“That’s pretty much it,” Gabe said, not wishing to make his mother worry any more than she did normally, which was a lot when it came to her four children. He saw Anna give him a quick nod, as if in tune with why he wasn’t going to say much else about the danger of their mission. The less his mother knew about it, the less she would worry.
“I feel much better now,” Maud confessed, giving them a look of gratefulness.
“A very boring mission,” Anna assured her, eagerly taking a second cookie. “These are really good, Maud.”
“Thanks. Do you get to see your family very often, Anna?”
Anna was careful with her reply. “Between assignments, I get a month off and fly down to my country and visit my family’s estancia.”
“I’d want to see my family between assignments,” Maud said.
“I’m always in touch via my cell phone and I talk with them at least once a week.”
“Oh, that’s good, then. Have your parents ever been to the US?”
“Yes. My father was a Marine general. He was often at Camp Pendleton, in Southern California. He sent his best Marines to your country to be trained.”
“Your family serves your country and you must feel proud about that,” Maud said.
“Just like your family does,” Anna said. “You are all patriots in the service of the USA, too.”
Maud gave them a kind look. “That’s very true. I’m just glad you’re here, safe and sound. Andy, my oldest daughter, just married Dev. They’ll be here tonight for dinner.”
“Is Sky around?” Gabe wanted to know. “And how about Luke?”
“She’s on duty over at the airport for helicopter medical emergencies. You’ll meet her tomorrow morning. Andy has the twenty-four-hour duty with her husband, Dev. Luke said he’d be coming in, but didn’t give a time or date. That’s typical of him,” she said, and smiled fondly.
“Too bad Luke does wear a watch,” he said, teasing. Luke was one of those people who marched to his own drummer.
Maud looked over at Anna. “Luke is a hotshot and right now he’s over with a US team fighting fires over in Australia. He does it year-round. He has a job here, in the valley, with the wildfire team, but this time of year, he’s where the fires are at.”
“That’s not a job I’d want,” Anna said. “Fire has a mind of its own.”
“Ugh,” Maud said, “tell me about it. Dev was saying that they want to hire him as a manager for the regional firefighter team here and he’d be working out of the airport, which means he’d be home. I want that so badly. Steve and I would love to have all our children come home and settle down nearby.”
“Family is good,” Anna agreed gently.
“Has Luke made a commitment to Pete Turner?” Gabe asked Maud. He saw Anna’s confusion. “He’s the boss of the air medevac and the wildfire unit at our airport,” he explained.
Maud nodded. “Yes, he’s given a verbal reply to Pete, but papers have to be signed and then it’s a done deal,” she said, pressing her hand to her heart. “He’ll sign the papers and will be arriving any day now from Australia.”
“For good?” Gabe challenged. “After all, he’s the tumbleweed of the family.”
Laughing, Maud said wryly, “All our children are tumbleweeds! Who are you kidding?”
Gabe grinned and drowned in Anna’s warm, brief gaze. “Well, guilty, I guess.”
Snorting, Maud said, “The four of you are all type A’s. Steve has been in Sydney and he gets together with Luke out in the field over there, when it works. At least they have some quality time with each other.”
“Then,” Anna asked, “all four of your children are coming home for good?”
“It looks that way,” Maud said, crossing her fingers. “We want them nearby. We miss them terribly.”
Gabe reached out, squeezing his mother’s work-worn hand. “And we’ve all missed you and Dad.”
Anna saw the tears well up in Maud’s eyes. What a tight family. One that loved one another and wasn’t dysfunctional like the Elson family they’d be observing for the DEA. It made her miss her own mother acutely, but she said nothing. It was hard for her to talk about her father even though he’d passed many years ago. They, too, had been a tight family like the Whitcombs. That ache in her heart would never go away. How she wished her father were still alive!
