THE HUNTING GROUND by AJB
CHAPTER THREE
Six sets of eyes turned to the lone marshal staring off in another direction and standing rigidly still. Seconds passed without movement. Tanner's expression was of utmost concentration.
"I do not think he hears you, Mr. Dunne," Standish offered quietly as he tipped his head and evaluated the stranger.
Chris stood closest to the frozen lawman, brow furrowed as he studied the agent. He shoved his sunglasses up on his head, sending his damp hair into unkempt spikes. "Hey?" he said, narrowing his eyes further. A magnetic-like pull drew the team leader a few steps closer, and Larabee was mysteriously compelled to speak in a low tone. "Tanner. What's up? What do you hear?" The marshal didn't move and Larabee felt as if a giant boa constrictor squeezed his ribcage.
For some reason he did not understand entirely, Larabee knew he had to do something. He stepped in front of the rigid agent. He pierced the wide, blue eyes with his earthy green gaze. "Take a step back, Tanner. Ease off. Come on." Chris resisted the urge to grab Tanner's shoulders and give him a shake. Instead, he clenched his fists at his sides. "Dial it back some. Back off."
Chris kept his voice soft and even, and locked his gaze with Tanner's until the icy hard blue began to defrost. "Now tell me," he said once the Marshal blinked into awareness. "What did you see?"
"S . . . see? No, no." A wrinkled V divided the Marshal's brows and then he blinked again, connecting with Larabee's intent eyes without a flinch. "Hear that?" He cocked his head and looked beyond Larabee's shoulder. "Over there."
He slipped around Chris and moved off with careful strides. Chris followed without question, drawing his weapon. The remaining six exchanged puzzled glances. Buck shrugged and motioned the rest to fan out behind, palms resting on their guns.
Tanner moved with an easy grace that confirmed his familiarity with the back country, passing through the spare brush as soundlessly as a shadow. Only Chris stayed close; the others kept back, still trying to detect whatever held the Marshal's attention.
Finally, at the bottom of a gentle slope where the ground opened up and turned powdery soft, Tanner raised an arm and signaled everyone to stop. He sniffed the wind and cocked his head slightly.
"There. Hear that? Smell that?"
Chris stilled and tipped his head into the wind, frowning as he scented the slight breeze. "No."
JD concentrated, nostrils flaring, and looked questioningly at Buck, who shook his head. The others shifted uncomfortably, tightened their grips on their holstered handguns, and scanned the area.
Tanner cocked his head again, intent on a patch of ground about ten feet away. Without warning, he sprinted to the spot, dropped to his knees and started digging with his bare hands, soft dirt flying everywhere. After a moment, Chris holstered his gun and joined him.
"What the hell, Chris?" Buck said, stroking his mustache nervously.
JD's gun arm dropped to his side and he took several curious steps in their direction. "What's going . . . shit! A trap door!" He dashed over to help.
"What?" Nathan barked. "Did you say trap door?"
The standing five spread out in a protective circle around the men brushing away the last of the loose dirt from a sturdy, metal square. There was a ring on one side. Tanner grabbed it and prepared to tug.
"Wait!" Chris snapped, placing his hand on top of the odd door. "Let's set up for cover."
"No time for that," Tanner snapped right back, making JD twitch. "She's alone and hurt!"
"She?" Standish repeated, surprised. "I still don't hear. . ."
As soon as the rusty square arced upward exposing a dark hole, they all heard muffled, panicked screams. Tanner dropped into the hole without hesitation.
"TANNER!" Chris yelled just before giving Buck an exasperated look and jumping in on the agent's heels. "God damn it, wait a minute!" His voice softened as he disappeared from view.
"Well?" JD said to the others, standing and shifting from foot to foot and looking from the hole to his partners and back again. "What do we do?"
"Hold off, we don't know how big it is down there." Buck and the others moved carefully the edge of the opening and looked down into five feet of black hole. "Wait until they clear it."
