Page 15 of Black Moon Rising (Black Knights Inc: Reloaded #4)

14

Huron-Manistee National Forest

“No luck on the other two motorcycles,” Agent Keplar grumbled, and Julia could sense the violence in him.

It’d become clear over the preceding hours that of the two feds from South Carolina, it was Ryan Keplar who was most determined to find Knox Rollins. A quick aside with Agent Maddox had revealed why.

Knox had been Keplar’s asset. It’d been Keplar who’d first recruited Cooper Greenlee and Knox Rollins to be the FBI’s moles inside the narcotics trafficking operation. This meant Keplar took Knox’s betrayal and the subsequent implosion of their joint operation with the ATF and IRS personally.

Not that a scream of frustration didn’t threaten in Julia’s own throat. But her fury had nothing to do with Knox Rollins—she didn’t know the man from Adam. It was leveled solely on Black Knights Inc. And, more specifically, Sergeant Britt Rollins.

“But they did find this.” Keplar slapped a heavy Maglite flashlight into her hand. “It was taped to the motorcycle's fender.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the line of pines standing guard around the farmhouse and its fields.

She could see the beams from the tactical team’s flashlights bouncing around the thick tree trunks as they continued searching for the rider of the lone motorcycle. But it’d already been an hour since she’d watched them fast-rope out of the helicopter. And so far…nada.

Every trail of footprints they’d found in the woods had petered out. Every tree with limbs low enough to climb had been spotlighted and searched. And every streambed and washed-out crevice within a one-mile radius had been scoured inch by inch.

The rider was gone.

Either he’d managed to run beyond their search parameters, or he was hiding somewhere they couldn’t find him without the help of thermal imaging. And the infrared drone they’d brought with them for that express purpose had given up the ghost on its maiden flight.

It was currently in pieces on the ground beside the helicopter as the agent certified to fly the sucker used a headlamp to do repairs.

Initially, Julia had been sure the tactical team would locate whoever had manned the wrecked motorcycle. After all, they were four highly trained agents who’d been schooled to find even the savviest of escapees. And besides, how far could one man get on his own?

But as the minutes dragged on—and from listening to the frustrated chatter over the radio—it had become increasingly apparent that the searchers had given up on their current tact and were preparing to expand their search.

Good luck , she thought despondently, knowing that the more time passed, the less likely they’d find their mark. Either the rider was putting more distance between them. Or he was holed up in a spot so covert and concealed that it would take a bloodhound to locate it.

“Taped to the fender you say?” She frowned down at the flashlight in her hand. “But why would—” She didn’t finish her own question because the answer suddenly came to her. “The three headlights we were chasing.” She closed her eyes and pictured the faint beams she’d seen over the side of the chopper as they’d hovered above the thick copse of trees. “It wasn’t three headlights at all, was it?”

“Doesn’t appear so.” Keplar shook his head, a muscle beneath his right eye twitching. Even in the muted yellow glow of the farmhouse’s porchlight, she could see his color was heightened. And despite the crisp nip in the air, sweat beaded his brow.

“That means whomever the rider is, he split off from the other motorcyclists after they lost that New Buffalo police officer.” The next words tasted sour in her mouth. “And that means it’s got to be Britt Rollins, right? He used himself as a distraction so his brother and the mystery woman could go on to parts unknown.”

“Or, if you were right about Hewitt Birch being part of the group, maybe he was the one doing the distracting,” Dillan supplied from his spot on the bottom step of the porch.

“Maybe,” she allowed, although something told her if anyone was going to sacrifice themselves, it would be Britt.

She narrowed her eyes as she surveyed the dark fields beyond the farmhouse, imagining she could feel where he was if she concentrated hard enough. They had that connection, after all.

Agent Maddox climbed the steps to join Julia and Keplar on the porch. His sandy hair was wild and begging for a good brushing. Then again, so was hers. Helicopter rides weren’t meant to maintain careful coiffures. “We ran the wrecked motorcycle’s plates. They came back as belonging to Black Knights Inc., not Rollins or Birch in particular. We can’t confidently say who was riding the bike. But whoever it was, they were the carrot. And we chased them down like a bunch of braying jackasses.”

“And the CCTV footage we pulled?” she queried Dillan. Her question had him standing from his seat on the bottom step and dusting off his trousers.

“Nothing.” He shook his head. “The techs back at headquarters checked the video recordings from the time you and I arrived at the factory building this morning to when we went back with warrants to search the place this evening. There’s no footage of the Rollins brothers, Birch, or the mystery woman leaving. Not unless they were riding in the trunk of Becky Knight’s car when she left for the evening.”

“I guess it’s possible they escaped in the trunk and hopped on the motorcycles elsewhere,” Julia mused, her mind racing with possibilities.

