Against the Edge (The Raines of Wind Can - By Kat Martin Page 0,117

the school bus stop at the corner.

One of his neighbors had noticed the white van parked near the stop. It occurred to him that maybe Santos’s men hadn’t come to the house because they had followed Claire or somehow knew she would be there. Maybe they had found out about Sam, knew how much he meant to her, planned to take him and trade her for the disk.

It wasn’t a bad theory. He walked to the corner, prowling the sidewalk, people’s front lawns, checking the street. About where the van had been parked, the sun reflected off something in the gutter. Ben reached down and picked up a piece of paper, the clear cellophane crackling in his hand.

He recognized the sound, and his heart started pounding. He spread open the candy wrapper, read the familiar white lettering. Homemade Mud Bugs. Catahoula Candy Makers, Egansville, Louisiana.

Relief and fury hit him at the same time. It wasn’t Santos. She wasn’t being tortured. Troy Bragg had come for Sam, and Claire had tried to stop him. Bragg had taken her with him to whatever godforsaken rat hole he and his clan were calling home.

Santos didn’t have her, but she was still in terrible danger. Both of them were, but especially Claire. His stomach knotted at the thought of the Bayou Patriots, thirty-odd men and very few women. Thirty horny, caged-up motherfuckers and a beautiful woman like Claire, helpless against them.

As Ben headed for the car, he pulled out his cell phone and started making calls. Jake, Trace, Alex and Sol were waiting in the office when he stepped inside, ringing the bell above the door.

“All right, we know who’s got them,” Ben said as he approached. “We just need to find them. Time to go to work.”

“Copy that,” Trace said as all of them headed for the conference room. Ben didn’t miss the hard, determined looks on his best friends’ faces.

Thirty-Three

Ben settled back in the copilot’s seat as Alex’s twin Beechcraft Baron dropped lower, winging its way over a dense green landscape ribboned with water and very few roads. Jake and Trace sat behind him. The nose and fuselage of the plane was full of their gear.

The ground came up. The wheels lightly touched down on the tarmac as Alex made a perfect landing at a small airport near Deerfield, just over the Catahoula County line where Ben hoped word of their arrival wouldn’t reach the Patriots before he and his friends could get to them.

Back in Houston, Sol waited at his computer. The kid had access to satellite imagery that could pinpoint areas Google Maps couldn’t begin to reach. If the position of the satellite was right, he was hoping to get some video footage this time.

First, though, they needed a starting place, some indication where to look for the Bayou Patriots’ bug-out compound. They had to know if it was somewhere in the area or someplace altogether different.

They’d discussed going to the sheriff, talked over the pros and cons. But the only people who had known Ben and Ty Brodie had pulled Sam out of the compound, knew Ben’s name and where he lived, were people who worked in the sheriff’s department.

Information had been provided to the Braggs. Whether on purpose or accidentally, the result was the same. Claire and Sam were missing, and Ben had no doubt Troy Bragg and his clan had taken them. He couldn’t chance letting Bragg escape again.

A pair of rental cars were waiting, a dark brown Chevy Tahoe, different color but otherwise the same as the one he had rented in El Paso and driven to Houston, and a white Jeep Grand Cherokee. They needed room for men, weapons, ammunition and miscellaneous gear, and he wanted a backup vehicle in case of trouble when they headed into the compound.

They piled into the two SUVs and drove to a motel on the edge of Deerfield that Ben had reserved on Hotels.com. They had to move fast. If word got out that four strangers had arrived in the area, it might reach the Patriots. If the group figured the men were there in search of the woman and boy, they would bolt like scalded dogs to a new location, forcing Sam and Claire to go with them.

These men knew the swamp, most had lived around here all their lives. The only way to get to them was to take them by surprise.

Sol had discovered the double-wide trailers Silas and Jesse Bragg and their families lived in a