Force of Nature

by C. J. Box

  Reed put his coffee down and looked away, a thoughtful expression on his face. “I understand,” he said. “I could see the sheriff announcing this guy’s name in the press as our suspect so it looks like we’ve made some progress in the investigation, and drive this Nemecek underground. And if we didn’t find him right away, McLanahan would hang you out to dry and say you’ve been withholding evidence. He desperately needs a scapegoat.”

  “I’ve played that role before,” Joe said.

  “I know.”

  Joe turned, walked past Marybeth in the kitchen, and found a six-pack of Coors in the refrigerator. He twisted the cap off a bottle.

  “Want one?” he asked Reed when he returned.

  “I want one so bad I could die,” Reed said. “But I’ll have to pass.”

  “Sorry,” Joe said, recalling Reed’s problems with alcohol a few years before. “I forgot.”

  “So what’s next?” Reed asked, gesturing with both hands to include the whole of it all.

  “I might go over their heads,” Joe said.

  “You mean McLanahan and Dulcie Schalk?”

  “Yup.”

  “To who? The governor?”

  Joe shook his head. “He can’t help me. But there’s a guy named Chuck Coon in the FBI in Cheyenne. I’ve worked with him a few times. He’s by the book all the way, but he might be interested in this, and he’ll have better resources to find out something about Nemecek—or rule him out.”

  “McLanahan’s not going to like that,” Reed said, obviously savoring the prospect.

  “Too bad,” Joe said. “When this guy—whether he’s Nemecek or Bob White or both—approached my wife, he made it personal. I’m going after him with both barrels.”

  “And you think the Feds might know about him?”

  Joe took a long drink and lowered the bottle. “Feds can find out about other Feds easier than we can.”

  Reed sat back. “‘Other Feds’? Nemecek is a government guy?”

  “Used to be,” Joe said. “I don’t know his status right now. He used to be in Special Forces with Nate.”

  “And you think the FBI can find something on him? You might be giving them too much credit,” Reed said.

  “Maybe.”

  Reed nodded toward the kitchen and lowered his voice. “You’re married to a tough lady, you know. My wife would have fallen apart if that guy showed up at her office.”

  “She’s tough, all right,” Joe said. “Do you know what she’s doing in there right now?”

  “I gather she’s calling airlines and hotels,” Reed said. “I think you’re all going on a little vacation. And I think it’s a damned good plan, myself.”

  “Vacation?” Joe said. “How are we going to afford that?”

  AFTER REFILLING Reed’s cup and asking him to stay around a little longer, Joe ducked into his office and booted up the computer. Marybeth was still occupied, although when he heard her read her credit card number to the agent on the other end of the line, he assumed she was about done.

  He was pleased to find out the phone company had restored service and he could both use the house phone and access the Internet. He sat down and opened the browser and scrolled through the bookmarks and clicked on the falconry website. His scalp crawled when he saw there was a single new entry:

  NOTHING I TRY WILL WORK, AND I’M GETTING FRUSTRATED AND CONCERNED. IT’S A DISASTER ON EVERY FRONT. I JUST WANT TO SAY TO THAT BIRD, “FLY AWAY NOW AND DON’T LOOK BACK.”

  JOE PUSHED his chair away from the monitor and rubbed his eyes. Nate was often obscure when he spoke, and there were times after they talked when Joe wondered what his friend was trying to say. But this seemed extremely clear.

  In the other room, he heard Marybeth close her phone. She was in his office within fifteen seconds. She eased the door shut behind her and leaned back against it.

  “Thank God you’re home,” she said. “I hate it when I can’t reach you.”

  “Likewise,” he said, then told her what they’d found at the line shack.

  “You got my message, though?” she asked.

  He stood up and closed the gap and wrapped his arms around her. She was stiff at first, but then welcomed the embrace and burrowed her face into his shoulder. Her hair smelled good. She said, “He scared me, Joe. And what bothered me the most was how confident he was. He didn’t really threaten me, or say anything that we could use against him. There was no mistaking his intent, and who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t gotten that call.”

