Chapter 1

 

October, five years later, in the Florida Keys

The sun was barely above the horizon. Service personnel were already preparing breakfast in the galley of the Aquatic Adonis, an eighty-foot luxury yacht belonging to Gianni Rodini. Gianni and seven of his friends had been partying onboard for days, but this was their last. Within hours they would be heading into port.

Fancy yachts like his had been disappearing for months up and down the southern seaboard. From the Pacific coast. From the bay area of Houston, and along the Florida coastline. It was assumed the boats were being boarded by pirates who then sailed them to the Bahamas, repainted and refitted them, and then used them to ferry contraband from port to port, or sold them outright to unsuspecting buyers.

The pirates left no witnesses, and the few bodies that had been found all had execution-style wounds. There was nothing on them that would lead the authorities to identify the people responsible.

The feds were getting flack. The ATF was getting flack. And the DEA was getting flack. When the FBI learned of Rodini’s plans to take his yacht out for a weeklong cruise among the Keys, they planted one of their best undercover agents onboard with a sat phone and a gun.

Her name was Rusty Caldwell. She was twenty-nine years old. Average height. Physically fit. A sharpshooter with blue eyes and red hair. She went in as a sous-chef for the galley chef and did what she was told with as little comment as possible. She’d learned long ago that the quieter people were, the more invisible they became to others. And being invisible mattered in her line of work.

The crew knew they were sailing into port today, but instead of the usual morning chatter, they were unusually quiet, and Rusty noticed. She kept following the chef’s orders in a quick and proficient manner, never looking up. Never meeting anyone’s gaze. But every instinct she had was on alert. Something was going down. She could feel it.

She had gone to the cooler with a basket to get mangos and pineapple for the breakfast service, and was coming out with the produce when she overheard two of the crew at the other end of the hall. Sound carried in that corridor, and even though their voices were low, Rusty heard enough to make her skin crawl.

“Inbound. ETA four minutes. Same orders. TNP.”

It could have meant anything. More guests arriving. Or maybe a fuel carrier. But in her world, TNP meant take no prisoners. That gave them away.

She went straight into the kitchen, put the fruit on a counter, and then glanced up at the chef. “Making a quick trip to the head, Chef.”

“Fine, but don’t dawdle! Service is in thirty minutes,” he snapped.

“Yes, Chef,” Rusty said softly, and slipped out of the galley.

Moments later she was in her cabin. She grabbed her sat phone and made one call to her contact on the outside.

He answered on the second ring.

“Browning.”

“It’s me. Get a fix on this location. Someone is inbound. ETA four minutes. And the last thing I heard was “Take no prisoners.” I think our link to the pirates is the crew. Whoever is providing crews for these yacht owners has to be in on the thefts and murders. There’s a speedboat anchored just off the starboard bow. I’m going to try and get to it before this all goes to hell. Get somebody here ASAP. I can’t die looking like this. My hair’s a mess.”

Browning grinned. Caldwell’s wild red curls were as unforgettable as she was. “Roger that.”

Rusty grabbed her jacket, stuffed the phone into an inner pocket and zipped it in, then palmed her Glock, pocketed two fifteen-round magazines, and bolted out of the cabin, locking it behind her. If they thought someone was locked inside, the time it took for them to shoot their way in might be the difference between her life and death.

And then she began hearing a lot of shouting and screaming, and gunshots coming from above.

Shit! They were already onboard.

Now she had a decision to make. She was on the lowest level of the yacht and needed to get up to the main deck to escape.

There were two staircases, one at each end of the galley level, that led to the upper decks. She needed to know how many intruders had boarded and where their boat was—and pray to God they hadn’t already taken possession of the speedboat. If they had, she was going to fight them for it.

She paused for a moment, her heart pounding as she listened.

One man was ordering Rodini and the others to move to the edge of the deck. There was more screaming and crying, and Rodini was telling them how rich he was and how they could ransom him for money, when Rusty pivoted and ran the other way.

She could hear men coming down the stairs behind her, but she kept running toward the opposite staircase and then up and out into the sunlight.

The pirates had lashed their boat to the opposite side of the yacht from where she was standing. That gave her the fighting chance she needed as she began to sprint toward the speedboat. And with every step, she kept hearing screaming and begging from the other end of the deck, and with every shot, a splash ensued. She was only seconds away from escape when she heard shouts. They’d seen her, and she’d just run out of deck!

