by Mallory Kane
MATT SPENT A LONG, HOT morning working on widening the turnaround in front of the Bellows’ mansion. It was nearly noon, and sweat soaked the neck and back of his T-shirt and had long since seeped through the bandanna he used as a headband. When he stopped to wipe sweat from his eyes, someone tapped him on the shoulder.
Matt turned.
The man, dressed in a summer-weight suit, jerked a thumb back toward the house. “Need to see you,” he growled.
A couple of workers stopped to look curiously toward Matt.
Matt finished wiping his face, shrugged and set his spade down. “I’ll just wash up…” he started, but the large man shook his head.
“Now.”
With a glance and a shrug at his fellow workers that said, Bosses, what are you going to do, Matt followed the man around the house to an entrance he hadn’t noticed. It was nestled into the side of the house and looked as much like a window as a door.
The large man opened the door and stood back to let Matt enter, then closed it behind him. After being in the bright sun outside, the room was pitch-black. It took his eyes a few seconds to adapt to the darkness. Once they did, he saw a desk lamp’s glow reflecting off the curved metal wheels of a wheelchair. He stepped closer.
Bellows had been a big man—an imposing man—at one time. Even now his shock of white hair, brushed back from a receding hairline, lent him an air of wisdom and dignity. The sense was aided by his excellent posture, gray beard and sharp blue eyes. He was dressed in a suit and string tie and tooled leather cowboy boots. A white Stetson sat on his lap.
“Sir,” Matt said. “I apologize for—”he held his palms out, embarrassed by his sweat-stained shirt and pants and his dusty work boots.
“Bah. Appearances.” Bellows waved an elegant, long-fingered hand. “Sit down, son. Sit.”
Matt perched carefully on the edge of a straight-backed chair and prepared to listen.
“How’s it going? Are the people in Freedom accepting you?”
“A lot of them are still skittish since the two deaths at the Fourth of July parade. In fact, quite a few blame Governor Lockhart, because her daughter was involved. But I’ve managed to stay under the radar. I’m just an itinerant worker who eats every meal at the Talk of the Town Café.”
“Speaking of Governor Lockhart, that’s why I needed to see you. We’ve got a problem.”
“Yes, sir?”
“She’s decided she wants to hold a town hall meeting in Freedom.”
Matt frowned. “A town hall meeting? When?”
“On Saturday, three days from now.”
“Three days? But I thought we had plenty of time before she made her final decision to run for president.”
Bellows sighed. “She declares that she’s not planning to announce anything. She just wants to—as she puts it—feel out the town. Freedom is where her family has lived for generations. And Eliza Scott’s café is where she announced that she was running for governor years ago. She has a special fondness in her heart for Freedom.”
Matt heard the resigned note in Bellows’s voice. He leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees. He studied the older man. “You think she’s going to use the meeting to make her candidacy official.”
“It’s hard to predict what Lila’s going to do. She’s as stubborn as a mule on a hot August day. If I thought announcing her bid for president was all this is about, I’d be happy. I’m worried her intent is to thumb her nose at whoever is sending these threatening messages to her. They’re continuing to escalate.”
“Well, at least the danger to her daughter wasn’t connected,” Matt said. “Bailey’s safe now.”
“Yes, for now. But it cost two people their lives and upset the people of Freedom.” Bellows brushed an imaginary speck of dust off the brim of the hat in his lap. “I’m afraid the bloodshed may not be over. The tone of these threats has gone from warning to deadly. That’s why I needed to talk to you in person. Stay around town between now and Saturday. Tell folks the construction project is on hold. You can work with the governor’s crew, preparing the venue. I want you right there before, during and after the meeting. You’ll spot potential threats and notify Sheriff Hale, who’ll have his deputies watching the crowd, along with Lila’s bodyguards and a couple of officers from the Amarillo P.D.”
Matt ran his fingers through his close-cropped hair. “How many bodyguards will the governor have?”
