Page 13 of Outlaw Ridge: Shaw (Hard Justice: Outlaw Ridge #5)

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Shaw cursed the words and the sickening sense of dread that came along with them. The memory of the riddles flashed through his mind—every clue, every victim, every moment of helplessness.

The bastard certainly knew how to bring all of that right back to the surface.

His head whipped up, his gaze spearing to Ava to see how she was reacting. As expected, she looked gutted. And then pissed. When their eyes met, he saw the anger flash there.

Good.

Because anger was a hell of a lot better response than giving into the despair of all of this shit. He felt the anger, too, and it skyrocketed when their phones sounded again with dual texts.

Before Shaw even looked at his screen again, he knew there’d be another riddle. And he was right. The asshole killer hadn’t given them even a minute before he’d sent this latest invitation to hell.

“I am the beginning of sorrow and the end of strife,” Ava read aloud. “You’ll find me in death, but not in life. What am I? You know the drill. Come alone or somebody will pay the price.”

She immediately used her phone to do a search for the answer and came up with one. “It’s the letter D.”

As clues went, that one downright sucked. There were way too many places in and around Outlaw Ridge that contained the letter D. That added some frustration to his own anger, but Ava didn’t hesitate. She snatched up the notepad and pen from Owen’s desk and started writing.

“The diner,” Ava murmured, writing that down and then moving on to an internet search.

Shaw used his phone to text Owen and Reed to let them know what was going on and to have the drones returned to Outlaw Ridge.

“The Dairy Freeze,” Ava added after looking at her search results.

Since that particular shop was right in the center of town on Main Street and not much bigger than a breakfast nook, Shaw doubted the victim was there, but he texted the info anyway so that Owen could assign a deputy to check it out.

“There’s no other businesses that start with the letter D,” she muttered, “but there are plenty that have a D in them.”

“Yeah,” he snarled. “For now, focus on places or things where the D is the first letter of the word.”

That could turn out to be a mistake, but he reminded himself that the killer wanted them to find the person. Wanted them to go on this mad chase that might or might not end with a dead body.

“There’s an old train station,” Ava continued. “It’s referred to in archived news articles as the depot.”

He mentally pulled up the image of what was basically train tracks and a platform with a booth where tickets had once been taken and sold when the trains still went through this part of Texas.

Shaw didn’t know of any culverts or tunnels there for the killer to entomb someone, but he texted Owen to have a drone sent there right away.

“There’s also the county landfill,” she added when he was done with the text. “It’s about a half mile outside of town, and the owner is Ben Dawson. The permit lists it as Dawson’s Landfill.”

Shit. That sounded exactly like the kind of nightmare place the killer would choose.

It had a gated entrance and was manned a couple of days a week so that people could pay a fee and then unload whatever stuff they were discarding.

But since there were trails all around the damn place, it would be easy for someone to come and go unnoticed.

Shaw arranged for another drone to go straight there, and he looked at Ava again, knowing they had a decision to make. “Go there or wait for the drone?” he asked. “What’s your gut feel?”

She didn’t debate for long, only a couple of seconds. “Go. You? What’s your gut saying?”

“Go,” he muttered on a sigh.

Shaw hated, hated, hated that Ava had to be put through this wringer again, but he thought of Grant’s missing assistant. Or hell maybe somebody else that this sicko had taken and was now in the process of murdering. That person was going through a lot worse than Ava and him.

He texted Owen to let him know their plan, and Owen immediately arranged for Lexa and Jemma to follow behind them.

It would be like the other times with the deputies keeping out of sight but staying close enough to respond if things went to hell.

Owen also added that he’d be sending them the security code to get into the landfill.

Also like before, Ava and he put on vests, took some backup weapons, and this time, he also grabbed a handheld infrared scanner that could detect a heat source. The moment the two deputies were geared up and ready to go, they all hurried out to their respective cruisers.

Shaw hit the accelerator and sped out of town, hoping that whatever Ava and he were about to face didn’t end with another death. Hoping, too, that whoever was doing this twisted game would leave something behind that could be used to arrest their sorry ass.

Like pretty much everything in and around Outlaw Ridge, it didn’t take long for him to reach the turn for the landfill.

Ditto for the drone because by the time Shaw drove onto the single lane dirt road that led to the site, the drone was already circling the piles and piles of discarded items and the equipment used to deal with all the debris.

Shaw spotted an excavator, bulldozer, and a compactor. All three were plenty large enough to use to stash someone inside them.

There was a thick metal barrier arm stretched across the road and no one in the small hut just to the side, but Shaw spotted the keypad. He was about to text Owen, but before he could, his boss came through with the code. Shaw punched it in, and the arm lifted.

He didn’t speed now. Shaw kept the cruiser at a crawl while Ava and he fired glances around. He sure as hell didn’t see a potential victim, but it was possible he or she was buried under that debris.