Without a second of hesitation, she leaped. Only after she was in midair and looking down did she realize she was going in the water.

Then fate handed her a miracle.

A wave hit the speedboat, rocking it back against the yacht just as she came down. She landed in the boat on her hands and knees, popping her neck and biting her tongue from the jolt of the fall. Her body was one solid ache, and she was spitting blood, but there was no time to think about what she may have done to herself.

She scrambled to her feet, threw off the rope securing the speedboat to the yacht, and ran for the controls. Rodini had insisted on keeping the key in the ignition after someone misplaced it onboard days earlier. She had been counting on it being there. And it was.

She slid into the seat and turned the key. The engine fired at the same time the first bullet sailed past her head. There was no time for an engine warm-up as she grabbed her gun and turned, firing off a round of shots at the same time she pushed the throttle forward.

The sudden burst of power lifted the nose of the speedboat so high out of the water that for a moment Rusty thought it was going to flip over, but then it came down with a thud and she was flying, leaving a four-foot wave of water in her wake.

They were shooting at her again, the bullets zinging past her like a swarm of angry bees. She turned sideways, making herself a smaller target, and began firing back at the armed men lined up on the deck. She saw some of them fall and others ducking for cover, but she knew their faces. The men shooting at her were part of the crew. Her suspicions had been correct.

She emptied the first clip and shoved in a second clip before moving out of range. Even though she’d taken three of them out and wounded a couple of others, the fight was far from over. The pirates had the yacht, and their boat, and they didn’t leave witnesses.

Rusty turned back to the stretch of water before her to get her bearings. They’d dropped anchor at Big Key. The sun was at her back, so she was moving west. Club Key was the small island to her right, which meant the Florida coast should be somewhere ahead.

She pulled the sat phone from her bag and made one more call, with salt spray in her face and the roar of the engine in her ears.

Again, Browning answered. “Backup is on the way, and we’ve got someone in a speedboat on radar.”

“That’s me. Don’t shoot. I made it off the yacht, but I’m going to have company ASAP.”

“Copy that. Choppers in the air and closing in. Less than two minutes out. Are you hurt?”

“Not so it shows,” Rusty said, and then glanced over her shoulder. “They’re coming after me. Can’t talk now. My daddy always told me to keep both hands on the wheel.”

She dropped the phone back in her bag. The speedboat was hitting the tops of the waves so hard it kept bouncing her out of the seat. There was a life jacket at her feet, and she needed to be wearing it, but the best she could do was get her foot between the straps. Maybe if she went into the water, it would go with her.

The wind was burning her eyes and tearing at her hair, but she didn’t look behind her again. She was focused on the faint green shoreline of the Everglades ahead of her when the image of a man’s face flashed before her.

Soldier Boy! That shocked her and then scared her. Was this her life actually flashing before her eyes? Was this some celestial sign that she wasn’t getting out of this alive?

Then she saw a Coast Guard cutter in the distance and two choppers in the air above her, and when the choppers roared over her, she lifted her arm in jubilation. But it wasn’t until the Coast Guard cutter blew past her, too, that she eased back on the throttle.

She’d made it. Home free again, but how many lives did she have left?

Each time she got into a situation like this, it felt like the end of her, and yet she kept going back in. She still hadn’t decided if that was a death wish, or because she was so alone in the world that it didn’t really matter.

Now that she had the power of the FBI and the Coast Guard behind her, she began to breathe easier. But coming down from the adrenaline surge of what had just happened was beginning to make her shake.

Every muscle in her body was throbbing. The coppery taste of blood was still in her mouth, her fingers wouldn’t uncurl from the steering wheel, and the wind was drying the tears on her cheeks faster than she could cry them.

A short while later, the Coast Guard picked her up and towed the speedboat into port. Rusty was taken to a hospital for treatment and then, later that same day, returned to her home in Virginia to recuperate.

A week passed. She finally graduated from soup and pudding after her tongue had time to heal, but she was still suffering from whiplash, a swollen knee, a twisted ankle, and daily headaches from the hard landing in the boat.

It wasn’t the first time she’d given thought to reconsidering her career choices.

