by Val Welch
Carson jumped up from the bed and crossed the room to look at the bruise on her collarbone the dress revealed. “Wow, that’s awful, does it hurt?” he asked, lightly touching her neck.
“Yeah, not as bad as the ones you can’t see though,” she said.
He shook his head. “Sounds painful. Maybe you should stay here and rest. I can meet with Navarro,” he offered, his eyes meeting hers in the mirror.
She laughed. “Nice try. But not going to happen.” She turned back to the mirror. “So, what do you think?”
He slowly looked her up and down. “Nice.” He turned, crossed the room and dropped back down on the bed. “You’re interested in Navarro, aren’t you?”
She glanced at him in the mirror. He was slumped on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, fingers laced behind his neck, staring at the carpet. “No,” she said, trying to keep the irritation she felt out of her voice. “He’s just an investigative lead at this point. Who knows how he fits into this case.”
“Then why the dress?” he asked, looking up at her.
She shrugged and took one last look at herself in the mirror. “Hey, it’s just a dress. We’ve been on the road, living out of suitcases for months. I just felt like dressing up a bit. Besides, Navarro’s is a nice place. I can’t walk in there in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.” She turned, walked back toward the bathroom and said, “You better get dressed.”
“I think I’ll stay here. I have some stuff I need to take care of. You okay with interviewing Navarro on your own?”
She turned and shrugged. “Sure, I guess. What are you going to do while I’m gone?” she asked as he flipped open his laptop.
“Find an unsecured wireless network and hack into a couple of websites. I have a hunch about the stealth e-mail account our mysterious informant uses that I want to follow-up on,” he said, his eyes glued to the computer screen.
“Care to elaborate?”
He shook his head. “No. I’ll let you know if I find anything interesting.”
Seven
Gabe walked through the back door of Navarro’s Restaurant and into the usual pre-dinner hour chaos. He waved at the kitchen staff, pushed through a heavy swinging door and stepped into the quiet serenity of the richly appointed dining room. His mother stood behind the mahogany bar smiling. He crossed the room, stepped behind the bar and lightly kissed her cheek. “Hi Mom.”
She gestured toward his suit and tie. “Gabriel, you look wonderful. What is the occasion?”
“I have a meeting. I’ll need a table for two over in the corner.”
She brushed a non-existent piece of lint from his shoulder and straightened his tie. “Yes, dear. Will you be ordering off the menu or would you prefer that I prepare something?”
“The menu will be fine, Mom. Just remember, this is business, so please don’t get the wrong impression when you see Shelby Ryan.”
She smiled broadly. “You’re having dinner with Doc’s daughter Shelby?”
“See … you’re already getting excited. It’s official business. Shelby’s a witness I need to interview.”
“Gabriel, you are not dressed for interviewing. You are dressed for romance.” She smiled, patted his cheek and sailed out to the kitchen.
He watched her disappear through the swinging door and slowly shook his head. Damn, this is a mistake.
Two beers later, he was leaning at the end of the bar watching the entrance when Shelby walked in. He did a double take and swallowed hard when he realized it was really her.
She was wearing a very low-cut, curve hugging, short black dress and hi-heeled sandals that made her legs look a mile long. Her long dark hair softly curled around her face and fell over her shoulders. He leaned against the bar and watched as she stood surveying the crowded room. She saw him, smiled and walked toward him.
“Hello, Chief Navarro,” she said, lightly touching his arm, their eyes meeting.
He finally found his voice. “Hello, Special Agent Ryan. Glad you could make it. Our table is right over there.” He gestured toward the now candle lit table in the corner.
She crossed the room in front of him and he swallowed hard again as he realized the view walking away was just as spectacular. He held her chair, took his seat and tried to keep his gaze from wandering down the plunging neckline of her dress. She slowly leaned back, crossed those amazing legs and waited.
“What would you like to drink, Special Agent Ryan?” he asked, still unable to stop his wandering eyes.
She laughed as he slowly brought his eyes back to hers. “I’ll have a glass of cabernet, please. And … after the look you just gave me, I think you better call me Shelby.”
He felt the heat rise on his face and realized he was blushing like a damn schoolboy. He signaled their waiter. “Sorry Shelby. That’s some dress.”
“Glad you like it, Gabe,” she said, looking around the room. “So this is your family’s restaurant?”
“Yeah, my mother and Aunt Judith started it about thirty years ago. Most of my family has worked here at some time or another.”
The waiter arrived with a bottle of wine, filled their glasses and left the bottle on the table.
“I’ve been here before with Doc,” Shelby said, picking up her glass.
“Yeah, Doc’s been in here a lot over the years. He and my father were good friends.”
She sipped her wine and looked at him, obviously ready to get down to business.
“Shelby, I’m sorry I had to go over your head. I hope it didn’t cause you any problems.”
She set glass down, sighed and visibly relaxed. “No, Gabe, this is a unique situation and for reasons I can’t go into, it had to play out this way.”
He smiled across the table. “I hope we can still be friends in spite of it.”
“Absolutely,” she said, smiling.
“What exactly do you do for the FBI?”