The muffled screams turned into a louder wail, the woman's sobs deep and heart wrenching. Soon, there were shushing sounds and soothing words and Chris appeared within the square of light. He held a weeping woman in his arms, her long, stringy hair covering a small visible wedge of her face tucked in the crook of Chris' neck. Bits of gray duct tape clung to her wrists, ankles, and cheek.
"Take her, Buck. Have Nate look her over." Chris hefted her up, calming her with his voice and telling her everything would be okay. Josiah helped Buck lift her from Larabee's arms.
Once Buck took her, they realized that under the layer of dirt she was thin and young, somewhere in her twenties. He felt her trembling in his arms and Buck turned his formidable attention to calming her down along with Nathan and Josiah. JD and Ezra edged closer to the opening.
"Chris, what . . ." JD began, but Chris vanished once again. The young agent dropped to his hands and knees, peering into the hole, reluctant to enter without Chris' order to do so. Although his boss had disappeared from view, both JD and Ezra could hear his steady voice reassuring the marshal. JD wrinkled his nose at a faint, sharp smell emanating from the depths.
Inside the earthen cavern, Chris Larabee's mind automatically clicked off a list of priorities for proceeding forward on what was either a second crime scene or part of the first. The bare-bones meth lab he currently stood in the middle of had to be vented somewhere, because there was only a bare trace of its odor where he stood. The only possibility was the still above ground, which, in Larabee's book, linked the crimes as one.
On top of that, the bound and gagged girl added another element to the scene that caused priorities to jockey for position on his mental list, but the number one item on said list continued to be Marshal Vin Tanner.
"We need to change location, Tanner," Chris said in a flat whisper, as if his tone would ignite any of the nearly undetectable fumes; and Tanner said he smelled it above ground? The question sat in the back of Larabee's mind to attend to later, and it wasn't alone. "Come on back. Shut all this down. One thing at a time."
To look at the frozen, wide-eyed marshal, one would think Larabee's words fell on deaf ears, but with each passing second, Chris felt their mental tether strengthen. He knew he was getting through, just as he somehow knew to hold off on touching the Marshal.
Tanner's eyelids finally fluttered and his eyes began to water, breaking him from his rigid state. Chris knew it was time to latch on to the agent's elbow. "Come on, we have to leave," he said, dragging his charge to the hole of daylight that framed Dunne's head like a halo. "Help him up, JD. Fumes."
Chris knew that wasn't entirely true, but since he didn't know what the truth actually was, he elected to keep his words to a minimum. It was a good thing the woman was there to hold the team's attention.
Between JD, Ezra, and Chris, they got the marshal away from the trap door and to one side of the group gathered around the weeping woman. As the Tanner gained awareness, he shrank away from Dunne's grip. Chris felt his pointed unease along their odd mental tether.
"I got him, JD. You and Ezra get a perimeter on this whole area. There's a meth lab down there."
"Holy crap, really? I don't smell it. Who do you think the girl is?"
With each question, Chris felt Vin shudder under his hand. "JD. Go. Now."
"What about the Marshal Clark?" Ezra asked.
"He can go process the prisoner. Make it clear that we need to question him, too. We'll take care of Tanner. Thoroughly check our perimeter first, though. I don't want any more surprises. "
"Indeed," Ezra agreed.
"Roger." Dunne turned to go, muttering in a lowered voice to Standish, "Not like the guy cares for his partner anyway."
Larabee's cheek twitched, amused by the obvious improvement of the young agent's observational skills.
"Aw, Hell," Tanner moaned, speaking his first words since the tunnel while massaging his temples with his fingertips. "Did ya get her? She okay?" He flashed a sidelong glimpse at the ATF team leader and his cheeks flushed red. "I hate when that happens," he thought.
"Happen often, does it?" Chris asked.
A quiet moment passed before Tanner caught his breath and turned suspiciously slanted eyes in Larabee's direction, where he found that he was the subject of a similar narrowed glare.
"More often than I'd like." Out loud, he muttered, "No, not often."
