As she listened, Lucy was reminded again of the history these two shared—they had worked together on many missions. She thought back over what she’d read in Dean’s file, about Barcelona and Glacier and Virginia. Dean had seen evil before and stopped it. She knew he would again.
She trusted him. The realization calmed her somehow.
“I called this meeting to inform you that we suspect someone on the inside is handing information to this group.”
Even in the darkness, Lucy felt Dean stiffen.
“You have confirmation?” Dean asked.
“We found a fourth body in the desert.”
“I didn’t receive photos of a fourth victim,” Lucy said.
After a brief, almost imperceptible hesitation, Martin said, “He was an agent.”
“This cannot be happening again.” Dean didn’t bother to lower his voice.
“We didn’t release the information to you or anyone else. The information was kept highly classified, and yet we have reason to believe someone leaked it.”
“I don’t understand.” Dean jammed his fists into the pockets of the old bomber jacket.
“Neither do I, Dean. All I know is there’s a terrorist group, and they have an informant somewhere within our organization—either on the military side or within USCIS.”
“How is that possible, sir?”
“It happened in Glacier. We court-martialed one man and dismissed three others, because our intelligence division found suspicious activity in their accounts, but we never confirmed they were the source of the activity. We hoped they were. Now it looks as if there might have been someone above them.”
Lucy remained silent, trying to understand what she was hearing, and what it meant to her and Dean.
“Each team will work independently,” Martin continued.
“We’re going dark?” Dean asked.
“You’re only to make contact in a critical situation. Any information you have, send directly to me. Under no circumstance do you send it to anyone else. If something happens to me, you send it directly to the head of Homeland Security.
Delete all previous addresses I’ve given you. In fact, don’t even use your systems. Trash them. Assume they’ve been compromised.”
Martin doubled back to his SUV, a dark shadow in an even darker night. He returned and handed a new cell phone to Dean. He gave Lucy a small laptop.
“These systems are clean. I checked them myself. No one else has touched them.”
In the starlight, Lucy saw him reach out, shake Dean’s hand, then turn toward her. She placed her hand in his.
“I won’t insult either of you by emphasizing how critical this mission is. I know you’ll do your job. You’re both the best we have, which is why I chose you to be here. Now all I can say is be careful and Godspeed.”
He slipped into the SUV and drove off into the night. Dean opened the door to his truck. Lucy climbed in on the driver’s side. She had a hundred questions, but didn’t ask any of them. At this point, she knew she didn’t want to hear the answers.
Ω
The dashboard clock flashed four A.M. when they reached Josephine’s. Dean somehow resisted the urge to kiss Lucy’s upturned face as they hesitated between their rooms. He told himself to maintain a professional distance, though he recognized he was probably too far gone for that.
He was also exhausted and beyond furious. Someone had infiltrated their op and killed an agent.
“You want to stay in my room?” Dean asked. He softly pushed her hair back from her face, let his hand trail down her back. He wanted more than anything to take her to hold her close to him, assure himself she remained safe as she slept.
“I’m fine, Agent Dreiser.” Her voice was teasing, but as tired as his. He watched her walk down the four stairs, unlock her door, and enter her room.
When he’d entered his own room he couldn’t resist calling her on the room-to-room phones. “You okay in there, Lucy?”
“You could have tapped a Morse code on the wall, Dean.”
“Yeah, guess I could have.”
“I’m fine.”
“All right. Just checking.”
“Get some rest, Dean.”
And he had no trouble falling into a deep sleep, so deep that the pounding on his door made no sense.
He checked his clock, noted the morning light pouring through the window, heard the pounding again, and rechecked the clock. Someone had the wrong room. Lucy would use her key or shout at him to get up. So, who was banging on the door loudly enough to scare the deaf away?
With a sigh, he stood up, pulled on his jeans, and looked through the peephole. “Hang on, Jerry.”
Darting across the room, he transferred his Glock from the bedside table to the bathroom, then shut the bathroom door. Jerry continued banging on the door. If someone hadn’t died, Dean might be tempted to punch the big old guy.