Chapter Four
April 13
“The Rocking G looks like a disaster to me,” Anna said, sliding out of the truck and joining Gabe at the front of it. Ace leaped out, staying at Gabe’s right leg. He was so well trained that he could be trusted to remain with them and not run off and snoop around. Above them, low-hanging gray and white clouds pushed by the off-and-on wind, made her hug herself, the wind icy even at ten A.M. She wore a black felt Stetson, but her ears were freezing. And she’d bought a good down coat, a muffler, and thick, warm gloves, as well.
“Yeah,” Gabe murmured. “Dad wasn’t joking when he said it was in bad shape.” He pulled out his cell phone, called his mother to let her know they’d arrived safe and sound. Then, he texted a message to the DEA in La Mesa and Salt Lake City that they had arrived on station.
Sweeping her gaze around the property, she saw everything was in a state of dishevelment. Wooden rails sagged because five feet of snow could easily be dumped in the valley during the winter, the weight of it bending hand-hewn rails that were probably fifty years old. Patches of the white stuff were all around them. The storm that had come through seven days ago had dropped two feet of snow, which was more than enough for her. She saw the Elson property less than half a mile away from where they stood in the muddy driveway.
The nicker of the horses in the horse trailer they’d brought along made them both turn their attention to a small, nearby horse barn. To Anna, it looked in good shape compared to the house. Her words turned into vapor. “Shall we see how the stalls are? Get the horses comfortable and settled in? Let Ace look around since he will be guarding our equipment for the second floor?”
“Yes.” He glanced toward the Elson property, no sign of life except two pickup trucks parked on the side of the ramshackle single-story house. It looked almost as bad as the Rocking G house. “Let’s go snoop,” he said. He gave Ace a hand signal and instantly, he leaped up and stayed right with Gabe.
“Aren’t your ears freezing?” she wanted to know as he opened the sliding barn door that creaked with need of oil and some care.
Chuckling, Gabe said, “Oh, yeah. You get used to it after a while.” He gestured to her. “Go on in.”
Anna saw a light switch and turned it on. The horse barn held four wooden stalls. There were a lot of cobwebs and dust on the rafters above, barely discernible, but alerting her that cleanup was going to be long and continuous. She spotted a ladder. “I’m going up there,” she said, pointing a gloved finger up at the landing that rose above. “Want to see if I can find a good spot to locate the video camera and other equipment.”
Nodding, Gabe said, “Watch that ladder, okay? It may have cracks in it. I don’t want you to fall.”
“I’ll watch it,” she assured him. Anna liked that he was protective, but not smothering. Most men who didn’t know she was a sniper tended to want to do the latter. Checking out the ladder on the wall, she saw there were ten steps up to the landing. Using her hands, she gingerly tested each of the first five. They were old, but durable. On the fifth step, she checked out three above her. The good news was the ladder was safe. There were some nails that needed to be replaced or worked out from the wood, but a hammer would fix these issues in a hurry.
The landing was in gray light, and she found another switch and turned it on. There were several bales of hay, but they were covered with decades of dust and would have to be thrown out. The light from the bare bulb above in the rafters was enough for her to spot a small wooden door in the side of the building that faced the Elson property. Going to it, she pulled off her gloves, stuffed them in the pocket of her coat, and found a rusted l
atch. With patience, she was able to slide the lock back and the door creaked open.
Being careful, Anna knelt down and cracked it just enough so that she could see outside. The Elson property was in perfect alignment with her window. The video equipment could be placed here and easily used. Pleased, she shut the door and then took a good look at her new hide for her spy equipment. It was dusty, filled with cobwebs, and needed a good cleaning.
“How’s it look up there?” Gabe called from below.
“Excellent,” she said. “I’m coming down.”
They spent the rest of the morning cleaning the debris out of the stalls, bringing the horses in after they laid cedar shavings, and putting the hay bales into the tack room area. With the horses watered and fed, the barn door left open so they could each look out the upper part of the stall door, they went to check out the house.
“Hungry?” Gabe asked, cutting his stride a bit.
“Starving.”
