In Too Deep

“So, do you have a job you need to get to?”

She shook her head. “I work from home. I’m a bookkeeper.”

“You mind hanging out at the shop until we’re sure this whole thing has blown over?”

She glanced at him, and he saw the fear behind her eyes. “I’m still worried about Trevor. I at least need to make some calls and tell the police he’s missing.”

“Why don’t you start by calling around from the shop?”

She shrugged and then her expression grew pensive. “I can’t live my life like a captive. I’ll just go to the police. They can help me.”

“Sure, I suppose.” He didn’t need the local cops sniffing around him or his shop. He pushed off on the bike. “I’m sure we can work something out.”

The wheels whirred up and down the hills until the landscape flattened out and they came to the edge of town. This was an older part of town. The houses were built on bigger lots but were more run-down.

In his short time living here, the town seemed to be a place of contrast. Between rich and lower class. Between old and showy.

The drug problem here was bad and had escalated in recent months. Both bored kids with disposable incomes looking for a thrill and kids trapped in the cycle of poverty were targets. Scenic View was believed to be the hub for drug distribution throughout the Northwest.

They pedaled down the street.

Joseph swung around to the alley of the skateboard shop. He lived in the apartment above the shop. After opening the lower level of the shop so they could push the bikes in to keep them from being stolen, he headed up the stairs. Sierra followed behind him.

He opened the door and stepped inside, hurrying to pick up some workout clothes he’d left on the couch. Glancing around, he realized that his place looked like a total bachelor pad, with dishes in the sink and sports equipment piled in the corner. Why did it matter to him what she thought of his place?

He scooted a box of his stuff out of the way, laughing nervously. “Still haven’t finished unpacking.”

“It’s nice. Cozy,” she said. “And your commute time to work is close to perfect.”

He pointed for her to sit down on the couch. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get a couple hours’ sleep before I have to open up the shop.” Once his clerk came in, he would have to retrieve his boat. “Why don’t we wait on contacting the police. I can stick close to you for a little while until we know that guy won’t be after you anymore.” Though he didn’t want to alarm her—Sierra could potentially identify a man they’d been tracking for years—chances were, her life was still in danger.

She studied him for a moment. “I could use some rest, I guess.”

He hurried over to a closet and pulled out a blanket. “Be my guest. Take the couch.”

“Do you have a landline? I want to make a few calls about Trevor first,” she said.

“In the kitchen.” If she didn’t locate Trevor, she’d probably call the police about him. He couldn’t see the harm in that—the kid needed to be found—as long as she didn’t get the cops poking around his life and figuring out he was undercover.

Joseph stepped down the hallway and collapsed on his bed. He listened to Sierra’s soft voice as she talked on the phone. His jaw tensed. He walked a tightrope here. Sierra was going to need some level of protection. If she knew he was undercover, they could come up with a ruse as to why they were together. She was working for him. Or they were an item.

Out in the living room, things had gone silent. She must have lain down to sleep.

Joseph pulled a pay-as-you-go phone out of his bureau drawer. His work required that he always keep an extra around. He dialed a number and explained the situation to his handler.

“It is your call. If you think you can trust her not to blow your cover,” said the handler. “Clearly, she’s important to the investigation. Maybe her memory would be jogged if we got her to sit down with a sketch artist.”

“I think I can trust her.” He clicked the phone off and closed his eyes. It took him only minutes to drift off to sleep.

Sometime later, the ringing of the phone woke him with a start. He heard Sierra’s voice, this time filled with panic as she talked.

She must have given his number to the people she’d called about Trevor. His chest squeezed tight. Judging from the tone of her voice, something bad had happened.

Sierra couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Trevor, where are you?”

“I’m in trouble, Miss M. You need to come and get me. I can’t explain. I’m at Leman’s junkyard. Please hurry.” The line went dead.

She hung up the phone with a trembling hand. Was Trevor’s plea sincere, or was she being set up? The anguish in his voice seemed very real.

Joseph spoke from the hallway where he stood. “What’s going on?”

