“So what?” Gabriel asked defensively. “Is it a crime to be an FBI agent?”
Gabriel realized that they were confronting him about his latest relationship and that was making him angry. He loved and respected his brother, but not even David had the authority to tell him who he was going to date. On the other hand, he also felt betrayed. Asa had been obviously using him to get closer to the locals, successfully hiding her real profession. Gabriel thought about the fact and realized that Asa never actually told him what she was working on, but he had also never asked her directly about it.
“So, you followed around my girlfriend?” Gabriel asked them a bit surprised. “Were you worried about me?”
“You know how I feel, how we feel about the government and its cronies, Gabriel,” David answered him. “An FBI agent has no place at our table or in our lives. You should stop seeing her immediately.”
“I will stop seeing her, but not because of the reasons you just listed,” the younger of the two brothers said. “I will stop seeing her, because she wasn’t honest with me and there is nothing that I hate more than someone lying to me, even by omission.”
“That is good, that is very good for you, Gabriel,” Jane smiled at him and took his hand in hers. “From the first moment I saw her, I knew that there was something fishy about her. Don’t let women like Asa make you think that you should leave the people who love you and have cared for you, your whole life. We are your family and we would take care of you always.”
“Thank you, I know that Jane,” Gabriel answered her sadly.
David watched him carefully and noticed how his brother fought the tears back. “I have a big job for you and I need you to focus on it.”
“What is it?”
“I have to go away for a while and I need you to take care of the ranch for me, until I come back,” David said gravely. “This is very important to all of us, that is why I want you to focus on our family and on the ranch, leaving everything else behind.”
“You are leaving and expect me to take care of everything by myself?” Gabriel asked incredulous.
“Yes.”
“But, where are you going? Is there some problem? You know that you can tell me everything, right?” Gabriel asked urgently.
“No, no, everything is okay,” David smiled reassuringly. “I just need to do something and will be away for a while, that is all.”
“But…” Gabriel tried again.
“Please, Gabriel, just trust me on this? I cannot tell you anything more for now, just that I will be on a cattle run up in the mountains.” David pleaded with him, while Jane nodded encouragingly. “You just promise me that you will take care of Grandpa Joe.”
Gabriel had a lot of other questions to ask, but the look on David’s face told him that his brother wasn’t going to talk any further about the subject. “Okay, I will take care of Grandpa, of the ranch and of whatever else you need me, but just promise me that everything is going to be okay?”
“Everything is going to be okay, Gabriel,” David assured him. “Now, is the dinner ready, Jane?” He changed the subject and Gabriel went to look for Grandpa Joe. Asa and what he felt for her still on his mind. Gabriel did his best to forget about her, but it was too soon and too fast to forget someone so spectacular as Asa Clark.
Chapter 24
The next day, agent Todd Gibson and agent Asa Clark made their way to the Kimble ranch in force. The orders had been clear and Asa hadn’t wasted any more time in considering her personal feelings. Gabriel had been a beautiful dream, but if the man turned out to be a criminal, Asa was going to put him behind bars and never think about him again. During the drive to the Kimble ranch, she had lost herself in thoughts about the man and the few hours they had spent together.
Thankfully, Gibson had given her the time to rethink the whole situation and had spoken only once to warn her against getting involved with people she knows nothing about. “I thought that I made it clear that you should keep your thoughts to yourself?” She had answered and Gibson had kept quiet after that.
They arrived at the ranch mid-morning and Grandpa Joe greeted them in his customary way with his rifle. “Stop where you are, turn around and leave my property,” the old man had shouted, pointing the old rifle at them.
Asa Clark recognized the threat and acted quickly. She climbed out of the car and with raised hands approached the porch. “Grandpa Joe,” she called at him. “This is me, Asa. I came here with Gabriel. Don’t you remember me?”
“Asa?” the old man repeated. “The Salish girl? Yes, I remember. What do you want?”
“I want to talk to your grandsons,” Asa answered, slowly approaching him, as the man was still holding the rifle. “Can you tell me who is home?”
“Gabriel is here,” Grandpa Joe answered, lowering the rifle and taking out the pipe he had in his mouth. “What do you want with him?”
“I need to ask him a few questions. Can you call him for me?”
Grandpa Joe still looked suspiciously at her and agent Gibson, but after a few more seconds, he turned around and opened the door. “Gabriel, come out boy,” he called in a rugged voice and slowly lowered himself on the bench beside the door.
“What is it Grandpa?” Asa heard Gabriel asking from inside. “Do you need something?”
Gabriel stepped out of the house and froze in his place. His eyes were glued to Asa and she could read the hurt in them.
“Mr. Gabriel Kimble,” she spoke. “My name is agent Asa Clark and I am here to ask you a few questions about the death of two FBI agents.”
“Agent Asa Clark,” the man repeated. “Why did you have to lie to me about who you were?”
“Mr. Kimble do you know something about the murdered agents?” Asa asked, her voice and behavior strictly business. “And can you tell me where your brother is?”