***

Jubilee, Kentucky

It was just after sunrise when Cameron Pope left his house, still wearing the shadow of last night’s whiskers and the clothes he wore for his daily run. He wasn’t one of those guys who needed earbuds and music blasting in his ears while he ran. Although his cell phone was zipped in an inner pocket of his windbreaker, he didn’t need to listen to motivational speakers or the news of the day. He’d been a soldier too long to be stupid enough to cut off one of the senses that had kept him alive. He was aware of every aspect of his surroundings, as was the big dog at his side.

Fog was still rising as he came down from the porch of the sprawling, single-story home he’d grown up in. The air was as still as the big white dog beside him. Where he went, Ghost went. It’s how they rolled.

A hawk took flight from a nearby tree as they started up the gravel drive, and by the time Cameron and Ghost reached the blacktop road at the end of his drive, they were running.

It was the feel of foot to earth, the blood racing through his body, the little clouds his breath made coming out of his mouth, the sting of cold air up his nostrils that reminded him to be grateful he still lived. Two tours of duty in a war-torn land and still coming back with all his limbs and senses was everything.

Ghost always ran a few yards ahead, unaware that this country did not have IEDs planted at the sides of the road. Always on the alert. Always clearing the way for his human. Their bond was deep. Unbreakable. Their faith in each other unwavering.

The road up the mountain was steep and curving and bordered on both sides by trees older than the humans who now lived on it. It was the land of the Pope and Glass and Cauley families. Their sprawling generations populated the Cumberland Mountains and the town of Jubilee in the valley below.

The blood of Cameron Pope’s Choctaw ancestors ran true in his dark eyes and black hair, but it was his Scottish great-great-great-grandfather who’d put the breadth and height in the DNA of the Popes who came after.

Cameron towered over most people, just like Pope Mountain towered over Jubilee, and his long legs carried him far and fast as he ran, chasing Ghost up the mountain, outrunning the ghosts of the war they’d left behind.

They ran up, then they ran back down and all the way home.

Cameron’s day had just begun.

Back inside the house, he fed Ghost, then headed up the hall to shower and shave. He came out dressed for the day and turned on the TV to listen to the morning newscasts as he made breakfast. Then a news bulletin interrupted the morning show, and he stopped, his focus shifting.

“We’ve just been alerted to an ongoing riot inside Abercrombie Penitentiary. Guards have been taken hostage. At least four prisoners are unaccounted for and are suspected to have escaped. The warden is in negotiations with the prisoners regarding the release of hostages.

These are scenes from within the prison moments after the riot began. It is unknown how the inmates were able to get out of their cells, so at this time, it is all supposition. We’ll keep you updated as more information comes in. Authorities are asking everyone in the vicinity of the penitentiary to lock their cars and houses and, if possible, stay inside.”

Cameron frowned. Every time somebody in this part of the state made a jailbreak, they headed for the most heavily wooded areas. Like these mountains.

He thought of his sister, Rachel, and her family who lived a couple of miles further up the mountain. He sent her a text, then plated his food and sat down to eat.

A few minutes later he got a reply.

Saw the same bulletin. Locked in.

Satisfied he’d done his brotherly duty, he finished eating, cleaned up after himself, and headed into town with Ghost riding shotgun.

The day progressed. He thought nothing more of the bulletin as he bought groceries, then swung by the hardware store for nails and caulking. There were some loose boards on the porch steps, and he needed to recaulk some windows before winter set in.

***

It was nearing midnight.

Rachel Glass was waiting for her husband, Louis, to come home from work and had fallen asleep on the sofa. She was so tired from her busy day and taking care of her lively toddler that not even the laughter and chatter from the late-night television show was penetrating her sleep.

It was the sound of footsteps on the porch that woke her.

Thinking it was Louis, she opened her eyes just as the glass in the front door shattered, scattering all over the floor. She leaped up screaming as a man burst into the room, and then everything stopped.

The man was staring at her in disbelief. Holy shit! Rachel Pope?

Rachel was in shock. Oh my God! Danny Biggers?

The last time she’d seen him, she had been in court, testifying against him for rape and assault. She grabbed the poker from the fireplace, and as she did, he jerked like he’d been slapped and came at her.

“Get out! Get out!” Rachel screamed and swung the poker at his head.

He ducked. “Can’t,” he muttered. “You got somethin’ I want.”

She screamed and swung at him again, but this time he was ready. He grabbed the poker out of her hand and threw it across the room, then doubled up his fist and hit her on the jaw so hard it knocked her off her feet. She flew backward, hitting her head on a corner of a table as she fell, and didn’t get up.

