Paradise Ranch (Jack and Ashley detective series Book 2) Page 16

  Jack pulled up and parked where Earl had instructed. A couple of men emerged from the building and walked their way.

  “You stay with the vehicle,” Jack reminded her. “The trunk is popped. All he has to do is climb in. If you see anyone lingering around the car, lead them away. Go walking or something. Text me when Earl is in and I’ll be out in a flash. I’ll keep Elijah busy inside.”

  As they got out of the car, one of the men informed them that Elijah was busy finishing manifests for the night’s shipments and would be with them shortly.

  “You can wait out here, honey,” Jack smiled as he followed the men into the building. “We have man talk to do. I’m sure you understand.”

  Ashley nodded, ignoring Jack’s sexist remark since it was part of the show. She leaned against the car, waiting for Earl to show up, as Jack and the men went inside.

  She glanced around, making sure no one was watching. The streets seemed quiet, the only movement coming from the factory.

  After a few minutes, Ashley wandered away from the car, realizing that Earl might be waiting for her to move clear so he could slip into the trunk. She glanced at her watch. They had been there about ten minutes but as far as she could tell, Elijah hadn’t returned to his office.

  “Waiting on someone?” growled a familiar voice from behind her. It was Sheriff Tubbs with his gun pointing at her!

  “What are you doing?” Ashley yelped, seeing the barrel of his gun trained at her.

  “We need to have a little talk,” the sheriff declared with cold eyes.

  “You need to lower that gun, Sheriff,” Ashley said, trying to put some authority in her voice.

  “You need to stop telling me what to do,” the sheriff replied. “This is my county.”

  “He’s right, you know,” Elijah said as he slipped into view from the shadows. “He is the chief law enforcement officer in Liberty County and deserves respect.”

  “Amen, Elijah,” the sheriff smirked, still pointing his gun at Ashley. “By the way, Elijah, would you mind handing me her gun? I’m sure she’s packing like all those jack-booted federal agents do.”

  Elijah stepped over and pulled back Ashley shirt, revealing the gun on her hip. He pulled it out of the holster and gingerly handed it to the sheriff.

  “I never cared for the things,” Elijah confessed.

  The sheriff shoved Ashley’s gun into his waist band and opened his mouth to say something when all three were startled by another voice.

  “What’s going on, Sheriff?” came the voice of Deputy Ward.

  The sheriff went pale as his deputy stepped from the darkness.

  “What are you doing here, Kyle?” he asked, obviously surprised to see the young officer.

  “I saw you heading this way so I followed you,” Kyle replied. “When I saw you go over the hill, I figured something must be wrong and that you might need some help. What you are doing pointing your gun at the agent?”

  The sheriff cleared his throat and looked from side to side. “She’s no federal agent. They are imposters.”

  “Imposters?” Ward asked. “What do you mean?”

  “Follow us and I’ll show you,” the sheriff said as he waved Ashley toward the factory.

  “I don’t understand,” Kyle said, cocking his head.

  “You will in a second,” the sheriff guaranteed. “Come along, Kyle.”

  With that, the four walked over to the factory. Elijah let them in and closed the door behind them.

  “So what’s this all about?” Kyle wondered as they stepped into the deserted furniture factory.

  “Business, young Kyle Ward. Business,” the sheriff replied as he whirled and shot the deputy.

  The deputy fell backwards against the wall and col-lapsed onto floor.

  “Kyle was like a son to me,” the sheriff growled as he turned to train the barrel of his still-smoking gun at Ashley’s chest. “Imagine what I’d do to someone like you I don’t even like, especially someone who has caused me so much trouble.”

  Ashley gulped. She wanted to go to the deputy’s aid but she feared it was too late. He wasn’t moving. And, she realized that any sudden movement would likely end with her being shot.

  “Why?” Ashley stammered as she instinctively raised her hands, glancing toward the fallen deputy, still seeing no signs of life.

  “Don’t you hear good? It’s just business,” Sheriff Tubbs snarled. “It’s nothing personal, Agent. Young Kyle just got in the way of businesses – just like you and your partner.”

