She accepts my phone and, after a quick search, makes her call. It doesn’t take her long to have the police chief on the phone. Funny how the phrase “FBI” gets everyone’s attention. It reminds me that Ana was always a rule follower. Me, not so much, which is probably a part of why she so easily believed I was dirty and her brother was not. But there’s a difference between crossing lines and completely whiting them out.
“We believe this is a trap,” Ana is saying next to me. “Light the place up, and I know you’re a small force, but I need as many men as you can spare. Me and my man will go in first to protect your own.” She listens a minute. “Really? You have dogs? Yes. Bring them. Right. We’ll stay undercover until you arrive. We’ll need a few minutes to get to you.” She disconnects. “I can’t believe they have dogs in this small town. Apparently, they have an ex-cop who trained police dogs living in the city, and he basically rents his dogs to them. They’re going to light up the place and send in the dogs first.” She hands me my phone back.
“Let’s hope the bastards don’t shoot the dogs.”
“Please don’t say that. Don’t even put it out in the universe. I’ll lose my shit. You know I will. And on a separate note, I’m worried about this getting back to his daughter before we can tell her. Then there’s also the other side of the coin, where I worry they went after her, too, and we need to get an officer out there.”
“If they went after her, she’s dead. If they didn’t, we need to tell her ourselves after dealing with the crime scene. How soon will they be here?”
“Ten minutes for the police. Fifteen for the dogs. They’re going to hold back and wait on the dogs.” There’s a shift in the air that might as well be a twig popping. My eyes cut through the darkness to meet Ana’s, and I motion for her to move, and to do it now.
Chapter Eighteen
LUCIFER
Just as Ana starts to move, the glint of yellow eyes captures my attention.
“Stop,” I order urgently before the coyotes think we’re running and see us as fearful prey just asking to be chased.
Ana freezes, and I add, “Coyotes,” rather than a coyote, because where there is one, there are always more.
“Wonderful,” Ana replies, the calmness in her tone coming from years of survival training Kurt all but beat into her, the bastard. “The teeth of a dog or the bullet of an asshole,” she adds. “Not much of a choice.”
She’s not wrong, I think.
In a perfect situation, we handle the coyotes and move on, but to do that, we have to get big and loud to scare the animals off, which pretty much places a bullseye on our backs. But we can’t do nothing. Big it is. “Turn to face them and stand up on three.” I don’t wait for a reply. “One. Two. Three.”
We both move at the same time, our backs to the house as we raise our hands, moving them around, almost as if we’re saying, “Here we are. Shoot us.” As for the coyotes, at least three of them snarl, a sure indicator that our plan has failed. Ana and I pull our weapons at the same time. “You got a rock you can throw?” I ask, scanning my feet to find anything helpful and coming up dry.
“Nothing,” she says. “No rocks. Not even a stick.”
I curse under my breath because I’m going to have to charge at the coyotes, and that might mean I end up shooting at least one of the pack, and that’s a really shitty endgame. This is their land, over our land, and I try my damnedest to respect that fact, but the longer we stand here, the more likely we end up with bullets in our bodies. “You know what I’m going to do,” I say softly.
“You sure about that?” she asks, obviously reading my plan and not keenly.
“Any other suggestion?”
Sirens shrill to the rear of our position, and lights set the sky to an extreme glow. The cavalry has arrived. The coyotes react and scamper away. Ana and I both kneel for cover. “Call the number I called and tell them we’re coming down,” Ana whispers.
A few minutes later, we’re safely standing at the gates of the property and doing so with no bullet holes in our bodies. We’re also in the company of the Estes Park small town cavalry. And for a small town, they’ve gone all out. There are four patrol cars and a few random vehicles present, two of which are hitched to a trailer that holds the spotlights scanning the property.
A tall, lanky man with a beard greets us, and Ana pulls out her badge, offering him a glance. “Agent Banks,” he greets after checking her credentials. “I’m Chief Montgomery. Glad you made it to us safely.”