“Yeah. But they’d have been stacked in like sardines.” Dillan made a face. “Mrs. Knight drives a restored 1968 Porsche 911. That model isn’t known for its cavernous trunk space. I can’t imagine it would fit three grown adults.”

Julia narrowed her eyes as more and more puzzle pieces didn’t fall into place.

There’s something very wrong about all of this , she thought.

She had a nagging sense of something . She couldn’t put her finger on it, but it was there, itching, scratching at her brain like sand in her sheets.

“So what’s our next move?” She posed the question to Maddox and Keplar. She and Dillan might’ve been the ones to facilitate the search, but it was the South Carolina agents’ operation. It was their fugitive on the run.

“We head north.” Keplar ran a hand back over his thinning hair. “We’ve already alerted the border authorities on both sides to be on the lookout for Knox Rollins. But he could cross into Canadian waters via Lake Huron if he steals a boat. Or if he stays on land until he makes it to Michigan’s upper peninsula, he could do the same thing on Lake Superior. We need to get more birds in the sky.” His disgust was palpable when he glanced over at the agent working on the drone. “And definitely more drones. Preferably ones that work .”

“Should I call in the tactical team?” Maddox lifted a hand to the earpiece he wore.

“Leave two of them here to continue the hunt for whoever was riding that wrecked bike,” Keplar declared. “If we catch them, we might be able to squeeze them into giving up the others’ location or destination.”

“I’d like to stay behind, too.” The words were out of Julia’s mouth before she’d even decided to speak them.

Maddox cocked his head, eyeing her curiously. “Why?”

“Because I’m a pretty good interrogator if I say so myself. Plus, I laid some friendly groundwork with the people at BKI when Agent Douglas and I worked the Senator McClean case. If the tactical guys catch Rollins or Birch, they’ll probably open up to me before they open up to anyone.”

“Your friendly groundwork didn’t win you any favors when you went to the motorcycle shop this morning,” Keplar said, his beady black eyes watching her closely. “Nor did it seem to sway the folks at Black Knights Inc. this evening.”

Professionalism dictated she smile, say something appropriately de-escalating, and then switch the subject. But she had three older brothers and an old-fashioned father who had taught her that backing down from an insult was tantamount to accepting defeat in an argument.

Her voice was so sugary-sweet that her teeth ached when she said, “That was me asking questions nicely . You haven’t seen me when I decide to get nasty.”

Plus, she thought, if it was Britt riding that wrecked bike, I want to take the first stab at him. I want to look him in the eye and tell him he’s the lowest of lowdown dirty dogs for using my attraction for him against me.

“She’s not lying,” Dillan declared with a staunch dip of his chin. “When she sets her mind to it, she can make a priest forget the sanctity of the confessional.”

Her jaw was slack as she gazed at her partner.

“What?” Dillan lifted his hands. “I may not like being bossed around by a pipsqueak I could punt over the fence, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate your professional prowess.”

A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. Extra points for the alliteration.”

“Degree from Cornell, remember?” His arrogant grin widened over the name of his Ivy League university.

Her smile melted away as she rolled her eyes. “How could I forget when you never miss an opportunity to remind me?”

“Suit yourself and stay,” Keplar tossed over his shoulder. He was already trotting down the weathered porch steps. “We’ll let the tactical guys staying behind know you’ll be here with them.”

Agent Maddox turned from watching his partner jog toward the waiting chopper and offered her an abashed grin. “He’s not that bad once you get to know him.” When she lifted an eyebrow in disbelief, he relented. “Okay, fine. So he is that bad. Sorry.” He shrugged and then took off after Keplar.

“You want me to stay with you?” The single glowing bulb beside the front door spotlighted Dillan’s longing gaze as he watched the two South Carolina agents hop into the waiting helicopter and helpfully accept the drone pieces the operator handed them. Two of the four tactical guys emerged from the woods and crossed the cleared field as the pilot switched on the chopper’s engine. The remaining two searchers began a methodical route around the perimeter of the farmhouse, the beams from their one-thousand-lumen flashlights lighting up limbs like it was high noon on a sunny day.

She had to raise her voice above the noise of the chopper as she nudged Dillan with her elbow. “Nah. You go on. I know you’re itching to have your Harrison Ford moment.”

His smile reminded her of a kid who’d just been given money for the ice cream truck.

“For the record, it’s a Tommy Lee Jones moment I’m after. He was the federal agent who was after Ford. And thanks for understanding. If it wouldn’t hurt my back to bend down so far, and if I weren’t scared you’d punch me in the face, I’d kiss you right now.”

“I might go ahead and punch you in the face just for making another short joke.” She gathered her hair in her hand to stop it from whipping around her face.

“That’s my cue!” Dillan lifted a finger. He didn’t bother taking the stairs. He hopped off the porch and hit the ground running.

