Ridge (Texas Boudreau Brotherhood Book 4) Page 14

  “Maggie, calm down. Take a deep breath and relax. There’s no way I’m letting you head out, not with this torrent of rain and the winds picking up. Not gonna happen. Either I come with you, or you’re staying put. Your choice.”

  “Fine. I can’t afford to wait. Understand this, you have to do what I tell you, no questions asked.”

  He looked her up and down, and gave a brief nod. “Let’s go.”

  Maggie flung open the front door, and raced toward the garage, wishing not for the first time that she hadn’t elected to have the garage as a separate building, instead of connecting it to the house. It was a mistake that she’d get corrected, because she was tired of ending up wet and dirty at the capriciousness of the Texas weather. Shiloh matched her step for step, and she punched in the code, opening the closest door.

  Ducking inside, Shiloh let out a whistle when he spotted the cars and the Jeep parked side-by-side in the oversized building. Dang it, now she wished she hadn’t left the van parked so far away. That thought quickly followed by the realization it probably wouldn’t be the best vehicle to traverse the muddy terrain. Climbing behind the wheel of her Jeep, she opened the door to that bay while Shiloh jumped in the passenger side.

  “Where are we headed, Maggie? I’m not prying, but I’d sure like to be prepared for whatever trouble we’re headed into.”

  “I own a couple of small houses that I’ve got set up on the property. They’re occupied at the present time, and there’s apparently a problem. We’re headed out there to see what’s going on, and fix it.”

  “Small houses? Like bungalows or cabins?”

  “Think more like tiny houses, similar to what you seen on television. The kind you can hook up to a truck and take with you. Small, compact, and easily transferrable from one space to another. The call I got said the house was, and I quote, ‘sinking.’”

  “It’s on wheels?” At her nod, he continued. “Probably too heavy then. With all this rain, unless you’ve got a foundation or concrete slab underneath, the weight of the structure combined with the muddy conditions are probably causing it to shift.”

  “That makes sense. I never intended for them to be a permanent fixture.” She slammed her hand against the steering wheel, before leaning forward trying to see through the windshield. The wiper blades weren’t helping much, and the visibility sucked.

  “Thinking about moving them to another location? Probably a good idea.”

  “Shiloh, I really wish you hadn’t insisted on coming. Things might get a little…dicey, and I don’t want to get you into something you aren’t prepared for.” Maggie stared straight ahead, partly because of the lousy visibility and partly because she didn’t want Shiloh to read her guilty expression.

  “Maggie, are you in some kind of trouble? Because if you are, I’ll do whatever I can to help. Ridge trusts you, so I’ve got no problem trusting you, too. Tell me what’s wrong, and let me help.”

  A loud boom of thunder rumbled, and it seemed to be right over top of them, quickly followed by a huge flash of lightning, illuminating the inky darkness. Maggie found herself praying that the storm would move through fast. Didn’t it figure, the one time she did something outside the edges of the law, fate seemed determined to conspire against her, throwing roadblocks in her path.

  “I’m doing something that needs to be done, trying to help some people get out of an untenable situation. But, and this is a really big but, it’s technically a little bit…illegal.”

  She felt more than saw Shiloh’s posture stiffen at her words, and she wished she could snatch them back, make them unsaid, but it was far too late.

  “What part of what you’re doing is illegal? Because I won’t have anything to do with selling or distributing drugs. I’ll tell you that up front; if you’re involved in any way with putting that junk on the streets, I’ll turn you in myself.”

  “No! What would make you think I’d be involved with drugs? I hate that stuff. I wish the government could get all of it off the streets. It’s horrible.”

  He sat quietly, long enough she wondered what he was thinking. “Might be best if you tell me what I’m getting into. Just spit it out, kinda like ripping off a Band-Aid.”