  “Any idea who called him?”

  “No. But it made him change his plans.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t be reached,” Joe said, stroking her back. “I wish I could have been there. But I’m very glad Mike came here.”

  “Me, too. He’s a good man.”

  Then: “Joe, he knew us. And he seemed to know you wouldn’t show up even when I told him you were on the way.”

  Joe stopped stroking her and asked, “Really? He knew my location?”

  “I don’t know about that for sure, but he knew you were in the field and wouldn’t show up to interrupt him.”

  “That’s no good,” he said. “He must be keeping close tabs on the sheriff’s office.” His mind leapt. And he couldn’t help but suspect Mike Reed in the other room, even though Reed had never given Joe a reason not to trust him. But he instantly wished he hadn’t told Reed so much.

  Marybeth stepped back and looked up at Joe. “This man, Bob White or John Nemecek, whoever he is, just oozed creepiness. I honestly had no doubt he would have hurt me if he didn’t get that call. I don’t have any doubt he will go after our girls if it would help him get what he wants.”

  “Which is Nate,” Joe said.

  Her eyes flashed as she said, “Which is why we’re leaving this place for a while. I can’t put my girls at risk any more than they are now. Or you, Joe. I refuse to let a member of our family get hurt.”

  She said it with such vehemence that there was no point in arguing, Joe knew.

  “Nate agrees with you,” he said, handing her the printout.

  She read it and handed it back.

  “You didn’t tell me you were in touch with him,” she said, hurt.

  “I haven’t been,” Joe said. “This is the first communication he’s sent since he left.”

  “I thought we didn’t keep secrets from each other,” she said.

  “We don’t, and I’m sorry. But I didn’t want you to get any more involved than necessary.”

  She glared at him, and he eventually looked away.

  “We can talk about this later,” she said. “Right now, Nate and I are on the same page. I booked us on the first flight out tomorrow morning.”

  “To where?” Joe asked with no enthusiasm.

  “Saddlestring to Denver to Los Angeles,” she said.

  “Los Angeles?” Joe said incredulously. He’d never been there and didn’t have any desire to see it. But Marybeth had lived there for a few years while growing up, and she was somewhat familiar with the city.

  She said, “I can’t think of a better place to get lost, can you? I don’t know anyone there anymore, and no one knows us. Maybe we can take the girls to Disneyland.”

  “Disneyland …” Joe repeated, shaking his head.

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  Joe thought, Find Nemecek and take him down. But he said, “Nope.”

  “Then let’s start packing. I’ve booked us into a Holiday Inn in Anaheim. It’s one of those places with a package deal that gives discounts to Disneyland and caters to young families. It’s so boring, no one will even want to try and find us.”

  Joe cringed.

  She said, “I’ll wake the girls up. Tomorrow, as we’re boarding that plane and not before, I’ll call the schools and let them know Lucy and April will be missing some classes. And I’ll tell Sheridan what’s going on. I’ve got some sick leave built up at the library I can take, and I know you’ve got plenty of time comi
ng because you never take any days off.”

  Joe screwed up his face and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “What?” she asked, her voice rising.

  “How are we going to afford this?” he asked.

  “We’ll figure something out,” she said, and started to leave the room. “Don’t forget, my mother left us money for the girls.”

  Joe groaned at the mention of Marybeth’s mother. “That’s for their college,” he said. After all, he’d negotiated the deal with Missy several weeks before, as her price for leaving without him revealing what he knew about her. Money had shown up in their college funds via wire transfer. It had been an act of pure extortion, and Joe was proud of it.

  Marybeth said, “They’ve got to get to college first, Joe.”

  He didn’t argue with that logic.

  “I’m going now,” she said. “I’ve got to get the girls up and help them pack.”

