by J. A. Jance
“Nailed the bastard!” Nick crowed gleefully over the screech of rending sheet metal. “Now call the cops.”
The uncontrollable trembling that assailed Jenny’s fingers right then made it almost impossible for her to dial. Once she had summoned help, she made a U-turn and drove back the way she’d come. Nick’s pickup, a powerful Dodge Ram, had been built to haul livestock and hay. Its air bags were deployed, but beyond minor damage to the front end it was barely dented, while all that remained of the sedan was a jumble of broken pieces. Nick had been wearing his seat belt. The shooter had not. Nick had hauled the guy out of the wreckage and dumped him in the dirty snow along the shoulder of the road, where he lay bleeding, writhing, and moaning. The weapon was nowhere in sight.
“The cops are on their way,” Jenny gasped, falling gratefully into Nick’s comforting arms.
The 911 operator, still on the line, speaking through Jenny’s phone, was asking questions in the background. “He’s hurt pretty bad,” Nick said. “Tell her we need an ambulance as well as the cops.”
Just then a dribble of blood ran down the side of Jenny’s cheek. She looked up at Nick’s damaged face and realized where it had come from.
“You’re hurt,” she said. “Your nose is bleeding.”
Self-consciously Nick wiped his face with the sleeve of his jacket. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Air bag got me full-on, but I’m a helluva lot better off than he is. That asshole was trying to kill you, Jenny.”
She nodded. “I know,” she said.
“Unless I miss my guess,” Nick added, “Maggie is perfectly fine.”
And she was.
Chapter 35
Butch was in bed and Joanna was heading there, too, when Jenny called back. “A guy just tried to kill me,” she said into the phone, almost choking on the words as she forced them out.
That jarring announcement left Joanna feeling as though her body had been plugged into an electrical outlet. With her legs no longer fully supporting her weight, she sank down onto the bed.
“Are you all right?” she asked weakly. “What on earth happened?”
“I got a message, supposedly from someone at the Lazy 8, saying that something was wrong with Maggie—that she was down in her stall and couldn’t get up. I was getting ready to come check on her, and Beth wanted to ride along. When I told her no, we agreed that if she stayed home, I would call Nick. I was here and about to turn in to the ranch entrance when a guy standing on the side of the road took a potshot at me. Nick was a minute or so behind me. He rammed the guy’s car and nailed him good. The shooter’s not dead, but he’s on his way to the hospital. The thing is, Nick wouldn’t have been here at all if Beth hadn’t insisted I have someone with me. She saved my life, Mom. She really did.”
“What’s going on?” Butch demanded from his side of the bed. Belatedly, Joanna turned the phone on speaker and then repeated some of what Jenny had already said.
“Are you okay?” Joanna asked then. “Is Nick?”
“We’re both fine. The cops are here now, and the EMTs are loading the shooter into the ambulance. I don’t know how badly he’s hurt. He was in his vehicle and starting to come after me when Nick slammed into him with his truck.”
“I can’t believe someone tried to shoot you,” Butch said. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” Jenny declared. “We found a bullet hole in the bed of the pickup right behind the cab.”
“But both you and Nick are okay?” Butch asked this time.
“We are.”
“Then please give him a huge hug from us.”
“I already did,” Jenny said with a short laugh. “I hugged him for all I was worth. But the cops are wanting to talk to us now, so I have to go. I don’t know how long that will take, but I’ll let you know what’s going on.”
“Thanks, Jen,” Joanna said. “And tell Nick from me that he’s one good guy.”
“So now Beth’s cyberboyfriend is attacking Jenny, too?” Butch asked as Joanna pulled on her robe.
“I’d say so,” she replied, “and it sounds like he’s dangerous as hell.”
“And do you think the guy who shot at her is the same guy who was messing around with Beth?” Butch asked.
“Not on your life,” Joanna answered grimly, “not in person. Guys like that are cowards. They enjoy pulling the strings to mess with others without having the courage to show their own faces.”
“What are you going to do about it?” Butch asked.