  “About my tiny houses? Well, I set them up as a kind of waystation, a stop-gap for women and children escaping from horrific domestic violent situations. It’s part of what you might call an underground railroad, because these women were married to men who had all the power and were able to obtain legal custody of the children. The same children they were abusing repeatedly while the supposed watchdogs turned a blind eye. Mothers who were downtrodden and beaten to within an inch of their lives, and nobody helped them.”

  “Okay.” He drawled out the word, without any inflection, and she wondered again if she’d made a mistake bringing him along. If he decided to turn her in, she wouldn’t be the only one going to jail. The women would be arrested, and the children returned to their abusers.

  “I don’t care whether it’s legally right or wrong. I can’t stand by and watch these women be beaten or raped, or kept virtual prisoners by the men who supposedly love them. It gives me nightmares when I think about what these kids have suffered. I don’t think I have to paint you a picture of what they’ve endured in their short lives, do I?”

  When Shiloh started laughing, Maggie’s foot slammed on the brake. She whirled around in the driver’s seat and shook her finger right under his nose. “Do you think this is funny?”

  He leaned his head back against the headrest, and closed his eyes for a few seconds, before turning to meet her gaze. “No, there’s nothing funny about their plight. I’m laughing because this is karma taking a big ole chunk out of my backside. I don’t know what my brother’s told you about what I do for a living. I’m a private investigator.”

  “He might have mentioned it. Why?”

  “About six months ago, I was hired to work a case in San Antonio. Nice enough guy. A businessman, owns a couple of restaurants. Makes decent money, and he seemed like a straight shooter. He wanted me to find his estranged wife. Claimed she’d left him and took the kids. Not my normal kind of case, but he swore she was hurting the kids. Showed me the paperwork from the judge awarding him sole custody of his boys. I did my due diligence, checked for police records of domestic disturbances, looked into medical records. Two of the boys had been treated for broken bones, one a fractured arm and the other a broken ankle. Could have been the usual childhood accidents, but given the social worker reports, the legal custody awarded to the dad, I did my job and searched for his missing family.”

  Maggie turned in her seat until she stared out the window, watching the swishing motion of the windshield wipers at play across the glass, their rhythmic motion soothing, almost hypnotic. “You found them.”

  “Yeah. They’d made it all the way to Arizona before I caught up with them. Mom had a part-time gig working as a maid at a crappy motel for room and board, and enough to buy a few groceries. The manager said she was a good worker, reliable. He did remark the kids seemed like typical, happy boys, though they tended to stay indoors a lot.”

  “I’m seeing some eerie similarities here,” she whispered.

  “I called their father, let him know where they were. He had her arrested on federal kidnapping charges, and brought back to Texas. I swear, I have never seen anything like the faces of those kids when they saw him standing in the hallway of the courthouse. The hollowness, the utter defeat written on their expressions—it haunts me. I see them every single day. I knew I’d made one of the biggest mistakes of my life. This wasn’t a loving reunion between a misunderstood father and the children he professed to love. No, they were his possessions.”

  “Exactly. I can’t screw this up, Shiloh. These women, they’re the first ones I’ve actually tried to help, and I can’t even think about them getting caught and going back to the lives they’ve fled.”

  “I get it. I’ve been eaten up with guilt since that case. Funny, I’ve never
told anybody about it, not even my brother. I guess maybe if I help you help them, I can atone for what I did.”

  Maggie reached over and squeezed his hand. “You didn’t know. I’ve met your family, seen what a loving, giving home you came from. I had a good family too. But not everybody is as fortunate. Maybe if we help Isabelle and Caroline, we can make up for a tiny bit of the ugliness.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Shiloh nodded toward the rutted, muddy path. “Let’s go make a difference.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Although it was late afternoon, all light was obliterated by the enormous black clouds rolling across the sky until it looked like midnight. Ridge had raced toward the meet-up on the north side of Maggie’s property, intent on beating the trucks. He’d have to give them credit: moving their contraband during a Texas downpour made things tricky on their end, and gave the cartel the advantage of being able to move with less traffic out and about, with people taking shelter from the elements.

