The Shack series

Chapter 2

Thirty minutes later, the Sheriff dropped me back at the yard. I went up to the trailer, pulled out the keys to Sally and, after a bit of thought, pulled out my Springfield 1911 .45 out of the bedside table, then pulled a couple extra magazines for it.

I pulled the roller door up on Sally's garage and stared at her. Mostly primer with a brilliant yellow hood, and passenger door, she was certainly no beauty, looking more like a rent-a-wreck beater than anything else. That boxy looking "Fox" body style didn't exactly scream "Fast and Furious." Still, she had it where it counted. A 1979 Mustang Cobra four-speed with all the internal trimmings and some extra upgrades beyond anything Ford offered. It'd been a total pain in the a*s, but I'd put in a Gen2 5.0L Coyote engine, the best sway bars money could buy and racing seats with five-point harnesses. If this got stupid, I wanted something that could run with anything out there, and for all her cosmetic problems, Sally was that girl.

I took the backroads to the outskirts of Durham; I'd been that way hundreds of times to pick up loads. The dusty rock roads kept me off the highway and out of traffic, away from i***t drivers. I occasionally checked the tablet to see if my quarry had moved, maybe to a mall or something. No such luck.

It took almost two and a half hours to get to the rundown neighborhood. I figured by that time, according to the tracker, she'd been there for nearly five hours. I parked a few houses away. A shiny black Lincoln Navigator and a dark blue Pontiac G8 GT sat outside what was an obviously condemned building. Not good. I tucked my .45 into my belt.

I straightened my hat, looked at myself in the mirror and hoped that the idiots in the two-story house were desperately stupid.

When the door opened, I held the tracker up as if it meant something. "I'm looking for 'Delaney Morris.' I'm the Uber driver."

The guy who opened the door had a half a head of height on me, and a dizzying array of tattoos. Nobody was behind him. "Nobody called an Uber here."

"Look, I'm pretty sure she's here, the instructions are pretty specific. I looked at the tablet as if I were reading it. "She's a minor, so I have to do the pick up or I get in trouble." I had no idea if Uber worked that way, but the guy didn't exactly look overly sharp. I pulled her picture up and held the tablet up in my left hand. "You know her?"

"She ain't leavin'. She's our girl now." His eyes flicked to a closed door.

I pretended to look at my tablet. "Dude, she's like 13 years old."

"You know what they say, man. Old enough to bleed, old enough to..."

He never quite finished the sentence; medics learn a great deal about anatomy. Such as the fact that the point where the jaw attaches to the skull is particularly vulnerable to a sudden hard strike, say a right cross delivered with no warning.

He staggered back and fell to his knees, so I hammered another one in on the same point and rammed my knee into his face as he sagged loosely to the ground. God, that felt good.

A trickle of blood dripped out of his mouth. I guess he was old enough.

I walked over to the door he'd looked at. There was a hasp with a screwdriver through it, locking the door shut. I pulled the screwdriver out and yanked the door open.

She was sitting, obviously terrified, on the edge of a ratty mattress that had been dragged into the room. She blinked as the extra light poured in. The windows to the room had been mostly painted over on the outside. At least she was still wearing clothes; that was a damn good sign.

"Let's go. I'm here to take you home."

She didn't say anything, just jumped to her feet and scrambled for the door. She stopped and looked at the guy on the ground and paused long enough to kick him in the face as hard as she could.

I heard something moving upstairs. Lots of somethings. "Keep moving." I grabbed her arm and dragged her towards Sally.

"That? Seriously?" Even as scared as she was, she was obviously appalled by the car.

"Keep moving, Pumpkin. The limo is in the shop." I shoved her into the passenger seat.

"What are these things?" She fumbled with the five-point.

"Jesus. It's a safety harness. Like a seat belt." I leaned over and began pulling the straps into place. She froze when I yanked the crotch strap into place.

"Easy there. Just getting you strapped in." I snapped the belts shut and pulled the release rotator off, ran around the car, keeping one eye on the door and slid into my seat.

She fumbled with the center of the harness. "It's broken. I can't get out"

"I'll fix it later."

"But I can't get out."

