He had a split-second to make a decision… stay and explain or high tail down the beach.  He decided to give the cop a moment to let him go, then he would be on his way. 

As the police car rolled close, before the officer got out of his car, he retrieved an ID he kept on hand.  It identified him as FBI, which he wasn’t, but it was a cover if needed.  He held the badge up so that the officer would be able to see it.

“FBI, I have to get down to Carova in pursuit of a subject.”

“I need to call this in,” the police officer said as he approached… hand still on his weapon. 

Ed didn’t want to injure this guy, but if he didn’t hurry up, the police officer would find himself face down, hogtied on the edge of the parking lot, wearing his own cuffs. 

“Call Lieutenant Karolyi.  And you need to get on this.  I have to get down there.”

“Slow down, Hoss.  We’ll get this sorted out, but you need to calm down or I’m gonna have to cuff you.”

“On your radio now, Officer.  That is all your warning,” Ed said to the man, giving him a look that should have let him know he was serious.  “Call Karolyi.”

“Looky here, Hoss.  I don’t care if you are FBI, you don’t talk…”

A moment later, Officer Allen found himself face down with his hands cuffed behind his back and both ankles zip-tied to the cuffs.  It happened so fast he didn’t even realize how it happened.  The man in front of him had spun around and taken his legs out from under him.  He’d been in a fair number of scrapes, both as a cop and before that, but he’d never been handled like that.  He’d knocked down burly bikers, but this guy had wrecked him before he had a chance to even think about it. 

Ed picked up Allen’s collar mic.  “Allen to Lieutenant Karolyi.”

“Karolyi here.”

“Pick up Allen at the Sandbridge beach gate,” Ed said before dropping the mic, locking the gate and driving away in the Jeep. 

Officer Allen didn’t think he would ever live this down.  He just wondered what the hell had just happened.  He still didn’t know how he was taken down and subdued that fast. 

Ed made for the narrow strip of hard sand closer to the receding tide. 

***

Riley had Jack.  He’d have rather had Amy.  She was smaller and he thought she’d be easier to manhandle.  And he wouldn’t have minded groping her a little.  Instead, he had this dude…  He looked at Patrick and tried to copy his movements.  He put his forearm around Jack’s neck and held the knife to his side, ready to stab into him if he tried anything.  Paul was prattling on about some lesson, but he wasn’t really listening.  He was just trying to make sure that Jack Dixon didn’t get loose from him.  He couldn’t see Jack’s face, but Amy had defiance in her eyes.  If she weren’t small and pretty and a girl, that look might have scared him. 

“All of this is your fault, Amy.  If you hadn’t disrespected me by cheating with him, none of this would have happened.  So, everything is on you.  You realize that, right?” Paul said.

“No, Paul.  You broke up with me.  You weren’t even talking to me.  Jack and I never went out until after that party… which you apparently invited yourself to.  But, if you really think this is all on me, why don’t you let him go and just teach me the lesson.  What are you going to do, beat me?  Rape me?”

“That isn’t how this is going to work, Amy.  You can’t tell me what to do.  You’re the one that’s been a cheating whore.  I’m the victim.”  His voice started to rise.  He was losing his temper.  “Now you have to watch him suffer because you are a whore.”

“Paul,” Jack said quietly.  He was trying to use modelling behavior.  He’d learned a little about conflict resolution in Scouts, and while they never envisioned this, he was trying to use whatever tools he had at his disposal.  “Blame me, Paul.  I’m the one that enticed her.  Take it out on me.  Let Amy go.  You can’t blame her.”

“Fuck you, Jack.  I AM going to take it out on you.  But you both get to watch the other one getting their lesson.”

“What’s the matter, Paul?  Are you afraid of me?  Here I am, tied up and you have your brother holding me at knife point.  Are you scared of a hundred-pound little girl, Paul?  Don’t think you could take me in a fight.  Wow.  I never took you for a scardy cat,” Amy goaded. 