  He bit back a curse as hail pinged against the hood of his truck. Great, like he needed another distraction on top of everything else. Hoping against hope Shiloh kept Maggie contained at the house, he searched the inky blackness for the other members of his DEA team. Some of them he’d worked with before, a few he’d never met, but they were all good men.

  When his phone vibrated, he answered on the first ring, “Boudreau.”

  “We’ve got a problem.” The strain in Daniel’s voice more than the words told Ridge things were about to go sideways.

  “What happened?”

  “Our mark stopped outside of town. Diego Rivera got out and climbed into a sedan.”

  Ridge leaned forward, resting his forearms against the steering wheel, and staring out through the windshield. “Did you see who was driving the car?”

  “Couldn’t get a good look. All we know is it’s a woman.”

  “Please tell me he’s not stopping to get a little nookie in the middle of a shipment. That would be the icing on top of this whole lousy day.” Ridge resisted the urge to bang his head on the steering wheel in frustration.

  “They’re parked on the side of the road, in front of an ice cream place. Can’t tell what they’re doing. The trucks have stopped too. We’re playing wait-and-see. I want to get out of my car, go over and snatch his door open, yank him out and arrest him.”

  “Patience, grasshopper,” Ridge joked. “He can’t sit there forever. We’re in the endgame here, and we’re gonna take him down.”

  “I know. I’d simply like to go home to my wife and kid. It’s been weeks since—” Daniel broke off, and Ridge straightened in his seat, anticipation zinging through his blood. “They’re on the move, just pulled onto the street headed out of town.”

  “We’re ready at this end.”

  “South team radioed in, they’re all set,” he heard Roland’s voice respond. “Stay on the line, Ridge. I’ve got Rabbit and Maxwell posted on the south perimeter, half a mile past the entrance to Ms. White’s land. Simmons and Baker about a mile past them, and Garner and Fitzgerald as backup.” Funny how Roland sounded all businesslike and in control, nothing like the mousy accountant type he’d dealt with for the past few days. Ridge hadn’t though the meek-mannered guy had it in him to take charge. Guess he’d read him all wrong.

  Keeping the line live, he sat in silence except for the booms of thunder directly overhead and the pounding rain, splatting against his truck’s windshield and hood. He’d shut off the wiper blades, cutting back on their distracting rhythm. He needed to stay sharp and focused. Right now, he knew where everybody on the north was positioned. He had double-checked their locations before parking his truck behind a large live oak, using its huge trunk and sprawling branches to obscure him from direct view.

  Now it was a waiting game.

  It seemed an eternity passed, though in reality it was probably only ten minutes, before Roland’s voice came through on his phone. “The car and both trucks are approaching. Repeat, the suspect vehicles are approaching. They just drove past the entrance to Ms. White’s property, headed west.”

  It made sense. Maggie’s house faced directly south and the paved road ran east to west. Which meant they were headed in the right direction to access the undeveloped and heavily forested part of Maggie’s property. Excitement coursed through him. This was it. Every instinct, every ounce of intuition, screamed today was the day. No more waiting and watching, trying to figure out where and how the drugs were crossing Shiloh Springs County and Burnet County.

  It looked like the DEA had finally built a better mousetrap and the rats were headed directly for it.

  “Keep your eyes peeled, Daniel. The motion sensors and the fencing stop about a mile and a half past the gate. Anything after that’s fair game.”

  “Roger that. We gotta hope they—”

  Ridge straightened up his seat, adjusting his seatbelt as the phone abruptly cut off. Tossing his phone onto the seat beside him, he clicked on his wipers, clearing the steady stream of rain off his windshield. Fortunately, it seemed to have lessened some, from a monsoon. Though still heavy, the torrents of rain were a heck of a lot easier to see through.

  Why wasn’t Daniel calling back?

  The shrill ring of his phone nearly had him jumping out of his skin, and he grabbed it, hitting the speaker button. “What?”

