Today's Free Story by Dean

USA Today bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith returns to the world of his acclaimed thriller Dead Money with a new problem for professional poker player, Doc Hill. 

Doc agrees to help find a missing college student, the son of the Las Vegas Chief of Police. But little did Doc know that such a simple case would turn out to be so large and ugly and dangerous.

The Road Back gives readers a perfect introduction to the world of Doc Hill and professional poker.

“The Road Back” is available for one day on this site. The ebook is also available on all retail stores, a well as here.

The Road Back

A Doc Hill Story

 By Dean Wesley Smith

 

When you are short-stacked in poker,
and in life, the road back
to being in contention
often has a very sudden end.

 

ONE

“DO WE HAVE ANY IDEA where he might be?” I asked Annie over my shoulder.

She had crouched down behind my chair at the no-limit ring game I had joined a few hours before at the Bellagio. I was almost a thousand up and had been enjoying the game as a warm-up for a series of poker tournaments coming later in the week to the Bellagio.

I seldom played regular ring games anymore, only tournaments. But at times it felt right to just sit and play for a time. This hot September afternoon was one of those times to relax in the air-conditioned poker room and drink iced tea and win a little money in the process.

“Not a clue,” she said. “Dad’s got all the information.”

Annie had her long brown hair pulled back and the white blouse and dark slacks she wore accented her perfect body. She was the best-looking former Las Vegas detective I had ever met, with brown eyes that could stare through to your soul. Actually, she was one of the best-looking women I had ever met, and also one of most deadly poker players in the modern game.

In the year we had been together, she had taken down a dozen tournaments and won two World Series of Poker bracelets for two different events.

Now she wanted my help to find some guy her dad thought was missing. Actually, her dad, Detective Bayard Lott, also a former Las Vegas police detective, wanted her help and she was asking if I would help out as well.

“You want me to deal you in, Doc?” the dealer asked.

“No, thanks, Al,” I said, pushing back from the table as Annie stood and stepped back. I flipped him a twenty-five dollar chip and he tapped it and nodded thanks before slipping it into his tip slot.

I turned and nodded to Ben, the brush in charge of the room at the moment who was headed my way from the poker room desk.

“Cash you out?” he asked.

I flipped him a twenty-five dollar chip as well and said, “Thanks. Just add it to the account.”

I had had a running account at the Bellagio for almost ten years now. Made it easier than hauling racks of chips to the cage all the time. And after the two tips, I had five hundred in starting money in my stack and another eight hundred and fifty in winnings.

My chip vanished into Ben’s pocket and he worked to rack the rest as I turned and headed with Annie out of the poker room and into the noise and bells of customers filling the slots.

“Dinner?” I asked, realizing I was starting to get hungry as we turned toward the front of the casino.

“Dad’s meeting us in the Café Bellagio,” she said.

I laughed, taking her hand. “You were pretty sure I was going to help you, huh?”

“Not really,” she said, smiling at me as we wound our way through the people toward the restaurant. “I would have gotten the information from Dad and told you later if you were really interested in staying in the game.”

“It was enough warm-up,” I said. “More than enough, actually.”

“Lucky for those guys at the table,” she said, laughing. “You warm-up much more and they would have been broke.”

“That’s the point, isn’t it?” I asked.

She agreed and then waved at her father sitting at a semi-private four-person table off to one side of the café where it looked out over the pool. The smell of hamburgers and steaks drifted from the direction of the kitchen and my stomach rumbled. I really was hungrier than I had realized.

I liked her dad a great deal. He looked pretty sharp for his sixty-three years with short-cut white hair, broad shoulders, and only a hint of a gut around his stomach. He had a wicked sense of humor and his laugh could start an entire room laughing with him.

He and a bunch of his retired detective friends played poker every week in the basement of his house and worked to solve cold cases for the Las Vegas Police Department on the side. They called themselves the Cold Poker Gang. Annie and I helped them when we could.

But from what Annie said, this didn’t sound like a cold case. More like a missing person problem. And in Vegas, there were always a lot of those.

