I had not finished that bureau out in the workshop.