Page 3 of Venom's Sting
A lump forms in my throat as I watch her terror-fueled sprint. At first, it’s unclear whether she’s desperate to get somewhere in a hurry, or to get away from someone or something that’s chasing her.
I begin to search around, and it takes me only a couple of seconds to see she’s being pursued by two animals. Worry niggles in my gut that they are coyotes. When I zoom in, I discover they are dogs, large hounds by the looks of things. I can see them sniff around and stop as they try and catch her scent.
I quickly get the drone back to the woman and watch her claw her way up a sharp embankment to the highway. She runs out when a car stops, and she jumps into the passenger side. When they drive away, relief courses through my body and the tight knot in my chest finally loosens.
The hounds begin running up the embankment, sniffing and pawing at the edge of the road. Suddenly, they stop and race back the way they came. I follow them with my drone hoping tocatch a glimpse of the asshole who lost control of his hunting dogs.
Eventually, the dogs run to an older man wearing hunting gear and an orange ballcap. He’s carrying a rifle. I just want to beat his ass for the tragedy that almost took place because of his negligence. But then he takes out a piece of cloth and I watch him squat down and rub it forcefully in the face of each dog. They get riled up and start running towards the road again.
That’s when I realize this isn’t all just some kind of innocent mistake on his part. He was using the dogs to track the woman. She knew she was in serious danger and that her life depended upon giving those dogs the slip.
I wasn’t about to let the old bastard get away with what he just did, so I bring my drone lower and closer to the man, hoping to capture an image of his face. Unfortunately, the sunlight glints off the side and he catches sight of my drone. Before I can focus in on his face, he raises his rifle and shoots my favorite drone right out of the sky. I don’t know who this old man is but I’m already building a nice healthy dislike for him. There were no two ways about that.
I sigh and stare off in the direction of the road the van had disappeared down. Today I’m zero for two. I didn’t manage to track the van long enough to discover where it was going, nor did I capture an image of the old man’s face. On the upside, at least the woman managed to get away.
I go back to my motorcycle and head to the clubhouse to pick up another drone. I’ve got a job to do and I’m not going to let the Legion down, not now, not ever.
Chapter 2
Amy
Earlier That Morning
I’ve spent my entire life striving to be the opposite of my mom in almost every conceivable way. I’m outspoken, brash, and I don’t let people push me around. If I want something, I set a goal for myself and I don’t let anything pull me off task. I managed to pull us up out of the dirt and keep a roof over our heads, food on the table, and made sure she got her meds every month.
Unfortunately, my mother, Carol, came from an abusive background. Because of that, she learned to be quiet, do as she was told, and tends to make herself small to keep from drawing unwanted attention. I never knew exactly what had scared her so much, though it didn’t take a genius to figure out it had something to do with my grandfather. He wasn’t physically abusive, but her childhood veered between being neglected and being treated like an unpaid servant. She’d been estranged from her father for years, I used to see him occasionally when my step-grandmother was alive, though he’d never wanted much to do with me. But after she died a year and a half ago, the visits grew less frequent.
I tried to draw my mom out of her shell, but she was too scared to leave the house most days and terrified of talking to a therapist about what she’d been through. She thought hiding away was the best way to keep herself safe.
It didn’t work. I know, because she wound up missing one day. She’s been listed as a missing person for coming up on seven months. Las Salinas is a small rural town, and an easy ride to the West Coast. It’s both heaven and hell, for me. I wanted to get out of this town so badly and move to the city, but my mother flat out refused. So, I stayed because I couldn’t bear to leave her all alone.
I believe she was abducted, because there’s no way my mom would leave me, and she’d barely go to the grocery store by herself. I was working the day she went missing, I had a photography business, and I was happily taking baby portraits while something dreadful happened to my mom. The cops think she skipped town or that she met a man and ran away with him. Which is absolutely crazy, often a man just had to look at her and she’d shrink into herself in fear. I can tell they’re just counting down the days until their chain of command lets them close down the active investigation. The thought of my mom’s case being filed in the cabinet alongside dozens of other cold cases haunts me almost as much as the thought of her lifeless body being abandoned in the thousands of acres of barren wilderness out in the California desert.