For all sorts of reasons.

 

TWO 

I WAS INTO MY RIB STEAK and onion rings, Annie was picking at her hamburger, and her dad was about halfway done with his French Dip before Annie finally broached the subject.

“So who is missing and why are you involved, Dad?”

“Steve Benson Junior,” he said between bites.

Both Annie and I glanced at him.

Finally Annie asked exactly what I was thinking. “The son of Chief of Police Steven Benson?”

“One and the same,” her dad said. “Chief Benson called me, asked if I would look into it for him.”

“He thinks his son is in trouble?” I asked.

Annie’s dad shook his head. “Not that kind of trouble. He’s a good kid, graduate student at UNLV focusing on Nevada history. But his dad this morning went to meet him for breakfast and Steve didn’t show up. Steve’s best friend hasn’t seen him either.”

“And his dad’s worried?” Annie asked.

“I would be too,” her father said, smiling at her. “Steve is like you in that he calls when he has to cancel something.”

“He have a car?” I asked.

“Red Jeep SUV,” he said. “About a year old. It’s missing as well.”

“So he went somewhere and hasn’t returned yet,” Annie said. “More than likely he’s fine.”

Her dad nodded. “That’s what the Chief thinks as well, but he’s still worried. Steve’s cell isn’t picking up. I think that’s really why the Chief called me. He doesn’t want this out yet, so he’s just calling in personal favors at the moment.”

I sat back munching on a crisp onion ring, thinking. My little voice was telling me that something was wrong with this kid. I didn’t know him and I didn’t know his father, but this felt wrong for some reason I couldn’t put my finger on.

However, when at a poker table, I had learned to trust that little voice when it told me something was wrong with a play another player made. And in life I had also learned to trust that voice. And right now the very same voice was telling me we needed to move on this and fast.

I finished the onion ring and leaned forward toward Annie’s dad. “Could you call the chief and ask him if Steve is back yet? And if not, could we go look at his apartment?”

Detective Lott slid the key across the table at me, smiling. “Steve wasn’t back five minutes before you two showed up, and I got this key from the Chief before coming over here.”

I just shook my head and grinned as Annie patted her father’s arm, smiling. It was no wonder the guy had been such a great detective in his day. He was a half step ahead of everything.

 

THREE

STEVE’S APARTMENT near the university seemed far neater than I would have expected a grad student’s apartment to be. And it was clear with only a quick look that there was nothing at all out of place.

Nothing.

The apartment had one bedroom with a living room with only a couch and chair and a large desk in it. A small, clean dining room table with four chairs sat near the open kitchen. There was a bathroom off the bedroom.

There was no sign at all of any woman’s touch in here. Everything was standard apartment except the large computer on a L-shaped desk on the left side of the living room and large wall of books on the right side, mostly textbooks that at a glance I was glad I never would have to read. My college days were a long ways behind me now.

However, one full shelf was full of books on various aspects of Nevada history that looked very interesting, from the gold rush towns to railroad history to the founding of Las Vegas.

All of them in perfect order by author.

Annie was looking through Steve’s desk. There were a couple of books open on the desk on Nevada place names and another on lost mines of Nevada.

“Can you access that computer?” I asked Annie. “See what he was researching before he left?”

“If it’s not password protected,” she said, sitting down in the chair and moving the wireless keyboard closer toward her.

Her father came out of the bathroom shaking his head. “This kid is the cleanest kid I have ever seen. Nothing out of place, no sign that anyone else but him even visited here. Not even a hair on his comb.”

“He folds his socks and underwear,” I said. “His bed is made, even though he slept in it recently. And he washed his breakfast dishes before he left, more than likely yesterday morning, since the dishes are completely dry as is the dish towel.”

Annie brought the computer up and then shook her head. “Protected.”

“He’s going to have a password book,” I said. “Upper drawer on the left.”

She opened the drawer and pulled out a small notebook, shaking her head. “How did you know that?”

