AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Roth chuckled. Yeah, he never wanted to end up on Shepherd’s bad side, and setting up his people was one of the fastest ways to accomplish that. Only a fool would cross Shepherd. But SecDef was not a stupid man. There had to be something big going on behind the scenes.
“Let’s keep going up the highway. We’ll pass the entrance into homebase and pause a few miles up the road,” Jackson said.
Jackson pulled back onto the road. Roth followed him, the two ATVs eating up the pavement. The breeze whipped through Roth’s hair, exhilarating him. The sun’s bright rays peeked over the horizon. All his senses were bristling. This was one of the many reasons why he loved this kind of work. He was as alert, all cylinders firing together, as when he was on official SEAL missions.
When they pulled off the road, both men’s eyes scanned the horizon and the sky back the way they’d come.
“I know we’re in the U.S., but I expected to be fired on as we retreated,” Roth said to Jackson, both men still not transmitting through their comms.
“We’re not home-free yet. Don’t jinx us.”
Roth kept his gaze on the sky towards Wells’ property. They waited for nearly an hour. No vehicles passed them from either direction. Garcia reported no movement by those on the Wells ranch until the helicopter lifted off, but still, no one from the ranch followed them. He tracked the chopper. It flew back to Biggs Field.
“Return to home base, gentlemen,” Cooper broadcast. “Big Bear will initiate a meeting within the hour.”
They rode back to the campground.
Lima
Briana Woods gripped her pistol more tightly with her right hand. She held it at the ready. She brought her left index finger to her lips in a hushing gesture to the whimpering woman beside her. The floorboard from above squeaked again. Another wave of panic rolled through Tessa Conroy. Another wave of determination crested inside Briana Woods.
There was no way he could know they were in the basement.
Briana had met her newest client in person thirty minutes earlier. Tessa Conroy was a thirty-year-old nursing student at the University of Kentucky. Originally an Indiana native, she’d attended Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana after her high school graduation, where she earned a bachelor's degree in marketing. After working in the field for several years, she became interested in a career in nursing. She went back to school in Bloomington part time, while working part time for the firm she’d been employed at for five years.
That was when her life went sideways.
She caught the eye of a fellow nursing student, a man by the name of JP Knight. He was in his mid-thirties, and he wouldn’t leave her alone, insisting they were made for each other. His conduct quickly escalated into stalker behavior when she declined his advances. The school assisted by changing her class schedule mid-semester so that she was not in the same classes with him, but he persisted in following her. She even saw him parked across the street from her house at one in the morning. Even after she obtained a restraining order, he continued to turn up wherever she was.
She transferred to the University of Kentucky, moving to Lexington, and giving up her life in Indiana with hopes that once she was out of the area, he would move on. At first, she went about her life with no sight of him. Until the day the flowers arrived at the old house where she was house-sitting for a friend.
The card had her name on it, and she recognized his handwriting. She called the police, but they wouldn’t do anything about it without proof he was in the area. She grew paranoid when she felt as though she was being watched, a creepy feeling that was unsettling. By Thanksgiving, she thought she’d caught a glimpse of him several times in cars that passed her or in a store window. But with each second look, he was gone. Had she been imagining him?
Until that night she woke at midnight and peeked out of the blinds to clearly see him standing on the sidewalk, gazing at the house. She nearly passed out; her breath stuck in her chest. She hadn’t even forwarded her mail. How had he found her? She called the police after she’d remembered how to breathe. Officers responded. They found no one. One had the audacity to suggest she’d dreamt it.
The next day, she trolled the internet to find help because the cops clearly couldn’t do anything. One search led to another, and she found a website that offered help. She completed the contact form and was contacted by a woman who said her name was Lisa an hour later. She promised she could help. For some reason, Tessa Conroy believed her.
The door to the basement creaked as it opened. Briana felt Tessa grab her left arm and hold it in a vise grip. They were cloaked in the shadows behind a dust covered screen in the corner of the room near the stairs. There were two open doors across from the bottom of the wood staircase. If they could get him to go into one of those rooms before he discovered them, they could escape up the stairs and lock him in the basement where he’d stay until the police arrived.
Briana looked around the immediate vicinity without moving for anything she could roll or throw into one of those doorways to make him think someone was within. Nothing but a coil of rope and the screen was within grabbing distance. Her other option was to strike him on the head and knock him out. That carried several risks, though, least of which could include him claiming she assaulted him.
From above, the sound of one footfall, then another. White gym shoes appeared through the open-backed stairs, slowly descending the stairs. They creaked and moaned under his weight. Dust floated in the air, dislodged from the movement.
Briana grabbed the rope. She holstered her weapon and then pulled on the rope with both hands, testing to see if it was sturdy, fearing it may have been weakened with age. It held. She quickly and silently tied a taut-line hitch knot, leaving the loop about two feet wide. She handed it to Tessa, fixing her hands to hold it so it remained open. By this time, the man had descended to a step that was even with her chest. Briana reached under the stairs, grabbed him by his ankles, and pulled hard, bringing his feet through the open back of the stairs as far as she could drag him, until his thighs stopped him.
There were curses, a scream, and the sound of the man crashing down the stairs, his hands and face impacting the wood planks.
“Give me the rope!” Briana ordered.
She looped the rope around his calves and tightened the loop. She tied the rope off to a wood beam and then stretched it with her as she came around the front of the staircase, intending to tie his hands so they could get by. She found the man lying over the stairs lower than his legs, attempting to get up. Blood streamed out of his nose.
“What the fuck?” he growled.
Tessa Conroy circled around, so she stood beside the woman she knew as Lisa. “You are trespassing, and you have violated the restraining order!” Her voice was strong, anger spewing with each word. “I am pressing charges, and you are going to jail!” She pulled her phone from her back pocket and dialed nine-one-one.
Briana tied his hands as planned. Then she and Tessa stepped over him and went upstairs. In the kitchen, Briana whispered instructions. Tessa had to tell the police she was a friend she knew from the University of Indiana when she attended ten years earlier, who was visiting. The true nature of their relationship couldn’t be disclosed. Briana secured her weapon in its lockbox in her van and was just returning to the house when the police cruiser pulled up. Briana was not concerned with her ID in Lisa’s name, not holding up to scrutiny. It was valid ID.
The police found a window in the parlor had been broken. That was how he’d gained entry into the house. He was arrested for breaking and entering, as well as violating the restraining order.
