Page 12 of Storm and Tempest (Brand of Justice #13)

Chapter Ten

T he sun had barely peeked over the horizon when Jax pulled the car into the entrance of the Altern Brothers junkyard in Wickenburg, a small town northwest of Phoenix.

Ramon shoved his door open. “This town has a municipal airport. Same one that they took off from?”

“I doubt it’s a coincidence.” Jax wasn’t going to correct Ramon that they didn’t know the men who kidnapped Kenna ever took off in a plane from the airport. After all, that might have been misdirection. But according to Amara, they had been there.

Ramon slammed his car door. “We’re going there when we’re done here, right?”

A police unit pulled in behind them, running lights and sirens for a second as the black-and-white passed Jax and Ramon and went through the gate into the junkyard. The exterior walls were corrugated metal, and the sign out front needed painting. Bruce’s car was parked next to theirs.

Jax went through the open gate, Ramon right beside him.

Two skinny Rottweilers prowled around just inside the entrance.

Jax stopped. Ramon took a couple of steps, and one of the dogs growled at him. Jax chuckled. “I don’t think he likes you.”

“He can smell an alpha.”

Jax laughed outright. “Sure, that’s what it is.”

A man in overalls ambled over to them, more hair on his chin than on the top of his head. He had a rag tucked into one pocket and his sleeves rolled back to reveal tattoos up both arms. “Help you guys?”

“They’re with me, Charlie.” Bruce came over wearing a white button-down shirt.

Charlie whistled, and the dogs laid down on the dusty earth. Ears up but following orders.

Bruce waved them to him. “This way.”

“Want to tell us what you found?” Jax strode over to him.

“And why the cops are here.” Ramon didn’t look so happy about that.

“Charlie’s brother insisted, and I didn’t have a good reason to say no.” Bruce shrugged. “They hid it pretty well.”

“Charlie and his brother?” Jax glanced at the rows of junk cars piled on each other on either side, four high in some cases. Compacted vehicles and farm equipment, odd scraps of metal. He even spotted a few washing machines dotted about—and the body of an old plane.

“Nah, Charlie and his brother are good people. Charlie was in ’Nam. His brother Petey was a cop for years. That’s why he called his buddies at the state police about the blood.”

They rounded the corner at the end of the row and spotted who he assumed was Petey, chatting with an older uniformed cop with a potbelly, while a younger officer climbed up a stack of cars.

He stood on the frame of an open window belonging to a blue Taurus and looked in the window of a small red SUV.

Bruce said, “They never even knew it was here till I did a walkaround. Someone must’ve smuggled it in, because the boys didn’t remember it and there was no record of this car in their ledgers.”

“Paper ledgers?” Ramon asked.

“Can’t hack a piece of paper. And it ain’t like they get good cell signal out here.”

Jax did a circuit around the car, including the police car. He hadn’t brought his credentials to prove he was an FBI agent, so he couldn’t be here in an official capacity. But he did want to take a look.

The cop scanned the interior.

“You see a body?” Jax found the license plate—or the spot where it should be. Nothing. He went to check the front. They could run the VIN numbers and see who it was registered to.

“Nothing but blood.” The cop looked at him. “Who are you?” He shifted back and jumped down, brushing his hands together.

“Someone who’d like to know what happened to Elliot Adams.” Jax went to the front. No license plate number there either. “Is there a VIN number, or did that get removed like the plates?”

The officer lifted one brow. “Sergeant?” He glanced at the older officer.

“Let’s pop the trunk, Son. See if there’s anything got left behind.” The sergeant had a moustache, and flat brown eyes. His skin had a yellow tone to it.

“Yes, Sergeant.” The officer looked around.

“Fetch a crowbar, Son.”

The officer jogged away toward Charlie, who’d wandered off.

A breeze kicked up down the aisle between rows of junk.

Through the dust, Jax spotted a small plane taking off from the airport that had to be several miles away, maybe even all the way across town.

Elliot Adams had made it as far as where those men took Kenna.

Then something had happened before he could prevent them from leaving with her.

Jax owed it to the special agent to find out what happened to him.

He went to the end of the row, walked up the next aisle so he could see the other side of the small SUV, then turned to Bruce. “How did you find it?”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”

“At least you didn’t call me Son .”

