She folded her arms over her damp shirt. God, she hated this. Sex appeal was one of her go-to weapons, and she didn’t like fighting with a man when she looked and smelled like dead fish.
“He was already covering his tracks,” she said. “His prints weren’t in the car, which means he wore gloves. Speaking of which, you need to get that car to the Delphi Center so our tracers can take a look at it.”
Jonah shook his head.
“I mean it. There could be hair, dirt, carpet fiber, latent prints, skin cells, any number of things you could have tested—”
“Since when did you become a CSI?” he thundered. “You’re a freaking receptionist, Sophie! Get that through your head! And your meddling is mucking up an already impossible investigation. Now thanks to you, besides an uncontrollable crime scene and angry parents and lawsuits to worry about, I’ve got the media wailing about conspiracy theories. And on top of everything, I have to leave town and worry about your safety the whole time I’m gone!”
She let a moment tick by to make sure he’d finished shouting before she responded. “Why would you have to worry about my safety?”
He turned to glare at her. “Because if by some chance you’re right about this, then you just announced to the world that you’re an eyewitness who can identify a coconspirator! What the hell were you thinking?”
Sophie turned to look out the window. “You can scratch my safety off your list of concerns. I barely saw the guy.”
“And I’m sure he knows that, right?”
She felt a prick of unease. “I can take care of myself.”
“Oh, yeah? Like you did last winter?”
She turned to look at him, stung by his vehemence. He must be seriously upset to take a cheap shot like that. But if he didn’t think her story had merit, he wouldn’t be worried about this. Was it possible he did believe her?
And where was he going, anyway? She hadn’t figured on him leaving town in the middle of this, and it made her uneasy. And the fact that his whereabouts should even matter bugged her.
“When do you leave?” she asked.
“Tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“I’ve got a meeting at oh-ten-hundred tomorrow. With gas stops, I’ll probably just make it.”
“You’re driving?”
He didn’t answer, just stared straight ahead. She studied his profile. His teeth were clenched, and she’d never seen him so angry.
“So, you’re worried I’ll give another interview while you’re gone?”
“Among other things, yeah.”
“Well, I’m not going to. And if it’s my safety you’re concerned about, Ric or someone else can keep an eye on me. Or tell one of your patrol cars to put me on his route or something. You don’t need to worry about it.”
Jonah shook his head. “You still don’t get it.”
“What don’t I get?”
Whatever short fuse he’d had ran out. He jerked the wheel right and whipped into a parking lot, then slammed on the brakes, making them both pitch forward.
“Damn it, Sophie! There is no patrol car to keep an eye on you, or Ric to keep an eye on you. There’s nobody but me. Don’t you understand? Nobody believes you!” She shrunk away from the blast, but he kept going. “You pulled a publicity stunt, and guess what everyone in my department thinks this is about? Publicity. As in, here comes Sophie Barrett again, looking for a chance to get her face on the news. Congratulations. Your credibility is completely shot. Was that what you wanted?”
She felt as if he’d slapped her. “Nobody believes me?”
“That’s right.”
“Not even Ric?”
His silence answered her question. It dragged on, and she started to feel sick to her stomach. Ric was her friend. Mia was her friend. Did everyone she knew doubt her credibility? Did they really think she’d lie about something like this to get attention?
Jonah sat there, jaw twitching with suppressed emotion. A cold feeling settled over her.
“What about you?”
He didn’t look at her.
“You know this case better than anybody. You think I’m lying?”
He sighed heavily and some of the anger seemed to go out of him. “Sophie …”
“Just tell me what you think. I’m a big girl. I can handle it.”
“I think you gave an honest account of what you thought you saw.”
She turned away, hoping he didn’t see how much this conversation hurt her.
“The other VW is a pretty big coincidence for me,” he said. “It brings reasonable doubt into it. I think it’s reasonable to believe that’s the car you saw, not James Himmel’s. And not some mystery accomplice.”
“So the case is closed, then,” she said bitterly.
“Far from it. Especially not after today.”
Sophie looked at him, and she knew it was all just for appearances. She’d been on the news, and now the department had to at least look as though they were following up, even if they weren’t.
Sophie turned off her emotions. “Where are you going tonight?”
“Georgia,” he said.
“This is related to the investigation?”
“I can’t talk about it.”
Which meant it was. She should take it as a good sign, although the fact that he was driving made her wonder if the department was paying for the trip or if he was off on his own. He could be kind of a maverick.
Sophie glanced around. “Take me back to the gym,” she said. “You need to get on the road.”
A tense silence filled the truck as he took a few turns and drove them back to the gym. He pulled up beside her Tahoe. The lot had nearly emptied, and she glanced around apprehensively. She hated parking lots at nighttime.
She unzipped her big purse and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “Here,” she said, handing them to him. “I’d planned to give you these tomorrow, but sounds like you won’t be here.”
“What is this?”
“Victim profiles. Even though I’m just a receptionist, I managed to find some good info and I wanted you to have it. You might be interested to know Walter Graham took out a two-million-dollar life insurance policy just a few months ago.”
Jonah thumbed through the papers, frowning. “How’d you get all this?”
