Page 42 of Kent's Watch
“Understood. I’ve got the location of your cell, unfortunately, we don’t have GPS locations for the communications. Wait, I just found your tracker, it’ll be a few minutes to get your exact location. Do you want me to send the others to you when they’re done loading up the hiker?”
“Please, I don’t know what I’ll be walking into. It’s best to have backup. I’ll let you know if I need anything else.”
“Roger,” Darius said, and signed off. Kent shook his head, looked at the dog, and gave the signal for him to proceed. He tuned into what was being said in his ear, and shook his head at the information he heard. He sent a quick text and pulled his earwig from his ear and put it up to the speaker to the phone. He hoped it would work and the others on the other end could hear what was being said. It was a long-shot, but it was all he had until he could find Rita. As he did this, he made sure he had hit record on his phone so if anything happened to Rita, he had proof that Vickers had been the one to harm her further than he suspected she was already hurt. He knew he was within a mile of her location, because that was how the earwigs worked. Shaking his head, he continued to follow Tate to go rescue Rita.
“H-h-how do I o-o-owe you?”Rita stammered, and shook her head to try to straighten out her stuttering. It didn’t work, except to make her even more dizzy than she already was. She had no idea what was wrong with her. She only knew she had her hands tied behind her back, and her ankles were bound with tape. It was awkward trying to sit up, so she ended up leaning to the side to try and have a conversation with the psycho before her.
“You owe me because you cost me money, bitch. I had promised Petey that I would come through with a bait dog.”
“W-w-who’s P-P-Petey?”
“You’ll never live to tell anyone about it, so I might as well tell you. Oh, and before you get your hopes up that someone is coming after you, think again.” He gave an evil laugh that caused all the hair on Rita’s body to stand on end. She subtly sighedin relief when she heard Kent’s reassuring voice in her ear. She knew then to keep him talking.
“Petey Manchester is the guy who recruits guys like me to find the bait animals for the fights. His boss is even bigger and more important than he his.” When it looked like Rita was going to speak, he shook his head at her. “Like I said, you won’t live to get out of this cave, let alone to see the next sunrise, so I might as well tell you all.” He sounded so proud of himself, that if Rita had anything in her stomach, she would have lost it again.
Little did he know that several miles away, his conversation was being recorded and would be used against him in the very near future.
“As I was saying, Petey Manchester is the guy who recruits guys like me to get the animals for either bait or actual fighting. It’s not just dogs, either. He’s also involved with cock fighting, and has six different places he holds these fights. Out of the six, three are for the cocks, three are for the dogs.”
“W-w-where are these f-f-fights held?”
“Denver.” Vickers sat on a rock and settled in to have a conversation with her. Rita remained silent so he didn’t suspect she had someone on the outside listening in. She had heard Kent say that Sheriff Jim and others were listening to the conversation, and he and Tate were still making his way toward her.
“See,” Vickers said conversationally. “In the hierarchy of the fighting business, myself and others are considered the lowest rung on the ladder. We need to prove we can get the job done before we can move up. Petey is what you would consider middle to upper management. He’s not the top dog.” Rita cringed when he laughed at his pun. “He’s also not directly under the top dog, he’s a couple steps down.”
“W-w-who is the top dog?”
“Again, I’m only telling you this because you’re going to die in about an hour, so it won’t be a problem. Above Petey is Steve Benton. He’s some big-wig executive in a downtown office in Denver. Some lawyer or something. Anyway, he’s not important. His number-one client is the one that is important. Oh, everyone thinks Benton’s calling all the shots, but he’s not. It pays to have stupid friends like Elroy and Judd. See, they may act stupid to others around them, but they are great at gathering information. They stand there at the bar and listen to everything being said. They’ve even gotten jobs where they were able to interact with Benton and his client in a restaurant.” He laughed again at his own private joke.
“S-s-so who is the p-p-private client?”
“Craig Collier.” Vickers laughed again, and Rita could only barely shrug.
“W-w-who is he?”
“No clue,” he laughed again. “All I know is that Petey is scared of him, and when he’s running scared, the rest of us are put to the test. As they say, shit runs downhill. I for one am getting sick and tired of getting shit on. This last bout is all because of you. It’s all your fault. If I’m going to climb the ladder to be Mr. Collier’s right-hand man, I need to eliminate all the roadblocks. I’m starting with you.” Without any warning, he kicked out his leg and his boot made contact with Rita’s chest. The impact caused her to lose her breath as she toppled over backward and screamed out in pain when her shoulders felt like they were ripped out of their sockets. The impact was so hard, that she hit her head and passed out again. If she was going to die, she didn’t want to see it coming. She thought she heard a shout, but her world went black. She only prayed Kent would forgive her for giving up, and her father would be able to take care of Zeke for her.
Out on the trail,Kent was paying more attention to the conversation between Rita and Vickers that he hadn’t noticed when Tate stopped in his tracks. He ended up tripping over him by doing a somersault to avoid stepping on the dog. In the process he dropped the phone and ear piece. It took a few moments to find them, and when he did, he looked at where Tate was staring. He saw the mouth of a cave and sighed in relief. He quickly put the earwig back in his own ear, then talked on the phone.
“Guys, Tate just alerted as to where we think Rita is. I’m going to investigate.”
“Be careful,” Cruz said. “Heads up, though.”
“What’s that?”
“We’re making our way to you, but we’ll be at least two hours behind.”
“Why?”
“We ran into a problem getting Russell off the side of the mountain. It’s okay now and Logan just left with the chopper. He has Marvin and Zeke with him. We have Tank with us. Marvin gave us a quick rundown on how to handle him. Mason has control of him.”
“Good. But what is the problem?”
“The storm is coming in faster than anticipated. I don’t know what it is like in your location, but the wind is picking up here. It’s going to be slow going to try to reach you before the rain hits.”
“Roger that,” Kent hung up the phone and made sure his earwig was in place before he hunkered down beside Tate to take in the terrain. As he looked around from Tate’s vantage point, hecould see scuff marks in the dirt. As he looked around, he shook his head, quickly stood, and went back up the trail a few yards, making sure Tate was at his heels. Kent made a quick decision. He removed both packs, and withdrew a bottle of water. Looking around, he nodded as he stepped off the trail, and messed up the ground before he poured the entire bottle of water into the area. He grinned as Tate cocked his head at him, his look said Kent had gone off his rocker. Using a branch, Kent stirred the water to make mud. He first took his fingers to test the consistency, he nodded as he smeared some on his face, then his forearms. He looked at Tate with a grin and quickly took up two scoops of the mud and rubbed it on the sides of the dog. He could have removed the vest, but he wanted to keep it on the dog to let him know he was still working. The mud was to dull the bright neon safety green. He nodded when he was satisfied the brightness had been toned down.
“Better,” Kent chuckled as he ran his dirty hands over Tate and then he stood to wipe them on his pants. He picked up the leash as they made their way to the spot Tate had alerted Kent to earlier. With a short leash, man and animal slowly made their way to the entrance. He didn’t hear anything in his earwig, and started to become worried that he might have lost Rita. Suddenly, Tate stiffened at his side and gave the tiniest growl Kent had ever heard. He looked at the dog, he whipped his head up to see what had his attention and quickly hunkered down beside Tate. Together, they watched as a man came to the entrance to the cave. It was getting dark, but the setting sun shone in his face, and Kent knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was Timothy Vickers. To prove his point in the future, he quickly pulled out his phone and began snapping photos of not only Vickers, but also of the surrounding area.