He jerked the door open. “Where’s Angie?” Jerry demanded.
“It’s ten in the morning, Jerry. What are you talking about?”
Jerry stormed into his room, and Dean let him. He had nothing to hide—other than the Glock. He sure wasn’t going to find Angie. Besides, Dean wanted to get back to sleep as soon as possible. The fastest way would be to let Jerry have a look around.
“She’s not here, Jerry. Have you been by her house?”
Jerry stood in the middle of the room, having already checked under the bed and in the closet. He’d spied the bathroom and was moving toward the closed door when Lucy walked in.
She stood in the doorway, hair mussed, nightshirt hanging over a pair of jogging shorts, and suddenly Dean didn’t feel so tired.
“What’s wrong?” Lucy asked.
“Jerry lost Angie.”
“Didn’t she have a nine o’clock shift?” Lucy asked.
“Yeah, and Angie doesn’t show up late for her shift—ever.” Jerry’s eyes shifted from Dean to Lucy, then back to the bathroom door.
“Maybe she slept in.” Dean was still watching Lucy, wondering if she’d rested, if she’d had any other revelations about the people they were tracking.
“Sit down, Jerry,” Lucy said. “We’ll help you look for her. Let me get you a glass of water.”
“She’s never late, Dean. I’m telling you something’s wrong. I called her house, and she never came home last night.”
Lucy retrieved the glass of water, but nearly dropped it when Jerry’s cell phone buzzed. They all stared at each other.
“It might be Angie,” Dean said. “Better answer it.”
“Hello. Yeah, this is Jerry Caswell.” The big guy sat down on Dean’s bed. “That’s impossible. No. You must have the wrong Angie.”
Jerry slid off the bed onto the floor, still gripping the phone. “Angie Brewer? Are you sure? But, no, that can’t be right.”
Jerry let the phone slide to the floor. He didn’t seem to notice the tears rolling down his cheeks. Covering his face with his hands, he began rocking back and forth.
The person on the other end of the phone was still speaking. Lucy went to Jerry, placed a hand on his back, and murmured to him.
Dean picked up the phone. “Dreiser speaking. Who is this?” He listened for a few minutes, his eyes never leaving Lucy’s face. “Okay. Yeah. We’ll bring him over.”
When he disconnected, he held the phone a few seconds, then reached out and placed a hand on Jerry’s shoulder. “What happened?”
Finally Jerry glanced up. “I don’t know. Eaton didn’t say, but she can’t be dead, Dean. We were dancing a few hours ago, remember?”
“Yeah. I remember.” Dean crossed the space to his closet in three strides, yanked a clean shirt off a hanger. “I’ll drive Jerry to the police station in his car.”
He sat down and tugged on his boots.
Jerry continued to stare at the floor. He never saw Dean slip into the bathroom, didn’t hear the door click. Even if he’d been sitting on the bathroom counter, he wouldn’t have noticed when Dean
placed his weapon in his holster, his holster over his shirt, and his jacket over everything.
When Dean returned to the room, Lucy’s eyes met his. He could read the question she longed to ask—the same one he’d been chewing on since Jerry had collapsed on his floor. But the only person with answers would be Martin. Their orders had been clear, and this was not critical. They’d file a report later and wait for a response.
Asking wouldn’t change the grim fact of Jerry’s anguish. So the question hung between them. Was Angie’s death connected to the other victims in the desert?
“Get dressed.” Dean tossed her the truck keys. “Meet us at the police station. It’s on the corner of Main and First.”
“Jerry.” Lucy rose from the floor. “You need to go with Dean now.”
Jerry stumbled to his feet, peered around the room as if seeing it for the first time. “Yeah, okay. It’s probably a mistake. We’ll go straighten it out.” He staggered to the hallway. Pausing in a shaft of morning sunshine, he gazed out like a man hoping to find himself waking from a dream.
Dean followed, glancing back at Lucy only once. He sensed the mission had branched in a different direction, and he hoped six hours sleep would be enough for him to follow it.