Ace whined, cocking his head, giving Anna a begging look.
Gabe chuckled. “See? You fed him that first morning and now he’s looking to you to continue it. That’s a good sign he trusts you.”
“I’ll be happy to do that. Should we get his dog bowl out and feed him inside the house?”
“Yes, we’ll all go over there and eat a bite.”
They stopped at the truck and he pulled out a cooler filled with food that Maud and her cook, Sally, had made up for them. There was no nearby restaurant in this area, no takeout, no nothing. They did have groceries, and they would use the chill of the outdoor and freezing temps at night to keep certain foods cooled until they could purchase a refrigerator.
“Even my hide in a tree was cleaner than this place,” she grumped, watching dust poof into clouds as they walked into the large kitchen after Gabe had switched on the electricity.
Gabe frowned and looked around. “A lot of mouse droppings, too,” he observed. Ace was already casing the house, his dog prints in the dust everywhere he walked, smelled, and then moved on to another place to check it out.
“Mousetrap time,” she agreed, hands on her hips as she slowly looked around, memorizing the layout. It was an ancient log cabin with white mortar between each of the logs. A lot of the mortar had cracked or been lost in the twenty-five years that the house had no upkeep. It needed a lot of repair. Without the mortar, cold wind would leak in, lowering the heat they would try to build with the fireplace in the living room. She followed Gabe from room to room. It was easy to identify where the roof was leaking in two of the four rooms.
“Take your choice,” Gabe said, pointing to the two bedrooms that sat beside each other in the hall.
“I’ll take the blue door.”
He grinned. “I’ll take the pink door.”
Anna chuckled. “Is your masculinity cringing?”
Gabe opened the pink door once more and left it open. “No. Is yours?”
She laughed softly. “Not at all.” She stepped into her bedroom, a small window in front of her, the once-blue drapes sagging, holes chewed in them by mice and no longer serviceable.
“Let’s scout the outside of the house after lunch? Maud made us some prime rib beef sandwiches with horseradish on them.”
“Sounds good. We need to look like two people just moving in, not the spies that we are.”
Gabe was happy that his father had the plumbing in the house repaired and that they had running water, plus a new water heater that had been installed earlier. Maud had supplied them with a lot of rags that could be used in cleaning up the dust and debris, and he pulled one from one of the boxes he’d carried in earlier. Anna came over, grabbed one, and without a word, wet it at the double porcelain sink and began to wipe the dust off the square, wooden table at the other end of the kitchen. There was no question she was completely self-sufficient, but she was still a team person. He got busy wiping off the four wooden chairs around it. In no time, they had the surfaces clean enough to eat their food from, and they sat down opposite each other and eagerly ate beef sandwiches.
Gabe rummaged around and found some Cheetos in a sack and opened them up, laying them between them as they ate. Anna still wore her hat, and he suspected it was to keep the heat from her head from escaping and making her less warm as a result. “Your ears are red,” he observed, giving her a grin.
“So are yours.”
“Comes with the territory.”
Groaning, she said, “Right now I’d like to trade this hat in for my knit cap.”
“We’ll bring in the rest of the boxes after we eat. You can wear the red baseball cap Maud gave you and pull the knit cap over it. It will cover your ears and the bill will protect your eyes from weather and sunlight.”
“Sounds like you’ve done that once or twice yourself.”
“It’s the uniform of the day,” he said, munching on the salty, cheesy Cheetos.
“The military is never going to leave you, Gabe.”
“It had to when I was undercover, but here”—he looked around the kitchen—“it won’t matter.”
“I don’t think the Elsons will come over here. Do you?”
Shaking his head, he said, “No, but I think your idea to reach out to Roberta Elson, their mother, is a good one.”
“As soon as we get this place cleaned up, I want to bake some cookies, drive over to their homestead, and see her.”
