“Sweet girl, your sister. She’ll never tell you about me or my friends.” Shoebridge grinned through bloody teeth. “You can’t kill me, Mister FBI. I’m home free. You have nothing on me.” He laughed. “You wanna fight me for her? I might be older than you, but I took you down. How you gonna live that down, Mister FBI?”
Shocked when Styles removed his jacket and unbuckled his holster, tossing them to one side, she stared at him.
“Hold these for me.” Styles removed his goggles and handed them to her. “Keep out of the way. Don’t draw down on him. Give me your word he’s mine. I’m taking him in.” He turned to Bear. “Stay.”
Beth swallowed hard at the sight of his grim expression. She wished Carter was close by and the need to call him over was eating at her. She wanted to say something but stepped back beside Bear and placed the goggles next to a tree. In the dark, the men danced around each other trading blows. Styles had Shoebridge’s measure and could have hurt him, but reason was slowly taking hold. His anger was ebbing, and he grabbed Shoebridge’s arm, ready to cuff him, when the man pulled a knife. Styles twisted out of the way, lunged forward to grab Shoebridge’s wrist, but tripped over an exposed tree root. She gasped in horror as he staggered back, smacking his head hard against a pine tree before sliding to the ground. Panic gripped her. Styles wasn’t getting up and Shoebridge was advancing, knife raised. In a split-second decision, rather than draw her weapon, Beth bent and picked up a broken branch and ran into the fray. “Hey, you.”
As Shoebridge turned to look at her, she swung the log like a baseball bat, striking him across the front of his skull. The impact shot up Beth’s arms and she dropped the log. Suddenly afraid, she stared at him, one hand going to her weapon. Shoebridge stood very still and then fell straight back like a felled tree, crashing into the dead underbrush and not moving. Bear whined and shot past her to lick his owner’s face and Beth ran to Styles. Her partner was staring straight ahead into the darkness. She sighed with relief when he moaned and pushed Bear away. “Are you okay?” She indicated to Shoebridge. “He’s down.”
“Just a lump. I tripped when I avoided the knife and hit my head. I figure I blacked out for a time.” He staggered to his feet, rubbing the back of his head, and went with her to look at Shoebridge. The front of the man’s head was embedded with bark fragments. He felt for a pulse and then turned slowly to her. “He’s dead.” He shook his head and found the log she’d used. It had been torn from a tree during the fight. “It looks like he broke this branch clean off the tree when he ran into it.”
Trembling, Beth stared at him. Could the incorruptible Styles be covering for her or had he really blacked out? Either was possible and she sure as heck wouldn’t be confessing. She shrugged. “Best get your weapon and jacket before Carter gets back. He doesn’t need to know, you two got into a fight.” She gave him a long look. “I witnessed him resisting arrest and threatening you with a knife before he ran into that branch.”
They both stopped talking when Carter’s voice came through their comms.
“Do you copy? I’ve found two very terrified girls. Have you found Shoebridge?” Carter sounded annoyed.
Beth tapped her comm. “Yeah, we’ve been kind of busy. We tried to take him down alive, but he fought like a bear.”
“You’ve been offline for a time. Is he dead?”
“Yeah.” Styles rubbed his head and looked at a smear of blood on his hand. “He knocked me into a tree, took off, and then ran into a low branch. Killed him outright.”
Beth looked at him. Not one trace of guile showed on his face. She stared at the ground, unable to believe her luck. Maybe Styles had blacked out, maybe not. She guessed she’d never know.
EPILOGUE
FRIDAY, WEEK TWO
Rattlesnake Creek
Sunshine spilled into the office forming a patch on the floor where Bear lay, legs up and belly exposed, enjoying the rays. Beth smiled at him. It was strange how much he had become part of her surrogate family. She yawned and stretched. It had been a very long and hard week poring over all the evidence they discovered. After a couple of days in the hospital in Black Rock Falls, Shiloh had been returned to her family. After treatment, Callie and Bonnie had joined Ava and Ginny at the Her Broken Wings Foundation women’s refuge in Black Rock Falls. There they would receive extensive counseling. Likely, Bonnie would stay there until she was eighteen. In that time she would be rehabilitated and offered various opportunities to allow her to enter the world. Ginny continued to be in self-denial about everything that had happened, and although she had been deemed a fit mother, she would be under supervision for some time. It was hoped that with special care and training she would be able to rejoin society. It was difficult for Styles as he wanted to be there for her, but it would take time for her to accept him in her life again. The hunt for the whereabouts of Ginny’s lost babies and all the other children involved could take years to complete as very few records had been discovered. For the FBI it would be an ongoing investigation. The news hadn’t been welcomed by Styles, and it had taken Beth some time to explain the slow process of checking adoptions across the US within the vague timeframes Ginny had offered and by cross-matching DNA samples.
