Blood on Copperhead Trail

Chapter Fifteen


Okay, think.

Laney trudged ahead of Bolen, wondering why she hadn’t insisted on going back down to the staging area. If she kept going much farther with Craig Bolen, she’d be a fool, even though he hadn’t shown any sign of aggression toward her.

But running down to the staging area and calling for help wasn’t going to get her very far, either. What could she say—“Hey, look, he disguised himself to take a photo of my sister and me without our permission and left it in the trail-shelter logbook”? What if nobody else saw the resemblance she’d seen?

She needed to figure out what to do and fast. Before they went much farther.

“Do you have a map of the search-party assignments?” Bolen’s friendly query sent another shudder down her spine.

“Uh, yeah.” She stopped and opened her backpack again, digging around inside for the map she’d folded and stuck in one of the pockets. She pulled it out, wincing as the Polaroid snapshot snagged in the folds and flipped out of the pack onto the ground at her feet.

She bent and picked it up, trying to be nonchalant as she dropped it back into her pack. She darted a look at Bolen and found him looking not at her but at the woods behind her, his eyes slightly narrowed.

Suddenly, pain shot through her hip and side, exploding into agony so all-encompassing that she felt as if her whole body was a giant, raw nerve. She wasn’t aware of falling until she hit the ground with a thud.

“Why’d you do that?” Faintly, through the buzzing sensation that had begun to replace the pain, she heard Craig Bolen’s soft query. “She didn’t suspect anything!”

“New plan,” the other voice, deep and unfamiliar, answered. “We wanted to scare her off the job. Now we’ll just get rid of her altogether.”

“Then why didn’t you just shoot her?” Bolen asked.


“Because we need her help first.”

* * *

“WHAT TIME IS IT?” Joy Adderly’s voice was barely a whisper, but in the taut silence they’d been maintaining for the past hour, it sounded like thunder, making Doyle’s already rattled nerves shimmy in reaction.

He checked the time on his phone, wondering how much longer his battery would last. “Just after noon.”

The phone itself was useless as a means of communication. Picking up signals this far up Copperhead Ridge was difficult in the best of situations, and inside a closed-off cave? Impossible. Probably why they hadn’t bothered taking the phone off him when they took his pistol and keys.

“He usually brings me something for lunch,” she said. “It’s how I kept time. Breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

Anger boiled up in him again, joining the clamorous chorus of emotions vying for top billing in his mind. Fear was there, raw and unsettling, and also determination, fed by the fear. Anger was the ever-present heat source, bubbling never far from the surface. “When he comes, we’ll be ready.”

“He’ll have a weapon.”

“I know.”

She fell silent for a long moment. “I’m studying law enforcement in college. Did anyone tell you that?”

“No,” he admitted. “What year?”

“Sophomore.”

“What college?”

“Brandon College, up near Purgatory. It’s a private four-year college.”

“Pricey.”

“Scholarship,” she said with a smile in her voice.

He turned on the flashlight app and flashed it her way. This time, instead of wincing, she shielded her eyes and flashed a half smile, half grimace his way. “Give a girl some warning!”

Her change in demeanor gave him hope that her ordeal hadn’t broken her. He hadn’t been so sure when he’d first found her. “Joy, we’re getting out of here. And you’re going to get a chance to say goodbye to your sister.”

Her smile faded. “Oh, God. Sweet little Missy.”

“I lost my younger brother to violence. It’s unfair and all kinds of wrong, and I wish it hadn’t happened to you. I’m so sorry.”

“How are my parents taking it?”

He thought about his one brief meeting with the Adderlys at the diner. Remembered Dave Adderly’s strange behavior, the way he’d looked as if he’d been keeping secrets.

He’d been with Bolen that morning, Doyle remembered. Had someone already given him his ransom instructions?

And if so, what were they?

“I haven’t seen a lot of your parents,” he answered.

“Let me guess. Craig’s been handling them?”

She was smart, he thought. She might just make a good cop. Now that she was no longer stuck in this dark hellhole alone, she seemed to have found her nerve and came across as a completely different young woman than the one he’d found cowering in the back of the cave. He just hoped she wouldn’t let this horrific experience destroy her dreams once they got out of here.

“Do you really think they’ll let us out alive?” she asked.

“I think the plan has always been to let you out alive,” he said, not sure if he believed it but saying it anyway, because she needed the hope. “You said Ray wears a disguise, and Craig Bolen has been careful not to let you see him.”

“I heard him, though.”

“He doesn’t know that.”