“What any right-thinking mother would do under the circumstances, and that means everything I can,” she told him. “I’m guessing deputies from the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office are the officers on the scene. First off I’m going to call Howie Fulton and let him know what’s happened. Next I’m going to call the campus cops at NAU and ask them to keep an eye on Beth. Then I’m going to pull every possible string at my disposal and put the FBI on this case, too, because I’m pretty sure this guy is connected to Beth’s Ron Cameron.”
“Sounds like we’re about to put in an all-nighter,” Butch said, crawling out of bed. “I’ll start a pot of coffee.”
In the end it wasn’t quite an all-nighter, but close. Sheriff Fulton was good enough to supply information as it became available, including the hit man’s name—Aaron Morgan. He was in St. Jerome’s Hospital in Flagstaff with what were deemed to be serious but non-life-threatening injuries that included numerous broken bones. He was also under arrest and would be interviewed by Phoenix-based agents from the FBI as soon as they could arrive on the scene.
It was almost one in the morning before Jenny finally called back. Two individual interviews had been conducted at the sheriff’s department. Nick’s had taken place in a single-person interview room. Jenny’s had been done as a group-grope in a conference room where detectives from Coconino County, FBI Agents Norris and Flores from Phoenix, and Commander LuAnn Maxfield from NAU’s police department had all joined in on the questioning process. Once the interviews were over, and with their vehicles currently impounded, sheriff’s deputies gave Nick and Jenny separate lifts home.
“What’s happening now?” Joanna asked.
“NAU is concerned that Beth’s and my presence could put other students at the school in danger. Since a bad guy might be able to figure out when and where we’ll be taking finals, we’ll be having our last exams tomorrow during the day. We’ve both been told to show up at the president’s office at ten o’clock in the morning. Someone there will administer our tests. In the meantime we’ve been instructed to speak to no one. That goes for Beth and me and for Nick, too.”
“If you’re done with finals a whole day early,” Butch said, “does that mean you’ll be home tomorrow evening?”
“I don’t know how,” Jenny said. “Beth doesn’t have a car, and my truck is currently impounded as evidence.”
“All right, then,” Butch said, “since you’re not old enough to rent a car on your own, I’ll hop in one of ours and come get you.”
“Would you?” Jenny asked. “You’re sure you don’t mind?”
“Are you kidding?” Butch returned. “If random bad guys are busy taking potshots at you, I’d rather have you here at home, safely behind our security shutters, than out driving around on your own.”
“Thank you, Dad,” she said gratefully. “I can’t wait to be there.”
It wasn’t an easy night. As sheriff, Joanna was accustomed to being the one in charge and running the show. This time around she was on the outside looking in. About 3:00 a.m. a few more details slipped in under the official radar via a phone call from Special Agent Robin Watkins.
“Okay,” she said, “here’s what we know so far. Shooter’s name is Aaron Morgan.”
“I already knew that much,” Joanna said. “Sheriff Fulton gave me the name, but not details.”
“Turns out Aaron’s an ex-con from Las Vegas who’s about to go down on charges of attempted murder along with a weapons-possession charge. With an offer on th
e table of his pleading guilty to reduced charges, he’s singing like a bird. According to him the real target tonight was Jenny.”
A shudder of dread shot through Joanna while Robin continued.
“Morgan was hired to do this by someone who paid for his services via a Bitcoin transaction, half on signing and half on delivery. He’s given the FBI access to his Bitcoin account. One of the FBI’s blockchain agents in D.C. has suggested that we attempt to pull off a sting. We’ve asked the Coconino County authorities to report the incident as a fatality shooting with the identity of the victim being withheld pending notification. Meanwhile they’ll have someone posing as Morgan report back that he’s successfully completed the mission. When the final payment appears in the shooter’s account, we may be able to use emerging technology to peel back the blockchains and establish a trace.”
“Will the FBI do it?” Joanna asked.
“Looks like,” Robin replied.
“And for now we’re all supposed to pretend that the shooter succeeded and Jenny is dead?”
