Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
But by some miracle, they managed to make the high ground without them noticing he and Gia were there, and he stopped to look down at them.
Two of them, a man he’d peg at about Jess and Jace’s ages, that being around thirty, and an attractive woman in her fifties.
They had a few camp lanterns lighting what looked to be a makeshift center of operations, which consisted of a shovel, two thermoses and a backpack. And both of them had flashlights and metal detectors and were sweeping the ground several yards from the lanterns.
Since Riggs was looking, and not at the ground, he caught something—movement, or a reflection off a balding head—and he saw Bubbles lurking behind a tree, down from him and at least thirty yards away.
Bubbles had seen Riggs and was doing action movie hand gestures, that if Riggs read him right, said he was on the man, Riggs was on the woman.
Riggs shook his head.
Bubbles did the gestures more sternly.
Goddammit.
He shook his head again, and before Bubbles fucked this, he shoved his flashlight in his back waistband, shifted his hand to the clip on Gia’s lead and moved out from cover, making an intentional racket.
Both the man and woman swung his way and froze.
He pointed at the man, and shouted, “Gia! Attack! Bite!” unclicked her leash, and she went flying through the woods.
The man started running.
The woman did too.
Riggs went after her.
He caught her easily, hauled her up, turned her, and slammed her down to her stomach, not giving that first shit she was a female, even when he heard her pained, “Oof!”
While she was winded, he pulled the digital cable down his arm, his knife out, slit the plastic fastener on the cable, and wasted no time hog-tying the bitch.
He heard the snarling, and the screams, over which Bubbles yelled, “Doc! I’m on him. Call this beast off!”
He ran that way, and only when he was close enough to intervene, did he shout, “Gia! Stop! Sit!”
She instantly let go of mauling his leg, sat and started panting.
Christ, Hutch could train a freaking dog.
Bubbles fell into a knee on the guy’s belly.
Riggs moved in.
They worked together to turn him, and since he wasn’t going to get anywhere on that leg for a while, Riggs just bound his hands behind his back.
Bubbles got off him, and Riggs didn’t care about his cries of pain when he dragged him to the woman.
He pulled out and clicked on his Maglite, and ordered Bubbles, “Put the lanterns down by the lake.”
Bubbles moved to do that.
He looked down at the two, aiming his light at them, first checking the damage to the guy’s leg to make sure he didn’t need to fashion a tourniquet or something.
Gia did a number on him, but it wasn’t that bad.
He moved his light to take them both in.
She, still on her stomach, turned her face away.
The man was more concerned about the pain in his mangled leg, so he was on his back, giving all of his attention to groaning and wincing.
But Riggs had occasion in his life living in Misted Pines, with all the lore, to remember with clarity the times he saw Roosevelt, Lincoln and Sarah Whitaker.
And there was no mistaking this asshole was one of theirs.
FORTY
Emphasis On The Criminal Mind
Riggs
He was standing in the observation room with Cade, Jess and Jace watching Sharon Swindell in an interview room clam up after what the men had reported to him when he’d shown, and what he’d seen himself for the last half hour.
Not saying much for the two hours they had her in there, outside pointing fingers at anyone but herself.
She’d just lawyered up on Harry and Rus, when suddenly, everyone in the interview room turned their heads at a knock on the door.
Harry called out at the knock, Wade swung his torso in and said, “You’ll want to go speak to who’s waiting in Conference Room A, sir.”
“Give her her phone call, then book her for criminal trespass, criminal menacing, stalking, attempted burglary and accessory to murder. We’ll start with that, until I can prove whether or not she’s the one who pulled the trigger, twice, then forced arsenic down a man’s throat,” Harry said to Wade as he and Rus got out of their seats and left the room.
Riggs smiled massively at the expression they’d left on Sharon Swindell’s face, because they’d been pressing her hard about what she was doing on Riggs’s land, what she was looking for, if she was involved in a fifteen-year conspiracy to scare people away from his lake, and if that was true, why.
But they hadn’t mentioned murder.
Wade went in the room, and Riggs, Cade, Jace and Jess turned to each other.
“Harry sure knows how to have the last word,” Jace muttered.
That was when they all smiled at each other.