“It’s Trevor. He’s in trouble.” She turned to face him. “I need to go get him.”

“How did he know to call my number?”

“I gave this number out to the people I called when I was looking for him. He must have gotten in touch with one of them first.” She rested her palm on her chest, where her heart beat erratically. “I have to go.”

“This could be a setup.”

“I know. I also know Trevor’s character and how hard he worked to get sober. I couldn’t live with myself if he was sincere and I left him out to dry.”

“It could be a dangerous situation. Why don’t you let me go?”

“Trevor trusts me.”

“I’m going with you, then,” Joseph said. “You don’t have a car, anyway.”

“I could just borrow yours.” Relief mixed with guilt as she stared into Joseph’s brown eyes. “What about the shop?” The truth was, she would feel better having Joseph’s help. She was still shaken by their run through the forest and being shot at.

“I can call my clerk and tell him to come in early and open up.” He grabbed a denim jacket off the rack where he hung his coats. “Take this. Looks like a chilly morning out there.” He left the room and returned a moment later, wearing a jacket and holding a phone.

“Do you always keep a spare phone around?”

He grinned. “It’s a Boy Scout thing. Always be prepared.” Then he pressed in some numbers on the phone and pointed toward the landline phone. “Make note of the number Trevor called from the caller ID.”

When she checked the number, she realized it wasn’t Trevor’s regular number. More cause for alarm. She wrote it down. Sierra listened while Joseph spoke to the clerk. Nothing in his tone let on that they were facing an urgent situation. “Listen, Jake, something has come up. If you could come in half an hour early and open up the shop, that would be great.”

Joseph listened for a moment and then said, “Okay, thanks.” He hung up the phone and gazed at Sierra.

His eyes seemed to look right through her. There was something he wasn’t saying. He hurried down the hallway and returned a moment later without explanation. They headed out the door, down to his Jeep.

She tensed.

What if they were stepping into a trap?

She still didn’t know why Trevor had run off down at Fisherman’s Crest. She didn’t know where the boy’s loyalties lay. But she did know that she had to give the kid the benefit of the doubt, if there was any chance at all for him to turn his life around. Last night and this morning, when she’d talked to him on the phone, she’d detected the anguish in his voice.

Joseph twisted the key in the ignition. “You’re going to have to give me directions.”

“Head toward the north side of town. Take a left off State Street and follow the road out of town.”

“Easy peasy,” said Joseph.

She appreciated how calm he seemed to be. It helped her to relax, as well, as the morning sun warmed the interior of the car. Maybe this would just be a simple pickup. Sometimes teenagers tended to be dramatic when there was no reason to be.

She glanced over at Joseph as they came to the edge of town. He drove past fields filled with cows, and the road changed from gravel to dirt. They drove for a long time without seeing another dwelling. This place was pretty remote.

Then the junkyard, surrounded by a high fence, came into view. Buses and single-wide trailers served as part of the fence. The man who had owned the junkyard, Peter Leman, had died two years before, leaving no heirs. The county had not had the funds to clean up the area. The No Trespassing signs had not stopped teens from using it as a place to hang out.

“The front gate is locked. We’ll have to park outside and walk in.”

Joseph pulled off the road and killed the engine. “This is a big place.”

“I have a pretty good idea where he might be.” She pushed open her door. “There’s a gap in the fence where we can get in.”

As she hurried around to the side of the junkyard, her heartbeat kicked up several notches. She slipped in between a bus and board fence.

Joseph followed her. He stood beside her, his hand slipped into his open jacket. She saw then why he had gone into the bedroom. He had a gun in a shoulder holster. He thought they might be stepping into something violent, too.

Hadn’t he lost his first gun somewhere on their run through the forest? Maybe it was just for protecting his business, but she wondered why the manager of a skateboard shop would have two guns.

A wall of partially crushed cars blocked her view of the rest of the junkyard. “This place is an accident waiting to happen, but we haven’t been able to keep the kids from coming here.” Sierra maneuvered around the wall of cars.