LUCY SURVEYED DEAN’S room, assured herself everything looked as it should. She’d watched him pocket the cell phone. She switched off the bathroom light, paused at the open closet. Seven shirts hung buttoned at the top, facing the same direction. It reminded her so much of her brother, her breath caught in her chest and she found herself standing not in a motel room in Roswell, but in an Army barracks in Fort Benning, Georgia.
Marcos had graduated Basic Training and was scheduled to begin the Ranger Indoctrination Program. Family had been allowed to tour the barracks, and Lucy had ribbed Marcos about how he once left his clothes strewn around his room. Lucy reached out and placed two fingertips between the hangers holding Dean’s shirts and smiled, but it didn’t come from a place of happiness. It came from a place deep inside, a place she tried to keep buried. Then she would see something—like Dean’s shirts—and the pain would rise like tulips in the spring. Her heart would split like the soil. She smiled because the feeling remained familiar, although the hurt never lessened.
She had always worshipped her older brother, never more than the weekend at his graduation as he had pledged his life to Uncle Sam. Had they all stood and applauded as he crossed the stage? She’d baked him a bag of raisin-chocolate chip cookies to take with him to Airborne School. They’d all been so incredibly optimistic.
Lucy closed the closet door, leaned her head against it. The images of the bodies in the desert, Jerry sobbing on the floor, and Marcos in the military hospital all swam together and collided. The weight of peoples’ pain threatened to pin her there. She felt so completely hopeless.
The sound of a bird pulled her back. It perched on the windowsill over Dean’s desk. It was a ridiculous window, similar to the one in her room though not as long—like what they put in prisons. The size of a small microwave and too high in the wall, but the bird didn’t seem to mind. It set up a chatter, and Lucy smiled when she recognized the mockingbird’s song.
Figures.
She needed guidance and what did she get? Mocked.
As she locked the door behind her, her mind settled on another old movie she’d watched with her dad—To Kill a Mockingbird. Gregory Peck had proclaimed it a sin to kill a mockingbird—because they only make music for us to enjoy. Lucy thought of Angie dancing the night before and felt her resolve return.
She would find out who had killed her. When she did, she wouldn’t have any problem using her Sig P229 to even the score. She made her way back to her room, changed, and was driving down Main fifteen minutes later.
The police station was located on the opposite side of town from E.T.’s. Two cruisers were parked in the back, several cars to the side. Nothing indicated any great emergency had taken place.
Inside, Lucy went directly to the dispatch officer manning the desk.
Fortyish, shoulder-length red hair and unreadable eyes, the woman had a no-nonsense demeanor. “Can I help you?”
“My name is Lucy Brown. I’m here to meet Dean Dreiser and Jerry Caswell. I work with them at E.T.’s.”
“They’re with Sheriff Eaton now. I’ll let them know you’re here.”
“Please don’t interrupt them. I’ll wait.” Lucy sat down in a plastic chair. Why had Angie died? What happened to her?
“I want to see her body, Sheriff. She was my girl, and you can’t stop me.” Jerry burst from a back room, barreled down the hall, and stopped short when he saw Lucy.
Dean and the sheriff followed him into the room. Sheriff Eaton looked to be about fifty-five, a gaunt man just under six feet tall. He was balding, with a salt and pepper mustache. He glanced at Lucy, then focused on Jerry.
“I’ll do what I can, Jerry. At this point though, I can’t promise anything. I’m not going to lie to you, son. I know this is a shock.”
“It’s more than that. It’s a crime, and I am going to see her. You can’t stop me. She was my girl. You know she was my girl.” Jerry stormed out of the room, letting the door slam behind him. Never looking at his car, he took off walking down Main.
Eaton took a deep breath, stared out the window, then shook his head. “I’ve known Jerry since he started elementary school. Hate to see him go through this.” He turned and studied Dean. “You have his car keys?”
“Yeah. I’ll drive his car to E.T.’s and leave the keys with Sally.”