  Ashley stood stone silent, half expecting to be executed on the spot. She was certain they wouldn’t just turn her loose after what she’d witnessed.

  “Business with … Elijah?” Ashley asked, her question bringing a broad smile to Elijah’s face.

  “Let’s just call it the family business, Ashley,” Elijah smirked.

  “What?” Ashley yelped.

  “You really don’t get it, do you?” Elijah quizzed. “Me and the sheriff, we’re brothers.”

  “Half-brothers, actually,” Tubbs interjected. “Broth-ers by different mothers. Elijah was born and raised in New Hope just like me. We’re hometown boys.”

  “I just went out to find my fortune,” Elijah added, still with a broad grin. “But, just like the Prodigal Son, I came back home. You know what they always say – home is where the heart is.”

  Ashley couldn’t believe her ears. How could they have been so oblivious? The sheriff and the cult leader had been playing both ends against the middle and making fools of the people of New Hope and Paradise Ranch.

  “It’s genius; isn’t it?” Elijah boasted. “Even the all-knowing FBI had no clue.”

  “Genius. Sure. If that’s what you want to call it,” Ashley choked out, nervously looking at the sheriff’s gun.

  “No one was the wiser,” Elijah chuckled.

  “The people in town didn’t trust the people in Paradise Ranch,” the sheriff pointed out.

  “And the folks at Paradise Ranch didn’t trust the people of New Hope,” Elijah added. “We’re a cult, you know.”

  “It was a case of divide and conquer,” the sheriff noted. “While they were busy distrusting each other, we were busy making money.”

  “Lots and lots of money,” Elijah added. “Isn’t the constitution great, Ashley? Freedom of religion at its best.”

  Ashley repressed a snarl. She was appalled by the way the two were proudly trumpeting their illegal and immoral actions.

  “What do you say we take a walk?” the sheriff said, motioning his gun toward the finishing area of the factory.

  “Yeah, I never got to show you and your partner all of Paradise Ranch,” Elijah said in a sinister tone. “I can finish the tour right now.”

  Her hands still raised, Ashley’s eyes darted back and forth.

  “Don’t worry. Your partner is being taken care of as we speak,” the sheriff declared, giving her a push with the warm barrel of his revolver. “Walk!”

  Ashley reluctantly obeyed his command, giving Kyle one last glance before marching toward the finishing room.

  “They know we’re here,” Ashley cleared her throat as she walked toward the door. “You can’t get away with this. They’ll come looking for us.”

  “I’m sure they will, Ashley,” Elijah agreed. “I would expect nothing less from the FBI. No man - or woman - left behind.”

  His cavalier answer left a knot in the pit of Ashley’s stomach. Why was he so casual?

  “They’ll come looking but they’ll be too late,” Elijah continued. “We will be long gone.”

  “Huh?” Ashley grunted as she slowed her pace only to feel the sheriff’s gun barrel prod her toward the door.

  “Little lady, all you did was hastened our retirement by a couple of months,” the sheriff said confidently. “We’re not stupid, me and my brother. We know what we’re doing.”

  “You gotta know when to hold ‘em … know when to fold ‘em,” Elijah sung in his best Kenny Rogers voice.
“Know when to walk away … know when to run.”

  “What do you mean?” Ashley asked as she reached the door posted with a large sign: Authorized Personnel Only. She stopped, realizing that once inside, there may be no chance of escape.

  “Go on in,” the sheriff said as Elijah punched in the code on the keypad lock. “It’s open.”

  The smell of acetone immediately met her nostrils as the large metal door swung open. She stepped out onto a metal landing, atop a flight of stairs that led to a large room below.

  “Welcome to my laboratory,” Elijah flourished as he stood atop the landing.

  “You mean, welcome to your meth lab,” Ashley shot back, her comment only serving to broaden Elijah’s prideful smile.

  “Our production facility,” Elijah corrected. “This is where it all happens.”

  The sheriff waved his gun, directing Ashley down the stairs. “Get to stepping, young lady.”

