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Dark ‘N’ Deadly
by Tee O'Fallon

Copyright © 2019 by Tee O'Fallon. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Chapter One

Tess bolted upright, gasping for air. Her heart beat fast and hard.

Am I having a heart attack?

Her cell phone lit up, vibrating on the bedside table like a swarm of bees.

She flinched, caught somewhere in that foggy void between deep REM sleep and being fully awake. When her eyes finally focused, she stared at the phone. It was a number she didn’t recognize, but she did know the area code.

Alabama.

Her blood went colder than ice water. Only one person in all of Alabama had her number. This could be the call she’d been waiting for.

Waiting for ten long years.

Again, the phone shrilled. Her hands trembled as she snatched up the phone.

Please, please, please be him, and not…

The one person she feared most in her life.

Gripping the phone tighter, she swiped the screen. “H-hello?”

“Tess?” a man—a very young man—said in a slightly familiar voice. “It’s Jesse.”

Her eyes widened, and the corners of her mouth lifted. It had to be him. His voice was deeper than when she’d last heard it, but she’d recognize his Southern cadence anywhere.

“Jesse,” she whispered. Oh my god. Her heart began pounding again, but this time from sheer joy. “Is it really you?”

“Yeah, Tessie. It’s me. I can’t talk long. Things are messed up. I want out. I—” A police siren wailed in the background. “Shit. I gotta go.”

“No, don’t hang up!” The siren wailed again, louder this time. “Jesse. Jesse!”

The call ended.

“No!” She punched up the most recent number, but it went right to voicemail. “Jesse, call me back. Call me back.” Unable to sever the only link she had between her and her brother, she stared at the screen for a few more seconds before hanging up.

Oh, no. She held the phone tightly to her chest, rocking back and forth. Her emotions vacillated between outright joy that Jesse had finally reached out to her after all this time, and gut-wrenching fear, because something was wrong. Very wrong.

Her hand shook. There was no mistaking the panic in her brother’s voice. It had practically screamed through the phone. The worst part was that she couldn’t help him.

I don’t even know where he is.

If what she suspected was the motivating force behind Jesse’s call after all this time, it could mean only one thing.

Evil was coming for him, and soon, it would come for her.

…

“Sonofabitch.”

The pickup’s bed cap sailed off the back of the truck, missing Eric’s SUV by inches.

He glanced in the rearview mirror. Luckily, the cap had bounced harmlessly onto the shoulder.

Claws scrabbled in the kennel behind him, followed by disgruntled huffs and snorts. Still snorting, Tiger thrust his dark brown muzzle through the cage opening.

“Hang on, pal.” He punched it, and the Interceptor’s 365-horsepower engine kicked in, rocketing the SUV down the highway.

Strobes lit up the Interceptor like a Christmas tree. The siren wailed like a banshee, and still the pickup didn’t pull over.

So much for a quiet Federal Friday.

The pickup serpentined through traffic like the highway was the driver’s personal NASCAR track. His speedometer’s needle passed eighty-five and was approaching ninety.

“This guy’s got balls, I’ll give him that.”

There’s no way he can outrun an Interceptor.

ATF special agents didn’t normally do car stops or high-speed chases, but the four 55-gallon drums in the back of the truck slid around with enough momentum to launch them right over the tailgate and crashing through someone’s windshield.

With the Interceptor’s engine roaring, he easily stayed close to the pickup, but far enough from the bumper in case the driver suddenly decided to pull his brains out of his ass and hit the brakes.

At six a.m. the westbound lanes of I-78 were nearly empty. Good thing, because this brainless road warrior was going to kill someone.

The truck fishtailed then veered right toward an exit ramp. Eric checked his rearview mirror then cut hard right to give chase on the service road.

“You okay back there, Tiger?” His K-9’s dark, almond-shaped eyes glinted in the bright morning light as he let out another snort. “C’mon. Pull over, you moron.”

What the hell’s in those drums that’s worth a high-speed chase?

“Time to wake the neighborhood.”

He pushed a button, and the Interceptor’s air horn blasted. If the town wasn’t awake before, it was now. Another minute went by before the truck finally braked and pulled onto a shoulder adjacent to a steep hill.

“About f-ing time.” Keeping half an eye on the driver-side door, Eric flipped up the lid on his mobile computer. The tag came back not on file. Odd. The truck had to be at least twenty years old, so the tag should have been in the system. Unless it was stolen and someone had swapped in an inactive tag.