“Not sure. But you’ll be in direct contact with Hale. If anybody does anything to disrupt the meeting, your top priority is identifying the culprit. Lila’s bodyguards and the police will take care of her.”
“When will the governor get there, and when will she leave?”
“She hasn’t said. I’m hoping she’ll fly back to Austin Saturday night, but I have a feeling she’s going to stay at Twin Harts for a few days.” Bart Bellows shook his head. “Any other questions?”
“The meeting will be held at the old town hall?”
“Nope. Like I said, Lila made her announcement of running for governor at the Talk of the Town Café, and that’s where she wants to hold this meeting.”
“But—” Matt thought about Faith, pregnant and tired and already working from six o’clock in the morning until after nine at night “—the café can’t hold more than sixty people.”
“Hey, don’t tell me. You’re preaching to the choir here. Lila keeps reminding me that last time there couldn’t have been more than seventy to a hundred people there and that Eliza opened the double doors leading to the street so people could stand out there and hear the speech.”
Matt shook his head. “But the governor is not an unknown wannabe trying her hand at politics this time. Once the word gets out about this Freedom is going to be overrun with pro-Lockhart and anti-Lockhart factions, curiosity seekers and media.”
“Nothing’s going to change Lila’s mind. I need you to treat this as an encounter in hostile territory. Your mission is to identify the threat and neutralize it. Use the skills and tactics that made you a decorated surveillance expert in the army.”
At Bellows’s words, Matt’s brain was suddenly awash with memories of hot, dusty streets, a few burka-clad women scattering to get out of the way of the jeeps and ragged children. The kids shouted and waved at the soldiers, wanting coins or food. Matt was riding in the second vehicle, armed and ready for anything, although scouting reports had described the village as nearly abandoned.
He glanced at the kids one more time, then turned his attention to the high windows and mud roofs. Just because the reports didn’t find any danger didn’t mean there wasn’t any. But the roofs were clear—no glint of sun on a rifle barrel, no odd movements along the roof lines.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a tiny boy, no more than four or five, run up close to the lead vehicle. His mother was right behind him. She grabbed his arm and sprinted away, half dragging the child out of the way of the vehicles.
But something wasn’t right. She’d paused a fraction of a second with her back to the other vehicles.
Matt’s gaze snapped to the side of the jeep where she’d stood.
There it was.
“Bomb!” he’d shouted, but it was too late. The deafening blast had drowned out his voice. His first thought was of his best friend Rusty in the lead jeep. His second was of all the women and children.
“Soarez?”
Matt blinked. “Yes, sir.”
“Something wrong? A problem with your assignment?”
“No, sir. I’ve got it.”
“How’s your knee?”
“No problem, sir,” Matt said. “I can run just fine.”
“I know. That’s what your discharge orders say. My question is will it hold up in hand-to-hand combat? Or quick changes in pace or direction?”
Matt resisted the urge to reach down and rub his knee. “A hundred percent, sir.”
Bellows studied Matt for a long moment, then jabbed the air near his arm with a pointed finger. “You
and I both know that knee is not a hundred percent. If it was, you’d still be in the army. People who lie to me are useless to me.” Bellows put his hands on the wheels of his chair and rolled it backward a few inches. “Now, do you want to rethink that answer, or do you want to get your stuff and head back to L.A.? What’ll it be, Sergeant Soarez?”
Chapter Two
Matt’s back stiffened, and he cringed at the word lie. He felt heat rise from his neck to his face.
“I apologize, sir,” he answered Bellows. “My knee has around sixty percent mobility. It’s nearly a hundred percent on straight line running, but I’d probably throw it out playing guard on a basketball court where I’d have to be sidestepping a great deal.”
“That’s better,” Bellows said. “What’s your plan for handling surveillance at the town hall meeting?”