Danny Biggers frowned at the blood pooling beneath her head, unable to believe this was where they’d sent him. Then he stormed through the house until he found the nursery and the little girl asleep in her bed. There was a moment when he second-guessed his actions, but then he thought of the money she was worth and shrugged it off.

“Whatever,” he muttered. He wrapped her up in the blanket she was sleeping under, and took off with her.

Three-year-old Lili Glass was tiny, but when she woke up in a stranger’s arms, she let out a shriek that brought tears to Danny Biggers’ eyes.

“Son of a bitch!” he shouted, and all but threw her into the front seat of his car, buckling her in as she was still shrieking for her mama.

He handed her a bottle of milk, thinking that would silence her.

Still shrieking, she threw it at the floor.

Cursing, Danny backed up, then spun out on the grass as he drove away.

***

Louis Glass worked the closing shift at Trapper’s Bar and Grill on Main Street in Jubilee. He was tired and cold as he left town and headed up the mountain toward home. All he could think of was a hot shower and crawling into bed beside Rachel.

When he turned off the road onto their driveway and saw a couple of lights still on, he smiled. Rachel was waiting up for him again. But when he pulled up and parked, he saw the front door standing open. Panic hit, and then he was out of the car and running into the house, calling Rachel’s name. She was lying on the floor between the fireplace and the sofa, with blood pooling beneath her head.

His heart stopped as he dropped to his knees beside her, desperately feeling for a pulse. The moment he realized she was alive, he rocked back on his heels with relief. He was reaching for his phone when it hit him.

The baby!

He ran down the hall to her room, turning on lights as he went. The little bed was empty. Lili was gone!

“Oh God, oh God, oh God!” he cried and grabbed his phone, his hands shaking so hard he could barely hold it, and made the call to 911.

“911. What is your emergency?”

“This is Louis Glass, at 33972 Winding Road on Pope Mountain. I just came home from work and found the front door open and my wife on the floor. She’s unconscious and bleeding from a head wound and our three-year-old daughter is missing. Help me! Please help me!”

He could hear the 911 operator dispatching an ambulance and relaying the same message to the county sheriff as he was running back to Rachel.

“Mr. Glass, is your wife still breathing?” the operator asked.

Louis dropped to his knees and felt again for a pulse. “Yes, but I’m afraid to move her,” he said, and jumped up and ran to get a wet cloth.

“Okay, just stay on the line with me,” the operator said.

Louis ran back to Rachel, put the phone on speaker as he laid it aside, and began gently wiping her face. He could hear the 911 operator dispatching services, but Rachel was his total focus.

“Rachel, baby…wake up! It’s me, Louis. Can you hear me? Wake up, love. I can’t do this world without you.”

He was still wiping the cold cloth on her face and neck when he heard her groan, and then her eyelids fluttered and she opened her eyes.

There was a moment of confusion when Rachel saw Louis’s face above her, and then his frantic expression registered along with the pain in her head, and she remembered. “Louis! He broke into the house!”

Louis groaned. “Don’t move, sweetheart. You’re hurt.”

Rachel started sobbing. “He said I had something he wanted.” And then it hit her. “Is Lili okay?”

“She’s gone, Rachel. Who took her? Who broke in?”

Rachel was sobbing. “Danny Biggers. It was Danny. I fought him, but then he hit me.”

The shock of hearing that name again—after all this time.

“I thought he was still in prison,” Louis muttered, and then he began hearing sirens.

Sound carried in the mountains. It would be a bit before they got here, but at least he could hear them now. He picked up the phone. The dispatcher was still talking when he disconnected the line to 911 and called his father.

***

Marcus Glass was a big man. A strong, youthful-looking man in his midfifties. He’d been a widower going on three years now and still hadn’t gotten used to sleeping alone, which was why he was dawdling about the house and folding laundry to keep from having to go to bed.

He frowned when his cell phone began to ring. A call at this time of night was never good news, and then he noticed it was his son, Louis.

“Hello, Son. You’re up late,” Marcus said.

“Dad! Rachel was attacked and Lili is missing. She said it was Danny Biggers. I don’t know which way he went when he left with her, but we need help. The police and ambulance are on the way, but they’re not going to start searching until they’ve talked to us. Call our people. Tell everyone on the mountain to be on the lookout. I don’t know how long he’s been gone, but not long because the front door was open but the house isn’t cold inside. Rachel’s head is bleeding and there’s a big bruise on her jaw.”