“Someone like Steve is completely predictable. Every move, every detail. It’s how his mind works. He has no choice.”

“Easy pickings on a poker table,” Annie said.

“He’d never sit down at one,” I said. “He wouldn’t be able to handle the uncertainty that comes naturally with the game.”

“Obsessive-compulsive?” Annie’s dad asked.

“Borderline,” Annie said, nodding. “It goes toward hoarding or being neat freaks.”

“We know which way Steve goes,” I said.

As Annie worked on the computer and bringing up the history, I went back into the small apartment bedroom. Steve had his shoes lined up perfectly along the bottom of his closet, from dress shoes through tennis shoes to boots. There was an empty spot between a pair of tennis shoes and a heavy pair of boots. That’s where he would put his hiking boots.

His shirts were lined up hanging in his closet and there was a clear opening where a light casual shirt had clearly hung. More than likely brown from the patterns of the colors.

I went into the bathroom and opened the medicine chest. There was an empty spot where a tube of suntan lotion would have sat right between a small jar of Vaseline and a tube of blister cream.

I closed the cabinet and turned went back into the living room with the desk and books. “He’s gone into the desert. More than likely yesterday morning. My guess is he was planning on returning before dark last night and something happened.”

Annie’s dad looked around at the apartment. “I can see why the Chief was worried, now.”

“Got it,” Annie said, moving back through the history of what Steve had last looked at on his computer.

The very last thing was a map of an area of the Nevada desert to the north and west of Las Vegas along Highway 95.

“Skeleton Mountains,” Annie said, hitting a button to print up the map just as I was sure Steve had done.

One of the books open on the desk referred to the area as well, and I picked it up as Annie kept going back through the history on the computer.

Seems the Skeleton Mountains were a group of rocky peaks sticking up out of the desert about ten miles to the west of the highway. The article said that no one knew exactly how it got its name. From what I could tell in the book, the rocky peaks had just always been named that.

And they weren’t that big, with the largest being not more than six or seven hundred feet off the desert. Compared to the mountains I spent the summer in every year in central Idaho, guiding rafts on the River of No Return, these Skeleton Mountains were nothing more than large piles of rocks.

“He was researching some old patented mining claims in those mountains,” Annie said, again hitting the print button. “All of them are long dormant and never produced anything of real value.”

“So we know where he went,” Annie’s father said, nodding.

“Get a search team set up from the Chief,” I said to him as Annie printed a second copy of the map of the small group of mountains.

“Where are you going?” Annie’s dad asked, as he pulled out his phone.

“Fleet’s in town and he loves testing out his new helicopter,” I said, and Annie laughed. “He’ll get us up there and we’ll see what we can see from the air, see if we can spot his car before you and the Chief get there.”

I was on the phone to my best friend and business partner, Fleet, and Annie’s father was talking with the Chief of Police as we headed out into the hot early evening air and Annie pulled the door to the apartment closed behind us.

 

FOUR

FLEET LIVED IN BOISE with his family. Annie and I had a house there as well, but unlike Fleet, we were seldom in Boise. Fleet had a wonderful wife and two kids there, but at the moment they were all here, letting the kids have one last vacation before school started up again.

Fleet had decided that our company needed a helicopter to go along with our own private jet. It seemed that over the years, his investments of my poker winnings had made us, as he said, stupidly rich. We gave millions away to charity every year and spent what we wanted and somehow just managed to get richer.

Fleet was that good with business and investments.

My father’s death a year ago had just added more millions than I wanted to think about into the picture.

When Fleet bought the jet helicopter for the company, he had decided he wanted to fly it, much to his wife’s horror. And in the last year he had become a very good pilot.

On the phone I told him what was going on and he almost beat us to the airport, even though we had a shorter distance to go. Any excuse to take out the helicopter was a great idea as far as he was concerned.

Within forty minutes after leaving Steve’s apartment, we were airborne and headed for the Skeleton Mountains, the loud drone of the chopper a constant noise around us.

“So what do you think we’re going to find?” Fleet asked through the communications links we all wore.