Standing in my rented room, I read over the e-mail from the pharmacy. It’s confirmation that her meds have been delivered as scheduled for the last seven months. Although it’s a small-town pharmacy with a habit of doing things their own way, I finally managed to persuade the pharmacist to give me the information. My mom had a breakdown a few years ago and at the time I was given power of attorney for her medical care. That had never been withdrawn, and my Google searches for online free legal advice suggested that it might still be active.
The hand holding my cell phone drops to my side as I contemplate what this means. My mom has a complicated medical history. In addition to her mental health problems, she’s an insulin-dependent diabetic with high blood pressure and has several other issues requiring maintenance meds. In other words, she literally cannot survive without medical support. Lifting the phone up again, I stare at the message. My lips press into a thin line as the reality of what I’m seeing sinks in. For the last seven months her meds have been going to my grandfather’s farm, the one place on earth she never wanted to see again.
My grandfather, Rufus Grayson, is the kind of asshole no one wants for a relative. My mom’s been no-contact with her father for years, and up until my mom went missing, I’d not spoken to him for almost eighteen months. Since she’s been gone, I’d visited him a few times and called to see if he had any idea where she was, the old bastard just laughed in my face. For a father, he didn’t seem to have one ounce of compassion for his daughter, and I had wondered if something had gone wrong with his mind after my step-grandmother died. Once, the farm had been a home—a cold, unfeeling home with rules and regulations, but a home none-the-less—but now it was empty, save for a bitter old man and his four freakish farmhands. All this time, he claimed to know nothing about her whereabouts, and now I come to find out, her meds were being delivered to his place.
Well, fuck this! I’m getting to the bottom of this right damn now. Grabbing my cross-body bag, I sling it over my head. Adjusting it at my waist, I cram my phone into one of the front pockets. Furious, I stomp out to my old beat-up Chevy and fire up the engine.
***
As I drive out to the farm, all the times that my grandfather denied knowing where she was circle around in my head, and I decide I’m going to get the truth out of him if it’s the last thing I do.
My mind rolls around that threat in my head to see if I have any hope of finding leverage to force his cooperation. Not surprisingly, I come up empty handed.
There will be no storming the place to look for her, because he has four rough farmhands who are all too eager to do his bidding, especially if it means putting their hands on a woman. I don’t even know if the police would entertain the idea of raiding his place or if a judge would issue a search warrant based on my gut feeling that if her meds were redirected to his house then there must be a reason. My grandfather is holding her there, or at least he knows where she’s being held.
I pull up at his place when the sun is high in the midmorning sky. He walks towards me in the same camouflage pants, khaki green jacket, and orange ballcap he always wears. This time he has his rifle cradled in the crook of his arm. His two hyperactive hunting dogs are jumping around, probably hoping for treats. I wrinkle my nose as he gets close, he smells of body odor, tobacco, booze, and dogs. Out of that collection of scents, the smell of dog is the most preferable.
His gruff voice asks, “Did you come to stay or just to snoop. If it’s the latter, you’d best leave, I’m done with you, Carol.”
Carol? I’m momentarily puzzled as to why he’s calling me by my mom’s name. Not backing down to his not-so-subtle intimidation, I tell him, “I got confirmation from the pharmacy that my mom’s meds were redirected here.”
“And what of it?” The tone of his voice is slow and careful as if I’ve finally hit upon something that might implicate him in her disappearance.
“Why are her meds coming here?” I shoot back. “You insist she’s not living here, right? You have to admit, that don’t hardly make any sense.” I was using one of his favorite turns of phrase, maybe to connect with him, and lure him into seeing me as his granddaughter instead of the enemy.