Bruce laughed. “We’ve all been there.” Then slid on the pair of old Ray-Ban sunglasses he’d retrieved from his shirt pocket.

“Have you been over to the airport?”

Ramon came over. “What are we talking about?”

“This case.” Jax surveyed the car, spotting what looked like evidence of a collision on the side.

Bruce peeked over the top of his Ray-Bans. “The airport is my next stop.”

“Maybe you’ll find someone we can interrogate.” Ramon stuck his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans.

Jax glanced at him, wondering how come Kenna had never mentioned Ramon’s need to blow off steam by punching people. “I’d rather deliver good news to a young woman missing her brother.”

Ramon made a face like he was skeptical. “You really think he’s still alive?”

“Isn’t that why we’re searching for Kenna? Because we’re not giving up hope that she’s alive?”

“Good point.” Ramon shrugged, moved past Jax, and climbed up to the passenger window. “Did that cop know the keys are still in the ignition? This thing’s a bit mangled, but it’s still mostly intact.”

“It’s a wonder the junkyard guys didn’t realize it was out here.”

Bruce said, “Charlie told me they don’t come down this aisle until spring, but it’s all depending on inventory. New drop-offs get loaded on the far side.”

“Not much call for random parts?”

“They do all right selling scrap metal.”

The car engine turned over, coughed, and then died. On the far side of the car someone said, “Hey!”

Ramon shifted back out of the window, and the trunk door popped open an inch or so. “Guess we didn’t need that crowbar.”

Jax climbed up to the rear. When he spotted the sergeant, he said, “Just looking. I know not to touch anything.”

“Your friend there is gonna answer some questions.” The sergeant glared at him, instead of Ramon. Which wasn’t really fair.

Jax didn’t want to wonder if Kenna was dead in the back of this vehicle.

But the thought went through his mind anyway.

For all his talk about keeping hope that she was alive, it was getting hard.

It had been weeks since she was taken, and she seemed so far out of reach now that he had no idea how to get her back.

Surely someone out there knew where she was.

He peered into the back of the vehicle, but from what he saw, it was empty.

“Wanna back up?” The officer tugged on the door with a pair of gloves.

“I’m looking for a friend,” Jax replied. “A federal agent. I believe this is his car.”

“The VIN has been scratched off. No plates. So how do you know it’s his car?” The officer shot the question at him like an accusation that didn’t require an answer.

Jax reached for something. “The sticker on the window. It’s his.” He didn’t have anything better to offer than a sticker that indicated Elliot had run a marathon in his life—or the car’s previous owner had.

“He isn’t in the car. No one is.” The officer sighed. “Anything else?”

“Do you have any reports of a local hit-and-run? It would’ve happened about two months ago.”

“Are you a journalist?”

Jax shook his head. “Just asking questions.”

“No, we didn’t have any hit-and-run reports. I would know if we had because it’d mean something exciting actually happened in this backwater strip of desert.”

“Right.” Jax climbed down off the stack of vehicles.

“Don’t leave without showing me some ID.”

Jax glanced back. “You have good instincts. Transfer to a bigger department.”

“Can’t. Mom is sick and she’s local, so here I am.”

Jax nodded. He wandered back to Bruce and Ramon. “Elliot isn’t here.”

And neither is Kenna.

Bruce scratched his chin, then motioned to the car. “Someone slammed into him.”

“I saw that.” Jax went to get a closer look at the scrape.

Ramon said, “Someone with a black car collided with this one and probably forced him off the road. So, does that mean they took the FBI agent with them? Maybe we’re looking at a string of kidnappings, not just Kenna.”

“More likely he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Jax thought about it. “I hate to say this, but he’s probably in the desert in a shallow grave and we’ll never find him.”

Bruce said, “Your bureau can’t do some magic with forensic analysis and find the black car that hit him? They do that stuff on TV all the time.”

Jax shot him a look, then remembered where he’d seen a black car recently.

With a scraped-up front corner, and red paint transfer.

He whipped out his phone and called the number he had for Amara.

She didn’t answer, so he left a message that amounted to, Call me back immediately .

When he hung up, he said, “Let’s go.” And over his shoulder said to the deputy, “We’ll get out of your hair. ”

“Hey!” the officer called after them.