  The sound of their footfalls on the metal steps echoed through the large room as they descended to the ground floor. Ashley took inventory, noticing the large containers dotting the room. She was in the middle of an industrial-size meth lab roughly fifty yards long.

  “Quite a setup, huh?” Elijah asked as he walked casually in front of her, pointing at the large metal tanks. “This is the nerve center of the family business.”

  “If your family is a bunch of drug dealers,” Ashley countered.

  Her comment brought a laugh from Elijah. “We’re not drug dealers, Agent – we are drug distributors. It’s supply and demand. Free enterprise. The American Dream.”

  “The American nightmare, more like it,” Ashley corrected.

  “Potato, Potahto – it’s all semantics,” Elijah said. “Dealer, distributor, dispenser. They’re just words.”

  “Besides, it doesn’t matter,” the sheriff added. “This will all be gone shortly.”

  “Yes. Thanks to you and your cocky partner, we’ve had to move up our retirement date,” Elijah chimed in. “We had been planning to pull the plug on the operation at the end of the year but your arrival has forced us to wind it down a bit faster. But, no worries. It’s all good. We have a healthy nest egg put away.”

  Ashley gave him a confused look.

  “We realized this wouldn’t work forever,” Elijah explained.

  “Yeah, folks would eventually get wise,” the sheriff noted. “People are all the time sticking their noses where they don’t belong.”

  “We agreed that we’d make our money and then get out while we could,” Elijah continued. “We’re finishing on top.”

  “But don’t worry about us,” the sheriff said with an uncharacteristic grin. “We’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.”

  “We own our own island!” Elijah exclaimed, smiling from ear to ear. “Like I said, Ashley - the American Dream - except our island is off the coast of Mexico … but you get the idea.”

  Their casual walk through the labyrinth of containers ended in front of a large metal tank.

  “Anyway, there is some good news in your case,” Elijah said as the metal door they had just entered opened and shut on the opposite end of the facility, the sound followed by the footfalls of several people coming down the steps. Three armed men approached them from behind. “You’re going to get to solve the case you come to investigate.”

  Elijah gave a nod to the men. They immediately seized Ashley. She struggled, trying to break their grasp but they held her still.

  Elijah nodded again as he reached forward and opened the door to the large tank. “Put her in.”

  Panic overtook Ashley as she felt herself being pushed toward the tank. She kicked against the side to no avail as the three men forced her through the opening. She fell back onto the wet floor, slipping against the back side of the tank. The door slammed, leaving her in complete darkness.

  “Let me out!” Ashley screamed as she scampered to her feet and banged on the door, hitting the metal with enough force to send shooting pain through her hands.

  “This is a condenser, Ashley,” Elijah said loudly so she could hear him through the wall of the container. “How tall are you, by the way?”

  Ashley didn’t answer. She was five-foot-four.

  “It’s six feet tall and we fill it full of water as part of the process to manufacture our product,” Elijah continued, his plan suddenly becoming clear to Ashley. “You see where I’m going with this?”

  “What do you want?” Ashley asked in a panicked voice, her face pressed up against the smooth side of the tank as she realized the woman found in the desert had been drowned inside the same condenser. Case solved.

  Ashley’s breath quickened as she recalled how Carol Parker had looked on the slab in the morgue. She could still see the partially-eaten remains in her mind’s eye and still smell the stench of death. She was surrounded by the pitch blackness of the tank, the same darkness Carol must have been plunged into during the last moments of life. Then there were Carol’s eyes, or the lack thereof. Ashley wondered if she would suffer the same fate, her remains left to be eaten by animals in the wilderness.

  “Settle down, Ashley,” she said out loud, knowing that panic would only hasten her demise and perhaps bring on an asthma attack. She might not even get the chance to drown if she was stricken by an onset inside the dank air of the steel tank.

  “Just a little information. That’s all I want,” Elijah replied through the wall. “The other agent, well, she wasn’t very forthcoming, and, well … you know what happened to her. Things didn’t end so good.”