  “The car pulled over to the side of the road just past the turnoff, and the two trucks went around them and turned onto Ms. White’s property. Simmons and Baker moved in behind them, running without lights. Stand by. I repeat, stand by, and keep your eyes open. Abernathy and I are hanging back, watching the car Rivera’s in. Don’t know if they spotted the tail on the trucks, but so far, they haven’t made a move to follow or leave. They’re sitting with the headlights off.”

  “We’ve got the north side covered,” Ridge heard the first team he’d spotted when he’d pulled up.

  “Roger that, boss man, we’re here. They won’t get by us.” There was team two.

  “I’m ready.” Ridge answered, and took a deep breath. He was more than ready to end this case. Drive a nail into its coffin, and get on with his life. Even more important, though, was clearing Maggie’s name, and proving she had nothing to do with running contraband across her land. He only prayed Shiloh managed to corral her and keep her at the house.

  With the anticipation building, Ridge did the only thing he could.

  He waited.

  Maggie slid the Jeep to a stop in front of the tiny house. The electricity hadn’t gone off, thank goodness, because the lights from inside shone through the curtains framing the window beside the front door. Shiloh was first out of the car, but he waited for her. She immediately gave him a tight smile, knowing the next few minutes might be more than a little tense. The women inside the cabin were skittish in the best of circumstances. Throw in being in a strange place with torrential rains battering the world outside their door, and add in a strange man? Yeah, she could see all the things that could possibly go wrong with that scenario.

  She glanced toward the wheels and groaned. They’d definitely sunk a couple of inches deep in the mud, which probably explained Isabelle’s thought that the house was sinking.

  Change of plans. It was no longer safe for them to stay here. She’d have to load everybody up and take them back to her place. Not the ideal solution, but what else was she supposed to do, leave them here? Not happening.

  Tugging her slicker closer around her, she pounded on the door, trying to be heard over the pouring rang and thunder. A pale-faced Isabelle answered the door, her son clinging to her leg.

  “Everybody okay?” She was loath to step inside and track mud through the confined space, so she stuck her head inside the open doorway, and spotted Caroline and her kids sitting hunched around the minute table with its bench seating. It was obvious the children had been crying. Their eyes were red-rimmed, the half-eaten package of cookies in front of them sitting forlornly in the middle of the table.

&nb
sp; “I’m sorry to be so much trouble. I…didn’t know what else to do.” Isabelle clutched the baby closer to her chest, never meeting Maggie’s eyes. Her heart squeezed in her chest, knowing this woman had learned to expect the worst from life, and wasn’t surprised when she didn’t get her happy ending.

  “You are no trouble, I swear. Nobody expected anything like this. The weatherman predicted some rain. I think he miscalculated how much,” Maggie joked with a smile. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We are going to load everybody into my Jeep out there and I’m taking you to my house. There’s plenty of room, hot showers, and food. It’ll be a tight squeeze, but we’ll make it work.”

  Maggie watched Isabelle start to nod, then she spotted Shiloh standing behind her. She took an involuntary step back, clutching the infant to her chest tight enough it let out an abrupt squeal.

  “It’s okay, he’s here to help. This is Shiloh. He’s a friend.”

  “Hello, ma’am.” Shiloh was smart and didn’t move any closer. Instead, he simply waved and nodded. Maggie knew if he was anything like his brother, he wanted to dive right in and take charge, but he stayed back, letting her run things her way. Yep, he was a smart man.

  “Shiloh, why don’t you go and open all the Jeep’s doors, so everyone can stay as dry as they can?”

  “I’m on it.” He sprinted around the Jeep, and she watched the interior light come on. He even opened the hatch in the back. Good idea, the kids could scramble in there. It might be a tight fit, but they’d manage. He even managed to snag the old Army blanket she kept tucked in the back corner.

  Too bad I’m in love with his brother, because if I’d met him first…