"Yeah, well that's sort of the point, Powder Puff. Why the hell are you trying to get out of the seat in the first place..." I stopped, figures were pouring out of the front door of the house. I reflexively counted eight of them. s**t. "Time to go. Your boyfriend's asshat friends are on the way." I tried to pull away slowly and quietly, but a few of them looked in my direction.

"He isn't my boyfriend. He's just a friend of Brandon's. Brandon couldn't make it, so that guy picked me up."

"Let me guess, you met Brandon on the internet? Un-Damm-believable. Hard to believe anybody still falls for that s**t. You actually still believe he's real?"

"Damm you." She did have the grace to look a little sheepish.

"My, my, my. Would you look at her, using bad words like she's all growed-up. You shouldn't Damm curse, it's not ladylike."

"Damm you!" She glared hatefully this time.

"You already said that, Tinkerbell. Not very creative, are you?" In the rearview mirror I could see them piling into the SUV and G8. I held my breath hoping they'd run for it, afraid, maybe that somebody'd called the cops.

"Damm you!" She yanked at the webbing of the harness furiously.

"You really are going to have to work on that vocabulary." s**t. They were turning in my direction. Sally could outrun that SUV, but the G8 was going to be a problem, no matter what.

Clueless, she apparently thought one unconscious thug had ended the danger. "What are you some kind of p*****t, k********g little girls?"

"Nah. Doesn't sound very challenging. Apparently, all you have to do is pretend to be a guy named Brandon on the internet and they come running." I needed to do this without involving the police; the last thing I needed was Charlotte to drop my grandfather's g*n into the ocean. I headed back for the route I'd come in on. Familiar ground.

"Asshole."

"That's better, at least now you're showing a little creativity." The SUV had pulled out in front of the G8; not a great plan, the G8 could have maybe outpaced me and boxed me in, but I could outmaneuver and outrun the SUV If I needed to. I didn't need them to know that, though. Not yet. I accelerated away as smoothly as possible.

"I didn't need your Damm help."

"I could see that. You had them right where you wanted them. Very clever."

"Damm you. Why'd you even get involved?"

"Your mother railroaded me into it."

"She's a Damm bitch."

"Well, we agree on that. Charlotte's a grade-A, Damm cold-blooded, heartless, soulless bitch."

"Oh God, you do know her."

"No s**t. Score one for Nancy Drew, Girl Detective." I kept Sally a quarter mile ahead of the SUV, pacing as if I wasn't aware of them. Push them too early and they'd act on it before I was ready.

I was pretty sure they were looking for the same thing I was: a quiet place with no witnesses. I had just the place for all of us, if only they were patient enough to wait fifteen minutes or so.

"We need to go back. That guy took my back pack with my clothes. He also took my phone. He said it needed to be charged."

I looked over her and rolled my eyes, but didn't say a word.

She slumped back in her seat a bit. "You must think I'm an idiot."

"Not really. You'll need to try harder to work your way up to i***t. Do you still not have a Damm clue what was happening?"

She stared down at her feet silently.

I rolled on. "You were about to become goddamned party favor. There were at least eight guys there, and probably more on the way. You know what they would have done to you. Use your Damm head."

She shrunk in on herself, breathing in spasms. I could tell she was crying but she didn't want me to know. She didn't want me to think she was weak. She caught her breath and gritted her teeth. "Asshole."

I laughed. "Good. If you can't be smart, learn to be tough. Because you're gonna Damm need it if you don't wise up." We were getting close. I turned down a broad gravel road. I'd been through here dozens of times and I knew the roads here; I just hoped I had enough luck to pull this off.

She turned her head to wipe the tears from her eyes so I wouldn't see them. "You don't have to be a d**k all the time. I've had a really awful day."

"You want sympathy, it's in the dictionary between s**t and syphilis. Learn from this, and don't do stupid shit." The SUV moved aside and the G8 started to move up fast; I stepped on the gas and the engine snarled in exhilaration, the acceleration punching a wide-eyed Delaney back into her chair.

"Holy s**t!"

"Hang on. Your friends have decided that they don't want witnesses."

She looked back around the edge of her seat and saw the blue car gaining. "Oh God! Do something!"