Behind him, Tiger pranced back and forth on the bench, eager to go to work.

“Blijf,” he ordered his dog, and Tiger responded with a disappointed grunt. Eric wanted his K-9 to remain in the SUV until he got a bead on the driver. If anything went down, all he had to do was hit the door-popper on his belt and the kennel door would fly open, releasing Tiger to back his ass up.

He activated the dash cam then opened his door. The air was typically hot and humid for mid-July, with a stiff, warm breeze blowing in from the east.

With one hand on his Glock, he stepped toward the back of the truck, watching it for signs of movement. As he neared the tailgate, details of the Alabama plate caught his attention. The paint color was off, and the crane looked more like a duck. No wonder it’s not on file. The tag’s bogus. If he hadn’t spent nine years working out of the Birmingham RAC office, he might not have known. But he did.

Hairs on the back of his neck prickled. With his free hand, he pressed his fingers against the truck’s left rear quarter panel. If this went to shit, not only would there be video, but his prints would be left behind for investigators to find in the event that he was found cold and dead on the side of the road.

His heart beat out a steady rhythm. Not fast, not slow. Just enough to pump more adrenaline through his veins because something was royally off. He could taste it. More to the point, he could feel it in his bones, and his bones were sending out a warning louder than a detonated stick of dynamite.

The back of the driver’s head was visible through the rear window. Cautiously, he approached and knocked on the side door.

It’s just a kid. With a shock of curly red hair. He’d only seen hair that vibrant once before in his life, but that had been on a woman.

Slowly, the window rolled down. At nearly six-four in his boots, Eric easily looked down into the cab. Most people would have their wallet or driver license ready for inspection, but the only thing this kid had was a stack of papers in his lap—a diversionary tactic used by “sovereign citizens” and the very thing that had gotten two police officers killed in West Memphis, Arkansas. But sovereign citizens were few and far between in New Jersey.

Eric tightened his grip on the Glock. He was a hair’s breadth from drawing down on the kid.

He glanced to the back of the pickup, then over his shoulder. No one else was there, but something was so off it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up even straighter.

The kid’s hands began to shake. “Step out of the vehicle.” Eric backed off enough to allow him to get out.

The driver opened the door, taking the three-inch-thick pile of documents with him. He was just under six feet and skinny as a rail, weighing in at around one-fifty. Fear brimmed in the kid’s bright green eyes.

“Get out your driver license, registration, and proof of insurance,” he ordered.

“Um, I got papers,” he answered in an Alabama drawl, then thrust the documents at Eric’s chest.

Eric backed off more, tightening his grip on the gun. The pulse that had been beating slow and steady began pounding in his ears, screaming out an even louder warning.

“Don’t move.” His free hand hovered over Tiger’s door-popper as he again flicked his gaze to the back of the truck.

“Here,” the kid said. “Don’t you want to look at these?”

Just as he yanked the gun from its holster, the kid threw the stack of papers in Eric’s face and took off running.

Game on.

He’d half expected to be gunned down, but a foot chase… That, he could do.

He holstered then bolted after the kid, hitting Tiger’s door-popper as he vaulted over the railing and hauled ass down the hill.

A brindle blur shot past him. No surprise. Eric ran ten miles every other day, but he’d never outsprint his K-9.

For a scrawny kid, he was fast and already shooting into the tree line a good twenty yards away. Tiger disappeared into the trees. Seconds later, a high-pitched cry shattered the morning quiet. A human cry, that was.

At the bottom of the hill, he pounded to the trees, redrawing his weapon. Tiger’s front legs were on the ground, his back arched as he maintained a firm bite hold around the kid’s calf.

“Get him off! Get him off! Please, mister, get the dog off me!”

Eric resisted chuckling. Yeah. Now, it’s “please, mister.” He holstered his Glock. “Los.”

Tiger released the kid’s leg but kept a wary eye, letting loose with an occasional growl from the back of his throat.

Eric flipped the boy onto his belly, then cuffed and searched him. The only thing on him was a thin wallet and a cell phone.

“Let’s go.” He hauled the kid to his feet. At the top of the hill, he sat him on the shoulder in front of the Interceptor then reached into the vehicle to call for a backup transport.

A stiffer wind kicked up, blowing in the direction of the pickup. Tiger stood guard over the boy, his black nostrils flaring as he took in hundreds of scents on the swirling air currents.

