Forbidden (Southern Comfort) by O'Neill, Clark (free ebook reader txt) 📗

“Has to be.  It’s the only thing that makes sense, even though – holy God – I never would have predicted he’d do something like this.”

“So you think this is part of his revenge and retribution thing?  He took out his accomplice, who was stupid enough to allow himself to be made, took out the deputy who did the composite, and went after the son of the woman who ID’d the partner?”

Clay laid the open phone – their link to Harding – on his lap so that he could rake both hands through his hair.  At this rate, he’d be bald before morning.  But he needed to think, needed to figure this whole thing out. He had to get inside this asshole’s head so that he knew best how to help Max.

“Yes,” he admitted to Kim as he watched the outside scenery fly by, “that’s essentially what I think.  Although to be quite honest, it’s more extreme than I would have imagined.   Josh Harding – well, I think he just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, so the guy shot him. But with Max…”  Clay shook his head, looked at Kim.  “It’s like he didn’t just want to strike back at Tate, but he wanted to do it in the most painful way possible.  And he went to a lot of trouble to do so, at the risk of getting caught.  We’re talking about the sort of man who up to this point has avoided risky behavior, so that begs the question why is he willing to do so now?  That sort of thing reeks of some sort of personal connection, of prior knowledge of his victim.  It’s too extreme an act of retribution against a perfect stranger who’s pissed you off.”

Kim seemed to swallow that piece of information like something akin to spoiled milk.  “So you think this man is someone who knows Tate? Someone she has some kind of history with?”

“I don’t know.”  Clay rubbed his eyes, went with his gut.  “Yes, that’s what I think.  Kathleen’s running everything they can on the old lady who owns the farm, to see if they can turn anything up from that quarter.  But I’m afraid if we can’t approach the situation at that farm stealthily – if it becomes a hostage situation – someone’s going to have to wake Tate and show her the second composite, to see if she recognizes the blond man from the diner.”  He remembered something she’d said to him once, about him being the latest in a string of gorgeous blonds that she’d fallen for.  He prayed to God that this man wasn’t one of them.  “We’ll need to know everything we can about this guy and what makes him tick if we have any hope of getting Max back unharmed.”

Clay’s phone rang, and he flipped it open to continue his dialogue with Kathleen.

“We’re here,” she informed him, just slightly out of breath.  “We have our snipers moving into position.  No sign of life so far, but two members of the SWAT team just cleared the barn and made a positive ID on the blue pickup.  There’s also a late model minivan parked beside it.”

A minivan?  Interesting choice.  It was excellent cover for a man traveling with a young child.

“Kathleen, find out if there’s a car seat in the back of the second vehicle.”

Clay could hear her muffled voice as she turned away to make the inquiry.  “Affirmative,” she told him after a moment.  “I guess that means he was planning to take Max out of here alive?”

“Not only that, but it means they’re both probably still there.  He’d want to move quickly, after shooting Harding, so our best bet might be to wait him out, have one of the snipers take him down when he heads out toward the car.”  But it was going to take nerves of steel for him to wait, knowing that Max was probably in that house.  Kathleen must have felt the same way.

“I want to bust that door down right now.”

“I do, too.  But that might endanger Max.  We need to be sure that the guy isn’t in there, holding a gun to Max’s head before we go alerting him to our presence.”  Clay listened to the silence coming from the phone on his lap and asked her another tough question.  “Any word on Deputy Harding?”

Kathleen sighed, and Clay could hear her tension.  “His position is such that he’s in full view of the house, and if we get near him we’ll give ourselves away.  I had to take a hard line with a couple of his fellow deputies, who wanted to run to his aid.  We can’t risk it, as you said, until we know what we’re dealing with inside.  But in all honesty, I’m not sure the guy’s alive.  There’s an awful lot of blood under him.”

Clay swallowed and looked at the phone on his lap, feeling a real pang of loss for the other man.  In the short time Clay had known him, Josh had managed to earn his respect.

But then suddenly, noise erupted from that phone, and Kathleen began oh, shitting in the other.

“Kathleen?  What the hell’s going on?”

There was a barrage of voices, most raised in angry shouts, and then a very definite gunshot.

Two.  Three shots.

Between the two phones it was like hearing the situation in some kind of weird stereo.  “Please tell me that was one of the snipers.”

“Another of the Bentonville deputies is down.” Panic pitched Kathleen’s words.  “He ignored orders and went after Harding.  The first two shots came from an upstairs window, the third from one of our snipers, to get the gunman to back off.”  She made a noise that sounded an awful lot like a sob.  “I’d say our perp definitely knows we’re here.”

THE situation had gone to hell in a hand-basket by the time Clay and Kim made the scene.  Federal