“I told you already, I don’t know anything about the murdered agents,” Gabriel said almost yelling. “And about my brother… my brother is in the mountainous country on a cattle run. As you can see here, the pastures are drying up from the drought and heat and some of the other local ranchers moved our herds further north.”
“And you really don’t know anything about the missing agents?” This time it was Gibson, who asked the question.
“No, I have never seen them,” Gabriel insisted.
“What about your brother, do you know if he knows something about them?” The FBI agents continued the investigation. Gabriel continued to answer with no to all of their questions and Asa could see that he was telling the truth.
And then suddenly something unexpected happened. “I sent those agents packing,” Grandpa Joe commented with satisfaction.
“What are you talking about grandpa?” Gabriel asked him, surprised. “Did they come here?”
“Excuse me, Mr. Kimble, but we are the ones who conduct the investigation,” Gibson took the lead again. “What do you mean, you sent them packing?”
“I told them to get off of my property and went inside to get my rifle. When I came back out they were gone, probably scared for their lives.”
“When did that happen, Grandpa Joe?” Asa asked.
“I can’t exactly recall, but it surely was a few weeks ago,” the old man nodded to himself and put some more tobacco into his pipe.
It was obvious that they weren’t going to get anything else from him, so Asa Clark produced the search warrant they had and gave it to Gabriel. “We have a search warrant to search the ranch,” she said to him, looking pleadingly into his eyes.
“You can search everywhere,” he told her. “I don’t care.”
Agent Gibson proceeded to search the property and sent the police and the agents to do the job. They started fanning out over all the property, looking for any evidence to link the Kimbles to the murder of the two field agents. Asa waited for them to put some distance between her and Gabriel and then climbed up the stairs of the porch.
“Gabriel, I want to explain,” Asa said in a soft v
oice. “I didn’t want to lie to you, but you never asked me directly and I just decided to omit the truth for the time being. It never occurred to me that your family might be involved.”
“Omitted to tell me?” Gabriel asked, while the FBI agents were searching the property. “You have all the possibilities in the world to tell me the truth and you never did. Do you have any idea how I feel about you coming to my home, meeting my family, while you were investigating your murder case?”
“I can imagine, but as I said, I never really suspected your family…”
“I don’t want to hear it, Asa, I really don’t want,” Gabriel said to her in a tired voice and turned around to go back into the house.
“Gabriel, wait,” Asa called after him and tried to get a hold of his hand, but the man shook it off and closed the door in her face.
Asa felt humiliated, although she understood why he was acting like that. In his place she would have done something much worse than just to close a door.
Chapter 25
Asa didn’t see Gabriel after he closed the front door in her face, but she could tell that he was standing behind the windows, watching her. The search of the ranch continued for about two hours, but they found very little evidence that something horrible had happened on its grounds. One of the policemen found a few bullet entries on the walls of the buildings, as well as a few bullet casings on the ground, but there was no telling when and against whom the shots were fired.
Agent Gibson insisted that they look around one more time and make sure that there wasn’t even a stone not turned up. When it became obvious that they weren’t going to find anything useful, Agent Clark gave the signal to pack up and go. She and Gibson were the last to climb into the vehicle, and Asa looked back at the house, searching for the man she had learned to love.
“Come on, Clark,” Gibson called from inside the car. “It is time to return to Kalispell.”
Asa climbed into the car and closed the door with a hard tug, shaking the entire car. Gibson huffed at her antics, but didn’t say anything. They drove in silence for a long while, until the man decided that she had calmed down enough.
“Listen, Asa,” he started carefully, getting a sense of the mood. “I am sorry for going over your head.” He tried to apologize.
The woman listened to him, but didn’t say anything. She wasn’t in the mood for talking and the subject wasn’t her favorite one either. Gibson and his problems didn’t really interest her, but she had to admit that it took balls to say that he was sorry to a young woman like her.
“You saw the situation out here,” Gibson continued. “We are in the middle of nowhere, and the big bosses tend to forget about our existence. We have few interesting cases and when something really big comes our way, they send someone from the big city to work on it. You understand how that might get us irritated?”
“Yes, I understand,” Asa sighed, thinking that she should give him some slack. “Don’t worry, everything is okay between us. I was just surprised that you would tell on me so easily.”
“Yeah, well,” Gibson looked ashamed. “Getting the attention of the Deputy Director is not a small thing. Especially, when she was the one, who sent you down here. She must really think a lot about you, because she refused to believe me for a long time.”
“If you say so,” Asa laughed sarcastically. “From my point of view, things look differently.”
By the time they finished their difficult conversation, they were at the outskirts of Kalispell. The town was very much alive at that hour of the day and they drove slowly towards the FBI field office. The rest of the cars were following them and together the FBI vehicles entered the parking in front of the building. Asa was about the open the car’s door, when suddenly a large explosion ripped through the building. Everyone around them went ducking for cover as the FBI field office went up in a ball of flames.
