Out Of The Shadows (HADES) (Whiskey Bend MC Series, Book #4)

“I think it’s someone here in town,” Hope spoke softly from the doorway.

Hades looked up and saw her paling face. It had been several hours since he’d sent her to Jesse.

Cole nodded. “It very well could be. But who would that be?”

“I don’t know. If he’s been here awhile like you think, he’s probably had time to pick out someone. He’s getting pissed off at you guys and he might not take your rejection too well. I don’t know if this means anything or not but my friend Lillian, she works at the diner in town, she thought she was being followed. She said she never saw anyone but she got this creepy feeling someone was watching her, then the other day she said she found footprints in the soft ground around her windows.”

Charlie nodded. “I remember that. She stopped me when I went in for a cup of coffee, but she didn’t think it was all that bad when I spoke to her.”

“Maybe we should check it out anyway,” Hades suggested to Caden.

Caden nodded. “Maybe we should.”

Hades went over to Hope. “Please go and keep Luna and Jesse company okay? I need to know you are in that room with them and that the brothers are guarding you. I will come see you when I get back.” He walked her up the hall and then to another where the huge living room was with all the women and kids. They passed 4 men who stood guard, all of them holding weapons or having holstered weapons.

Hope raised on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.

He smiled at her and watched her go in.

He went back down and met Caden at the front.

They both left and drove into town.

A few minutes later, they entered the coffee shop and glanced around. None of them saw Lillian.

When they stepped up to ask to see the manager, Annie, another waitress came up to them. “Hades?” she asked.

He nodded. “I am.”

She handed him a note. “Someone asked me to give you this when you came in.”

Hades tore open the envelope. He read the damning letter and knew they had figured it out too late. The words burned into his brain.

Hades,

The game has only begun and already you’re cheating. You should know by now cheaters never win. Didn’t your mother teach you that?

If you are at the coffee shop, then you’re either very smart and are finally figuring me out, or you’re plain lucky.

You pissed me off by not taking my phone calls, but I think you planned that all along. If you all have come looking for Lillian, you’re too late. She’s with me and I’m going to have a little fun with her before you find her.

Tell Hope not to worry. I’m still planning on getting together with her before this is all done. Maybe you and “Caden” can watch.

Drake

Hades handed the note to Caden and stomped outside. He had to get away from the others for a few minutes.

In a rage, he picked up a trashcan and tossed it. With a growl, he tried to get a hold of himself. Hope needed him focused. He took several deep breaths of cool night air and gazed out over the town. This freak would not get to Hope. He had to kill this fucker and perhaps in cold blood.

Caden and Charlie joined him.

Charlie shook his head at the garbage mess. “Littering is a crime, ya know?”

Hades turned his steel like glare to the older man.

Charlie held his hands up.

Hades growled, “I don’t care if we have to rip this town apart at the seams,” he said quietly. “We need to find Lillian, and soon.”

“Where do we start?” Caden asked.

“Charlie, get on the phone and see if your guy Dan’s done any forensic stuff yet. He was going to try and back track Drake’s movements. Otherwise, it’s going to take too long. For a small town, this place has too many places to hide.” When Charlie reached for the phone, Hades told him to have Dan meet them back at the station.

A few minutes later Caden, Hades and Charlie met Dan and his police escort at the station house.

Hades grabbed a city map and spread it out on the table in the conference room.

“What did you find?” Charlie asked Dan.

Dan paused and motioned his head at Hades. Most likely wondering why they had Hades here.

Charlie shrugged and motioned for hymn to go ahead. “He’s a tracker. A specialist from the military. We need him here.”

Hades gave Dan a cold stare.

Dan looked a bit spooked but he explained, “Okay then. Actually, we found out a good deal about our killer. Our man has been moving around a bit, but that’s to our advantage. Every place he hides, he leaves a trace of the place before. Okay, we found the place where he held Ethan. The cave had the cattail pollen. We tracked that pollen back to a place on the Buffalo River. He’s been there long enough to collect the pollen at any rate. It took some doing but we found his spot here. When we searched the Buffalo River, we found some mold. The mold was from one of the trailers in the old trailer park. From there, we found traces of old red carpeting.”

Hades frowned. “Red carpet?” he asked. “How the hell do we find old, red carpet?”

Dan smiled. “You don’t have to. My team already found it. It was a particular kind of carpet. The carpet belongs to the old Catholic church out on Highway 37.”

Charlie smiled. “Good job, but how did you figure all of this out?”

Dan tipped his head to one side. “I was born and bred Catholic and I have had numerous chances to study that particular carpet. It’s the carpet on the kneeling benches. When you’re a kid who’s bored in church, any little thing breaks the monotony. Please don’t tell my mother; she wouldn’t understand.”