“Do it after the boys leave,” he warned. “Catch her alone. Sarah Carter said Roberta was clearly abused by her husband, Brian, before he died. She knows right from wrong, is lonely, and would like to move into Wind River, but the boys want her to stay out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“To feed them, do their laundry and stuff,” Anna sniffed, a hint of anger in her tone.
“When we spoke with Sarah, she said Roberta was the epitome of an abused wife and housewife.”
“I think Roberta can be manipulated from what Sarah told us earlier in the week,” Anna said, wiping her hands off with a paper towel from a roll that sat on one end of the table. “It might take us a couple of days to clean this house up and get everything online, but she’s my target of opportunity.”
“She’s the only one we have a chance with turning or at least maybe getting some intel out of her.”
“I just wonder how the Elson boys are going to react to me bringing over some cookies to them as their friendly new neighbor?” She filled Ace’s dog bowl with kibble, walked over to a corner of the kitchen, and filled a large bowl of water for him. Soon, Ace was chomping down with gusto on his kibble between drinks of water.
“That’s something you’ll have to evaluate on the fly. If they buy our story that we’ve bought the place and you work for me, then they might stand down and be a little mistrustful.”
“They’re too ingrained into the cartel not to be wary, Gabe. I would just take it on SOP, standard operating procedure, that they may think we’re agents.”
He grimaced and finished off a handful of Cheetos, closing the bag. “Yeah, that’s my take on it, too. But over time, as we start to ride fence lines, repairing all those posts that are down and stringing new barbed wire, they might change their minds.”
“I want to go out to the barn, clean it up, and get my spy equipment set up this afternoon.”
“Go ahead. I’ll start on the house.”
“I’m trading this hat in for Maud’s baseball cap and my knit cap, though,” she warned, picking up the wrapper and standing.
Laughing, Gabe said, “Roger that. Dad said he had a chimney sweep come out a month ago and clean out the soot in the chimney so it doesn’t start a fire once we get wood in it to start heating up this place.”
She took a lapel radio that was hidden beneath the collar of her coat, turning it on. “Let’s do a radio check so we have comms between us?”
He stood, unsnapping his radio and turning it on. “We’re on the same frequency. Let’s do a test. You go out to the barn with your equipment. Once you’re up on that landing, g
ive me a test call.”
“Roger that.” She hesitated, her voice sounding humored. “You’re easier to work with than I thought.”
“Funny, I was thinking the same of you.”
Anna met his grin. She liked this guy way too much! He seemed completely in sync with her at every turn. Far more than any other man she’d met. “I like working alone, Gabe, but you’re changing my mind.”
“Uh-oh,” he deadpanned, walking over to the door and opening it for her, “we’re in trouble, then.”
Shaking her head, she saw the merriment glinting in his eyes, and that mouth of his—which was decidedly sexy to her—curved with good humor. “I’ll send you a test in a bit,” she promised, heading for the truck bed where the equipment was stowed beneath a heavy tarp.
* * *
By five P.M., Gabe had the house pretty much cleaned up. The stove worked, thank goodness, and he had a prime rib roast in the oven, warming it up for dinner. Maud had thought of everything, including some pre-baked potatoes in the many boxes she’d packed for them. He’d not seen Anna for a couple of hours. She’d come in and used the bathroom, which worked, thanks to the plumbers. She reminded him of Ace when he was on a scent, eyes somewhat narrowed and all business. By the time she came in at five, he’d had the table set with dishes Maud had sent along with them. The flatware was on the table along with paper towels that would serve as napkins for them. It was nearly dark, the house was actually warm as he’d fed the huge fireplace with well-dried wood. His heart expanded a bit when he thought that Anna would really appreciate that welcome warmth. Though he was trying not to like her too much, it wasn’t working. Gabe knew he was in trouble of a different kind.
The door opened and closed.
He turned, smiling a hello at Anna, who pulled off her gloves after shutting the door.
“Wow,” she murmured, pulling off her headgear, “it’s actually WARM in here!” Ace greeted her, wagging his tail, licking her fingers. Anna leaned over, petting him fondly.
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