Kentucky Crime Ring
Autor:in
Julie Anne Lindsey
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Somebody wants her dead… But they'll have to go through him first. The moment she discovers a murder scene, Allison Hill becomes a target for human traffickers who are willing to kill to keep their crimes hidden. Private detective Derek Winchester's priority is keeping this brave woman and her infant daughter safe — without letting his feelings become a distraction. But his expert training and fierce determination might not be enough to stop the depraved predators circling ever closer to Allison…
Chapter One
Allison Hill tucked her infant daughter, Bonnie, into the cloth baby sling around her torso and moved swiftly through the cool morning wind. April in Kentucky was beautiful but brisk, and Allison had a little work to do before she went inside. Normally, her elderly neighbor, Mason, met her on the porch when he heard her truck rock down his long gravel drive, but today he’d stayed inside. He hadn’t answered the door when she knocked, but the phone line was busy, a sure sign he was tied up on a call.
Mason was one of the few people Allison knew who still had a landline, attached to the wall by a spiral cord, no less. And he refused to get call-waiting because he claimed he could only talk to one person at a time. That person was usually his daughter, Franny, who lived in Minneapolis and worried desperately about her father living alone after his recent heart attack.
Allison hurried along the side of the home and into the shady backyard, ready to feed Mason’s chickens and collect the eggs from his henhouse. She’d promised Franny she’d handle the tasks during Mason’s recovery. Another family friend was handling Mason’s lawn mowing and prepping the ground for his garden.
The sound of the river mixed with the blustering wind as Allison approached the henhouse. The ground was soft and muddy from a late-night storm. She curved a protective arm over Bonnie as the insistent wind picked up, then pulled her baby’s knit cap more securely over her soft blond curls. With only a few days left in her twelve-week maternity leave, Allison was already mourning the loss of her extended alone time with Bonnie. Thankfully her job at the day care would keep them close, even after she returned to work.
Allison let herself into the gated area around the henhouse, then headed for the little ramp. The chickens swarmed her legs, clearly recognizing her as their morning food source. She took off the lid of the tote of seed and scattered a few scoops over the ground. The hens lost immediate interest in Allison, clucking and diving over one another instead, eager for first dibs on breakfast.
She squatted to pluck a square of paper off the ground that had been trampled into the dirt by twenty chicken feet. “Litterbugs are the worst,” she told Bonnie. She tucked the scrap into the pocket of her old zip-up hoodie, then put away the container of food.
A set of muddy footprints caught her attention as she hooked a basket for egg collection over the crook of her arm. The prints were strangely small, closer to her size than Mason’s, and she could see the small outlines of toes. Her brow wrinkled at the thought. Bare feet? In an old man’s henhouse? It wasn’t warm enough to be without shoes right now, and the ground had been hard until the storm.
Strange.
Allison finished collecting eggs, then headed for the back porch, eager to know if Mason realized he’d had company.
She’d barely left the henhouse before getting her answer. More prints came quickly into view near the porch. These prints were accompanied by a trail of larger, heavier marks, likely made by a pair of men’s boots, and about a million of the usual doggy tracks, courtesy of Mason’s geriatric hound, Clark. Allison followed the path to Mason’s door, then knocked. Maybe the man who cared for Mason’s lawn had brought a barefoot child or wife along yesterday?
Allison knocked and the door swung open beneath her touch. A shiver of unease crept down her spine. “Mason?” she called, slipping into the kitchen. Her toe nicked a small white button, and Allison bent to pick it up. The button was delicate and flower-shaped. Nothing like the buttons on any of Mason’s flannel shirts. Maybe the button belonged to whoever had made the footprints.
Her breath caught as she eased upright and took in the normally tidy space. Mason’s countertops were littered with bloody rags, bandages and cloths. A first-aid kit had been ripped open, its contents splayed across the nearby table. A bottle of peroxide was lying in the sink. “Mason?”
Allison rushed into the living room, where the wall-mounted phone’s receiver hung by its spiral cord. Abandoned. “Mason!” Her voice was loud and frantic, stirring Bonnie from her sleep.
A sense of doom spread in her stomach as she rushed through the old farmhouse, throwing open the doors and calling. Then, in a small room at the end of the hall, Mason’s feet came into view. He was lying on the floor, eyes open and unseeing, his flannel shirt darkened with blood. “No!”
Allison dialed 911 on her cell phone as she fell to her knees at his side, patted his cold cheeks, then checked his neck for a pulse that wasn’t there. Sobs broke across her lips as she cried the details into the receiver. “He’s dead. I don’t know. There’s so much blood,” she explained to the dispatch officer.
“I can’t tell where he’s hurt.” She wiped wildly at her eyes, taking small sips of air and struggling to remain composed. Then, another thought came to mind. “Someone else was here. There are footprints in the yard, and I found a button on the floor.”
“Are you certain you’re alone now?” the dispatcher asked.
Ice ran through Allison’s veins. “No.” She’d raced around the first floor, but there was still an upstairs and basement. Both places she hadn’t been.
