Final Extraction by Julie Trettel

Silas

Chapter 9

 

 

 

“What is taking so long?” I demanded. “We’ve been here for days.”

“Be patient,” Tarron said. “We need eyes on the inside.”

“If it hasn’t come in yet, it’s not going to. Martin double crossed us and for all you know he’s taking it out on my mate. Why do you think I didn’t give him her name?”

“You don’t trust him?” Painter asked.

“No. Do you?”

“Yeah, I do,” he surprised me by saying. “He’s the one Verndari I trust above all else.”

“I know my opinion doesn’t count for much, but I agree. He’s not going to double cross us,” Dave said.

“I agree. I’ve worked with Martin on many cases now and he’s proven himself trustworthy time and again. If he says he can do it, then he will,” Clara insisted.

“Just sit tight. I know it’s not easy, but you have to, big guy,” T said. “He’s infiltrating their organization and just his arrival could raise red flags. You’ve done undercover jobs before, you know what it’s like in the field. As soon as he’s established, he’ll make contact. Just have a little faith.”

I looked around the room surprised by what I was hearing.

“You too, Grant?”

“I have and would trust him with my life, sir.”

I groaned. “Fine.”

I resumed my pacing despite knowing how much it stressed the others out. I just couldn’t seem to stop myself from doing it, especially since they had all complained about my knocking on the table if I tried to sit still.

The main phone in the small conference room we’d rented at the hotel for our command center started to ring.

“What’s up?” Painter asked knowing that it was only supposed to be used in emergencies.

“Sir, we have a problem out here,” Ben said.

“What kind of problem?” I asked even knowing I wasn’t supposed to take the lead from Painter, but not really caring. Ben was on site and if there was a problem, I damn well wanted to know about it.

Painter took it all in stride as he did with most things in life.

“What’s going on, Ben?” he asked.

“There are cops crawling all over the place here.”

“What are cops doing there?”

“I’m not sure yet. They’re marking off an area about half a mile from the warehouse. It looks like the property line butts up to a park and something along one of the running trails has them out there. Chances are slim that it has anything to do with us. I mean from the looks of things the Raglan are still settling in.”

“A jogging trail you say? I could certainly stand to go for a run right about now. Maybe find out what they’re doing there.”

“Painter, you sure it’s safe for him to be so close to the facility?”

My friend snorted. “He knows better than anyone what’s at stake here, and honestly I think the whole team would feel better having him out from under foot for a while. He needs to blow off some steam and this might help him feel like he’s actually helping in some way.”

“I’m right here,” I reminded him.

“I’m aware.”

We stared at each other for a moment.

“Gage and I will go with him. We could certainly use the stretch as well.”

I groaned. “I don’t need chaperones.”

“Oh, we know, but honestly until the extraction begins, we don’t really have much to do here, and I can’t stare at that laptop for another second today,” Clara explained.

“Please take us with you,” Gage practically begged, “We aren’t used to being cooped up indoors for so long.”

I begrudgingly agreed. “Look the part. We’re just local runners out for a jog.”

Gage laughed. “You will never look like a runner. Maybe we should be your students for a mock boot camp. That would be more believable.”

I rolled my eyes. “Just be ready to leave in five.”

Fortunately, by the time I walked back to my room and put on my workout clothes, Clara and Gage were waiting and ready.

The drive over to the park was short. We got out and stretched breathing in the fresh air.

“It’s hot here. I mean it’s Florida, I get it’s hot, but I wasn’t expecting it to be quite this hot when it was still springtime,” Gage said.

“You can hang here if you’d rather not,” I said.

“No, we’re coming. It was just an observation. I can handle the heat.”

“But can you, big guy?” Clara teased.

I smirked. “This is nothing. Stretch out if you must, but let’s get moving.”

I didn’t wait to see what they would do, I just put my earbuds in and started running, I had to pace myself. Knowing I was so close to my mate made my gorilla perk up and try to take control. He was not happy that we weren’t going to her, but I couldn’t risk screwing up the mission. I knew damn well that was why Clara and Gage had jumped in to come with me. They didn’t think I could handle it, but I didn’t have a choice. There was too much at stake.

We’d been running almost a mile when I rounded a bend and came up short. Ben was right. There were cops everywhere.

Clara and Gage slowed up behind me.

Gage smacked my shoulder encouragingly. “I’ve got this,” he told me.

I didn’t know the man all that well. I’d only worked with him on a few cases, and he always seemed to stay quiet and keep his head down. As a leader, I greatly appreciated that, but this time it was like he morphed before my eyes.

His back straightened, his head rose a little higher, and he walked with a confidence I didn’t know he had. He smiled politely to the first officer he came to.

“Hello there. Is everything okay?”

“Keep moving,” the man said.