“I don’t get it. Scenic View has all kinds of recreational possibilities. Why come here?”

“I think it’s the danger factor. Didn’t you like adrenaline when you were a teenager?”

“Still do.” He offered her a brief smile, raising his eyebrows.

The moment of humor that passed between them lightened the tension she felt. She zigzagged through the junkyard, past rows of appliances and piles of tires. There were several sheds on the property that Sierra knew contained old books, magazines and newspapers. Peter Leman had been the ultimate hoarder.

Joseph tilted his head to look up at a mountain of twisted and intertwined pieces of metal. He shook his head. “It’s like an amusement park for junk collectors.”

“There is a big pipe at the far end of the fence where kids hang out.” She glanced around, not seeing any signs of anyone else in the junkyard.

As they made their way through the labyrinth of junk, wind blew around them, causing the metal to creak. Tarps that covered piles of junk flapped in the wind.

She pointed. “The pipe is just on the other side of that motor home.”

He crouched by the motor home. She slipped in behind him, unsure what was going on here. A hundred frantic thoughts zinged through Sierra’s head. Was Trevor safe? Was he even here?

Had the drug dealers set him up to make the call, or had his emergency been an emotional one? Had he decided to ally himself with the dealers after all?

Again, Joseph touched his chest where the gun was. “Let’s take this slow.”

His action sent a fresh dose of terror through her. He was anticipating violence.

FOUR

Joseph pulled his gun and rushed toward the next object that would provide them with cover, in case someone was lying in wait for them in the pipe. He crouched behind a pile of car doors, then lifted his head above them. He could not see the interior of the pipe, but it was easily big enough for a grown person to stand inside.

Though arguing with Sierra about coming out here would have been an act of futility, he still didn’t like the idea of putting her or any civilian in danger.

She’d handled herself fine while they had been running from the drug dealer by the lake. He wondered what made her so tenacious in her need to help this messed-up kid who might have betrayed her.

Sierra leaned close to Joseph’s ear and whispered, “Should I call out for him?”

Joseph shook his head. What if someone more dangerous than Trevor was close by? “You stay here. Let me go.”

She nodded.

With his gun lifted, he ran toward the pipe. The interior came into view. He lowered his gun. There was no one inside, only evidence of what went on there—empty beer bottles and even a syringe. A magazine lay open, its pages flapping in the breeze.

The sight of the debris, of lives being destroyed, made his heart heavy. His baby brother, Ezra, had been so young when he’d overdosed. How did someone with so much to live for get to such a hopeless, dark place?

Sierra came up behind him. She must have sensed his shift in mood. “You all right?”

He pointed inside the pipe, backing away from the memories of Ezra’s transformation from a happy, bright kid to a prisoner of his own addiction. “This kind of stuff makes me angry.” Very few people knew why he had become a DEA agent. The pain still cut deep.

“Me, too,” she said. Her expression softened, and her voice filled with compassion. “I just decide every day, in whatever small way I can, I’ll work to pull a kid from the fire before he or she is consumed.”

He studied her for a long moment, feeling drawn to her. “Exactly.” They were on the same side. Both of them fighting for the same thing, just in different ways.

They searched the rest of the junkyard, finding no one or any evidence that someone had been here recently. When he tried the number Trevor had called from, the phone didn’t even ring on the other end.

“Probably a throwaway phone,” he said.

Frustrated, he slipped outside the junkyard and returned to his car. Sierra followed him. She sat in the passenger seat while he settled in behind the steering wheel and buckled his seat belt.

“Something is going on with Trevor. He sounded scared on that phone call. We have to find him.” She laced her fingers together. Her forehead furrowed.

His heart went out to her. “We need some kind of lead to find him. Kids talk when they come into the shop. They think I’m not listening. And some of them even trust me enough to let me know what they know.”

She turned to face him. “Yes, the skateboard shop is ideal for finding out what’s going on with teenagers. Even the ones who are using drugs.” She narrowed her eyes at him, expecting a response.