She didn’t answer.

The sound of footsteps outside the cave penetrated the ensuing silence, spurring them both into action. As they’d planned, Joy stood in the middle of the main cavern, her feet planted apart so that she could dodge or run the second she sensed direct danger. Doyle, meanwhile, hurried all the way to the front, waiting in the shadows for whoever was bringing the food that afternoon. Joy had told Doyle that she’d started hiding in the back of the cave after Ray had told her the more she saw of him, the less likely she’d be to live.

They were hoping her presence near the doorway would lure him inside.

But when the door opened, it wasn’t Ray who entered. In fact, the door opened just enough for a shadowy figure to stumble through the opening and land with a moan against the nearest wall. The door closed again without anyone else coming through, keys rattling in the lock and the footsteps receding quickly.

Doyle pulled out his cell phone and engaged the flashlight app. The beam of light played across a slender female figure, hands and feet bound with duct tape and a sack taped around her head.

The clothes, the shape—Doyle didn’t have to see the face beneath the hood to know who it was.

Laney.

His chest tightening, he ran across the mouth of the cave and knelt by her side, pulling away the tape around her neck. She tried to fight, but her movements were loose limbed and flailing.

“No, sweetheart, it’s me.” He removed the rest of the tape and pulled the hood off, revealing her wide, scared eyes and dirt-smudged face. He pressed his mouth against her forehead, felt the cool dampness of perspiration and residual tremors and knew what had happened to her. When he ran his hands lightly over her body, her soft whimper when he reached her back confirmed his speculation.

“That bastard Tasered me,” she growled.

He bit back a smile of relief. If she could still curse, she was going to be okay. “How long ago?” he asked, removing the tape around her wrists.

“Time was kind of fluid there for a little while.” She struggled up to a sitting position, squinting as he ran the beam of light across her to check for any other injuries. “I found your keys.”

The non sequitur threw him for a second. “Where?”

“In the woods.” As he removed the last of the duct tape around her ankles, she made a move to stand, and he helped her to her feet, keeping his arm firmly around her waist while she found her bearings. “And you’ll never guess who took that picture of Jannie and me in the hospital.”

“Let me guess,” said Joy Adderly from behind them. “Craig Bolen?”

Laney’s gaze swung to the sound of Joy’s voice, her eyes narrowing as she tried to see into the gloom beyond the circle of light created by Doyle’s cell phone application. Doyle shifted the beam to reveal Joy, and Laney gasped before pushing to her feet and stumbling toward the other girl.

Joy opened her arms for a fierce hug. “Is Jannie really going to be okay?”

“She is. And she’s going to be so glad to see you!” Laney turned to look at Doyle, a wide smile on her grimy face. “You found her.”

He laughed. “I had very little to do with it.”

“Don’t let him fool you,” Joy said, her arm still firmly around Laney’s waist. She was helping hold Laney up, Doyle realized, seeing the tremors that were rocking Laney’s slender frame. She must have been zapped recently, he thought.

“There are two of them,” Laney said. “They put that bag over my head so I didn’t see them, but of course, I know Bolen’s one of them.

“The other one is the guy we know as Ray,” Doyle told her.

“Why did they grab us?” Laney asked. “Why not just kill us?”

“I don’t know,” Doyle admitted. “Keeping us alive certainly doesn’t fit what they’ve done so far.”

“I think they may be trying to get my father to pay a ransom,” Joy said.

“But they’re not the ones who shot Missy and Janelle, right?” Laney asked. “Jannie was very sure it was a guy named Richard Beller.”


“She’s right,” Joy answered. “At least, I guess that was Richard Beller. I described the shooter to the chief here, and he seems to think it’s the same guy.”

Laney looked at Doyle for confirmation, and he nodded, watching her lean on Joy and feeling a battle of emotions raging inside him. He’d spent the past couple of hours worried sick about Laney being out there somewhere, with no idea that Craig Bolen was one of the bad guys. But as glad as he was to know she was okay, at least for the moment, he wished she were safely home, far away from this dank cave prison.

“Oh,” Laney said suddenly, slapping her hand against her right side.

“Are you hurt?” Doyle hurried over, flashing the light toward her side. He didn’t see any blood on her jacket, but her injuries could be internal, if they were as rough on her as they’d been on him while dragging her to the cave.

She unzipped her jacket, grinning up at him. “Those stupid, sexist idiots.”

He followed her gaze and saw what her captors had missed.

She was still armed.