  Ashley gulped as she strained her eyes against the darkness. Then she heard it. It was rushing through pipes somewhere above her head. Water! It began pouring into the tank, its first cold burst taking her breath as it showered down upon her. She side-stepped its flow best she could inside the cramped tank.

  “No!” Ashley screamed as she resumed pounding on the side of the tank. The cold water made her shiver as it quickly filled past her ankles and rose up her calves. It was gushing into the tank at an alarming rate, the sound of the rushing water making it hard to hear anything outside the tank.

  “Ashley! Ashley!” Elijah yelled over the sound of the water. “Get ahold of yourself. I need some information.”

  The water continued flooding in. It was falling from somewhere above, splashing off her back in the dark-ness. She reached up, standing on her tip-toes, trying to find its source, hoping to stem its flow with her trembling hands. The opening was at the top. She couldn’t reach it. The water had risen to her knees in a little over a minute. At that rate, Ashley estimated, the water would be above her head in …

  “Turn it off!” Ashley cried out, realizing she would be submerged in only a handful of minutes.

  Elijah banged on the tank, the reverberation from his blows vibrating Ashley’s ears inside the small enclosure.

  “First tell me what I need to know and then we’ll talk about it,” Elijah responded. “If I were you, I wouldn’t hesitate with my answers. How tall did you say you were again?”

  The water began climbing up Ashley’s thighs. Where was Jack? Was he already dead? Was she on her own? The water was climbing too fast. There wasn’t much time.

  “What do you want to know?” Ashley’s voice trem-bled as she tried kicking against the door. It wouldn’t budge.

  “Now that’s what I want to hear,” Elijah responded, still speaking loud enough to be heard over the rushing water “We can help one another. You scratch my back, I scratch yours.”

  “What do you want?” she screamed again.

  “Just the answer to one little question,” Elijah called back through the wall as the water crept up to the top of her thighs and lapped at her lower back. A shiver raced up her spine as she blindly groped the walls, trying to find any hand-hold. There were none. The interior walls of the metal tank were smooth.

  “Now Ashley, it’s important you’re truthful with me. Okay?” Elijah called out as Ashley continued feeling for anything she c
ould get ahold of. She reached under the water toward the door. Even the interior of the door was smooth, the only handle being on the outside of the tank.

  “Just ask it!” Ashley yelled, now taking deep gulps of air, more out of terror than lack of oxygen. She could feel the water climbing upwards.

  “I believe in tying up loose ends, Ashley,” Elijah declared as he pressed his face to the outside of the tank so she could hear him. “I’m sure being a federal agent that you feel the same.”

  “Please!” Ashley screamed back as she felt the water creep up to the middle of her back.

  “One of my brothers here has betrayed me – betrayed all of us,” Elijah said. “I want to know his identity so I can set things right before we conclude our business at Paradise Ranch.”

  Elijah wanted the name of the inside source. For a moment, just for a moment, Ashley considered calling out Earl’s name. Anything to stop the water from rising. However, two things stopped her from revealing their source – her sense of duty and her realization that Elijah and the sheriff weren’t about to willingly let her or Jack leave alive.

  “I … I don’t know,” Ashley yelled back. “Jack never told me.”

  “Ah, that’s most unfortunate,” Elijah replied, feign-ing disappointment. “For you, anyway. You realize, the air is going to start running out in there pretty soon. If I were you I wouldn’t use my breath for lying, I’d use it for telling the truth. You know, lying is a sin, Ashley.”

  The water was up to Ashley’s chest and still pouring in. Her mouth would be covered in no time. She had to climb upward! Pushing her back against one side of the tank, she stretched her legs across and pushed off, forcing her body toward the top of the tank.

  “Come on, Ashley,” Elijah encouraged. “Just one little name and I’ll turn the water off.”

  “I don’t know the name!” she yelled just as her foot slipped off the slick side of the tank, causing her to tumble beneath the water.

  She caught her breath just in time to avoid swallowing a mouth-full of water as she found herself sub-merged. She quickly planted her feet to the bottom of the tank and stood upright. It did little good. The water was up to her chin! She gulped for air while pushing herself onto her tip-toes.