This was the moment of truth. “I guess you figured it out.”

“You didn’t act like a shop owner back there in the junkyard. You acted like a cop.”

He tensed. “It’s important that no one else know.”

“I’m good at keeping secrets.” A soft smile graced her lips.

“That man you saw in the forest is very high up in the drug trade.” He placed his hands on the steering wheel. “If we can take him down, it would go a long way to destroying the drug network in this area.”

“So that’s why he sent his henchman after me.” Her voice filled with anxiety.

He turned the key in the ignition and pressed the gas. He wished there was something he could say to lift the burden of worry from her. Sometimes silence was the kinder choice over saying something trite or untrue.

The car rolled up a long hill. “Kind of like a roller-coaster ride,” he said, hoping to distract her from her worry. He aimed the car downhill and coasted, lifting his foot off the gas.

“Yeah, I guess. Never thought of it that way.” She sounded a million miles away as she stared through the windshield.

The car picked up speed. Joseph pressed the brakes, but the car rolled even faster.

So that’s why they’d been lured out there.

The brake line had been cut.

Sierra’s pulse raced as she watched Joseph’s expression change. His features hardened with concern as he pumped the brakes.

He applied the emergency brake, but that didn’t seem to make a difference.

She didn’t need to ask him what was wrong. They were traveling at a dangerous speed on a dirt road. This was a long downhill. Before the road leveled off, they ran the risk of the car flipping.

Sierra gripped the armrest.

Joseph stared straight ahead and clutched the steering wheel, keeping the car to the center of the road. There was a ditch on one side. The gravel at the edges of the road could function like marbles, causing the car to roll over.

Her heart raced, and every muscle in her body turned to stone as they hurtled downhill. The road leveled off a little, but the car kept rolling.

Joseph turned the wheel. The car caught air as they sailed over the ditch. She saw now what his plan was. The field beside the road contained round hay bales. Joseph steered toward one but turned abruptly.

“Still going too fast,” he said, steering around another hay bale. The car bumped over the uneven terrain as the scenery through the window went by in a blur.

“This is it,” he said through gritted teeth.

She looked away as the hay bale filling the windshield drew ever closer. The impact jerked her forward and then back. The car was too old for air bags. The seat belt dug into her skin. The wind had been knocked out of her. She wheezed in a sharp, trembling breath.

The entire car seemed to vibrate from the impact. Metal creaked and groaned.

She opened her eyes.

Joseph put his hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”

She wondered if she was as pale as Joseph. Her body felt like it was being shaken from the inside out.

She cleared her throat, trying to answer, but managed only a nod.

“Stay put.” He pushed open his door.

She stared through the windshield, which was 90 percent hay bale with only a sliver of blue sky visible. Her hands trembled, and her stomach felt like it had sustained a blow.

Joseph opened her door. He reached across her and unclicked her seat belt. Gently, he took her arm and lifted her up. She collapsed against his chest.

The run through the night, the worry over what was going on with Trevor and the accident had taken its toll on her. She thought of herself as a strong woman, but this was all too much. Joseph must have seen it in her expression. He held her for a long moment. She rested her head against his chest, squeezing her eyes tight to keep from crying. Her face brushed against the soft fabric of his cotton shirt. Finally, she stopped shaking and could take in a deep breath.

She stepped away from the warmth of his embrace, embarrassed that she had fallen apart. “Sorry, I’m just not used to all this.” She pulled a strand of hair off her face and touched her fingers to her lips.

“I’m impressed with how well you held it together.” He squeezed her arm just above the elbow and offered her a faint smile.

She appreciated his effort at calming her, but she was having a hard time accepting what had just happened. “You don’t think those brakes just stopped working because of wear and tear.”

He shook his head. “The car is too bent for me to check the brake line, even if it wasn’t stuck in a hay bale.” He looked back at the car. “We won’t know until we have it looked at, but my guess is we were set up.”

His conclusion sent a fresh wave of fear through her and made her wonder again about Trevor’s innocence.