When the boy looked at Tiger, those green eyes were filled with an odd mixture of wariness and curiosity.

Eric tugged a few folded pieces of paper from the kid’s wallet. No ID. The only thing of any interest was an old, wrinkled photograph. Looked like his prisoner, only years younger. In the photo with him was a girl, slightly older. Both had the same vibrant red corkscrew hair and sharp green eyes. The boy he’d never met until today; he was sure of it. Something about the girl was familiar.

He flipped the photo over. In faded blue pen were the words Jesse and Tess. The date beneath the names was ten years ago.

The breath caught in his throat. It can’t be. But it was, and holy shit. The resemblance he should have recognized earlier was now clear as a bell. How could I have missed it? Still, he had to be certain. “What’s your name?”

“Jesse.”

He took a step closer until he was towering over the boy. “Jesse what?”

“McTavish.”

Oh, hell.

He let out the breath he’d been holding.

Tess McTavish.

The woman he’d once wanted so badly he couldn’t think straight. A woman he’d never so much as kissed, yet she still plagued his dreams. He’d lost count of how many times he’d woken, aching and sweaty, sorely in need of a cold shower to snap him out of the steamy dream he’d been having of the two of them. Together. In his bed.

He shook his head. Man, don’t go there.

Red tape first. Answers second.

He slipped a card from his cargo pants and read the boy his constitutional rights. The kid didn’t respond that he wanted an attorney. Kind of surprising, considering Eric’s theory about what the boy was involved in.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Eighteen.”

“Why’d you run from me?” Not having a license wasn’t enough to get someone arrested. Running from the police or federal agents was.

Jesse averted his gaze. “Like I told ya, I don’t got no license.”

Bullshit. Didn’t take a world-class detective to see the kid was lying his ass off.

“Don’t move,” he ordered Jesse, then to Tiger, “Bewaken,” commanding his K-9 to guard.

Tiger dipped his head and let out a low snort, as if saying, “Yes, sir.”

Eric went back to the pickup and searched the area around the driver’s seat. Since the truck would be impounded and all contents itemized, he didn’t plan on an in-depth search incident to arrest. As he viewed the contents of the truck, he was more and more convinced there was a boatload more going on here than just an unlicensed driver.

A backpack lay on the floorboard. More documents were strewn on the seat. He picked a few up, scanning them before tossing them aside. Every sheet contained rambling, twisted anti-government rhetoric declaring sovereignty from paying taxes, getting driver licenses, and any other fee the almighty system could drum up. It was all pseudo-legalese mumbo jumbo. He’d seen it before. In Alabama.

Carefully, and methodically, he looked around the cab’s interior for anything out of place within arm’s length of the driver seat. There. His pulse began to race.

Two seams in the plastic between the steering column and the radio portion of the dashboard were bowed slightly outward, creating a gap. This, too, he’d seen before.

He tugged a knife from his belt and stuck it in the seam, using it as a pry bar. One side of the plastic popped off and fell to the floor. Staring back at him was exactly what he expected—a pistol taped to the inside of the plastic. A 9mm Baretta, to be precise.

This is bad.

Too many things were adding up to be discounted as coincidence. Sovereign citizen documents, no license, registration, or insurance. Lastly, the hidden gun. When Eric had worked in Birmingham, he’d run into someone who liked to hide weapons in that exact spot next to the steering column.

Harley Gant.

The sovereign citizen leader who’d murdered his friends and gotten away with it.

Tiger barked, followed by a sharp whine.

His dog swung his head back and forth from where he guarded Jesse McTavish to the back of the truck. Eric ducked out of the pickup, noting the wind had shifted, doing a one-eighty and now blowing from the direction of the pickup directly at his K-9.

When his dog whined again, it wasn’t Tiger’s I-gotta-pee whine. This was his I-found-something-you-gotta-see yowl.

“Los,” he said, releasing the dog from his guard post over the boy.

Tiger whirled toward the truck, rising on his hind legs and resting his front paws on the tailgate. The dog’s black nostrils flared repeatedly as he took in scents coming off the drums. His tail whipped back and forth.

Tiger just hit on those drums.

When he turned to face Jesse McTavish, the boy swallowed hard, his eyes wild with panic.

The deep pile of shit the kid had stepped in just got a whole lot deeper. Eric couldn’t be absolutely certain what was in those drums, but he could guess. Explosive material. When sovereign citizens and explosives got together…

People died.