Stoned (Unlikely Heroes Book 4)
STONED
Unlikely Heroes Book 4
Leslie Georgeson
Copyright © 2016 Leslie Georgeson
This is a work of fiction. The events and characters described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
About Leslie Georgeson
Other Titles by Leslie Georgeson
Connect With Leslie Georgeson
CHAPTER ONE
Hurry!
Karen crouched down behind a large tree trunk, pausing to let her eyes adjust to the dark forest and catch her breath.
Night sounds filled the woods around her. A squeak from a small forest creature off to her left.
A far off howl.
Animals rustling through the underbrush somewhere behind her in the trees…
Karen tried to tune it all out while she concentrated on her escape.
She had to reach the perimeter fence.
She had to scale it.
The fence was at least ten feet high, topped with wicked-looking rolls of barbed wire that would be difficult to navigate. If she managed to escape, she wouldn’t do it unscathed.
A few cuts wouldn’t stop her.
She was getting away from these creeps tonight.
Karen headed for the fence, darting behind trees, pausing to glance behind her at each stop.
She didn’t think anyone had followed her.
But the guards could spot her at any moment.
Another tree trunk.
Another pause.
She scrambled across the dark ground to the next tree.
Karen paused again. She could now make out the perimeter fence about six feet away.
She could taste freedom.
A low growl came from the darkness.
Shit.
Karen’s ears prickled.
The hair sprang up on her arms and the back of her neck.
She jerked her gaze left and right, trying to locate the menace in the dark.
Then the outline of a huge dog materialized through the trees a few feet to her left.
One of Viper’s Rottweilers.
The animal’s teeth were bared in a fierce snarl as it focused on her.
If the Rotty was out here, his handler had to be close by.
“What is it Buddy?” A man stepped up behind the dog, shining a flashlight through the forest. “You find something interesting?”
The flashlight beam swept the trees, heading straight for Karen.
She cringed. Terror crawled under her skin, burrowing deep.
The dog’s growls grew louder. It pulled at its leash, lunging at her.
She flinched and drew back.
The flashlight beam landed on her face.
She gasped, jerking away from the light.
Go!
Karen leapt forward, sailing toward the fence.
CHAPTER TWO
8 hours earlier…
“I knew it.”
Karen Williams knelt in the underbrush, leaning closer to the tree trunk. She extracted a chunk of bark with her blade. She lifted the piece of bark for inspection, noting the swarm of beetle larvae feeding on the wood.
“Western Pine Beetle.” Karen placed the bark sample into an unused collection bag. She wiped her hand on her dirt-smudged jeans. She removed her digital camera from her backpack and took several pictures of the infested trunk, making sure she photographed the serpentine galleries that distinguished Western Pine Beetle infestation. She would need evidence before she presented her findings to the U. S. Forest Service.
This was devastating news. Western Pine Beetles were known to wipe out entire stands of Ponderosa Pine.
Karen zipped her collection bag closed. She stuffed the bag into her backpack, along with her blade and her pruners.
She’d been out here all day searching for diseased or infested samples of various types of flora. It was hard to believe such a tiny little creature like the Western Pine Beetle could create such damage in this beautiful woodland.
Karen glanced around the trees. She breathed in, the fresh scent of pine filling her nostrils. Birds twittered from the forest around her. She was in her element here, deep in the woods, doing what she loved.
The late evening sun was slinking behind the mountain. It would be dark in a few hours. It was time to head back. She’d collected enough samples for one day.
A squirrel bounded up a nearby tree trunk, chattering and jerking its tail in warning.
Someone—or something—was coming.
“Don’t kill me. Please.”
The voice was faint, somewhere deep in the trees. Male.
“Shut up and move!” Another voice, louder. Mean. Also male.
The hair stood up on the back of Karen’s neck. Her arms pricked with goosebumps. What the hell? Her pulse quickening, she rose from where she crouched near the tree trunk and cautiously removed her bear spray. She had believed she was the only human out here.
A loud grunt echoed through the pines.
Karen clutched the bear spray tighter in her hand.
A second grunt followed the first.
A sharp cry of pain rang through the forest.
Shit.
Karen slipped her arms through the backpack and pulled it on. She peered into the trees.
Movement flickered through the branches deeper in the forest as a group of people appeared in a small clearing. Her heart pounding, Karen hunkered down behind a large Ponderosa pine and watched. All of the people—except one—wore black hoods with detailed red snakeskin markings. Karen shivered at the creepiness of the hoods, the intricate detail of the scales.