  When he didn’t follow, she turned back to him and locked his eyes with hers. “Joe, I know what you’re thinking.”

  He didn’t say yes or no but let her continue.

  “What I’m telling you is we need to leave,” she said. “All of us. I looked into that man’s eyes and I saw no empathy at all. Not even a spark. It was like looking into the eyes of one of Nate’s falcons. He’s capable of anything, and he’ll do anything to get to Nate. Our family means nothing to him except as bargaining chips. We can’t let him use us as bait to lure Nate here to his death. Do you understand me?”

  Joe didn’t respond. It made perfect twisted sense, he thought. The man at the library had set the trap.

  “I bought four tickets,” she said, opening the door. “Your name is on one of them.”

  She started to reach for the door handle but stopped short. Turning, she gestured to a stack of books on Joe’s desk. He followed her finger. He hadn’t noticed them previously.

  She said, “I don’t know if it means anything at all, but those are the library books he brought to check out. They could have been chosen at random for an excuse to engage me, but my intuition tells me they mean something to him.”

  Joe picked the books up one at a time and frowned. The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Falconry and Hawking by Phillip Glasier. And The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright. Joe felt his neck get hot.

  “What?” she asked. “Do they mean something to you?”

  “I’ve seen them all before,” he said. “At Nate’s place. They read the same books. It was our man, all right.”

  JOE SAT DOWN heavily at his desk and reread the message from Nate on the screen. There was no other way to take it than Nate wanted them to hit the road.

  He looked through the three books again. Both The Art of War and Falconry and Hawking seemed too specialized and unrelated to provide much insight. But The Looming Tower? Joe opened it and turned straight to the index, looking for the names Nemecek or Romanowski. He found neither. But he agreed with Marybeth: something in the book had meaning to them. But where to start?

  He rubbed his face and tried to think of alternatives to leaving—some kind of action he could take to try to help Nate and protect his family—but there were simply too many unknown variables. He felt impotent, useless, and cowardly.

  When Joe tried to figure out how White/Nemecek knew so much about his family, his whereabouts, and the investigation, there were few people he could rule out. There were dozens of people privy to the proceedings: deputies, dispatchers, reporters, administration, maintenance, visiting state and federal agents, even McLanahan’s coffee group that met every morning at the Burg-O-Pardner. He could rule out only the sheriff himself, because without solving either the murders or the missing-persons cases, the man was circling the drain of his own career. He’d do whatever he could to stop the spiral by making arrests, Joe knew.

  He leaned back in his chair and sneaked a long look at Mike Reed in the other room. Reed thumbed through a hunting magazine and sipped the last of his coffee on the couch. The man was affable and good-natured. By all rights, he should be the next sheriff. And although he certainly wanted to win the election, could he possibly be predatory enough to assist a killer so his opponent would go down in flames? Joe couldn’t conceive it.

  Who else would know?

  Then he thought about the password-protected text thread on Brueggemann’s phone.

  WHEN LUCY entered his office rubbing her face from sleep, she said, “Mom said we’re going on a trip.” She didn’t sound happy about it.

  “That’s the plan.”

  “What about my play?” she asked. “I can’t let everybody down. I’m the lead. This really means a lot to me, and Mom doesn’t even want to talk about it. I mean, I could stay with Heather until you got back.”

  Joe didn’t have a good answer. “Maybe we’ll all be back in time.”

  “But I’m the lead,” she said again. “If I’m not here they’ll give the part to Erin Vonn or somebody else.”

  “I’m sure they’ll take you back,” Joe said, not sure about it at all.

  “Mom won’t even tell me why we’re leaving.”

  “For your safety,” Joe said. Lucy rolled her eyes in response.

  “I have a life of my own, you know,” she said, folding her arms in front of her and striking a pose very much like Marybeth had a few minutes before. “You and Mom treat me like your property.”

  Joe said with some sympathy, “You’ve got to get a few more years on you before it’s otherwise.”