Annie was in the co-pilot chair because she had taken a few lessons with the chopper last year. I was behind them, strapped in tight. I wasn’t afraid of flying, but I had to admit having my friend from childhood doing the flying didn’t instill great confidence, even though he had a lot of hours in the air already.

“Besides rocks and snakes?” Annie asked.

She moved slightly so I could see the wink she gave me.

I smiled. Fleet was deathly afraid of snakes. Any kind and size of snake, actually. And everyone knew it.

“Not funny,” he said.

“If we have to land, you can stay in the chopper,” I said. “There will be snakes.”

Fleet shook his head. “You two sure know how to kill a good flight.”

Less than fifteen minutes after leaving the Las Vegas airport, the mountains sort of rose from the rolling desert floor in front of us. They were sure nothing to look at. Mostly rocks and scattered open areas covered in scrub brush. I hadn’t been kidding Fleet. Those rocks would be infested with snakes, since it was clear the area got little or no attention by humans at all.

“Come in from Highway 95,” I said to Fleet. “See if you can spot a road into those mountains.”

Fleet nodded and slowed until Annie pointed ahead.

A bare excuse of a dirt road left the highway and wound toward the mountains.

Fleet banked over it and followed the road, moving slowly as we all studied the area.

There was no place to hide below us at all. Just open desert and scrub.

Up ahead the road started to wind up a small canyon and then seemed to break out into an open flat area before going back into another canyon and deeper into the piles of rocks laughingly called mountains.

Nothing but huge rocks and scrub brush.

“On the right,” Annie said, pointing.

It took me a moment, but finally I saw what she was pointing at. A glint of the sun reflected off some metal. At closer look I could see hints of a red car hidden beside a rock and covered with scrub brush. Someone had spent a lot of time in the task of hiding the car and had the car off the road so it couldn’t be seen by anyone driving in.

“Someone really wanted that hidden,” Fleet said, shaking his head.

My stomach was twisting like my rib steak was suddenly not agreeing with me.

“Same speed,” I said to Fleet. “Just keep going straight and off into the desert on the other side of the mountains.”

“Like we’re on Fleet’s tour of the desert,” he said and did as he was told.

Annie had her cell phone to her ear as all of us watched the ground below. To the right of our flight path I could see a trail going up to what looked to be an old mine entrance. There was no sign of anyone there, but that meant nothing.

Then, near where the dirt road came out the other side of another rock canyon and started across the desert, I spotted an old pickup truck parked under a rock outcropping. It was brown and clearly dusty and blended in perfectly with the rocks.

“Truck on the right,” I said as we went past and out into the desert just as if we were a sightseeing chopper doing nothing unusual.

“Get us away from these rocks and turn back toward Vegas until we are completely out of sight,” I said to Fleet.

“Looks like the kid found some real problems he didn’t expect in there,” Fleet said.

“Dad,” Annie said into her cell. “We found Steve’s car, but looks like he’s in trouble with someone living in an old mine in the Skeleton Mountains.”

She waited for a second. “They hid his car,” she said. “Spent a lot of time doing so, actually.”

Again a pause as her father said something on the other side of the conversation that I couldn’t hear.

“There is,” Annie said. “A brown pickup, dirty, also hidden. We’ve moved away from the mountains to not spook anyone in there.”

Then she gave a description of the truck to her father.

This one-sided conversation was driving me crazy. I had a hunch that the longer we delayed, the less chance Steve was going to make it. He had clearly walked into something ugly. You don’t go to that much trouble to hide a person’s car if you ever plan on letting them leave.

She nodded for a long minute, then she glanced at me, her brown eyes big. Then she said, simply, “Shit.”

Then she hung up.

Fleet had the chopper flying low over the desert and had turned back for Vegas. We were out of both hearing and sight of the mountains.

“Dad and the Chief and a bunch of Vegas police and the State Police are all coming hard and silent from all directions. They are going to button up all ways in and out of that group of mountains.”

“What did he say?” Fleet asked just before I could.