Jax ignored him and walked away with Bruce and Ramon, moving fast and not wanting to get waylaid.

They made their way to the office where Charlie met them.

The cops would catch up in a second, no doubt.

Intending to make life difficult for him and Kenna’s friends under the guise of finding out what they knew.

Jax said, “Any idea who brought the car in and when?”

Charlie leaned against the doorframe. “No cameras. Don’t need Big Brother watching me. And we were in Vegas at a car show two months ago. Probably showed up then.” He shrugged, apparently not all that bothered by the appearance of a mystery car.

The officer approached, thunder in his expression. “And you didn’t notice a car with blood on the steering wheel in your lot?”

Elliot had been hurt.

Jax glanced at Ramon and mouthed, Hospitals.

Ramon nodded and slid out his phone, texting furiously. Probably contacting Maizie so she could call around local places where Elliot might have been taken if he was found.

Charlie shrugged. “I don’t do inventory until September. Right now, we’re filling rows A through C. What can I say?”

“I have the sister’s information,” Jax told the officer. “In case you want to contact her with the news you found her brother’s car.”

Bruce and Ramon spoke quietly with each other off to the side.

“You still haven’t explained who you are. You don’t act like a civilian.”

“He’s a fed, Son.” The sergeant came over.

“I’ve seen him on the news. FBI out of Phoenix, is that right?

One of them big-city bigshots who like to tell us small-town folks how to do our jobs.

” A big man, he rocked back and forth on his boots.

“Only it turns out this is a major corridor for trafficking guns, drugs—you name it. So we don’t just work petty crimes. We do the big stuff, too.”

Jax wanted to ask if the airport was on their radar, but didn’t figure the question would go down well. He could request files from the state police. Going through them would take time he didn’t have.

“This isn’t just a case,” he finally said. “It’s also a personal matter.”

“When the missing driver of that vehicle was one of your agents, right? I don’t think so.” The sergeant shook his head. “Has to be a fed thing. Or a cover-up. Did you run him off the road? Now you’re here to run interference. Is that right?”

Jax ignored the fact this guy mistook what he’d said. “Call my office. I’m sure they’ll fill you in about Elliot Adams. Pretty sure he transferred out of the Phoenix office, but I wouldn’t know. I was in the hospital at the time recovering from surgery.”

“I see.” The sergeant rocked back and forth on his heels, eyeing Jax.

Probably thought he was unhinged. Or lying.

Jax’s phone rang in his pocket.

Thank You, God. Otherwise, he didn’t know how to get out of this conversation without handing over ID and spending hours answering questions.

“I need to take this.” He waved the phone at them. But when he walked away to see who was calling, it was Special Agent Herron.

“Jaxton.”

He stared at the sky in the direction of the airport but saw nothing as he headed slowly in the direction of the open gate. Not like he was leaving, just wandering and talking on the phone.

“I thought you might want to know,” she began, “Assistant Director in Charge Hadley was on the warpath this morning. He’s acting like he’s sticking around for a while, bringing his things into your office.”

“Great.”

“He’s talking like you aren’t coming back.”

Jax winced. “We found Special Agent Adams’ car. Looks like he was in an accident and someone tried to cover it up, but that’s just supposition from the remains of the car. I’m going to have Kenna’s people call around hospitals and find out if he’s in one as a John Doe.”

Or the man was under that name, unclaimed in the morgue. Hopefully, they’d be able to find him and give his sister good news. Not the worst news, the kind Jax dreaded.

“If we find his body,” Jax continued, “or find him alive, I’ll let you know. We can go talk to his sister together.”

Andrette sniffed. “Thank you.”

“Anything else?” She’d called him, after all.

“I looked at Hadley’s calendar. He has a meeting on his schedule for lunch. It’s part of why he’s so antsy. He wants reports from everyone on what cases they’re working and the progress they’ve made before he goes out.”

“Who is the meeting with?”

“I don’t know, but the calendar appointment says D . That’s all. Just D .”

D , as in Dominatus ? A long shot, but it could be the break they’d been looking for.

Jax said, “Thanks.”

“I hope you find her.”

The line went dead.

Ramon met him at the car. “What now?”

“We need to track down Amara.” Jax opened the driver’s side door. “She’s the one who ran Elliot off the road.”