Thinking that the bomb must have been a big one, Asa watched out of the window of the car, how the flames were eating the building. A number of people were lying on the ground, hurt by the explosion and Asa finally moved from her safe place. She ran from one person to another and was glad that although they were hurt, no one was dead, so far. She could hear sirens coming their way and saw other agents coming forward to help with the injured. Gibson was the first to approach the building, but there was no going inside.
“God,” Asa heard him mutter. “They are all dead.”
That was the moment when she also realized that the bomb had most likely killed everyone inside the building. Covered in smut and breathing with difficulty, Asa tugged him back, afraid that he might get hurt by the falling debris. By that time the firefighters and the first ambulance had arrived and they were carrying away the injured and trying to find a way to enter the building.
“Can you see if there is someone still alive inside?” Gibson asked one of the firefighters.
“Sorry, Todd, but no one can survive that fire hell.” The man answered and together with one of his colleagues started establishing the perimeter.
Asa stood behind the police line and watched how the FBI building slowly disappeared in the hungry flames. The firefighters had managed to enter the first floor and bring out three burnt up bodies. Asa shivered at the sign of the dead FBI agents. Her only thought was that it could have been all of them in there. If they had arrived a few minutes earlier, she, Gibson and everyone else would have also been dead.
“Agent Clark,” Gibson spoke from her left side. “The Deputy Director Shepherd is nowhere to be found.” He gave her a few moments to process the news and then continued. “It is now up to us to find the people who did this.”
“Yes, yes, you are right,” Asa nodded, fighting back tears. “Do you know if Ann was inside?”
“Sorry, but I have no idea,” Gibson shook his head. “We have to find a place, where we can set up our office. We need space, where we can examine the debris and see what they can tell us.”
“Do you have something in mind?” Asa never moved her eyes from the burning building. The firefighters had given up trying to stop the fire, resolving in just keeping the nearby buildings safe. She could tell that everything would be over soon and was really afraid of what they were going to find then. The big question in her mind was how many people had been inside the building at the time of the explosion? And who were the people, who put a bomb inside a building full of innocent people.
“I was thinking about the barn at the end of the street,” Gibson answered after what seemed like ages. “The place is empty at the moment and is big enough for us to work in.”
Asa agreed silently and raised a hand to remove the hair out of her eyes, only to realize that her hand was black and covered in blood.
Chapter 26
“Twenty one FBI agents, among which the Deputy Director Jennifer Shepherd, were killed in the infernos fire in the FBI field office in Kalispell. According to experts, the building was attacked by terrorists, who put a powerful bomb inside it. The explosion happened in the early hours of the afternoon yesterday and took everybody by surprise.
“Flames engulfed the exterior of the FBI building within a matter of seconds, tearing up the building like a paper. The attendant has raised renewed fears about the safety of the region and the ability of the government to protect the people.”
The news reporter of one of the local channels was speaking in an urgent and soulful voice, sending across the message that the situation was much worse than what the people watching the news could imagine. The theory about the terrorist attack wasn’t unfounded, but the FBI agents were still keeping quiet about the true situation.
Everyone passing by could see the FBI agents and specialists digging through the rubble left after the fire. The news channels were showing the agents carrying away pieces of wood, half burned files, equipment and other things to the new makeshift office, set up in a nearby building. However, that was everything they could see right now, because the security of the new office was very tight an
d no one was allowed to come near it.
Almost twenty-four hours later, the situation was just as critical – the Deputy Director was among the dead and twenty other agents had been killed in the blast. The rest of the FBI agents were shell-shocked, but determined to find out who was responsible for it. The first thing to do was to find a place, where they could set up office and then they started pouring over the debris right away, bringing everything inside the barn house for testing and analysis.
More agents and analysts had arrived from the nearby FBI offices and Clark and Gibson were grateful for the help. Now wasn’t the time to feel threatened by them coming on their territory and everyone was giving the best of themselves to solve the case.
By the end of the first day after the blast, it became obvious that the bomb used for the attendant was home made by amateurs. That once again confirmed the theory that there was a terrorist organization in the area and gave the FBI agents the right to start arresting people.
Agent Todd Gibson ordered the arrest warrants of every member of the Kimble family and named them as their primary suspects. Asa listened to him giving the orders and felt nothing. If Gabriel and his family were responsible for this tragedy, then they deserved to be brought down. She felt horrified by the thought that Gabriel could be one of the terrorists, she still stayed silent.
The agents sent by Gibson to make the arrests returned with only two members of the family. Asa watched Gabriel and Joe Kimble climb out of the car. “Where are the rest of them?” She asked one of the arresting agents.
“Only these two were on the ranch,” the man explained. “It seems that no one has been in the ranch after you left it yesterday.”
“Did they resist the arrest?” She asked the question that had been bothering her from the very beginning.
“No, the young man came willingly and made the older one to do the same.” The agent explained.
Mystery: Family Ties: Mystery and Suspense Page 9