“A brown truck matching the description of the one back there has been connected to a string of disappearances. Maybe up to a dozen women going back years.”

Now the steak in my stomach was really twisting around. Steve really had stumbled into something far, far bigger than he could handle.

“Take us back up to where the road into the mountains hits Highway 95,” I said to Fleet. “Drop us off there and then make a wide circle out and around the rocks to the other side and out of sight and watch the road on that side. We don’t want this guy getting away before the police get here.”

Fleet nodded and two minutes later had us on the ground next to the highway. Then he lifted off and swung back to Vegas, climbing and moving fast.

I had tossed in an older twenty-two Remington saddle rifle from my car in case we needed to take out a couple of snakes and Annie had brought along her revolver. We had both grabbed bottles of water.

The air around us was hot, and there were very few cars passing by on the highway. The sun was low on the horizon, but not low enough to cut off the heat. It would be dark in less than two hours.

As Fleet vanished and the sound of the chopper faded off, Annie pulled out her phone to call her dad.

She told him what we had done and then asked how far out they were. As she listened to the answer, she shook her head.

“They are still a good fifteen minutes out,” she told me. “And it will be thirty minutes or longer before they can have the entire place locked down from all sides.

I glanced at the half mile of road between us and the first edge of the rocks they called Skeleton Mountains. I wasn’t sure that Steve had that long. If the guy had a police scanner, he would know the police were on the way.

I glanced at Annie and she could read my mind. She nodded and then said to her dad. “We’re going in on foot. Warn everyone we’re in there. And don’t put that on the scanner.”

Then before her father could object, she clicked off the phone and tucked it in her pants pocket.

“Up for a jog?” I asked.

“Why not?” she said, smiling as she made sure the clip in her gun was in place and ready. “Seems like a perfect evening for some exercise.”

I knew there was a reason I loved this woman.

 

FIVE

IT TOOK US less than five minutes to run the length of the dirt road to the edge of the first rock canyon. It was a tough and hot run since we both had to keep looking ahead and also down at our feet to watch ruts and rocks that could twist an ankle.

We slowed as we entered the shadows of the canyon and walked, both of us drinking from our water bottles.

The rocks towered a good hundred feet over the road that ran up a wash. Annie watched the left side, I watched the right.

And I had been right about snakes. A couple nasty Speckled Rattlesnakes lay on rocks. As we approached, they slipped down into the brush. Both of them were large, far larger than I had seen in some time, actually.

In Idaho, as a guide on the summer rafting trips on the River of No Return, I warned people away from climbing the rocks near the river. The rattlers there were much smaller, but could still ruin a good rafting trip if you cornered them or got too close.

The road came out of the rocks and opened up through an open area a quarter mile across before ducking back into the rocks on the other side. Steve’s Jeep was hidden to the right about a hundred yards into that canyon ahead.

We stopped, still in the shadows and both took another long drink. Then we left the bottles beside the road. I had a hunch we were going to need our hands free from here on out.

I glanced at my watch. Eight minutes had passed since we left the highway.

“You ready?” I asked?

She nodded.

Running low, bent over, we headed out into the sun and across the open area. I kept expecting to hear a shot or something, but we made it quickly to the shade of the other canyon, both of us panting.

From there we slowed to a walk, Annie again watching the right walls of rock while I watched the left.

As we got even with where Steve’s Jeep was hidden, Annie pointed it out. No one would have ever seen it simply driving this dirt path up this narrow canyon between all the rocks.

We kept moving up the road and within a minute we were at the place where the path left the road through some scrub and up a narrow cut in the rocks toward what looked to be an open mine.

“Got any ideas?” Annie asked as we stopped in the shadows and studied the path.

“Nothing,” I said. “Trying to climb these snake-infested rocks to get up there another way would be suicidal.”

“Going up that trail won’t be very healthy, either,” Annie said, studying the trail up to the mine opening a hundred feet above us. “It would be like shooting ducks in a pond for anyone above.”