Joseph opened his door and pulled out his phone. “Might as well get a tow truck out here.”

Neither of them spoke for several minutes. This was her new reality. Being hunted and sabotaged.

“These guys play for keeps.” Her voice held a note of terror. “What do I do now? Go to the police?”

“Not the local cops. We think one of them might be connected to the drug trade.”

Not sure how to respond, Sierra let that news sink in. She knew most of the city police. Some of them she had gone to high school with. “What makes you say that?”

“I’m not the first undercover guy to come to this area. In the past, anytime we involved the locals, the investigation fell apart. I know this kind of relentless violence must be hard for you.” Joseph stopped. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and then stared at his phone. “Let me make this call so we can get back to town.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and paced while Joseph made the call. As he talked, giving the tow truck driver their location, she could feel a sense of resolve growing inside her even as she battled with her own fear. She held an important piece to a puzzle and could give kids, the kids she worked with, a fighting chance at a decent life.

Joseph finished the call. “I want to help you as much as I can to put this guy away,” Sierra said.

He locked her in his gaze. “You would put yourself at risk like that?”

“Yes. Years ago someone did that for me.” She took in a breath. “A teacher who cared about me saved me from the druggie house I was staying at.” Sharing this information about her past was always scary. “I need to pay it forward. I’ve seen what drugs do to the soul. If I can help even one kid, I have to do it.”

A look of admiration spread across his face. “Well then, I guess you better hang close to me until we can figure out who that guy you saw in the forest was. If he has been arrested before, he’ll be in our database.”

There was no judgment in his demeanor, only acceptance. She felt closer to him in that moment, knowing that she had shared the most shameful thing about herself and he had not rejected her. “I know another dealer might take his place, but every one of those guys who gets put away means my kids are helped.”

She stared out at the landscape and then out on the road. They had gone miles out of town. The tow truck driver wouldn’t be here for at least twenty minutes. Though there were fields and cows, the farmhouse they belonged to could be miles from where they were. This area was pretty far from civilization.

Joseph glanced over his shoulder. His posture stiffened, sending a new wave of fear through her. He whirled around to face her, concern etched in his facial features.

Suddenly he tackled her. She fell to the ground just as the zing of a rifle shot filled the air.

Once he knew Sierra was out of the line of fire, he rolled free of her and crawled back toward the nearest hay bale. Hardly the best cover, but it was what they had to work with. A second shot shattered the silence around them. Still crouching low, he stumbled to his feet and darted toward the next hay bale with Sierra on his heels.

He grabbed Sierra’s hand and pulled her to the far side of the bale.

Sierra spoke between breaths. “Where did that come from?”

“Truck at the top of the hill.” The straw of the bale felt itchy against his back.

“They must have been behind us. When they saw we survived the car sabotage, they decided to finish the job.” She put her palm on her chest.

“We can’t wait for the tow truck driver. We’ll have to head cross-country. Stay off the road.” He looked directly at her. “Ready to make a run for the next hay bale?”

They darted from one hay bale to the next. Joseph looked over his shoulder. The truck had made its way down the hill and was headed toward the field. They couldn’t outrun a truck.

“You keep going. I’ll let him get close enough. See if I can take out his tires with my pistol.” He pulled his gun from the shoulder holster.

She nodded and took off running. He watched her dive behind a hay bale before turning his attention back to the oncoming truck. He could see only one person behind the wheel, no passenger.

He crouched low and pressed against the hay bale. A handgun had decent accuracy at short distances. His heart pounded against his rib cage. The truck loomed closer. The roar of the motor seemed to surround him. He jumped up and took aim, hitting the front tire closest to him and then rolling free of the trajectory of the truck.

The truck stuttered but continued to roll forward. The driver turned his wheel and aimed right for him. Joseph stood and took a second shot at the other front tire. The bullet zinged off metal. He’d missed. Then he aimed a third shot through the windshield, not to kill but to disorient.

The truck came to a stop as the driver picked up his rifle and pointed through the shattered windshield.