And where was Clark? Not here, she decided, or he would be with Mason.
In the stillness, a couple of voices registered. “I hear people outside.”
“Neighbors?” the dispatcher asked.
“There aren’t any neighbors,” Allison whispered. “Not like you mean. Not here.” Allison’s home was the closest to Mason’s, and she was more than a mile away.
Allison crept to the nearest window and spotted a pair of men heading toward the home on foot. Two ATVs were parked in the trees beyond an aged outbuilding. The men scowled and barked at one another—short, snappy words, muffled by distance and the glass. Dark streaks smeared their shirts and arms.
“I see them through the window,” Allison said. “I don’t know them. And they might have blood on their clothes. What do I do?”
“Can you safely leave the premises?” the dispatcher asked. “I have the address, and units en route, but they’re several minutes out.”
Allison’s gaze fell to Bonnie, fussy and squirming from the fear and tension surely rolling off her mother. “I think so,” she said, determination rising in her core.
She was too late to help Mason, but she would protect her baby. Whatever the cost. Allison gave Mason a final look, her heart pounding in her throat. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, then turned toward the hallway that had brought her to him. She reached the end of the narrow corridor and listened for any sounds indicating the men had entered the home. When silence prevailed, Allison sped back through the kitchen. “I parked in the driveway out front,” she told the dispatcher. “I think the men went around back. I’m using the front door now.” She clamped the phone between her ear and shoulder, then freed the dead bolt and swung the door wide.
Her truck glistened in the morning sunlight, waiting alone in the drive. Only a few yards away.
“Hey!” an angry voice called from behind her.
Allison froze, her hand on the open door, one foot already on the porch outside.
“Hold it right there.” A heavy footfall sounded on the kitchen floor, two rooms away.
And Allison ran.
She tossed her phone into the sling with her baby, then bolted across the porch and down the short flight of steps, landing hard on the lawn. Allison wrapped a protective arm around the sling as she tipped forward, slamming her free hand and one knee into the earth.
Bonnie screamed.
“Stop!” the man demanded.
Allison surged forward, throwing herself ahead at full speed. She flung open the truck door and jumped inside, jamming her key into the ignition as Bonnie wailed. She pulled her daughter from the sling and moved her to the rear-facing car seat on the bench beside her. Her bumbling hands and flailing newborn made the job of fastening her safety belt almost impossibly difficult.
A gunshot exploded into the air. The thunderous sound echoed off the trees and hills.
“Get out of that truck,” her assailant ordered, stalking predatorily across the porch. He lifted the gun in one outstretched arm, pointing it first at Allison, then swinging the barrel in the direction of Bonnie’s car seat.
Allison jerked the vehicle into gear and jammed her foot against the accelerator, as the man’s feet hit the lawn. Her old pickup launched forward, toward the gunman. A risky move, maybe, but far safer, in her opinion, than obeying the blood-smeared stranger.
He jumped back, screaming a string of curses as she pulled the shifter into Reverse and cranked the steering wheel. The truck spun in a wild backward doughnut through Mason’s yard before rocketing forward down the driveway and onto the desolate country road out front.
The man took aim from a shrinking position in her rearview as Allison barreled away.
Her ears rang and her heart pounded.
Bonnie screeched beside her.
“It’s okay,” she breathed. “We’re okay.” Allison pried one hand away from the wheel to stroke her baby’s tear-soaked cheeks. “You’re all right. We’re all right. Help is coming.” Allison had gotten a good look at the man with the gun. She’d be able to describe him to the police when they arrived.
A flash of red caught her eye in the rearview mirror.
“Oh, no.”
An ATV was racing along the road behind them.
Allison pressed the gas pedal with more purpose, then locked her doors. She needed to put as much distance as possible between her truck and the man giving chase.
The driver, visible in her side mirror, steered recklessly, a gun in one hand.
She slunk in her seat, fumbling to free her phone from the loose sling still hanging around her middle. “Hello?” she asked, praying the call hadn’t disconnected.
“I’m here. Are you okay?” the dispatcher returned.
“No!” she screamed. “I am not okay! The intruder shot at me, and he’s on an ATV now, chasing me!”
“Where are you?”
“In my truck. We’re on River Road headed toward town.” Allison raised her eyes to the rearview mirror, checking the ATV’s progress. Four-wheelers were fast, but her little Ford was faster. She could get Bonnie and herself to safety. Everything would be okay.
A gunshot boomed, and Allison’s truck jerked hard beneath her grip. The phone toppled from her hand as she clutched the wheel, attempting to regain control as her vehicle veered toward the hill on her right.
“He shot my tire!” Allison screamed, glancing at the floorboards and hoping the dispatcher could hear her. “I’m going to—”
The blast of a horn brought her eyes back to the road. Her little pickup had crossed the yellow line while she wasn’t looking, and an enormous black truck with a large horse trailer was barreling right at her.
Allison jerked the wheel once more, and her truck hit a small roadside embankment, sending her briefly into the air before she crashed to a stop.