“Is the trail open to continue on or do we need to turn back?”

“Move on,” he said.

A man in his early thirties wearing khakis and a short sleeve button up shirt that wasn’t tucked in approached us. He had dark hair and piercing brown eyes as he checked the three of us out with a stern look that had us all frozen in our tracks. Then his face broke into a grin.

“You folks run this route often?”

“No, first time. We’re in town for a few days and thought we’d give it a go. Is it always this exciting?” I asked.

He laughed easily. “Hardly. There was an incident reported this morning. We’re just up here checking it out. I’m Detective Stone, Nick Stone, welcome to our little patch of paradise.”

“Detective, there’s another body,” one of the officers yelled out.

“Did he say another body?” Clara asked with a gulp.

My heart sank. The Raglan weren’t dumb enough to leave their dead so close to a public trail or buried in a way they would ever be found. We had seen Trevor becoming sloppier, but not like this.

“And there’s a passport here. Looks like the kid’s. We have a Greggor Smith and looks like he’s a very long way from home.”

“Australia?” the detective said. “What the hell is he doing all the way out here? Where’d you find the second body?”

“Under him,” someone explained.

A mass grave? What were the odds of that? It had to be the Raglan, but I was struggling to believe they could be that careless.

“Let me know when the medical examiner arrives,” Stone said.

“Said it’ll be two hours or more.”

Nick Stone mumbled under his breath something about incompetence.

“It’s a stab wound to the chest,” Clara said.

“Excuse me? Did you say something?” the detective asked.

“Sorry. I was just saying that boy was stabbed.”

“How can you tell that from here?”

“The blood trail on his shirt. He was lying down when it happened.”

“Are you an ME?”

“No, sir. I’m a doctor. I specialize in veterinary medicine now, but my first degree was in forensic science.”

“How can you be certain it wasn’t a gunshot?”

“The cut. It was made by a small sharp object. You’re looking for something thin with precision sharpness.”

“A scalpel,” I mumbled.

“Exactly,” Clara said.

“A scalpel? Who would even have something like that out here?” he inquired.

The Raglan, I thought, but I couldn’t say that. This human wasn’t at all prepared for the path this investigation could lead to.

“We haven’t seen any sort of blood trail leading here, or tracks for that matter.”

He was wrong. I could see the path they had taken from here. The vehicle must have been equipped with something on the back to mask their tire tracks, but the width of it told me they had driven here. Ben had seen Jake and Vada in an ATV heading back to the building on the day we’d arrived.

My gut churned, was this their work? Jake would never be so careless as to bury two bodies that could be found so easily—unless he wanted them to be found.

I couldn’t let myself believe that was true. He wouldn’t have done that and risk evidence linking a crime like this to himself or my mate.

Even if they hadn’t killed them, they could be tried for conspiracy after the fact.

I thought I was going to be sick.

“Woah. You don’t look so good. Why don’t you sit for a minute,” Detective Stone said as he helped me to the ground, “Brantley, grab me a water, will ya? Now let’s just sit here for a minute.”

“He’s really not used to this sort of heat,” Clara tried to explain, but I could see concern evident on her face. No doubt the human did too.

The officer handed him a bottle of water. He unscrewed the top and passed it to me. “Sip slowly. We’re just going to sit here and let it pass. Now, Miss, why don’t you explain to me just how you noticed so much more from all the way over here than any of my officers here could tell.”

Clara took on a surprisingly cool, calm persona as she explained that they traveled around a lot on wildlife preservation projects. She went on to explain how she and Gage had met at an abandoned zoo where they rescued many caged animals that were starving to death.

Tears sprang to her eyes and the detective seemed uncomfortable with the entire scenario.

Of course, I knew that she left out the part about Gage being one of the caged animals abandoned at the zoo, and made it sound like they had been working together on the project. That was far from the truth, but I didn’t dare correct her. By the time she was finished Detective Nick Stone was more than happy to make an excuse to leave us and had long forgotten the questions he had been hellbent on asking.

“Feeling better?” he asked me instead.

“Yeah, thanks. Just needed a little water.”

“Alright then.” He looked down at his phone. “My ME’s on the way. I’d suggest you guys walk back and keep an eye on this one.”

“What do we have here gentleman?” the new man approaching asked.

“Two victims, one in his teens, a Greggor Smith, male, age seventeen who’s a very long way from home. The other is an unknown older male. Most likely stabbed,” Nick hesitated for a moment and looked our way. He sighed and pursed his lips. “By a scalpel. We believe they were killed elsewhere. Someone must have carried them here by trail in the night and disposed of the bodies just off trail…”

Satisfied with his findings that the victims arrived by trail and not through the woods from the nearby Raglan facility, I was miraculously feeling a whole lot better.