Amy and Jack were working at cross purposes.  Jack was trying to de-escalate Paul, but Amy was trying to goad him into fighting her.  As Jack started to think about it, he wasn’t seeing any results his way.  Maybe he could turn Paul’s wrath on him.

“That wouldn’t even be fair,” Jack said to Paul.  “I’m not quite your size, but at least it shouldn’t be as embarrassing as picking on a girl.”

Riley whispered in Jack’s ear, “shut up, he’ll kill you.”

A moment later, Ed came on the channel, “Same with Jack.  He got a call and Sharon said he tore out of the driveway.  I think everyone needs to go on alert.  I have contacted local PD and put an alert on his car.  Alpha, what car is Amy in?  I’ll get an alert on that, too.”

“1969 Camaro Z-28.  Dark green… Fathom.  Fathom Green.”

“Roger, Alpha.  We’ll find them,” Ed reiterated, as much for himself as for Bill.

“Three?  This is Two.  I’m on my way to pick you up.  I’ll be in the Blazer.  Give me 10 minutes.”

“Roger that, Two.  I’ll be ready to load up.”

***

Paul was pleased with himself.  It was almost too easy.  He’d been able to buy a tranquilizer gun from a veterinarian supply company.  That and the loaded darts had cost him ten thousand dollars, but he would be able to put both of them to sleep with one shot each.  And when he called and told each of them he’d grabbed the other, they both came running.  They obviously hadn’t called each other… they just reacted.  It was perfect. 

Now both were bagged and in the back of his Dad’s van, out cold.  They both seemed to have an ok pulse, so he probably was going to be able to give them a good lesson before he killed them.  Now he just had to get them to the beach.  It sucked that he had the van, but he could swap for the Bronco at the house.  He just hoped he didn’t have to deal with Candy.  He’d shoot her if she tried to stop him.  Right now, he thought he might even shoot his Dad if the old man tried to interfere. 

***

Ed keyed up his radio to the team, “Vehicles located.  They were at Murphy’s warehouse.  The door was open and there were no signs of a struggle, but also no signs of Amy, Jack or Paul Murphy.  I am certain he picked them up there, but I don’t know how.  We need to find him.  And it needs to be fast.  We don’t know what vehicle to look for, either, aside from the Bronco, BMW and the VW van.”

Four and Five had already decided to fly around looking for the VW Van.  That would be an unusual vehicle, and easy to spot from the air.  They were flying around between Southern Shores and Oregon Inlet, concentrating mostly on the residential areas near Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills.  They didn’t want to appear obvious, but they wanted to see as many driveways and parking lots as they could.  If the Murphy group, as they had started calling them, were paying attention, a chopper running a grid pattern over their neighborhood would tip them off.  For the bulk of the morning, the only time they weren’t in the air was when they were sitting on the ground at Dare County Regional Airport getting fuel.  The extra seat time is getting me a whole lot more comfortable flying this new bird, Duke thought to himself. 

***

There was a lot of discussion between Melody and Gunny about how to best be utilized.  They wanted to get involved in the search, but both felt that the beach house wasn’t out of play.

“Is the beach accessible from the north?” he asked.

“Technically… kind of,” she replied with a grimace.  “There are a few passes that exist for people to drive south from Sandbridge, in Virginia Beach.  But for the general public, no.”

“What if the general public was willing to shoot a gatekeeper?”

“Honestly, Will, I don’t know if there IS a gatekeeper.  There might just be a lock and a key.  Bolt cutters might be all the that’s needed.”

“Damn.  That means that if we leave, there is a chance Murphy could get behind us and back to the beach house.”

“Will, I don’t think those kids would leave that house alive if he gets them there.”

“Team, this is One.  Echo and I are staring at the beach house.  We want to get in the game, but if Murphy gets behind us, he would be free to act here.  Echo thinks that Candy and Missy will visit again before leaving.  Alpha, Omega, do you guys think we should head south and join the search?”

