She rushes into the bathroom, grabs the raincoat and cap from the floor, then dashes to the fireplace.
Rap-rap. Somebody’s knocking on the door to the bedroom.
She throws the coat and cap into the fireplace, cranks on the gas.
An instant later, flames engulf the clothing, and black smoke wafts up the chimney.
More knocking.
“Ma’am.” The muffled voice of the ex-Marine. Walden, head of house security.
“What is it, Walden?” She watches the last of the rain jacket melt and burn away.
“You wanted a car and a driver at five o’clock,” he says. “To go back to the hospital.”
Sarah looks at her watch. It’s 4:55.
Her robe stops at the middle of her thighs. She tightens the sash, walks to the entryway, opens the door.
Walden is standing on the other side, wearing his usual outfit: a pair of cargo khakis, a black polo shirt, and dark athletic shoes.
“I’m glad you’re here.” She points to the window. “I heard something outside.”
The movement shifts her robe open slightly, and Walden tries not to stare at her cleavage.
“What, uh, did you hear?” he asks.
She motions him in, shuts the door. The warmth starts in the pit of her stomach, spreads upward.
He walks to the window, looks outside. She stares at the khakis, tight around his ass, the biceps straining the material of his shirt.
“When does my husband’s plane land?” Sarah says.
Walden doesn’t answer.
“He’ll go straight to the hospital, I would imagine.” Sarah’s thighs tingle.
“An hour.” Walden turns around, no longer making a pretense of looking outside. “Touch down a little before six.”
Sarah tugs on the robe’s belt.
The garment falls open. The material feels rough as it moves across Sarah’s skin, delicious against her breasts. Cool air washes over her body.
“We shouldn’t do this,” Walden says. “Not again.”
She walks toward the man, a smile on her face, a feeling of peacefulness in her soul.
The voice of her grandfather: Fuck him, Sarah. Fuck him good and hard.
- CHAPTER EIGHTEEN -
Whitney and I got back into the Suburban, the AC a welcome relief.
A large panel van with government plates pulled up next to us. Several people in hazmat suits got out. They waved at Whitney and trudged over to the nearest gate leading to the transformers.
“Oh joy. The EPA is here.” Whitney rubbed her eyes. “Just in case we were running short on paperwork.”
“Hope those suits are air-conditioned,” I said. “Otherwise, you’re gonna need an ambulance crew for when they get heatstroke.”
She put the transmission into drive. At the same time her cell rang. A one-sided conversation ensued, Whitney doing most of the listening. She was finished by the time the main office for the power plant appeared.
“The sniper’s location.” She stopped in front of the office but didn’t park. “The crime-scene guys are finished. We can check it out now.”
Price Anderson stood on the curb by the front door of the building, watching.
“This has been fun,” I said. “Really it has. But I need to get back to work.”
“The Texas Rangers are sending another team to help with your murder investigation,” she said. “Your boss, Jerry—he’s signed the paperwork granting you extended leave.”
“Jerry wouldn’t do that without talking to me.”
“He’s probably too busy figuring out what to do with all the money from the new USDA housing grant that just came through this afternoon.”
Overhead, a pair of buzzards circled a spot on the other side of the switching station.
“There’s this undersecretary at the Department of Agriculture I know,” she said. “He fast-tracked the county’s application.”
“Well played.” I nodded in admiration.
The Bible says faith can move a mountain. So can the US government, if they turn on the money spigot.
“But I’m going to pass on this one,” I said. “No more contracting work for me.”
A moment of silence. Whitney picked at the nail on her ring finger with her thumb.
“You still have active indictments on the books,” she said. “I hate to bring those up, but I’d be more than happy to get the DOJ involved if need be.”
I didn’t say anything.
During my time as a DEA contractor, I’d been an unwilling participant in actions where a number of felonies had been committed.
“Leavenworth sucks the big one,” she said. “From what they tell me.”
Several years before, I had been involved in a situation where a lot of lives had been lost as a result of clashes between a competing contracting firm, the feds, and several drug cartels.
Shit rolls downhill, as they say, and, being at the bottom, I’d found myself neck deep. The government didn’t want to prosecute me because I might name names in an open court. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t, or threaten to at least, if they felt the need.
We were still in front of the main office for the Black Valley Generating Station, idling on the gravel road, cool air blowing on our faces.
Price glared at us, hands on his hips. He looked hot and sweaty standing there.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I asked.
She turned, looked in my eyes.
“I’m not a fed anymore, or a contractor,” I said. “You have access to a lot of qualified people for something like this.”
“The FBI as well as my best agents,” she said. “They’re going to be handling the investigation. We’ll be throwing everything we’ve got at this.”
“See?” I smiled. “That’s how it should be done. FERC and the FBI. An alphabet-soup operation all the way.”
“But I want an extra set of eyes.”
“Why?” I asked.
A few seconds of silence. Then:
“You know who the attorney general is, right?”