“I’m with the counter-terrorism section. My job is to investigate and prosecute domestic terrorists in the western United States.”
“So tell me. What happened yesterday when you rolled your vehicle?”
“A black Ford pickup tried to run me off the road. I swerved and rolled my rental car. I never heard the shots fired because I was blasting the radio.”
“Guess that explains why you pulled your weapon on me. Did you get a plate number on the truck?”
“No. But we think the truck belongs to Carl Watkins, an employee at the power plant. He was one of several people we interviewed there yesterday afternoon. We ran a vehicle check and he owns a black Ford truck. We have agents talking to him tonight.”
“What’s going on with the power plant bombing investigation?”
“We know the bombing was the work of the Earth Freedom Alliance, or EFA as we call them. It’s a renegade eco-terrorist group we’ve been watching. We recently received information which enabled us to pick up several members of the group. But, we suspect there are more out there, maybe even working inside the plant. And there could be more events. That’s why we’re interviewing all of the employees hired within the last year.”
“Why weren’t you able to discuss this with me earlier?”
“We were under orders to keep the local law enforcement agencies in the dark.”
“Is that part of your strategy, to shut out the locals?”
She shook her head. “No, not at all. Actually, when we move into an area, involving the local agencies is an important procedural element in all of our investigations.”
“Then why the black-out here?”
She took a sip from her glass and carefully set it on the table. “Because … you have links to two of our suspects.”
He topped off their wine glasses. “I heard they were picked up in Tucson.”
She nodded. “Now it’s your turn. Tell me about Eden and William Malone.”
He signaled their waiter. “This is going to take awhile, we better order some food.”
She opened her menu, closed it and
smiled at him. “You know what’s good here.”
He smiled, handed the menus to the waiter and said. “Roberto, please tell Mom she’s in charge.” Roberto smiled and went to the kitchen.
Gabe picked up his glass, took a sip and started. “Eden was twenty-five and I was thirty-five when we met. Her dog, Bear, had been hit by a car and she was trying to get all sixty pounds of him into her car. I stopped, loaded him into my truck and took them both to the vet’s office. Bear survived and we … well, just say it developed rapidly.
“From the very beginning, there were problems … mostly with her family. Her folks were throw-backs to the sixties’ hippy movement, trying to live off the land in a shack a couple miles out on Highway 77. They had no running water, an outhouse and grew a little pot for ‘medicinal’ purposes. You know the type, really just lazy and not willing to work, but quick to blame society for all their woes.”
Shelby nodded as he continued.
“We dated for awhile and then Eden moved in with me. I had every reason to believe that we’d have a great life together. She’d graduated from nursing school and was working with Doc in his office. We’d set a wedding date. Things looked real good.”
He laughed and shook his head. “Ironically, the beginning of the end came when her mom, Janie, won fifty thousand dollars in the Lotto. She gave them her social security number, took her winnings and went on a spending spree. A few months later, the IRS came knocking on their door. Seems they’d never filed a tax return. And to make matters worse, the agent showed up on the day Will was harvesting the pot. Things got ugly, her old man, Nick Malone, drew a gun on the agent. I had to go out and arrest her parents and her brother Will, which didn’t exactly endear me to any of them.
“All three of them did a couple of months in the county lockup, and when they got out, things got real ugly. While they were in lockup, Will had become acquainted with a couple of meth dealers who helped him set up a meth cooking operation out at their place. I had to bust them again. Eden left me, moved home and started using too. Six months later the DEA came in and cleaned out the entire operation. A dozen people including Eden got busted. I bailed her out, took a month off and got her through detox with Doc and Margie’s help.
“She was fine for the next few months. Then Will showed up at my door. I threw him out. The next day, I came home and she was gone too. That was two and a half years ago, and I haven’t seen her since.”
Shelby reached across the table and touched his hand. “I’m sorry. That had to be hard to talk about.”
He shook his head. “Not anymore. I’ve put it, and her, behind me.”
“How did the parents die?”
“When they got out of jail the last time, the IRS had seized their property and auctioned it off to the highest bidder, which turned out to be the local logging company. They tore down the shack and set up a transportation staging area with a little office.
“I don’t have any firsthand knowledge, but I’ve been told they all went back to cooking and dealing meth from a trailer house over by Linden. The parents went on a binge and ended up running their pickup head-on into a logging truck. Will thought he was going to make a mint off the logging company, but the parents were found at fault. Will went crazy and decided to get even by blowing up the little office the logging company had build on the old homestead. Things didn’t go as planned or maybe they did. I don’t know. Either way … the night watchman was killed in the explosion and Will and Eden took off.”
They were silent as Roberto served dinner and refilled their glasses. Gabe gestured at the bottle and said, “Roberto, bring us another bottle of wine, please.”
He smiled across the table as Shelby picked up her fork and asked, “What’s your story? Why are you still single?”
She sat the fork down, picked up her glass and took a sip. “I had a two-year affair with my boss. My married boss. Pretty dumb, huh?”
Gabe shrugged. “Who’s the guy staying with you at Doc’s?”
“How do you know about Carson?”