“Negative, One.  Stay put.  I trust Echo,” Ed said.  “You’ll know as soon as we get another whiff of them, and we’ll reconfigure then.”

Gunny felt helpless.  And he did NOT like feeling helpless.  He decided to go check out the state line and see if there were any obstacles on this end.  He’d seen the fence across the beach, and it looked as if it was designed more to stop the horses in the area from walking across the state line than anything else.  It kind of annoyed him… the horses had been here longer than either of the states had existed. 

The legends said that the horses had been left by Spanish Conquistadors when they were done with them.  That was almost five hundred years ago.  They had survived through adapting to their harsh environment.  They ate local plants and got the water they needed from that.  They had struggled through countless major hurricanes that wiped entire communities off the map.  The very shape of the Outer Banks had changed, inlets closing in one place and opening in another, dunes rising and falling.  Still, the horses wandered the beach and thrived.  When Sir Walter Raleigh’s Roanoke Island settlement was created, and then disappeared, the horses were here.  As hundreds of ships perished in the dangerous waters offshore, the horses were here.  When Orville and Wilbur Wright made their history changing flight just south of here and the horses were there watching.

Once upon a time, they had been military horses, ridden by men to accomplish the goals of their owners.  But now, they had reverted to wild.  And as Gunny walked along the beach to the state line, looking over and seeing a group of horses cresting the dune heading toward the beach, he stopped to look at them.  Oddly, the horses that had been pulled from the herd and pressed into service were once again gentle.  Not only that, but they were often used as trail horses for children because of their gentle nature.  There was even a Scout Troop that had been based on the Outer Banks, years ago, that required each of their Scouts to catch and ride one of the feral horses.  Yes, Will Grafton, Gunny, loved being around the Banker Horses, those proud descendants of Spanish Mustangs that had carried the Conquistadors all those years ago.  He wondered if he liked the horses because they made him think about himself.

Looking at the ugly fence made Gunny want to cut it down.  Who were the men that thought these horses didn’t belong on the other side of the line in the sand?  What gave them the right to tell these magnificent creatures, adapted perfectly to the land, that they were no longer welcome on the lands they had roamed since before the government even existed? 

The fence went out into the ocean, and then back over the dunes.  But upon examination, Gunny found that there indeed was a gate, and aside from a length of chain and a padlock, it could be swung wide and vehicles could pass.  There was rust on the hinges and the chain, but the sand had been cleared around the swing of the gate at some point in the recent past.  His guess was that the gate was kept clear and perhaps opened a few times each year for maintenance purposes by the wildlife refuge or state park to the north. 

All it would take to get through the gate is half a minute and bolt cutters.  It might stop the horses, but it wouldn’t stop anyone that was bent on getting past it.

He walked back to the beach house they referred to as “north 4 by 4 beach” or just north beach.  Maybe he would rustle up some breakfast for himself and Melody.  He thought he’d seen some eggs and bacon in the fridge. 

***

As dark approached, Paul pulled into the garage at the house in Kitty Hawk.  He unloaded the unconscious bodies of Amy and Jack and put them in the back of the Bronco.  It was barely after five, so he had almost seven hours before the plane departed.  He and Sean had packed the BMW and the VW van with things that were destined for the trip, including hiding the remaining cash in the two vehicles.  They were going to see if Tio would be able to help with converting cash, but even if he didn’t, they had close to eight million dollars that should be available in accounts, and another three million in cash.  The target was one million in cash. 

After getting things packed, he was ready to head out to the beach house.  Candy had insisted on coming.  She said that she needed to pack up a few things of hers and Missy’s from the house.  When they had last left the house, they didn’t know they were heading out long-term, or they would have prepared. 

Paul really didn’t want her to go, but he was having a hard time saying no… and then Riley and Patrick wanted to come.  There was no good reason for them to join in, but he supposed that the extra hands might come in helpful if he encountered any resistance from Amy and Jack… or Candy.  If anyone got in his way, he was just fine with shooting them.