I nodded.
The AG was the cousin of the treasury secretary, both scions of an old East Coast family. Regattas at the yacht club, summer homes on the Vineyard, custom-made Brooks Brothers underwear. That sort of thing.
“The attorney general owns a very large chunk of Sudamento stock,” she said. “One of his family’s trusts does, technically.”
I swore under my breath.
Sudamento was a publicly traded company, a perennial Wall Street favorite, like Enron but without the scandal and ruined lives.
If Whitney’s team uncovered anything that might affect the stock price, there would be pressure to change the course of the investigation. Because money trumps everything, even terrorism.
“Do you think Price is involved?” I asked.
She shook her head. “But he’s a college dropout making a hundred and a quarter a year. You tell me where he’ll end up in a showdown between his boss and the feds.”
Outside, Price Anderson continued to stare at us like he was trying to read our lips.
“Obviously, I’d prefer to use federal agents for everything.”
I nodded. “Obviously.”
“But after the first incident, and considering the AG’s potential—oh, how shall I put it . . . entanglement—I decided that we needed an outside perspective.”
“The first incident?”
“We’ll get to that later.” She waved a hand dismissively.
“How many have there been?”
“I cast a wide net, looking for the right person,” she said. “Contractors, ex-military, retired federal agents. You’re the most qualified for what I need.”
“And what, pray tell, made you think that?”
She ti
cked off the list on her fingers. “Your military background. You have a pretty long resume in law enforcement, both federal and local. You’ve had extensive counterterrorism training.”
Her voice trailed off, one finger left to go.
“And . . .” I arched an eyebrow.
“Your personnel file. Quite an interesting document. If you read between the lines, it’s almost like you don’t know how to quit.” She paused. “That’s what I’m looking for. Someone who won’t quit.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Your job is to run a parallel investigation,” she said. “Off the books. You report to me only, and I go straight to my boss at Homeland.”
“How come Price knows about me? Doesn’t that kinda negate the off-the-books part?”
She didn’t reply.
“He told me this morning that the feds sent him.”
Whitney chewed her lip.
I remembered the rest of the conversation. “Hell, he said that Sudamento was going to pay my fee.”
“FERC doesn’t have any money in the budget right now for outside investigators,” Whitney said.
“So the people I’m potentially going to be investigating are paying my bill?”
“You’ll be a licensed FERC agent. Working undercover.”
“Ferc that,” I said. “I’m liable to end up roadkill. Literally.”
She remained silent, staring out the window.
“But that doesn’t matter, does it?” I finally understood. “Because one of the other criteria you’re looking for is someone who’s expendable.”
My initial reaction to her manipulations was anger. Then came a level of excitement that I hadn’t experienced in a long time. It felt good to get back into something other than the business of being sheriff in a sparsely populated county.
A crew of workers emerged from the office and strode toward the towers.
“I picked you,” she said, “because you once broke an FBI agent’s jaw. Shit that petrifies normal people seems to have no effect on you.”
“Did you ever consider that maybe I’m slow in the head?”
Price marched to Whitney’s side of the SUV, stood by her window. She didn’t appear to notice.
“Are you gonna take the job, Cantrell? Or do I call the DOJ?”
I looked at Price. He was scowling at Whitney, his lips pressed into a thin line.
“Are you in love with him?” I asked. “Or was it a friends-with-benefits kind of thing?”
“He’s got a good line of bullshit,” she said. “You’d think at my age I’d be immune to that.”
“We all have our hang-ups.” I shrugged. “He’s not a bad guy, really.”
She sighed. “Yes, he is.”
Price tapped on the glass.
Whitney unlocked the doors, rolled down her window. “Get in already. I’m tired of watching you sweat your nuts off.”
- CHAPTER NINETEEN -
The ridge above the substation, the sniper’s perch, was part of a farm owned by a man named Thompson.
Whitney parked under a live oak tree that was in front of a one-story wood-framed house. The home was old but freshly painted, white with navy-blue trim. An ancient AC unit the size of a small refrigerator hung out of the front window.
Thompson was sitting on the steps leading to the porch. He was drinking a can of Keystone Light, wearing a pair of overalls and a faded denim work shirt. His skin was creased and leathery from the sun, age hard to determine, sixtyish or older.
Whitney, Price, and I exited the black Suburban. Because I was the county sheriff, I was designated as our spokesman.
“Howdy, Mr. Thompson,” I said. “How’re you doing today?”
He spat in the dirt.
“You get much rain this summer?” I took off my hat, fanned myself.
No reply. Just a deadpan stare and a long pull of beer.
Whitney sighed loudly. Price shushed her.
“Heard you had a little excitement this morning,” I said.
He didn’t speak. Instead he stared at Whitney like she was from Neptune.
“We’re gonna go up yonder.” I pointed to the ridge. “Have a look around.”
Thompson crushed his beer can. “Don’t suppose there’s nothing I can do to stop you.”