Marcus was in shock. “Lili’s gone? He hurt Rachel? What the hell? I thought he was in prison!”

“So did we. Whatever Biggers’s plans are, he’ll be up to no good. And if he’s on the run, he won’t go back through Jubilee. He’ll disappear in the mountains.”

Marcus heard the panic in his son’s voice. “Hold the faith, Son. I’m calling people now. If there’s a strange car on the mountain this time of night, we’ll find it.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Louis said.

The line went dead.

***

The law came up Louis and Rachel’s driveway with sirens screaming and lights flashing and an ambulance right behind it. Officers and EMTs spilled out into their yard and came swarming into the house.

While the EMTs were treating Rachel, Rance Woodley, the county sheriff, did exactly what Louis feared he would do and wasted precious time grilling both parents, even as they kept telling him they knew who took Lili, demanded to know why they hadn’t been notified Biggers was one of the escapees from the prison riot earlier in the day, and begged the police to go after him.

It was a nightmare of confusion, and then they caught a break.

***

John Cauley, Rachel’s uncle, lived near the peak of the mountain, and when he got the call from Marcus about what had happened, he flew out of bed, dressing in haste as his wife, Annie, scrambled to get his rifle and ammunition, handing it off to him on the way out the door.

He took off in his old Land Rover and headed for the main road. As soon as he reached the blacktop, he started down the mountain, thinking Biggers would not have had time to get up this far this fast and hoping maybe he’d meet up with him on the way. But he saw nothing, and his worry grew.

And then a few miles down he drove up on an abandoned car with two doors standing open.

John grabbed a flashlight as he got out and then looked inside the car. The first thing he saw was a Styrofoam cup with droplets of milk still in the bottom. Then a baby bottle half-full of milk on the floorboard and a pile of uneaten cookies in the passenger seat. After a quick search around the car, he saw tracks in the ditch leading into the woods and followed them, then found a scrap of blanket caught on brush and more tracks in the forest leading up the mountain. It had to be Biggers!

John’s heart was racing as he ran back to the road. His hands were shaking as he pulled out his phone, praying he’d get a signal strong enough to make a call.

***

Rachel was holding an ice pack against her forehead. Her eyes were swollen from crying, her head was still bleeding, and she was shaking so hard she could barely speak when her phone suddenly rang.

The sheriff jumped up, shouting. “Put it on speaker. If it’s the kidnapper demanding ransom, we’ll—”

Louis turned, shouting in anger over the sheriff’s orders. “Ransom? Have none of you heard a word we said? You just told us Danny Biggers broke out of prison. We should have been notified! It’s your fault we were unprepared! Biggers knows we don’t have money. He’s on the run, not hanging around waiting for ransom. He already got what he came for.”

Rachel took a deep breath and then screamed, “Stop shouting! All of you!” Then she answered the call and put it on speaker. “Hello?”

“Rachel, honey, this is Uncle John. I found an abandoned car on the road about four miles up from your place. There’s a baby bottle with milk in it and a pile of uneaten cookies in the passenger seat. I also found tracks and a piece of blanket caught on some bushes. He took to the woods, sugar. I’ll let the other searchers know.”

“Oh my God, oh my God… Thank you, Uncle John.”

“You rest easy, darlin’. We’ll find Lili and the bastard who took her.”

Rachel was sobbing. “Thank you, Uncle John, thank you.”

Woodley stared in disbelief. Let the searchers know?

“What searchers?” he shouted.

Louis snapped, “Our family. Our friends. I called them while I was waiting for you people to even show. They’ve been looking for a stranger’s car for the better part of thirty minutes now, while you’ve been here arguing with us.”

“Son of a bitch,” Woodley muttered. “Amateurs on the mountain at night. God knows what will happen now.”

At that point, Louis lost it and pointed at the front door.

“Nobody up here is an amateur at anything to do with hunting or tracking. Between them and their dogs, if Biggers is still in the woods, they will find him. If you’re interested in helping, then get the hell out of my house and go do it!”

Woodley’s face turned red as he began issuing orders to his men. Within moments they were exiting the premises and heading up the mountain to catch up with the search party.

But the searchers were already on the mountain with guns and dogs when they got the update from John Cauley. They came out of the trees and crossed the road to the other side and began looking for signs, while Louis went out to his shop, got a piece of plywood, and came back and nailed it over the broken window on their front door.