“Use the scanner,” he instructed Ava. The drone had one as well, but judging from the images, it hadn’t picked up anything yet. With the volume they had to sort through, it wouldn’t hurt to have two working at this.

His phone rang, the sound shooting through the cruiser and putting his body on even higher alert. Shaw answered it right away when he saw Owen’s name on the dash screen.

“The second drone picked up a heat source at the old train depot,” his boss blurted. “Someone’s beneath the old wood platform.”

Hell. His gut had been wrong, and that could end up getting someone killed.

“I have an ambulance already on the way there,” Owen added, “but I’ve instructed the EMTs to stay back until they get the word from you.”

Good. Shaw would give that word as soon as he was certain there were no booby traps or other pitfalls set around the victim.

Shaw spun the cruiser around, the tires kicking up dirt and gravel, and he sped away, heading for the depot. Before he even made it back to the main road, they were getting the feed from the second drone.

And Shaw didn’t like what he saw.

There was a heat source all right, and it was more or less in the shape of a person. A person who’d maybe been bound up like a mummy and wasn’t moving. Still, if there was heat, even a small amount of it, there was life, and that meant Ava and he might be able to get there in time.

Since the depot was on the other side of town, Shaw sped back through Main Street with the second cruiser not far behind him.

He then threaded his way to a narrow road that was in less than ideal condition.

Since the train hadn’t run through here for decades, there’d been no reason for upkeep on the cracking, crumbling asphalt.

That meant the cruiser bouncing over plenty of potholes before the platform and the old ticket booth finally came into view.

Unlike the landfill, there were no thick woods surrounding the place, but there were a few clusters of scrawny looking cedars and mesquites. Shaw didn’t see anyone lingering around so he focused on the platform.

Such that it was.

Once it had likely been sturdy wood, but it had collapsed in places, including both sides of that heat source. The entire thing looked ready to fall to pieces which could make it damn dangerous if the boards ended up crushing the victim.

Shaw grabbed the two earbuds from the glove compartment, and after Ava and he had shoved them in, they stepped from the cruiser.

Part of him wanted to take it slow, to assess their surroundings to make sure they weren’t going to get this person killed by making the wrong move.

But going to the landfill had already cost them precious minutes.

Minutes that this victim might not have.

With their guns drawn, Ava and he approached the platform, and Shaw immediately spotted the long nails that were sticking up like daggers. “Careful where your step,” he whispered to Ava.

She did, maneuvering around the nails and testing the fallen boards before she stepped on them. They wobbled and creaked but didn’t snap under their weight.

After what felt like way too long, they finally made it to the still-raised portion of the platform where the drone had picked up that infrared image.

Unfortunately, it was a good fifteen feet wide, and he was pretty sure the person was smackdab in the middle.

Maybe that was why some of the boards were already down.

The killer could have done that when the victim had been staged.

“Cover me,” Shaw instructed Ava. “I’ll go in.”

Easier said than done though since it meant shimmying over the fallen, nail-riddled wood and under the platform. Which was as dark as the bottom pit of hell. And it stank, too, of rotting animals, shit, and other things Shaw didn’t want to identify.

He had to drop to all fours and crawl, cursing the fact that he was probably destroying other tracks and maybe evidence that could help them ID a killer. Still, it couldn’t be helped. At this point, the focus had to be on saving a life.

“Maybe this will help,” Ava said, and she’d obviously turned on the flashlight function of her phone because some light speared through the darkness.

“It helps,” he let her know.

And it did. Shaw was able to dodge more of those nails though in the coffin-like space, some of them still scraped against his clothes. Another nicked his forehead, and he hoped like the devil that he didn’t catch something from the rusty metal.

Each inch felt like a battle, but ahead, he finally spotted what he was looking for. Someone encased in what appeared to be an old sleeping bag. There was no movement, no sounds. To be expected. The person was probably gagged and taped up from head to toe.

“I’m Deputy Brodie,” Shaw said, still crawling. “You’re going to be okay. We’ll get you out of here.”

Still nothing, not even a muffled moan.

Shaw kept moving, and when he finally reached the sleeping bag, he took hold of it to move it from the person’s face. But he didn’t see a face. Only some small packets that had been plopped all over the inside of the bag.

Hand warmers.

The kind of things people carried in winter. Definitely not something he’d expect to see in a situation like this.

“Hell,” he spat out.

Shaw could think of only one reason to put the warmers here, and that was to give a false reading to the drone. He shoved the warmers aside, revealing the body beneath them.

And it was a body all right.

All taped up and with no signs of life. Still, it might not be too late.

“Get the EMTs here now,” Shaw told Owen.

But he didn’t get the response he’d expected from the sheriff. “There’s someone else nearby. Another heat source,” Owen said just as Shaw heard a sound he sure as hell didn’t want to hear.

A gunshot.

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