She shook her head at the skip in his step. Then she shielded her eyes from the frenzy of blowing dirt when the big, black bird hopped into the sky in a wash of hurricane-force winds.

Once the helicopter gained enough altitude, she stepped onto the top step and watched the chopper get swallowed up in the blackness of the night sky. After a while, the engine noise was little more than a distant purr, and all she could see of the aircraft was the rhythmic flash of the white navigation light on its tail.

She alighted onto the second step, intent on rechecking the area between the fields and the house even though she’d already checked it twice . But before she hit the third step, the hairs on the back of her neck lifted.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but now that she was alone—the tactical guys had moved their search around to the left side of the house—and now that the hulking helicopter and its promise of a quick escape had been removed, she had to admit the empty farmhouse in the middle of nowhere with its creaky boards and crumbling paint was spooky as hell.

It wasn’t like it was abandoned . The recently swept porch, cheery welcome mat, and kid’s toys littering the front yard said whoever owned the property had no intention of being gone for long. But without the living energy of people and animals, the place felt abandoned.

Abandoned and malevolent and somehow…sentient .

How many movies started as thrillers, with some flinty-eyed FBI agent on the hunt for a known criminal, only for the plot to suddenly devolve into a horror story where said agent was chased through the woods by something that was only supposed to exist in fairy tales to frighten children?

She wrapped her arms around herself. Not so much for the warmth but to hold herself together against the rising tide of unease.

A gust of wind whipped up the leaves collected in the overgrown flowerbed. It brought with it the smell of decaying plant matter and…was that death? Had some animal met its end nearby, and now its carcass sat rotting in the bushes?

The trees seemed to shiver, their branches clawing at the sky as if they, too, sensed something foul and menacing lurking just out of sight.

“Screw this,” she muttered as she hopped back onto the porch and raced around two corners until she’d made it to the back of the house.

She spied the two beams from the tactical team as they continued their sweep. But getting visual confirmation she wasn’t entirely alone didn’t bring as much comfort as she thought it would.

There was a strange weight in the air. It was there at the edge of her awareness, waiting, watching . An electrical tension that made her skin prickle as if the night itself held its breath.

Get it together, Jules. Sheesh.

She squared her shoulders. Blew out a steadying breath. And then it happened.

A shadow moved.

Or…at least she thought it did. It was much darker at the back of the house without the porch light cutting through the relentless blackness of the night.

She stared hard, her desperate eyes scanning the area between the house and where the trees loomed out of the ground like silent sentinels that guarded secrets only the night knew.

There it was again.

Movement.

She was sure of it.

Wasting no time slinking farther into the safety of the shadows clinging to the old wooden porch, she pressed her back against the rough siding. Her hand automatically sought the butt of her duty weapon, her fingers curling around the cold metal as her pulse thundered in her ears.

Man or animal? she wondered and opened her mouth to call out to the two tactical guys. But indecision stilled her voice.

What if it was just an animal? A deer or a bobcat or maybe even a skunk? How foolish would she feel pulling the agents off their hunt to help her shoo away a harmless woodland creature?

Slipping into a crouch on the porch, she made herself as small as possible as her eyes strained to make sense of the movement across the field.

It was impossible to tell what it was. The darkness was too vast, too intense. But whatever it was, it was approaching. And quickly too. It pushed through the tall grass with silent, relentless resolve.

An owl screeched somewhere nearby. A rustle sounded in the weeds just off the back porch.

Predator and prey.

Which category did the approaching shadow fall into? And what was she by contrast?

The questions buzzed like angry wasps, each one stinging her with dread as the seconds ticked by and the unknown thing crept closer.

Then it happened. The black shadow took shape, sharpening from an amorphous blob into the silhouette of a man.

Some lonely, reclusive hermit who’d watched all the action and who’d waited to step into the clearing until he saw her standing by herself?

What did he want? To bash her over the head and drag her to his cabin deep in the woods where he’d hold her captive and force her to bear his squealing, grubby babies?

She’d have blamed her racing mind on having watched one too many horror movies. But she was an FBI agent. She’d seen how fact was oftentimes stranger—and more terrifying—than fiction.

With slow, practiced motions, she thumbed off the safety snap on her shoulder holster, wincing when the snick sounded obscenely loud inside the silence shrouding the porch. Then, inch by inch, she pulled her weapon from the leather.

The man was close now. Maybe fifty yards away.

His posture, partially hunched over, head on a pivot as he surveyed his surroundings, told her he wanted to gain ground without being seen.

Tension knotted her intestines until she felt nauseous. When the man turned and made for the small, dilapidated barn, recognition dawned like a slow sunrise. Her fears were instantly dispelled, and her jaw was instantly hard.

She’d know those broad shoulders and that flyaway hair anywhere. She’d seen them a million times in her dreams.

Sergeant Britt Rollins.

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