“Where did he go from there?” Hades asked, trying not to laugh.

“From there, the evidence tells us our criminal was around sawdust. We found good sized pieces of ground-up elm and birch.”

As he had been running down through his evidence list, Hades had been marking the map. So far, they had several places of interest, but would they be too late?

Charlie sighed. “Please tell me that is all you found?”

“Sorry, but there’s one more place. Our boy has been on one of the sandbar islands. We found sand at the lumber mill. Sand and burnt ash, like from a campfire.” Dan finally looked up at the small group. “The Mississippi River near town is littered with sandbars big enough for people to camp out on. People use these sandbars for summer recreation.”

“Okay,” Caden spoke to the group. “Let’s start searching these places. We have to find him and find him fast. He’s taken Lillian and he’s going to kill her soon.”

They all glanced at the map and decided to forgo the island, and the swamp. He would need room and an out of the way place to do what he had in mind. Only the trailer court, the church, and the sawmill were left.

Hades folded the map. “Okay, we’ll check each place in order. First, the trailer court, then the sawmill, then the church. We have to move quickly and quietly. We want the element of surprise on our side. We also don’t want him to kill her off before we can get in there.”

Charlie and Caden nodded. They already knew Hades was now front and center to all of this and he had keen instincts, so they would follow him to catch this killer.

Hades got on his bike and headed down the road.

Caden started his car and drove him and Charlie to the trailer court.

Hades didn’t know what they would find when they got there, he just hoped they weren’t too late. He slowed his bike and shut it off, kicking the stand down.

When they got close to the trailer court, Caden shut his lights off and killed the engine. He let the car coast as close as he dared. As they got out of the car, Caden and Charlie took their weapons out.

Hades had his already as he stepped beside them.

Slowly, they made their way into the trailer court.

The only sounds anyone heard as they made their way through each and every trailer were the sounds they made. At the last trailer, Caden shook his head and holstered his gun. “They aren’t here.”

Charlie said. “Let’s try the next place.”

A few minutes later, they crept up in the same fashion as before. They searched the lumber mill from entrance to exit. Again, the only sounds they heard were their own.

“Either they’re at the church or he’s found a new place,” Hades concluded. “Shall we find out?”

They made their way to the church. When they left town, they left the streetlights behind and only the darkness of the night surrounded them. As they neared the church, Caden killed the lights and the engine and slid off to the side of the road.

They would have to walk from here and no one needed to be told to be quiet. They all knew what was at stake.

The old Catholic church had been abandoned when the new church was built about ten years ago. The paint was chipping and the windows had been broken a long time ago but the building still stood.

Hades thought he saw something flickering in the distance as they neared the church. He only had to touch Caden’s arm to get his attention and he pointed to the back of the church.

Caden nodded and silently.

Hades led the others toward the flickering lights.

Peering through the dirty and broken windows at the back of the church, Hades could see the small room was lit by candles and Drake was there. He could see he had someone tied up to the post on the left side of the altar. He motioned for Charlie and Caden to go down to the next window.

They all waited to see what Hades would do next.

From where they were, they could see Drake pacing the area in front of Lillian. His body language told anyone watching he was upset and not in control of himself.

Hades fidgeted and wished he were closer so he could hear better what was being said. When he saw the glint of a knife in Drake’s hand, he knew he had to move quickly. He lifted his gun to the window and aimed carefully.

A shot rang out and Drake recoiled.

Someone screamed and all hell broke out.

The light was extinguished and the whole place went to darkness. There were sounds of running feet and doors slamming then there was silence. He motioned to Caden to follow him inside the church. They had been on the wrong side of the church to stop Drake from leaving, but they could at least rescue his victim.

Then they saw something that shouldn’t have been there at all. The inside of the church was lighting up again. Hades peeked in the window again and saw the small light came from the flames of a fire caused by the candle tipping over. As the flames grew, the place began to fill with smoke.

Caden and Charlie entered the front door of the church, weapons drawn. The darkness of the church was lit by the flames, and the sounds they heard were the sobs growing louder from the left post at the front of the church. They made their way to the sounds of ever increasing panic they heard and found a very frightened young woman tied to the post.

They cut Lillian loose and Hades covered her mouth with his hand and pressed her face into his chest to keep her from breathing in too much smoke. They hurried her out the back door as Charlie helped carry the frightened woman away from the burning build.

As the church was old and abandoned it was going up quickly.

Caden tried to calm Lillian while Charlie got on the phone to call in the fire and an ambulance. Caden held her and let her cry. When Charlie joined them, he began looking over her injures but there was nothing he found that wouldn’t heal with time.