* * *

LUNCH TURNED OUT to be a couple of peanut-butter sandwiches and two juice boxes. Doyle had found them in a paper sack near the mouth of the cave when it became clear their captors weren’t going to return with food. Apparently the small sack of supplies had been tossed in along with Laney, overlooked in the spectacle of her arrival.

Doyle shared his sandwich and juice with Laney, agreeing with her silent assessment that Joy needed food more than either of them, after several days in captivity. She also needed sleep, having been largely sleep deprived since her abduction, too fearful of the unknown to be able to sleep for more than an hour at a time. She’d nodded off after eating, and Laney had followed Doyle from the interior cavern to the larger one near the entrance in order to speak without disturbing her.

“I didn’t think we’d find her alive,” she confessed in a whisper, leaning against Doyle as they settled with their backs to the cave wall.

He wrapped his arm around her, lending extra warmth. “Neither did I.”

“What do they want from her father?”

“I’ve been thinking about that. He’s on the county commission, right?”

“Yeah.” She nestled closer, wishing they had something warmer to sit on than the grimy cave floor. “You think it has to do with the upcoming vote on the status of the Bitterwood Police Department?”

“From what I understand, he may be the deciding vote. Everyone else on the commission seems pretty set on a particular course.”

“So swinging his vote one way or another could be a viable goal.”

“But which way do they want to swing it?” Doyle asked. “For Bitterwood P.D. or against?”

“I think it has to be for,” Laney said after a moment’s thought. “If Craig Bolen is corrupt—and I think we can conclude he is, at this point—he’d be inclined toward preserving his job, wouldn’t he? Maybe he was working with Glen Rayburn on Wayne Cortland’s payroll.”

“He was Rayburn’s direct underling,” Doyle agreed. “Obvious choice for chief of detectives, taking Rayburn’s place after Rayburn’s suicide.”

“But here comes the new chief, threatening to upset the order of things,” Laney murmured.

“And a county public integrity officer’s suddenly assigned to the department for extra scrutiny,” Doyle added.

“So they have reason to want us out of the way,” she agreed. “But why keep us alive?”

Doyle took a deep breath, as if bracing himself for what he had to say. “Until you dropped in on us, I thought there was a real chance they were going to let Joy live. The only face they think either of us saw was Ray’s, and I think we all agree he’s wearing some sort of disguise.”

“But I saw Craig Bolen.”

He nodded, his cheek brushing against her temple. He tightened his hold on her. “Now I wonder if I was just being naive, thinking they’d let Joy live.”

“Still gets us back to the question at hand—why are they keeping us alive?”

“The vote doesn’t happen for another three days,” he answered.

“And they might need Joy alive as leverage, in case her father demands to see her,” Laney said. “But if they kill her, won’t her father just tell the world what he was forced to do?”

“Maybe, but who’s he going to blame? I’m damned sure he doesn’t know Bolen’s behind all this. I saw them together the other day, and he didn’t show the slightest antagonism toward Bolen. He seemed more angry at me.”

“Because you’re part of the reason his daughter was taken, in his mind,” Laney said, understanding the thought process even though she knew it was deeply unfair. “He’s being forced to maintain your job. Maybe he even wonders if you could be behind his daughter’s kidnapping.”

Doyle sighed. “I wonder if maybe I’m being set up as the fall guy.”

She turned toward him, even though there was far too little light in the cave for her to be able to make out more than the faintest outline of his profile. “How?”

“Maybe Bolen’s been hinting to Adderly that I could be behind the kidnapping. Maybe that’s what’s behind the hostility I noticed.”

“But why would he believe that? It’s ridiculous.”

“Is it? I’m new in town. An outsider. A flatlander. I came from a sheriff’s department that had its own issues with corruption. I showed up just days before the girls were shot. I have a vested interest in keeping the Bitterwood P.D. alive and kicking. And now I’ve gone AWOL, along with you. The woman the county sent to spy on me.”

“I wasn’t sent to spy on you.”

“You know what I mean.”

“You think Bolen or Ray plan to use your weapon to kill Joy and me,” she said with a sinking heart.

“They have it. They took it off me when they Tasered me.”

“I guess maybe they didn’t think I’d be packing,” she murmured.

“Lucky for us.” He’d taken over her pistol and holster, with her blessing, after a quick grilling established that he was the more experienced shooter.

“It would tie up a lot of loose ends. Plus put Bolen in prime position to step into the chief’s job,” Laney admitted.

“He’d be next in line. The only reason he didn’t get it this time was that the county commission wanted to look outside the area for their next chief.”