“I’m resourceful.”
He glared at her.
“Alex Lovell helped me.”
“How did she get it?”
She gave him a baleful look. “You don’t really want to know that, do you? It’s like you said about the sausages.”
She shoved the door open and started to climb out, but he caught her elbow. “Want me to follow you home?”
“Don’t bother. You need to get going.”
He watched her grimly. “Keep a low profile.” He released her arm. “And try not to get in any trouble while I’m gone.”
Colonel William Fowler was rumored to be a hardass, and that was pretty much what Jonah found when he arrived on time for his meeting at Fort Benning and was left waiting without explanation for more than two hours. When the colonel finally showed up, his gaze zeroed in on the only person in his entire office wearing civilian clothes.
“Detective Macon, this way.” He directed Jonah past his assistant’s desk and into his private office. “Sorry to put you on hold.”
“No problem, sir.”
Fowler was tall, slim, and had the super-erect posture of an army lifer. Jonah waited for him to sit and took a plastic chair on the other side of a gray metal desk. The colonel’s desktop, like his uniform, was immaculate.
“All the way up from Texas.” Fowler leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “What do you think of Benning?”
“Same as I remember it.” Jonah was playing the veteran card here, and both of them knew it.
“Long trip. Wish I had better news for you.”
“How’s that, sir?”
“You’re here about James Himmel. I’m afraid I do
n’t remember a damn thing about him, besides what I read in his file on Friday. Believe we sent you guys a copy of that.”
They had. Jonah had found it to be amazingly lacking in any detail that would help his investigation. The file had been scrubbed clean of anything that might reflect negatively on the army.
“The file was pretty thin, sir. I’m here to get more. For example, the paperwork says Himmel’s commanding officer refused to reenlist him, but it doesn’t say why.”
Jonah waited for an explanation, but it didn’t come.
“I also need more on his shooting skills. I’d like to talk to someone who worked with him here at the base. I understand you were one of his instructors when he went through sniper school? That would have been nine years ago this summer.”
Fowler smiled. “Not bad, Detective. You’ve obviously done your homework. Problem is, we get more than twenty-five thousand new soldiers a year through here, and I don’t remember this one. ’Fraid you’ve wasted your trip.”
Fowler stood.
Jonah stood, too, and set his jaw. He hadn’t spent fourteen goddamn hours on the road and two hours sitting in a chair to be dismissed after five minutes.
“With all due respect, sir, I’m not finished yet.”
Fowler’s eyebrows tipped up. “Finished?”
“I’m investigating a triple homicide committed by one of your soldiers, and I have some questions I need answered.”
Fowler gave him a long, hard look, and Jonah could tell he’d just gained some ground.
“You were here in ’04, if I’m not mistaken,” the colonel said.
“That’s correct, sir.”
“How about a tour of the base? For old times’ sake.” Fowler crossed the room and opened his office door. “Get me Wolchansky,” he told his assistant. He turned and gave Jonah a crisp nod. “Master Sergeant David Wolchansky’s your man. He’ll get you what you need.”
The speed with which the master sergeant responded to the summons told Jonah two things: first, that he’d passed some sort of litmus test, and second, that this hand-off had been planned all along.
Jonah rode alongside the man now in a doorless Jeep with the windshield flipped down. The base was just like he remembered it—from the sound of rounds popping off on the small-arms range complex to the stifling humidity. Jonah watched a line of new recruits with their faces in the dirt and remembered the hell of physical training—the push-ups, the flutter kicks, the mountain climbers, the cherry-pickers. He remembered thirty-second showers and meals wolfed down on the way to more PT. He remembered running and ruck-marching hundreds of miles and then collapsing into his bed at night and getting up to do it all over again. He remembered days spent in shoot houses, and the cuts and bruises on his body from the clay simulation rounds. And he recalled thinking at the time that it was hard, but then realizing months later that none of it even compared to the brutality of real combat.
Wolchansky pulled over at an empty firing range and ground to a stop beside a wooden cabinet. Jonah climbed out of the Jeep and surveyed the area as the soldier unlocked the box and pulled out some gear.
Jonah had noticed the M24 in back and figured he was in for another test. He peeled off his jacket and tossed it over the passenger seat, then rolled up the cuffs of his white oxford shirt.
“You still shoot?” Wolchansky asked, handing him a pair of earplugs.
“Here and there.”
He nodded at the range. “I was out here this morning with a team of Rangers. One guy hit the T-zone on a target from six hundred yards.”
Well, shit. The T-zone was forehead and nose on a human silhouette.
Wolchansky handed him the rifle. “See what you can do with that five hundred.”
Any doubt Jonah had that these guys were fucking with him was long gone. He took the rifle and looked it over. It was painted a flat desert camo and had a Leupold scope.
Wolchansky grabbed a pair of binoculars off the floor of the Jeep and started walking toward the range. “I’ll be on glass.”
Jonah followed Wolchansky across the turf and tried to get in the zone. The air smelled like spent ammo and CLP oil and dirt. Jonah breathed it in and let it sit in his lungs. He found a good, flat shooting position and crouched down to look around from the lower vantage point.
