An Accidental Family. Darlene Graham

first,” Seth said as he used the knife to cut the tape off the other two. One was thin as a reed, with messy brown hair and frightened brown eyes. The other was a little chunk—curly red hair, deep-set blue eyes that had a spooked look about them. Neither one said a word, but as soon as their hands were loose they started flashing sign language.

      “Yeah.” The bigger kid nodded as he read his friends’ signing. “They’re twins or brothers or somethin’. Look-alikes. Big red beards.” He made a pulling motion at his chin.

      There were more hand signals from the other two. “Yeah. Real weirdos,” the Hispanic kid agreed.

      Seth knew, without even hearing the description, that the kids were talking about the Slaughters. “What are you guys doing up here?”

      The Hispanic kid shot his comrades a guilty look. “We didn’t mean no trouble. We just sneaked out to explore the caves, and next thing we knew, those guys caught us and tied us up. They’re way back in one of those caves up there.” He pointed up the cliff. “Aiming to dig up those bones,” he blurted, before his eyes shifted, and he clammed up.

      Seth narrowed his gaze at the kid. He suspected some kind of lie here. How would the boy know what the Slaughters were aiming to do? Seth would get to the truth sooner or later. He usually did. The last seven years had been one long pursuit of the truth. Many times he had searched this endless warren of caves, looking for bones himself. And many times he had come up empty-handed, ending up staring out over the valley, torturing his mind, seeing Lane’s young face on that wall.

      If Seth could find those bones, he’d have the evidence he needed to nail the Slaughters for Lane’s death. The famous missing motive. The defense attorney in the Slaughters’ manslaughter trial had argued that the twins had no motive to intentionally kill a cop. And Seth was never allowed to tell the story of his last conversation with his brother to the jury. “Inadmissible hearsay,” the judge had ruled. That’s when Seth had started to give up on the law. Or rather, that’s when he’d begun to use the law like a weapon to punish the Slaughters.

      Although the kid’s statement did not surprise him, it sickened him. So Lane was right. And now Lonnie and Nelson Slaughter had returned to this high, rock-embedded cavity in Purney’s Mountain to finish what they’d started. The place was shaped like a giant grotto, with jagged, towering walls of layered sandstone black with age, etched by seeping water and pocked by caves that had hidden the brothers’ dirty secret well—until now.

      “They hit Maddy on the head,” the boy said urgently. “He’s hurt bad.”

      Sure enough, the skinny kid had a pretty sizable goose egg developing under his tousled brown hair. Seth checked the big one’s cut hands, too. Then he hit the button on his shoulder radio for dispatch.

      “Amy, come in. I’ve intercepted some runaways from Big Cedar Camp. One’s got a bad bump on the head and another needs stitches. Send paramedics with transport, bottom of Purney’s Mountain.”

      Jake arrived, wheezing and out of breath from the climb. Unfortunately, Seth’s partner didn’t keep himself in shape the way Seth did. There were a lot of guys like Jake in Tenikah, former defensive players on the football team. Encouraged to bulk up as teens, they found their muscle turned to fat they couldn’t shed as they aged.

      “Now here’s a fine situation,” Jake drawled as he eyed the three frightened youngsters.

      They got the kids’ names. Dillon. Maddy. Aaron. Found out the reason the big kid was doing all the talking. Maddy was deaf and mute. Aaron was just plain mute. “He don’t talk to nobody. Not never,” was how Dillon explained it. So that’s what all the hand signals were about.

      They could describe the Slaughters, but they couldn’t tell Seth which cave they were in. “It’s dark back in those caves,” Dillon said, “and they was dragging us around like feed sacks.”

      The kids had escaped because Dillon was sporting a contraband knife. “But I couldn’t fight ’em both,” he explained. “So we waited, and when those guys went back to finish digging up the…uh, we put our backs together and Maddy wiggled my knife out of my boot and cut my hands free.” That explained the lacerations. “I cut our feet loose and we ran. We hid in here when we heard a noise. We thought you was some more bad guys.”

      “Good thinking,” Seth said. But now they had to get the kids out of here. “Jake, you take them down. I called for an ambulance.”

      “You’re not going after Lonnie and Nelson by yourself,” Jake challenged. Seth knew this was coming.

      “You have a better plan?” He pulled his shotgun out of the sling. “If somebody gets shot trying to escape, so be it.”

      “You know how that’ll look? You bringing the dead bodies of the two guys who killed your brother down off this mountain? Seth, it could cost you your badge—”

      “Then they can have my badge.”

      “What about Rainey?” the Dillon kid interrupted.

      “Rainey?” The two cops turned on him.

      “Our counselor from camp. Rainey Chapman. She might be out looking for us right now. She’s done it before. What if those guys find her, too?”

      “That settles it. I’m going up.” Seth turned the volume down on the mike. “I’ll stay in touch by radio.”

      Jake gave him a grudging nod. Then he and the boys went one way—down—and Seth went the other—up.

      Rainey Chapman. As Seth crept along the ledge, he tried to imagine what kind of woman would go tearing through these woods alone in search of three runaway boys. Whoever she was, he would have to get to the Slaughter brothers before they got to her.

      He turned to peer upward over one shoulder, toward the edge of the high cliff that surrounded him in a dark horseshoe. A late August moon rose high above the ridge, and against its white spotlight, Seth couldn’t make out any movement under the black cowl of trees. But if the Slaughters were in one of these caves, they could only get out by coming down this ledge, or by using ropes to scale back up the cliff. If the woman came looking for the boys in the caves, she’d have to skirt this ledge, as well. He positioned himself strategically for either occurrence and waited again.

      It seemed as if he’d spent half his life waiting, trying to assemble the pieces of a puzzle that refused to fit. He’d waited for Lonnie and Nelson Slaughter to get out of prison. Waited for them to come back here and make a move. Waited for the day—or the night—when they’d lead him to the last piece. This day. This night.

      He ran a sweaty palm over his thigh again. His quad muscles were knotting up like bundles of barbed wire. He’d pulled them good scrambling up over the boulders at the base of the cliff in the dark. But years of ignoring rodeo injuries had disciplined his body well. If only he could ignore the memories churning through his mind.

      His decision to avenge his brother’s death had seemed so cold, so clean at the time. But now that it had come down to this—hiding in these rocks, ready to kill or be killed—the weight of it all closed in. He glanced at the badge that gleamed dully in the moonlight like a shiny lie.

      Despite certain well-honed skills, Seth didn’t feel like a lawman. He knew that in truth he was nothing more than a predator, seeking one thing and one thing only—now going on seven years past. Sometimes he could actually feel his fingers closing around the Slaughter brothers’ beefy necks.

      A stealthy sound from above made his spine tense.

      Slowly, he eased up, clutching the shotgun, and stepped out of his cave, listening.

      The skin on the back of his neck prickled as he heard labored breathing, then a harsh curse, then excited shouting. “Lonnie! The kids got away!”

      A second guttural voice hissed a foul curse. A ray of light flared over the edge of the cliff and Seth flattened himself against the rock. “We’ll have to catch ’em later. We gotta get the stuff up first.”

      Rustling.