“Well, sir,” Matt said, picturing the diner’s layout in his mind, “I’d like to have policemen at the front doors and covering the door from the kitchen to the alley. I’d barricade the basement storage room and the stairs leading up to Faith’s apartment. The whole front of the café is glass, and we don’t have enough manpower to block it all, so I’d just let the locals and possibly the media stand in that area. Whoever is after Governor Lockhart probably isn’t interested in hurting innocent people. He’ll have a plan that focuses on his specific target—the governor. He won’t have the time or the manpower to do anything but hit and run.”
Bellows’s sharp eyes met Matt’s. “Makes sense. And where will you be?”
“I’ll be on stage with the governor. I need to face the crowd—see their faces, their eyes.”
“Not a bad plan, off the top of your head.”
“Thank you, sir.” Matt paused. “We’ll need communications units. Tasers would be nice, so we can target any disruptors without hurting civilians.”
“I can arrange that. Now tell me what you’ve learned about the good people of Freedom.”
Matt thought back over the eight days he’d been in town. “Sheriff Hale is a good man. I’d feel comfortable depending on him to cover my back. His deputy, Appleton, is a single father with a six-year-old. I’m not sure how much risk he’d take. The sheriff’s other deputies are pretty much what you’d expect—generally competent but nothing extraordinary.”
Bellows sat back in his chair and tented his fingers, listening.
“The mayor’s no fan of the governor,” Matt went on, “but he’s got more ambition than conviction, so I’m sure he’s not above riding her coattails.”
Bellows nodded, showing tacit agreement with Matt’s assessments.
“The attitudes about the governor’s daughter, Bailey, are mixed. Most people like her a lot and are happy that she’s okay and is getting married. Apparently there are others who think she shouldn’t have stayed here knowing she could be putting townspeople in danger.”
“Who said that?”
“Well, according to Stan Lorry and Fred March, who hang out at the café all morning, a talk radio host named Allan Davidson devoted one whole show to the subject of Bailey Lockhart and the Fourth of July shootings. He got dozens of phone calls from people in Freedom. Lorry and March think Davidson is the greatest thing since sliced bread.”
“I’ll get a transcript of that show and see who called in. Anyone else?”
“I met Henry Kemp for the first time this morning. He’s a wild card. He has a burr under his saddle about the Lockharts.” Matt paused.
Bellows raised a shaggy eyebrow.
“He made a threat against them.”
“A threat? What kind of threat?”
“This morning was the first time I’ve ever met him, so it could be that he’s just a blowhard. But his exact words to me were ‘One of these days the Lockharts are going to get what’s coming to them, and you don’t want to be too close when that happens.’”
“Yeah, that sounds like Henry. He’s been telling his tale of woe about the Lockharts stealing his oil rights for two decades. Nothing’s ever his fault. He can always find someone else to blame. He’s got no legal claim to the oil rights on the land he sold to the Lockharts. It was just his bad luck that the oil was discovered by them and not him. What do you think about him?”
Matt thought back to Kemp’s florid, angry face and the look in his eyes. “He’s obsessed with them. He’s volatile. I think he could resort to violence.”
“He’s got a beautiful granddaughter and twin great-granddaughters that he worships. Why would he risk their safety and happiness by going after the Lockharts?”
Matt frowned. Was Bellows testing him? “Just my opinion, sir,” he said stiffly.
Bellows’s eyes sparked. “You’re going to have to do better than that, Sergeant Soarez. I know we don’t know each other well, but when I ask a question I expect a straight answer. You think I’m baiting you, that I know the answer I want from you and I’m testing you.”
The old man cleared his throat. “Well, this is no test. If I’d wanted people who agreed with me, I’d have hired lawyers. You’re here because you’re a decorated combat veteran, a hero. You have a set of skills I need, and your opinion matters to me. I need to know I can count on you to give me a straight answer, no matter what that answer is.”
“Sir, I—”
“Listen son. I get that you don’t trust me, and I get why,” Bellows went on. “You came up like I did—hard, alone. You figured out how to protect yourself. And you learned early that nothing is free and no one can be trusted.”