Though their faces were covered, their body shapes indicated they were all men. Karen guessed there had to be at least ten of them. The men were all dressed in jeans and black leather jackets or vests that contained the same words and logo on the back. As several of the men turned their backs toward her, Karen glimpsed the words written in red letters in an arc across the back
of their leather jackets: Cobras. Beneath the words was a king cobra rearing back with its hood flared and jaws spread wide.
Creepy.
The prisoner, the one man who wasn’t wearing a hood, was an attractive African American man in his mid-thirties. He sported a neatly trimmed goatee and several ugly bruises and cuts on his face.
A chill crept down Karen’s spine.
What was this, some type of cult? A biker gang or something? A white supremacist group?
Karen’s mind urged her to flee, but she remained rooted to the spot, unable to move, unable to tear her gaze away from the scene that unfolded before her.
The black man’s arms were bound behind his back. He was dressed in a black T-shirt that depicted an image of a flying bird—a falcon of some kind? Karen squinted, trying to catch a glimpse of the words on his shirt, but her view was blocked by the men who circled around him.
The prisoner stumbled to a halt. He lifted his head and glared at the men surrounding him.
“You poach on Cobras’ territory, you pay the price, Osprey,” boomed one of the hooded men. “You were warned to stay away from Tonya. If you were trying to get revenge for something I did, you went about it the wrong way. Raping her was your biggest mistake.”
Karen’s heart thundered in her chest. Osprey? Was that the bird on his shirt? A rival gang member?
He said raping.
Her heart stopped cold. The black man had raped a girl? This Tonya? Shit.
“You know I didn’t rape her.” The prisoner stared up at the man who’d spoken. “I love her. We’re about to have a baby, man.”
Karen’s stomach churned.
The hooded men surrounded their prisoner, forcing him to his knees.
Karen’s breath caught. She couldn’t watch this.
Run! Before they see you!
She couldn’t leave if those men were going to kill him.
Karen hesitated. If the men saw her, they’d kill her too.
One of the hooded men lifted a gun and pointed it at the black man’s head.
“No!” The word was out of her mouth before she could stop it.
The hooded men jerked toward her.
“Get her!”
The men exploded into action, thundering through the trees toward her.
Shit!
The man with the gun pointed it at the prisoner’s head again. “This is for fucking with me, Osprey.”
He pulled the trigger.
Karen gasped, squeezing her eyes shut as a gunshot rang out. The forest erupted with the flapping of wings as birds took to the air, startled from their roosts in the trees.
Karen jerked her eyes open. The black man lay on the forest floor, unmoving.
The other men were closing on her. Fast.
Run you idiot! Run!
Her heart in her throat, Karen stumbled backwards.
Shouted curses followed after her.
“Don’t let her get away!”
Karen spun on her heel. She forced her legs to cooperate, to keep moving, even as the men drew closer, their heavy breathing echoing through the trees.
She bounded over fallen branches, vaulted over rocks and logs. If she could elude them long enough to get back to her house, she could rush inside and lock the door.
Call 911.
And wait for the cops to arrive.
The men were gaining on her.
Twigs crunched beneath their booted feet.
Branches bent and crackled, springing back and forth as they were shoved aside by determined arms.
Oh God, keep going! Keep going!
She glanced down at her wrist GPS. She was only about a half mile from home. Following the GPS’s directions, Karen swerved this way, turned that way, leaped over another log, heading toward her small cottage in the woods.
Then her foot snagged in a large tree root.
She slammed to the ground, banging her knees and scraping her palms on the thick underbrush and pine needles that littered the forest floor.
The bear spray catapulted from her hand and landed somewhere in the underbrush off to her right.
Breathing hard, she glanced up as several pairs of legs gathered around her. Oh God, she’d witnessed a murder. There was no way in hell these men would let her leave the forest alive.
Her life flashed before her eyes. Her impromptu marriage at a young age to a man she hadn’t loved. The birth of her daughter. The affair she’d had that had caused her to lose everything. Her battle with cancer and the loss of her self-esteem. Regret surged through her for all the stupid things she’d done and the people she’d hurt along the way. This was it, then. Her final moments.
One of the hooded men stepped forward. She was certain he was the one who’d just committed murder. He peered down at her through the holes in his snakeskin hood.
“Well, well, well. What do we have here?”
CHAPTER THREE
A hand snagged in Karen’s short hair and yanked her head back, hauling her to her feet. She gasped and stumbled upright, trying to ease the pain in her scalp from the man’s fierce grip on her hair.
Rough hands spun her around, shoved her forward.
She froze.