“Fair enough.” Eaton concentrated on Lucy for the first time. Lucy had lived with a cop long enough to know he was sizing her up. She held the man’s gaze, waited for him to speak first.
“This is Lucy Brown, Sheriff.” Dean motioned for Lucy to join them. “Lucy went out with us last night. She’s attending MIT with my little sister and came to Roswell for a summer job.”
“Sally mentioned you,” Eaton said.
Lucy cringed, thinking what such a discussion might have included. “Nice to meet you, Sheriff.” She shook the man’s hand, noticed he didn’t shy away from shaking hands with a woman the way some men did, gave him points for it.
“I’d rather have met you over a piece of pie at Sally’s. I’ll send an officer down to take statements later today.”
“So it really was Angie? She’s really dead?” Lucy’s voice shook slightly.
“Yeah, we have a positive I.D.” Eaton ran a hand over his bald head.
“Sheriff.” The dispatcher held a phone in one hand and a patrol radio in the other. “You have a call on line two. It’s the state. And Preston has a four-car pile-up on the loop. He needs backup.”
“Alice, send Truss out to Preston.”
“Truss is with—”
“I know where Truss is. Pull him off it and send him to Preston. I’ll take line two in my office.” Turning back to Dean and Lucy he shook both their hands again. “Tell Sally I’ll need to see everyone who worked the same shift with Angie last night. If she could call them all in, I’d appreciate it. I want them at E.T.’s by four.”
Dean and Lucy both nodded. After Sheriff Eaton had left, Dean led them back outside to the boardwalk. Lucy remembered her first premonition of those old westerns—of blood and death. She again pushed the image away.
“Follow me to E.T.’s,” Dean said. “No telling where Jerry went, but we’ll leave his car there and deliver the Sheriff’s message.” Dean held open her door, and she slid behind the wheel.
“What happened, Dean?” Lucy fumbled with her sunglasses, pushed them on so he couldn’t see her tears.
He reached out and touched her face. Lucy had the feeling he could look straight through the reflective tint of her glasses. Straight into her soul to the fears and doubts threatening to overwhelm her on this sunny summer morning.
“Eaton either doesn’t know what happened, or he isn’t saying. She is dead though. He had some of her items to show Jerry—clothes
and stuff. The strangest part was he didn’t want Jerry to identify the body. In fact, he won’t even let Jerry see the body.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, but I can think of one good reason. If this is a homicide investigation, maybe Sheriff Eaton isn’t ready to let anyone know the cause of death.”
Ω
Lucy set her tray down on the bar and sank onto one of the stools. Emily and Nadine tumbled into seats beside her.
“I didn’t think our last customer would ever leave,” Nadine said.
She looked perpetually exhausted. Tonight was no exception. Dark circles had crept beneath her blue eyes, and curly blond hair escaped in every direction from the ponytail trying to hold it back. Angie had said Nadine took over the care for her niece and nephew when her brother left. Being a full-time mom was taking its toll on the young girl. Lucy remembered Nadine mentioning that last night’s outing had been her first in ages.
“You three girls look like you could use a drink,” Dean said. “What’s it going to be? This one is on the house.”
Emily’s hazel eyes were red and puffy. Her hands shook as she reached in her apron pocket for a pack of cigarettes.
“Let me get that, sweetheart.” Dean took the lighter and helped her.
Emily was the oldest of Sally’s waitresses—the mother hen of the brood. Wafer thin with hair cut in a stylish brunette bob, tonight she looked her full fifty years.
“Only one though,” Dean said softly. “Angie told me you two quit together. The last thing she’d want is for you to start again. Right?”
Emily nodded, then couldn’t seem to figure what to do with her hands. She settled for shredding the wrapper.
When nobody took Dean up on his offer for a drink, he pulled a bottle of whiskey from the shelf, set out four glasses, and filled each a quarter full.
“What time did Sheriff Eaton leave?” Lucy asked.
“About nine o’clock.” Emily picked up a glass, swallowed the shot in one gulp, and pushed the glass back toward Dean.
“You driving?” he asked.
“Nope. Joe’s picking me up in thirty.”
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