At Bellows’s statement that he understood Matt’s childhood, Matt tried to quell an urge to laugh. He caught himself but not in time.
“You don’t think I get it? Hell, son, I don’t give a damn whether you think I had a hard life or not. What I do give a damn about is whether I can trust you. From your background and your military service, I already know that you’re loyal and trustworthy. You were top of your field in surveillance. But you aren’t being straightforward with me.”
Matt thought back. “About my knee, sir?”
“Tell you what, son, you think about it while you answer this. Why are you here? Why did you accept this job? Of the men I invited to work for me, you were the most reluctant, even though I threw in full scholarships for your twin sisters to the colleges of their choice.”
Matt wondered what would happen if he told Bellows the truth. He was bound by a contract. Bellows had made it a deal breaker. So he was on board for at least three months, during which time Bellows would evaluate him for the permanent Core Security and Investigations, or CSAI, team. Matt had no idea what kind of deal the other agents had been given, but Bellows was asking for straight answers from him. He took a deep breath.
“I don’t like being in debt,” he said. “I went into the army because it was good money. Now I’m out and waiting to hear if I qualify for disability and if so how much. I’ve got a knee that’s never going to work right, and I’m unemployed. As you just mentioned, I have a certain skill set that’s pretty useless outside of combat.
“Then you come along and give me an offer that’s too good to be true. I definitely took it because of the money. There’s no way I could afford to send my sisters to college otherwise. And I’m tired of watching my mother work so hard for so little pay. I need this job. But if you try to leverage me using my mother or my sisters, Mr. Bellows, you’ll be sorry. My family is off-limits.” Matt stopped and waited for the explosion, but Bellows’s expression never changed.
“So what are you saying? You turning down the scholarships for your sisters?” Bellows asked.
Matt swallowed. The money Bellows had dangled over him as a salary was more than Matt had dreamed of ever making. But it wasn’t enough to put his seventeen-year-old twin sisters through college. They’d be the first Soarezes to graduate college, if he could scrape up the money. “The salary you offered me was beyond generous. Why throw in full scholarships?”
“Because I needed you, and I knew I could manipulate you by helping you
r family. You’ve heard the old saw about looking a gift horse in the mouth, haven’t you?”
“You’ve heard that if it seems too good to be true, then it probably is.”
Bellows wrapped his hands around the wheels of his chair and turned it away from Matt.
Matt’s breath caught in his throat. Had he just talked himself out of a job?
Bellows wheeled over to the big mahogany desk and maneuvered his chair behind it. Then he reached into a drawer and pulled out a slender file.
“Over three years ago, I decided that I wanted to do something more with my life, so I created Corps Security and Investigations. I met a young war veteran who had nearly died in a roadside bombing. I asked for his help, and in return I gave him mine.”
“The man we met in Dallas,” Matt guessed. “The man you call Nolan Law.”
Bellows nodded. “We spent months working on our mission statement, its purpose and its function. There were hundreds of details to be worked out. Once we were ready, we acquired the service records of one hundred and twenty-three veterans who had seen active combat and who lived in or close to Texas. After serious review and lots of debate, we narrowed the list to five.”
Bellows tapped a finger on the slender file. “This is your service record, as well as a summary of all public records involving you and your family.”
Matt wanted nothing more than to charge the wheelchair-bound man, grab his records and vamoose. But he clenched his fists and stood his ground. Obviously Bellows had a point to make.
“I can understand why you might think our offer is too good to be true. But let me assure you right now that it’s not. You’re going to work—harder than you’ve ever worked in your life—to earn the money and benefits I’ve offered you. You’ll be required to lay your life on the line, maybe not as often or as frighteningly as when you were in combat, but Corps Security and Investigations is an elite team of men with special skills. Each of you was selected because of what you can do. You do not have a backup. That means if you’ve worked twenty days straight without a break and I need a surveillance expert, you’ll work twenty more.”