“But if you turned out to be even worse than Rayburn, they might not feel that compunction a second time.”

“Exactly.”

Laney rubbed her gritty eyes. “This is so crazy.”

“What I don’t get,” Doyle added a few moments later, “is how this connects to Wayne Cortland. If Bolen was working for Cortland, and Cortland is dead, what’s his plan now?”

“Maybe that’s where Ray comes in.”

“Maybe. He could be Cortland’s successor, although the feds didn’t think there was such a person. They thought the whole cartel died with him.”

“Well, clearly the pieces of that whole are still around. What if they’ve found a new leader?”

“A new leader who can pull all those mismatched pieces together?” Doyle sounded skeptical.

He was probably right, she knew. The prevailing theory about Cortland’s criminal enterprise was that Cortland’s ruthless control had held the disparate groups involved together. Militia groups, meth dealers and anarchist hackers hardly made ideal partners, but Cortland had somehow brought those groups together, massaging egos and convincing each group that their goals would be met if they went along with his plans.


But could someone else maintain that delicate, improbable balance?

“Maybe not,” she admitted. “Probably not.”

“Doesn’t mean someone isn’t trying,” Doyle countered.

Laney pushed the stem of her watch, lighting up the dial. Just after three o’clock. Based on what Joy had told them, their captors would bring them something to eat around five, as daylight was beginning to wane.

“What if all they do is throw the food in here?” she asked Doyle. “What good does it do to have a weapon if we can’t get close enough to use it?”

“Joy and I had a plan before you arrived.” His voice was a rumble in her ear, sending a shudder of feminine awareness dancing down her spine despite the less-than-ideal situation. “She was going to scream bloody murder near the back of the cave to lure someone inside. I’d be hiding near the door, ready to jump.”

“Dangerous.”

“Desperate times,” he said, a shrug in his voice.

“What if they both come in?” she asked.

“Then it gets a little more difficult.”

* * *

WHEN LANEY FELL SILENT, her head drooping against Doyle’s shoulder, he was loath to move, even though his legs were starting to cramp from sitting in one position so long. Time was ticking toward their next chance to make an escape, and if she needed a nap to restore her strength, he didn’t want to disturb her.

So he was surprised when she sat up abruptly and said, “Oh.”

“Oh what?” he asked when she didn’t say anything else.

“I think I know what this place is.”

“Yeah?”

She looked over at the heavy wood door closing them in. “When we were kids, my mother used to tell us every Halloween before we went out trick-or-treating, ‘Y’all be careful, or Bridey Butcher’ll get you!’”

“Bridey Butcher?” he asked, pricked by déjà vu.

“Yeah. Bridey Butcher was a big, strappin’ mountain girl who lived up this way back during Prohibition. She and her daddy ran a moonshine still and scared off a lot of the other moonshiners with a little well-applied violence and threats of more. Anyway, one day a city slicker from over Knoxville way came up here looking to employ some men on a public works project, and for Bridey, it was love at first sight.”

Listening to Laney’s accent broaden as she warmed to the tale, Doyle’s sense of familiarity bloomed into memory. “But he did her wrong.”

Laney paused in her story. “That’s right. He led her on, made her think he was going to marry her and take her out of these mountains, but when the time came to go, he told her he had a girl back in Knoxville.”

“And Bridey lured him up here for a goodbye, or so he thought,” Doyle continued, the story coming to life in his mind, as if his mother were whispering in his ear. “She and her daddy had built a door in the mouth of a cave where they hid their still from the revenuers. But she’d moved the still somewhere else, and when she lured her lover inside the cave, she’d knocked him out and locked him inside. She left and never came back, leaving her lover to die slowly, the same way he’d killed her love.”

“How do you know that story?” Laney asked, her eyes wide with surprise.

“My mother used to tell it,” he said. “I’d forgotten. When I was old enough to be thinking about girls, she told me about the girl done wrong and how she got her revenge. But she never said what mountain.”

“I bet you were afraid to date after that,” Laney said.

He smiled back at her. “For a while. I’m pretty sure that was my mother’s intention.”

“How did your mother know about Bridey Butcher?”

He shrugged, not sure. “I know she was from somewhere in eastern Tennessee. Maybe she heard the story there.”

“It’s pretty specific to Bitterwood, since it actually happened here—” Laney stopped short, her face turning toward the doorway. “Footsteps,” she whispered.

Doyle clicked on his phone and saw that it was only three-thirty. Their captors were way too early to be bringing their evening meal.

He had a sick feeling that time had just run out.