We both stood there, with not an idea in the world between us. The heat of the day had really baked the rocks around us and even though we were in the shade, everything was just radiating heat. I would have bet the temperature was a good hundred and twenty and there wasn’t a breath of wind. Sweat dried so fast it left my skin feeling coated in dust and salt.

Annie took out her cell phone, then shook her head and put it back.

Then an idea hit me. “Car alarm.”

Annie glanced at me, puzzled and listening. There was no sound at all out here in the desert in these rocks.

“Steve’s car,” I said. “I’m going to go back and see if I can set off that car alarm. If the guy up there doesn’t know anyone is on the way to look for him, he’s going to come out thinking a snake set it off or something.”

“Good idea,” she said.

“Don’t let him get back in that cave or Steve is dead.”

She nodded and glanced around for a place to hide. I started back down the road and behind me she whispered, “Watch out for snakes.”

“You too,” I whispered back.

Actually, snakes were my biggest concern with this entire plan. With brush all over that Jeep, there could be a dozen rattlers in there already, both in the car, in the engine, and under it. The car formed a perfect snake cave and I wasn’t looking forward at all to wading in there.

I spotted a long piece of brush in the ditch beside the road and grabbed it. It was a good six feet long and sturdy. A rattler needed to get within four feet to strike, maybe more if they were big ones like we had seen coming in.

I glanced at my watch as I neared the Jeep’s hiding place beside the road. Annie’s dad and the State Police would be almost into position. If this guy ran, and Annie couldn’t stop him, they would.

I just hoped Steve would still be alive if the guy did run.

I took a deep breath of the warm afternoon air and started off the road toward the red Jeep buried in the brush. Then, before I had taken two steps, I heard Annie’s clear voice ring out through the rocks.

“Stop! Police. Let him go and put your hands up!”

Then two shots filled the air.

Running low and silently, I headed back up the road, not allowing myself to think about Annie getting hurt.

As I neared a corner in the road that would allow me to see the road ahead and the area where the trail left the road to the mine, I slowed.

Annie somehow had gone up the trail a dozen steps and then climbed into some rocks. Somehow she had managed to stay hidden as the guy holding Steve had come down the trail to the road. He must have had a scanner and finally clued to the fact that they were coming for him.

She now had him basically pinned on the road using Steve as a shield.

Steve looked tired and scared out of his wits in his tan slacks, hiking boots, and tan shirt. The guy holding him was short, about five-four, and wore jeans and a light green T-shirt that was stained by sweat. His face looked like it had a five-day growth of beard and his dark hair looked like it hadn’t seen a comb in days.

He had a large pistol pressed against Steve’s temple and was holding it as if he knew what to do with it.

Annie saw me and nodded.

“Police!” I shouted. “You are surrounded!”

The guy spun in my direction, trying to drag Steve with him, but Steve tripped. The guy’s gun left the side of Steve’s head as he fought to get his hostage back into position. In doing so he gave Annie a clear shot.

And she took it.

The guy spun from the impact and smacked back into the rocks and brush in the shallow ditch beside the dirt road. His gun flew away from him to the left.

Steve spun the other way, tumbling to the ground in the middle of the road.

I came in fast and Annie was almost faster down the trail, both of us watching for any movement in the guy. Annie had gotten him in the right shoulder. He had been holding his gun in his right hand. It didn’t look like the wound would be fatal. There was blood, but not enough to cause him any danger.

A huge rattlesnake came out of the brush under him and struck at the guy’s left arm. Clearly the snake wasn’t happy about some guy landing on him.

The kidnapper moaned and jerked away.

All I could do was laugh.

“That’s going to make his recovery a little longer,” Annie said, laughing and shaking her head as she turned to help Steve to his feet.

“You all right?” she asked the son of the Las Vegas Chief of Police.

Steve nodded and didn’t say anything. He was clearly in shock.

“You dad will be here shortly,” Annie said, patting Steve’s shoulder. “Is there anyone else up there in that mine?”

Steve shook his head. “No one alive.”