“That’s the whole idea,” Robin answered. “Fortunately, it was the middle of the night and there was no on-scene media coverage at the time. Everyone involved—Jenny, Nick, and Beth—is being asked to keep quiet about what really happened. As long as the bad guy thinks it worked, he’s unlikely to try to make a second attempt, at least as far as Jenny is concerned. Just in case, however, LuAnn Maxfield has posted night-shift officers to keep all entrances to Conover Hall under surveillance.”
That should have been some small comfort for Joanna, but it wasn’t.
“How long is all this going to take?” she asked. “Until the bad guy is taken into custody, both Jenny and Beth remain in serious jeopardy.”
“Agreed,” Robin said, “and we’re moving heaven and earth to make it happen sooner rather than later. In the meantime we’ve all got to pull together in order to make the unsub believe his hired gun succeeded. In other words, mum’s the word.”
“Understood,” Joanna said, “I won’t say a thing to anyone.”
She and Butch finally crawled back into bed at four. “At least Jenny’s safe,” Butch murmured into Joanna’s ear as she snuggled against him. “If it weren’t for Beth and Nick, we’d be planning a funeral right now instead of planning Christmas.”
“I know,” Joanna said. “We were all very lucky.”
And that was enough to let her fall asleep at last.
A bare three hours later, the smell of brewing coffee lured her into the kitchen, where Butch was up, dressed, and getting ready to head out.
“You’re up early,” she said.
He grinned at her. “I’m all for going and getting those girls. It’s a five-hour drive, and I want to be there and ready to head back home when they finish up at noon. I sent a text to Carol letting her know what’s up, and she’s on her way over,” he added as he poured coffee into two oversize thermal travel cups.
“Did you tell her why?”
“I told her Jenny was having car trouble.”
“But doing two five-hour trips in one day is going to be tough on only three hours of sleep.”
“Not to worry,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll drive up and have Jenny do the honors coming back home. I’m taking your car, by the way. There’s more room in the Enclave than in my Subaru.”
“Travel safe,” she said, giving him a peck on the cheek as he headed for the door. She was tempted to go back to bed, but with Denny already stirring in his room, there was no point. She hit the shower instead.
Chapter 36
The text from Aaron Morgan came in on Gerard Paine’s specially designated burner phone just after three in the morning. There was no explanation as to why it had taken so long for Aaron to get back to him after his mission, but the text consisted of a single word: DONE.
Gerard wasn’t what you would call a trusting individual. All night long he’d been monitoring Flagstaff- and Phoenix-based news sites. On the ten-o’clock news broadcast in Flagstaff, there was a report of a shots-fired incident on Lazy 8 Road south of town, with details to come as they became available. That gave Gerard hope that his plan had worked. At 2:30 a.m. there was a breaking-news update on a Web site that reported an incident in which one person, an unidentified female student from NAU, had died from gunshot wounds.
In other words, Gerard was pretty sure Jenny Brady’s death was a done deal well before Morgan sent the text. The GPS software Gerard had installed on Morgan’s phone told him that the text had been sent from Kingman, Arizona. In other words, with his mission accomplished, Gerard’s hired gun was on his way home to Vegas. Gerard was almost gleeful as he keyed in the codes for the Bitcoin transfer. Jennifer Ann Brady was dead. That meant that Beth Rankin would soon be carrying a lifetime’s worth of guilt in that regard. To Gerard’s way of thinking, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.
As for the rest of it? Later today or maybe, at worst, tomorrow, his postage-due package would arrive on Madeline and Kenneth Rankin’s doorstep. In that moment Gerard’s plan of ultimate revenge would be complete.
Unfortunately for him, he was an individual who put far too much faith in technology. After sending the Bitcoin final payment, he went back to tending his flower garden and spent the next hour or so chatting up Samantha Toon in Billings. Had he checked the GPS on Aaron’s phone, he would have seen something both surprising and chilling, because suddenly the phone was moving again, only this time it wasn’t continuing north to Las Vegas. Nope, it was actually heading southbound—and not in a car either.