A moment of silence.
“No. Afraid not.” I shook my head.
This was hard country—the loamy steppes of Texas, an area romanticized as the birthplace of the rugged individual, a lone pioneer braving the elements and standing on his own two feet. People here valued their privacy and didn’t much like the government nosing around. Unless there was a farm subsidy check involved.
He stood, turned his back to us, and walked inside. The screen door slammed shut.
“I thought people in the South were friendly,” Whitney said.
“We’re not in the South,” Price said. “We’re in Texas.”
The three of us climbed back in the Suburban and headed toward the ridge. Whitney drove down a dirt road lined with hackberry trees, past a barn gray with age and a pen with several swayback horses.
A few moments later, we parked by a stock tank at the foot of a small hill where two vans were idling. Yellow crime-scene tape encircled the entire ridge.
A man in a sweat-stained T-shirt and black fatigue pants got out of one of the vans. He carried a clipboard, an FBI badge dangling from a chain around his neck. We hopped out of the Suburban and met him halfway between the vehicles.
“About time,” the man said. “It’s hot as fuck out here.”
A vein in Whitney Holbrook’s neck pulsed.
“I think you need to canvass the entire farm,” she said. “Inch by inch. Today.”
The agent swore.
I looked at Whitney. “Give it a rest. Everybody gets that you’re Alpha Woman.”
She glared at me.
“Walk us through it.” I spoke to the agent. “One step at a time.”
He shook his head slowly and then gave us the rundown, starting with the dirt track where we were all standing.
“A gray Chevrolet pickup came through here about 9:00 A.M.” He pointed to a set of tracks in the dirt. “Farmer Thompson leases the back pasture to a neighbor for his cattle. He thought that’s who it was.”
“You checked the neighbor, right?” I asked.
The agent nodded. “He hasn’t been here in a wee—”
Price interrupted. “Did you take plaster molds?”
The agent looked at me, one eyebrow arched, the unspoken question: Who the hell is the doofus in the fancy clothes?
“He’s head of security for Sudamento,” I said. “Ignore him. You’re talking to me.”
Whitney nodded approvingly.
“Yes, we took casts,” the agent said. “Won’t have anything from those until tomorrow.”
The agent then explained they were in the process of contacting all the businesses within a five-mile radius to see if any had video-monitoring systems. If so, they would get the footage and look for all Chevy trucks, hoping to get a glimpse of the occupants.
I did a rough calculation in my head and figured there were zero businesses within five miles other than the power plant.
The agent motioned toward the top of the hill and looked at Whitney. “Ladies first.”
She took a sharp intake of air but didn’t speak. Instead she began hiking up a narrow path dotted with cow manure, her heels sinking in the dirt. Ninety seconds later, the four of us were at the top, sweating like we’d run a marathon.
“Two sets of footprints,” the agent said. “Work boots like you’d buy at Walmart. Size ten and eleven. Eight spent cartridges. Remington, thirty-thirties. You can get those at Walmart, too, or any sporting goods store.”
At the base of a mesquite tree, the brown g
rass was stained burgundy. Ants swarmed the discoloration.
“That’s where Thompson found the wounded guy,” the agent said. “He was the size ten.”
“And Thompson calls 911.” I looked at Whitney. “A call which should have ended up with my people.”
No one said anything for a few moments.
Whitney spoke to Price. “Go wait in the car.”
“What?” His eyes went wide.
“This is a crime scene,” she said. “Law enforcement only.”
Price turned to me. “Can you believe this shit?”
I shrugged.
“Un-fucking-believable.” He shook his head. After a moment, he marched down the hill. When he was out of earshot, Whitney said, “Thompson’s call to your dispatcher was intercepted. Happened right after Black Valley went dark. So we sent our own people in.”
“Intercepted” was a polite way of saying that the NSA, who eavesdropped on about half of all electronic communications on the planet, heard Thompson’s call.
I knelt by the bloody grass, tried to imagine what had occurred here a few hours earlier.
“We figure Size Eleven shot him,” the agent said. “Then he took off in the Chevy.”
I looked at the substation in the distance. The transformers were an easy target.
“A Chinese guy with the Koran in his pocket.” I stood. “Almost like they wanted us to go straight for the Muslim-boogeyman angle.”
Whitney nodded. “They succeeded.”
- CHAPTER TWENTY -
Dylan is awake now, eating dinner.
Her favorites—hot dogs, mac and cheese—specially prepared by the hospital’s kitchen.
Sarah cuts the hot dog into bite-sized pieces while her husband paces in the suite’s living area, a cell phone pressed to his ear. As usual, a business crisis of some sort is brewing.
Dylan has stopped asking about going home after Sarah told her she could stay up past her bedtime and watch anything she wanted on TV.
The meal finished, Dylan flips on the television and is soon engrossed in an episode of The Simpsons, much too old for her, but Sarah has made a promise and won’t go back on her word.
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