After the chase through the forest, Beth had dragged a reluctant Styles to see Nate, and the doctor had put three stitches into the cut in his head. During the debriefing, the fight and Beth’s attack on Shoebridge hadn’t been mentioned. She’d been free to get back to work and had joined forces with Kalo. After cross-referencing all the dark web information obtained from the laptops belonging to the doctor and Shoebridge, they’d discovered they’d caught the two men in the center of the pedophile ring. The men known as Shoebridge and Dr. Brewer had a cache of identities, all backed up with life stories and credentials. Beth had figured her stash of identities were second to none, but she’d been mistaken. A ton of work unraveling the pedophile ring lay ahead. It covered so many states and countries that the FBI needed to move like ghosts on the dark web to maintain the appearance that everything was business as usual. All the while moving in and dismantling various groups. It was going to be a long and arduous task, but in the last week forty members had been arrested and over seventy children rescued. Not one hint of the massive undertaking had leaked, and with Interpol involved as well, Beth was confident that not one of the doctor’s members would walk free to hurt kids again.
She pushed both hands through her hair. If only child abuse ended with the doctor’s demise, but it would spring up again somewhere else before too long like a deadly mold.
Although the dismantling of the doctor’s organization was in the safe hands of many departments in the FBI, it still bothered her sleep at nights. She stood and went to Styles’ desk. It was too early for lunch, but restlessness crawled over her. She needed a new case to clear her head, but nothing had come into the office. “I’m going down to the gym to hit a few balls, and then I might have an appetite for lunch.”
“Good idea.” Styles flipped a pen in his fingers, catching it and flipping it again. “The debriefing was tough, wasn’t it? At one point I figured they’d be taking me away in handcuffs. After the autopsy report on Shoebridge, who by the way was wanted in three states under the name Charley Dodds, Wolfe’s conclusion that it wasn’t only the head injury that killed him, but internal bleeding from either a fall or the fight, almost had me suspended. The fact I’d sustained so many injuries trying to take him in alive was my saving grace.”
Beth nodded. “I told the director you ordered me not to shoot as you wanted him alive to answer questions and that you both fought like dogs. I didn’t mention anything about giving up your weapon to fight him man-to-man.” She slid one hip onto the desk. “He questioned me about the Tarot Killer and how he’d slipped past me and Carter during our surveillance.”
“What did you say?” Styles stood, removed his jacket, and hung it on the back of his chair.
Beth straightened. “I told him we watched a few people come and go but our main focus was trailing the doctor. The Tarot Killer is ambiguous. We had no positive ID of him, so how could we have recognized him going in and out of the hotel?” She shrugged. “I did mention that because the doctor was dead we were able to move faster on the trail of Shoebridge. When he died, it cut through the red tape, and later with Shoebridge’s laptop we were able to infiltrate the entire network.” She smiled at him. “He said we worked well together and got results. I figure he was pleased.”
“So he should be.” Styles led the way out of the office and down the elevator to the gym. “I’ll watch you and then we’ll swap. I’ll feed in the balls.”
The baseball baffle net and pitching machine took up a good part of the footprint of the building. The other half was dedicated to a fully equipped gym. It had been part of the deal for Styles to work in the field office alone. Beth had discovered hitting balls calmed her dark side, and the joy of swinging the bat had become a passion of late. It kept her fit in body and mind.
After Styles loaded the machine and switched it on before standing outside to watch, she picked up a bat. It didn’t take long to get into the swing and she missed very few balls. Sweat ran down her back and her mind relaxed. Beth had found her niche in life, and Snakeskin Gully was the home she’d been searching for. She craved to get back out to her cabin for a time, just to do nothing, or to plan her next revenge. The last ball came out of the machine and she smashed it with all her strength. The ball hit the bat and shimmering energy vibrated up her arms, bringing back vivid images of hitting Shoebridge. Outside the cage, Styles gave her a slow clap.
“Wow! Your timing and follow-through are powerful.” Styles opened the cage and grinned at her. “I’m glad you’re on my team. With a bat in your hand, you’re darn-right dangerous.”
* * *