The range went to a thousand yards, with signs marking each hundred. The sole target at the moment was dead center in the field at the five-hundred-yard mark. It had a red flag on top, giving him wind direction as well as another hint that this was all part of the colonel’s plan.
Jonah turned to Wolchansky. The man was typical army—thin, muscular, confident. He had the cool look in his eye of an experienced operator, versus the new Ranger recruits Jonah had seen on the way in. Those guys were hyper-aggressive and amped up on ego and adrenaline, but Wolchansky had a maturity about him that told Jonah he’d seen his share of combat. Jonah pegged him for Special Operations.
“You a Ranger?” Jonah asked him.
“I am.”
“How long you been an instructor here?”
“Two years,” he said. “I train spec ops, mostly.”
Jonah had confidence in his shooting abilities, but he wasn’t stupid. He wanted to get some info up front, just in case he failed this test.
“You ever meet Jim Himmel?”
The Ranger pulled a few rounds from his pocket and handed them to Jonah. “Worked with him in Ramadi, back in 2005.” Jonah loaded the rifle as Wolchansky gazed downrange. “He was on one of the sniper teams. Back then, our guys were clearing a hundred IEDs a week. Our mission was to find the people placing them and take them out.”
“How’d you do?”
“We got the job done, for the most part.”
Jonah examined the weapon. It was slightly heavier than the Remington he had at home because of the more sophisticated optics.
He laid the rifle on the ground and settled on his stomach beside it. From there, it was a ritual. He zeroed the scope to five hundred yards, then pulled the gun in and adjusted the butt snugly against his shoulder. He lowered the bipod to the ground, shifted his hips and his legs, and dug his toes into the dirt. Then he tucked his cheek against the stock.
He peered through the scope and was sucked into a world five football fields away.
Wolchansky settled prone on the ground beside him and picked up the binoculars.
“It was a hot area,” he continued. “We were busy round the clock. I remember in training they told us only stay on scope forty-five minutes at a time, but back then, we couldn’t stop. It was an obsession. Those crosshairs get burned into your brain, even when you close your eyes. And you don’t want to close your eyes because you think, What if I miss someone? How many of our guys are going to die because I wasn’t paying attention?”
Jonah could relate to what he was saying. He felt that way about being a cop. He thought a lot about not just the rapists and murderers and gangbangers he took off the streets, but also the ones he missed, the ones who would go out someday and hurt someone.
“First cold-bore shot, just get the splash,” Wolchansky said.
The man was giving him a warm-up shot. Jonah knew he needed it. He practiced all the time, but law enforcement snipers focused on shorter ranges—typically under a hundred yards.
Jonah settled in. He looked at the flag and got wind direction. He did some mental adjustments for drop and spin, and shifted the crosshairs up and to the left of the target.
Then he relaxed and got his heart rate down. Three deep breaths. He waited for the natural respiratory pause—the most relaxed point in the breathing cycle.
Then he stopped thinking about breathing. He stopped thinking at all. He squeezed the trigger.
The gun jerked against his shoulder.
“You’re low, about four o’clock.”
Jonah peered through the scope again. He adjusted the crosshairs. Three more breaths. Three more pauses. He squeezed the trigger.
Another ki
ck in the shoulder.
Wolchansky whistled. “That’s a hit.”
Jonah took a moment to absorb what he’d done. He didn’t know whether it was luck or skill, but he was glad he’d done it.
He let go of the rifle and kneeled beside it.
“Not bad.” The Ranger picked up the gun and got to his feet.
Jonah stood and dusted his hands on his pants as Wolchansky gazed downrange. The sun blazed down on them, but Jonah stood there and waited because he knew he was about to get what he’d come for.
“I remember this one day with Himmel, back in Ramadi. We were in two teams, both of us on overwatch while some of our guys were out looking for IEDs. We get intel there’s this group of insurgents approaching an alley. They’re loaded down with RPGs.” The Ranger looked at him, and Jonah pictured the band of insurgents toting rocket-propelled grenades. “Finally, one of them darts across. I watched Himmel thread the needle on a sprinting target from eight hundred fifty yards.”
Jonah stood there in his dirty civilian clothes and knew he’d passed the test. And his prize was this Ranger’s information. He absorbed the words, along with their implications.
The guy had made a head shot from almost half a mile away. A moving target, no taller than ten inches.
Himmel was a sniper. A force multiplier. A deadly weapon. He’d taken fifty-three shots last week and missed most of them. And Jonah knew now what he’d only suspected before.
James Himmel hadn’t missed a thing.
Allison was finishing the remnants of her very late lunch when someone tall, dark, and handsome walked into the shop and peeled off his shades. He looked straight at Allison and approached her table as she swallowed the last bite of her soggy Italian sub.
“This seat taken?” He pulled out the chair across from her and flashed a smile.
Make that tall, dark, and arrogant. And young. Holy crap, he was young enough to be—well, not her son, but maybe a nephew.
Still sporting the smile, he sank into the chair and stuck his hand out. “I’m Tyler Dorion. And you’re Detective Doyle, if I’m not mistaken.”
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