“I saw him carry a suit bag in around noon when I was driving past the house.”
“Just happened to drive by?”
“Yeah, I live in the house at the end of the road.”
“Really? The restored Victorian set back in the trees?”
He smiled. “That’s the one.”
“I’d love to see the inside of that house, so would Carson.”
“So Carson is …?”
“My partner and a good friend.”
“How long have you worked together?”
“Almost a year. He’s the new kid in the unit. I’ve been showing him the ropes.”
He grinned. “He doesn’t look like a kid to me.”
“Yeah, I guess he doesn’t at that,” she said, laughing as she picked up her fork again. “All right, I need to eat or you’ll be driving me home.”
“I don’t have a problem driving you, it’s on my way after all,” he said, still grinning.
Eight
For the last thirty minutes Carson had been sitting at the kitchen table listening to Shelby and Doc talk about her dinner meeting with Gabe Navarro.
Shelby was playing it cool, but Carson knew she was interested in Navarro. He’d known it since yesterday afternoon when she’d refused to look him in the eye when she denied it. And this morning, she kept leading the conversation back to Navarro, subtly pumping Doc for information which only confirmed his suspicions. She had a thing for Navarro and it was driving Carson fucking crazy.
“You know,” Shelby said, stirring her coffee, “I think he’s been through hell and back and he may never recover.”
Doc nodded. “I know Lydia is very worried about him. Did he talk about his relationship with Eden?”
“Yeah, it was unbelievably ugly. Did you know we’re going to be interviewing both her and William?”
“No. I didn’t. It’ll be interesting to see how she is now. She was one of the best nurses I ever worked with. Just a wonderful girl,” Doc said. He shook his head, leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Gabe tried so hard to save her from her family, but they had this inexplicable hold over her and just wouldn’t let her go.”
“Gabe said it was a very dysfunctional family. Throw meth into that mix and you get an extremely volatile situation.”
“It wasn’t just the meth. The father, Nick Malone, was one crazy son of a bitch and had been for years. He was always getting into fights, scheming, ripping people off. And believe me, after Eden and Gabe got together, Nick took full advantage of it. It was like he had a license to do whatever he wanted. People eventually just got fed up with it, and it almost cost Gabe his job.” Doc reached for the coffee pot as he looked across the table at Carson. “How did William and Eden get involved with the group you’re investigating? What’s it called again?”
“It’s called EFA. Stands for Earth Freedom Alliance, and we don’t know yet how they got involved or even if they really were. We suspect they blew up the logging company office and killed an employee. EFA claimed responsibility for the explosion and William and Eden Malone were picked up with several other suspected EFA members in Tucson,” Carson explained.
Shelby stood, stretched and walked over to look out the bay window in front of the kitchen table. “I’m glad we’re here in time to see the leaves change. It’s always been my favorite time of year.” She turned, threw Carson an almost apologetic smile as she moved toward the mudroom door. “I need some air. I’m going for a run.”
She ran past the window and down the driveway toward the lake. “If Navarro breaks her heart, I’ll hurt him bad,” Carson said.
Doc looked at him. “You picked up on it too?
“Yeah, and I don’t like it at all.”
“Well, they’re both hauling around a lot of baggage. I’d hate to see either of them hurt again. But, I’m even more worried about the attempt on her life yesterday. Has anyone ever tried to kill her before?”
�
�Well yeah. It’s happened a couple of times. I know it’s hard, but try not to worry about her too much. She really can take care of herself. Hell, she’s the best shot in the section and can toss me around like a sack of potatoes in close quarters combat. Besides, after what went down yesterday, I’m not letting her get too far out of sight until we have a better feel for what’s going on.”
Doc leaned forward. “What’s really the story with the two of you? And don’t try giving me that you’re just partners bullshit. I see the way you look at her. Kind of like a lovesick calf.”
Carson laughed and scratched his head. “Well … I don’t have to tell you what a mess she was after the breakup with Morgan. The guys in the unit were all afraid of her.”
Doc raised a brow. “I bet.”
“Being the new guy, I got the short straw and was assigned to partner with her. The first day we ended up spending twelve hours sitting in a surveillance van together and talking. Over the following weeks, we started hanging out together after work and now as far as she’s concerned we’re just good friends.”
“Why haven’t you told her how you feel about her?”
Carson took a deep breath and slowly exhaled before he looked across the table at Doc and confessed. “I’ve been waiting for the right time.”
Doc shook his head as he stood to clear the table. “Damn, Carson, I hope you haven’t waited too long.”
“Yeah … me too.”
Nine
Gabe felt the cold nose nudge his arm. He rolled over and pulled the blanket higher. A minute later the paws hit the bed and he had a sixty-pound fur ball sitting on him.
“Bear, go away. It’s our day off.” Gabe pushed him off and hid his head under the pillow. Bear wasn’t buying it though. He padded to the top of the bed, softly growling as he nosed the pillow off Gabe’s head and licked his face.
Gabe sat up and looked into Bear’s big brown eyes. “You must be feeling good today, buddy, you made it up on the bed.” He fiercely hugged the dog. “Come on, let’s go make coffee.”