Then he dropped to the road and buried his head in his hands and just sobbed. The guy in the ditch moaned and the large rattler slithered off down the ditch, clearly not happy, as I glanced at Annie.

She looked up at the mine entrance and shook her head.

I had a slight desire to see what was in there, but my better judgment quickly got control.

Some things were better just left unseen.

 

SIX

I HAD MANAGED TO GO up the dirt road a short distance and get a clear enough phone signal to get word out that it was clear.

Then I called Fleet and told him it was clear and to meet us back at the intersection on Highway 95. But I told him that it might be awhile. He might have to transport Steve to the hospital with his dad before he could take us. We had some paperwork to fill out and a story to tell before we would be released, of that I had no doubt.

By the time I got back to Annie, I could hear two Las Vegas Police cars powering up the road.

They slid to a stop just short of us in a cloud of dust and Annie’s dad and Steven’s dad both piled out.

“You two all right?” Annie’s dad asked.

“Had to put a bullet in his shoulder,” she said, pointing to the guy in the ditch.

“And then a snake helped keep him down as well,” I added, smiling.

Annie’s father just shook his head and studied the moaning man for a moment before turning back to us.

The Chief helped his son to his feet and eased him back toward the patrol car as a number of State Police officers arrived on the scene sending up even more clouds of dust into the hot evening air.

As we watched, two Nevada State Police officers carefully worked to extract the guy from the ditch and made sure he didn’t have any other guns on him. Then they flipped him over on his face in the dirt and handcuffed him in the middle of the road, not seeming to care at all that he had been shot and snake bitten.

I moved over to the tall State Police officer who seemed to be in charge and pointed up the trail. “From what the Chief’s son said, that cave up there isn’t pretty. More than likely a major crime scene.”

The guy nodded. “Which one of you put the bullet in this guy?”

“I did,” Annie said, coming up and handing him her gun. “Retired Detective Annie Lott.”

“Thank you, Detective,” the officer said, handing the gun to one officer to put away. He didn’t seem to care at all about the rifle in my hand.

Then he motioned for two other officers to follow him up the hill.

Annie’s dad, Annie, and I moved into a deep area of shade and stood watching as the three State Police officers went into the cave while another stood near the prisoner in the road.

A short minute later one came out, moved to the edge of the mine entrance, and threw up.

“That can’t be good,” I said.

Both Annie and her father just shook their heads. In their days I was sure they had seen things I flat didn’t want to know about.

A few minutes later the other two came out and came back down the trail, a haunted look in all of their eyes.

The Chief climbed out of the patrol car where he had been sitting with his son.

“Your son is going to need counseling help after what he saw up there,” the officer said. “He’s going to have a long road back to normal.”

“That bad?” the Chief asked.

“Worse,” the officer said. “This is going to solve a lot of missing persons’ cases. More than either of us care to think about.”

I had never seen a police officer look so haunted in his eyes. He also was going to have some trouble dealing with whatever horrors were in that old mine.

Then the State Police officer walked over to the guy lying handcuffed face-down in the dirt and kicked him square in the side of the stomach.

After that, the officer turned and walked away down the road past the patrol cars, leaving the desert silence and heat closing in around all of us.

At that moment I was so glad I had resisted the slight temptation to go up to the mine opening.

The Chief glanced over at us, a look of relief in his eyes. Then he said simply, “Thanks.”

“You are more than welcome,” Annie said as her father put his arm around her.

“Just take care of Steve,” I said.

The Chief nodded and went back to the car to sit with his son.

As the door to the patrol car closed, I turned to Annie’s father. “Think all the good feelings will cut down some on the paperwork for us?”

Both Annie and her father laughed, as did the state cop standing near the prisoner on the ground.

“Not a chance,” Annie’s father said between laughs.

Annie stepped over and kissed me. “You always were a dreamer.”

 

________________________________________

“The Road Back” is available for one day on this site. The ebook is also available on all retail stores, a well as here.

The Road Back

Copyright © 2013 by Dean Wesley Smith
Published by WMG Publishing

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.