"Well, which is it?" Larabee demanded in a softened tone that belied his hard look. After a moment, the furrowed lines of his brow deepened with realization of their unusual communication. "You didn't . . . what's going on here?"
"I . . ." The Marshal shifted his stance then took a step back, continuing to rub his temples as he studied the lean agent regarding him. A peculiar aura surrounded the man, one Tanner recognized only from an old story he'd heard from his grandfather. Wonder sprouted in his mind. "Um, not sure whatcha mean," he whispered, unable to tear his eyes away from the pulsing, silvery-gold, halo surrounding the shadow-black figure. How did he not notice that before?
His heart raced and he took another step back, his knees wobbling from a sudden swoon. The marshal would have collapsed to his knees if Larabee hadn't stepped forward and snagged Tanner's elbow in a painful grip.
"Nathan!" Chris called, his hard stare still locked on Tanner. "Get over here!" Then, his voice softened at Vin's cringe. "You're not going anywhere at the moment. Sit." Larabee steered the subject of his attention to a nearby boulder, maintaining his grip until Tanner settled firmly on the rock. After a beat of time without Tanner fainting, Chris added in a quiet, yet threatening, tone, "And you know exactly what I mean. Don't know how I know that, but I do."
When Vin's slow gaze found Chris' face, he saw confusion, alarm, and anger battling for the forefront. The marshal was saved by Nathan's appearance, which he felt way before the medic actually arrived.
"Now," Nathan started as he looked Tanner up and down and reached for his wrist. "What's . . ."
When Jackson touched Vin's arm, he hissed and pulled away. "No, don't touch me. Wait . . ."
"You need attention, marshal," Nate said, again reaching for Tanner's arm even as he shrank away in obvious pain.
"No . . ." Vin's verbal plea was soft, but Chris heard a near scream in his own head.
"Nathan, back off." Chris inserted himself between the two men, his back to the medic, and laid the flat of his hands on Vin's shoulders. "He's leaving," he said aloud. Mentally, he instructed, "Dial it back, Tanner. Breathe, and dial it back. Concentrate on my voice."
Even focused on his subject, Chris wrinkled his nose at the irrational aspect of the mental command. Before him, however, Vin Tanner slowly pulled himself together. Finally, after several minutes of precise instructions that came from some well of knowledge Chris didn't know he possessed, the agent sighed, slumped in relaxation, and nodded tiredly in Jackson's direction.
Nate moved in without a word and started his exam when Chris stepped out of his path.
"What the hell, Chris." Buck's usual exuberant voice was soft to his boss' ear. "Is he okay?"
"Yeah," Chris breathed, raking his hair with trembling fingers. Suddenly, he, too, was exhausted. "I think so." He looked beyond his friend. "How's the girl? Why was she in there?"
Buck followed Chris' line of sight to where the woman sat with Josiah. "Says her name's Alex Wickerman. She says she was kidnapped."
"By whom?"
"Friends of the gentleman that just departed. I get the feeling that this here ain't the whole picture, stud."
Chris nodded in agreement. "Have you notified the locals?"
"Not yet."
"Good. Let's figure out the jurisdictional nightmare first."
Buck glanced back to Tanner, then Chris. "Should we call his partner?"
"No." The reply left Larabee's lips the moment Buck finished the question.
Buck grinned. "Agreed. Asshole." Then he got serious. "Chris, how the hell did he know that girl was down there? Did you hear anything? Or smell anything, like he claims?"
Chris turned his attention back to the slumped marshal, who was muttering replies to Nate's never ending questions. "No, and I have a few questions for him about that."
"Could he be involved?" Buck said.
Chris started to protest the question then realized that he had absolutely nothing to back up his steadfast feeling of Tanner's innocence. "I don't know," he offered instead.
The last part of their conversation was barely a whisper between them, but Vin raised his head and met Chris' eyes the instant he became the point of the conversation.
And for reasons he couldn't verbalize, Chris Larabee was not one bit surprised by that.
A/N: Sorry, but chapters will be out at a slower rate after today . . . that's what happens when I post before completion! Apologies! - AJB