Shortly after leaving that gas station by car, the phone suddenly went airborne, having been moved from a Mohave County Sheriff’s Office vehicle and loaded into a Phoenix-bound helicopter. Less than twelve hours later, his phone, along with Beth Rankin’s phone and computer, would end up in the FBI laboratory in Washington, D.C., where a team of government IT experts would work frantically to tease out all of “Ronald Cameron’s” many secrets.
The good guys were coming for Gerard Paine, and he had no idea.
Chapter 37
A somewhat bedraggled Joanna made it into the office in time for the end of roll call if not the beginning of it. She didn’t like having to keep a tight rein on what was going on with Jenny in Flagstaff. The day before, she’d learned from Dick Voland that there was a serious leak somewhere inside her department, and she didn’t want to take any chances that might further endanger Jenny and Beth or interfere with the FBI’s efforts to take down Beth’s tormentor.
Once roll call was over, Joanna ventured into the bullpen to huddle with her team of investigators. Seeing Ernie there conferring with Jaime and Deb made Joanna realize that she had not yet nailed down bringing on the next member of the team. With Ernie leaving in less than a month, she had to make that move soon.
“Hey, guys,” she said. “What’s up? And how did things go last night?”
In her late-afternoon phone call with Frank Montoya, the two of them had strategized over how best to deal with the Nite Owl issue. The bar was located close to the Sierra Vista city limits. When Floyd Barco closed up shop, there was a fifty-fifty chance that he’d head west into town or east into county territory. Joanna and Frank had agreed to plant patrol cars on both sides of the line with officers lying in wait.
“Turns out our guys won the toss,” Ernie told Joanna. “Barco’s in our lockup on a DUI charge along with drug possession. He blew a 0.15 on the Breathalyzer. Jaime and I have some paperwork to clear up here, but when we have our chat with him, care to sit in?”
“Yes, but I’ll sit out rather than in,” Joanna said, preferring to watch the proceedings from the far side of a two-way mirror rather than inside the room itself. “How do you plan to play this?”
“We know from several sources that there’s a lot of drug dealing going on inside the Nite Owl and that Floyd Barco is part of it. We’re going to lead him around to the scopolamine factor in Leon Hogan’s death and see what breaks loose. If he thinks we’
re about to pin him on a conspiracy-to-commit charge, I’m guessing he’ll talk.”
“Have you discussed any of this with Arlee Jones?” Joanna asked.
Ernie nodded. “He says that if Barco plays ball and gives us the goods on Randy Williams and Madison Hogan, Arlee is willing to kick Barco’s drug-dealing charge back to simple possession and drop the DUI charge altogether. He’s going to have to get that taillight fixed, though,” Ernie added with a grin.
“Okay,” Joanna said. “Call me when he’s in the box.” She glanced around the room. “What else is happening?”
Deb raised her hand. “Later on today I’m planning on bringing Madison in for a little chat. With the Department of Public Safety off the case, she’s probably thinking she’s in the clear. I’ll put her initial worries to rest by letting her know we’re looking into drug activities at the Nite Owl. Later on I’ll segue into what happened to Leon. Once we have her on tape, we can bring Randy in to see what he has to say.”
Joanna nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Compare and contrast sounds like a good strategy. Stay on it and keep me apprised.”
On the way back to her office, Joanna stopped by Kristin’s desk. “Is Garth Raymond on duty today?”
A few clicks on Kristin’s computer brought up the duty roster. “He’s off,” she said a moment later.
“Thanks,” Joanna said. She started for her desk, but Kristin held up her hand.
“Sunny Sloan just called and would like to have a word at your convenience.”
“Tell her to come on in,” Joanna said. “I’m available.”
Sunny, the widow of Joanna’s fallen officer, Deputy Dan Sloan, had worked in the department’s front office for several years now. Joanna had offered Sunny a job as a way of helping a struggling single mom support her child but also as a way for Joanna to assuage some of her own guilt over Dan’s death. When Sunny had first shown up, she’d been a diffident and almost painfully shy young woman. Now in her late twenties, she was gradually growing more confident and appeared to be coming into her own.