  “You sound just like her,” she said, meaning Marybeth.

  “We’re a team.”

  “Yes,” she said, her eyes flashing. “An evil team trying to destroy my life.”

  “That’s a little dramatic, isn’t it?” he asked, stifling a smile.

  “I’m in drama!” she cried. “That’s the point!” But her anger was diffusing.

  Joe said, “Before you pack, I need your help. I don’t understand how Facebook works, and I know you’re an expert. You spend more time on it than you do sleeping or eating.”

  She rolled her eyes again, and said, “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Everybody around your age is on it, right?”

  “Yes. Everybody.”

  “Everybody in college, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  He said, “What I’d like you to do is use your laptop to find the page or the profile or whatever it is for Luke Brueggemann, my trainee. See if there are any comments from his girlfriend, if he has one. See if he’s sharing things about his new assignment.”

  She asked him how to spell the name, and he did.

  “I may not find much,” she said. “It depends on how much he’s got his profile set up to share. I’m not his friend or anything.”

  “Just find whatever you can,” Joe said. “Let me know what you find.”

  She sighed, and said, “At least we’re going to Disneyland. I can’t believe it.”

  “Neither can I,” Joe said.

  IT WAS MIDNIGHT when the house phone rang. As always, Joe ignored it. He was talking with Mike Reed and waiting for Lucy to come back and tell him what she’d dug up on Brueggemann and his girlfriend.

  Marybeth came into the living room holding the handset, and the moment he saw her face he knew something momentous had happened.

  She handed him the phone with concern in her eyes. “You’ll want to take this,” she said.

  As he reached for it, she said, “In your office.”

  She followed him back in and again closed the door behind them. “It’s Nate,” she whispered.

  “WHERE ARE YOU?” Joe asked immediately, careful not to use his name.

  “We can’t talk long,” Nate said. The connection was clear, but from the airy tone of it, Joe assumed Nate was speaking from somewhere outdoors. Maybe a pay phone, he thought.

  “Gotcha,” Joe said. “Where …”

  “No,” Nate said. “We can’t go there right now. Our friends might be listening.”

  “
Right.”

  “It’s time to fly,” Nate said. “Take the entire nest. Don’t think about it, and don’t play hero. Just go.”

  “I understand,” Joe said, glancing up at Marybeth, who nodded.

  “The threat is on top of you right now.”

  Joe hoped he didn’t have to respond to Nate in falconry terminology. Instead, he said, “Yup.”

  “At least three of the Peregrines are still out there,” Nate said. “One may be a young female.”

  “Only three?” Joe asked, wondering how many men Nate had taken out of the game.

  “At least,” Nate said. “But there could be more I don’t know about. Leave them to me.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Nate laughed bitterly. “So far, so good. But the cost has been too high and the collateral damage has been heavy.”

  Joe thought, So many questions. He said, “Is there any way we can talk more?”

  “No,” Nate said, no doubt measuring the time of the call and trying to end it quickly. Joe wanted to tell him it didn’t matter: If the call was being traced, it was already too late. But he didn’t dare say it.

  “Just remember,” Nate said, “these creatures won’t return to the fist no matter how much you’ve done for them. They kill, they eat, and they move on. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  “They might be right next to you, but you can’t trust them. Just get away now.”

  And he hung up. Joe listened to the dial tone for a moment, then cradled the phone and picked it back up and dialed star sixty-nine. The phone rang on the other end, but no one picked it up.

  “He’s gone,” Joe said.

  “Is he okay?” Marybeth asked.

  “I guess he is.”

  “What did he say?”

  Joe tried to recall the conversation verbatim, and repeated it.

  She frowned. “The only thing I understand is he wants us to go. That I got. What was the rest about?”

  Joe said, “He thinks Nemecek has someone inside. And so do I.”

  He stood and said, “I’ve got to go out for a while.” Marybeth stepped aside, puzzled. “Where are you going?”