Lillian finally glanced up at Charlie. Her face was wet with tears. “Do you know a woman named Hope?”

Charlie nodded.

Hades stared at her, his fists clenching at the mention of Hope’s name.

Lillian closed her eyes tightly then opened them again. She had to struggle to get the words out. “H-he said I w-was merely an amusement, something to keep him busy while h-he waited until he could—get to her.”

“What else did he tell you?” Hades asked in a cold voice.

Lillian swallowed the lump in her throat and went on with her story, “He said he’s been thinking about her every day for the last five years. He said something about how he remembered her eyes.”

Hades held his breath. This freak was a dead man.

“Do you remember anything else about what he said?” Caden had to ask. “I guess what I’m asking is, can you remember what the man looked like?”

Lillian frowned. “Why? I’m not sure I want to remember what he looks like.”

Hades grasped her by the upper arms. “You may not want to remember, but we need to know. He’s using his anonymity to walk our streets, kidnap kids, and murder people. We don’t know what he looks like and that makes him dangerous.”

Lillian closed her eyes. “Okay, I can try. By the way, I think you hit him.”

Hades frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I think you shot him earlier. Before he blew out the candles, I heard a gun go off. He grabbed his shoulder and screamed.”

Hades grinned. He had hit him twice now and the third time would be fucking fatal. “Good.”

Charlie nodded. “He’s wounded. Let’s find an artist and see if we can come up with a face to go with a name.”

~*~

An hour and a half later, Hades examined the face in front of him. His brain was working over-time to remember each and every detail. Lillian had been very helpful in constructing her monster and now they had a face.

They had come back to the clubhouse and Geno had used a special computer program he had to reconstruct Drake Tourmel’s face. It probably wasn’t a perfect match but it was as close as they would get.

Hope hadn’t wanted to look at the face but had forced herself to. She still couldn’t remember anything about what he looked like, she only remembered his eyes, only the fear she felt still seemed to slam into her at unexpected times.

“Okay, now we know what he looks like, we have to find him. We think he’s hurt, we can’t give him time to find another place to hide,” Hades told the group.

“What do you suggest?” Lucifer asked.

“We need the brothers to spread out to the edges of town. Any building abandoned should be searched. Look under every fucking bush and shrub for this slime. He uses that as cover too.”

Caden reached for the phone. “I’m going to call in all the law personnel I can, and we are going to light up the night. We’re not going to give him the chance to slip into the shadows, not tonight. We’re going to keep him on the move.”

Lucifer stood his ground. “The hell you are. I won’t allow that on my land.”

“We finally have his attention, now we have to push him into making a mistake. There is a bullet in him, maybe even two. If we push him into a corner, he’ll fold,” Caden reasoned.

“Or kill again.” Hades spoke softly, “I can’t help but think a cornered Drake wouldn’t fold, he’d kill.

“You can’t do that,” Charlie told Caden. He nodded at the men around him. “You’d be putting everyone here and in town in danger they don’t need to be in.”

Caden glanced at Charlie and raised an eyebrow. “Damn.” He looked up at Lucifer and the rest of the men in the room including Hope and Lillian. “We have to do something. I can’t sit here and let him make the next move.”

“I think there are enough of us to hunt this fucker down.” Lucifer growled. “If what she said is true.” He motioned at Lillian. “He’s wounded again and he knows he’s on the run. If we use the brains God gave us and the hunting skills the military trained us with, we’ll find the little bastard.”

Suddenly the night’s silence was shattered by the roar of motorcycle engines as thirty more bikers rolled into the compound.

Lucifer nodded toward the door. “I took the liberty of calling a few friends, men I served with and who know their business.”

The doors flew open and the group of bikers that walked inside the clubhouse would have scared the bejesus out of the roughest of men. They stood tall and strong and they looked like they took no shit from anyone. They didn’t wear a biker’s cuts but you could see they were brothers of a kind.

One by one, they all took the time to greet Lucifer and his men. Lucifer stood tall right alongside them and when he held out his hand to the first man… there was a moment of pure silence

Boomer was the man. Hades knew he and Lucifer had served together before.

The silence erupted into chaos a few seconds later. Each man shook hands with him and greeted him by name. They were all laughing.

Then they got down to business. Lucifer led them into the conference room they usually called “Church” to fill them in. Lucifer started explaining events of the last few days and then got down to the plan of how to catch the man they were here to find.

While Hades was included in the group, Caden, Cole and Charlie decided to stand aside and let them do their bit.

Hope and the other women were busy making snacks and coffee for the men. Caden and Cole were setting out cups and trays filled with sandwiches and baked goods.