The hooded men surrounded her. Mean eyes glared out at her from holes in their creepy hoods. Her legs trembled. Eyes behind hoods were more frightening than faces because she had no idea who her assailants were.
Karen swallowed hard.
“What you doing out here in the woods, lady? Spying on us?” The man she assumed to be their leader stepped closer. He was tall with eerie, light pinkish-colored eyes that shined with intensity at her through the holes in the hood. He reeked of authority. And meanness. His voice was hard-edged, steely. “What’s in the backpack?” He motioned to her bag. “A camera? Did you film us?”
Karen drew in a shaky breath, exhaled.
“No,” she managed to get out before the man behind her yanked at her backpack, pulling it off her shoulders.
“Hey!” She turned on him, indignation forcing the fear aside. “Those are my specimens. I spent all day collecting them in the forest.” She lifted her chin. “And I didn’t film you. Why would I?”
Pink Eyes motioned for the backpack. The man behind her tossed it to him. Pink Eyes unzipped it and pulled out her digital camera. He scrolled through the images of the Western Pine Beetle infestation Karen had photographed. There were various other photos she’d taken as well, including several endangered species, and her own personal photos of plants and animals she found interesting.
But no photos of a murder in the woods.
Thank God she hadn’t filmed them. Maybe, if she was lucky, they would let her live. She hadn’t seen their faces. She couldn’t identify them.
The man lifted that sharp, frosty pink gaze to hers.
She’d never forget those creepy pink eyes. The man probably knew that too.
He tossed the camera back into the bag. He pulled out one of her collection bags. His gaze narrowed on her through the holes in the black hood. “What the hell is this?”
“I told you, my specimens.”
He barked out a laugh. “Spec-i-mens.” He tossed the baggie to the man on his right. “It looks like damn leaf.”
If she told them about her job as a botanist, their eyes would glaze over with boredom. Not many people found botany to be as interesting as she did. Maybe if she bored them to death with the details of her job, they’d leave her alone.
“It is a leaf. I have a contract with the Forest Service to micropropagate species in decline so they can be reintroduced to areas damaged by fire and disease. I was out collecting some samples to take back to the lab for testing. Nothing more. I didn’t even know you guys were out here.”
Pink Eyes glared at her. “So she says. Who are you? FBI? DEA? ATF?”
She let out a snort. “Seriously, do I look like an undercover government agent? I’m a botanist. Honest. No one even knows I’m out here. So, can I have my backpack now, please? It took
me all day to find those samples.”
“What’s that around your neck?” Pink Eyes motioned to her identification tag. She always wore it in the forest so any forest ranger who came upon her would be aware she wasn’t doing anything illegal.
“My identification.”
He motioned to her. “Hand it over.”
Reluctantly she lifted the tag, pulling the string over her head. She tossed the tag to him.
He caught the string, perused the tag. “Karen Williams,” he murmured. “U.S. Forest Service employee.” He chuckled and met her gaze. “Tell me about your contract with the Forest Service.”
Karen shrugged. She was a botanist. Telling them what she did couldn’t hurt.
“I do micropropagation mostly. You know, plants from test tubes. It’s a way to rapidly multiply plant stock from one parent plant or source. I’m sure you’d find it very boring.”
Karen expected the man’s eyes to dull over with disinterest, but instead they perked up. “Rapidly multiply plant stock from one parent? You mean like cloning?”
“Exactly like cloning.”
His eyes gleamed. “I like the sound of that. No I love the sound of that.” His head swiveled around. His gaze focused on one of the other hooded men. “Did you hear that Stoner? Cloning plants.” He motioned the man forward. “This is your area of expertise, so I’m assigning you to this one. She could be useful to us. We won’t kill her. Yet.”
The man named Stoner stepped forward, pausing before her. Karen fought the urge to step back, forced herself to hold her ground. Stoner wasn’t as tall as Pink Eyes, but he was stockier. She stared at a wide, powerful-looking chest encased in black leather. He wore a black vest with a black T-shirt underneath. She let her gaze roam down his body, then back up. Strong arms, a well-muscled physique, trim waist. No jewelry. No visible tattoos. She guessed he stood around six foot or so, maybe a tad shorter. He emitted an edginess, a coiled strength that she sensed brewing just beneath the surface. Karen glanced up at him, her gaze locking on his hard stare through the holes in the hood. Cold hazel eyes, a greenish-blue with gold flecks around the pupils, bored into hers.
The breath snagged in her throat. Stoner was dangerous.
“So how does the process work?” Pink Eyes asked, bringing her attention back to him. “Can it be done with cannabis?”