by Scott Blade
Hogan paused a long second and asked, “In case of what?”
“In case this takes time to sort out. You know? Banks are slow. By their very nature they are set up as corporate bureaucracies with regulations leaning hard on them. They’ve probably got guidelines on how to read their guidelines.”
Hogan smiled and said, “Yeah. That’s true. Well, there’s plenty of hard work out there you can get. Probably even get a roof over your head for a couple of days if you want. But I don’t know of anyone off the top of my head. Plus, I’ve got this kid to worry about.”
“That’s why I came over. The kid is fine.”
“How’s that?”
“I saw him.”
“Where? When?”
“Earlier. I saw him waiting for a train. I talked to him. He went home.”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so.”
Hogan asked, “And if he didn’t?”
“Then someone will spot him. You or one of the other departments out there looking for him.”
“Good. What did you say?”
“Nothing really. I didn’t tell him that I already knew who he was or anything. Just talked to him. Like a man.”
Hogan nodded and said, “That’s good. I’d better call them and made sure he made it home then.”
“Actually, that’s part of my idea.”
Hogan said nothing, just waited.
“I wanted to ask you to take me out there with you. We can see together.”
“Why do you want to go?”
“I saw a flyer. That they needed help. Back at the gas station.”
Hogan said, “So you figure, you help the kid, then Mrs. Sossaman will be inclined to give you a quick job and put you up for the night?”
“Why not? I gotta look after myself. And right now, I’m facing the prospect of sleeping outside and starving for a few days.”
Hogan nodded.
Widow said, “Desperate times and all.”
“I can’t blame ya. All right, get in. We’ll drive back out there.”
CHAPTER 21
THE WATCHERS had turned out to be more reliable then FBI Agent Halle Escobar had hoped for. They were also as amateur as she had suspected, all at the same time.
She had been told to drop her obsession with the Sossaman case and for the last couple of years, she had. This wasn’t easy. She had to bury it down deep. She had to forgot.
That was all over now because about fifteen minutes ago, she had signed an unmarked federal car out of the FBI’s underground lot. She had used her badge and her seniority and signed it out. But the most important tactic that she used was forging her SAC’s signature, which was easy, at this point in her career. Her boss’s name was Herry, pronounced like hurry.
She had been stationed at the Seattle Field Office after her return to duty after that first month of grieving. At first, Escobar decided to try and push an investigation into her sister’s death. But she was told by the higher-ups that there already was one. She wasn’t to interfere.
Time had passed and nothing ever came out of the investigation. No public briefings. No resolution. No justice. Nothing.
Escobar had used all of her resources to try and get information. She had called the nearest field office to Eureka many, many times and gotten nowhere. When she tried to squeeze information on the investigation from her friends in the bureau, they told her nothing. Until she talked to a guy she had used before. She had used him to get ahead, in a way.
For six weeks, ten years ago, she had slept with him, in the conference room, in their SAC’s office, on his desk and all of it had been in Chicago. He had been her equal, back then, but now he had been promoted—twice, since then. At first, he had been moved to a field office in London. A great experience and opportunity for him to work in the international crimes division of the FBI. It also looked good on his résumé.
He had forgotten all about Escobar. He had gone on with his life. He made quite the reputation for himself in London. Impressed all his colleagues. He even got a handwritten letter of recommendation from the constable’s office, all because of a case that he had worked years prior.
When Halle Escobar had emailed him, he was shocked. She had wanted to talk, on the phone. It wasn’t a long-distance call, not technically because they had used one of those apps for talking across the internet like Viber or the green one; he could never remember the name.
She had called and he had taken it. Why wouldn’t he? She had kept his secret all these years.
Recently, he had applied for a job back home. He had applied for a SAC position, back in Nashville, where he was from. That’s why he had requested the letter of recommendation, after all.
He had already started making plans to get the job. Everyone had told him he was a shoo-in would be able to live with his wife and kids. He missed her. He loved her. Despite having sex with Halle Escobar while his wife had been pregnant with their first child. So, when Halle had called him, threatened him, blackmailed him, he complied.
The information that he had recovered was short, which was disappointing to her. But it was a big deal. It was shocking to say the least.
Some of it she already knew. Her FBI agent sister had been murdered, while working a case investigating a company called Switch Sossaman, which was a medical technology company. She wasn’t exactly sure what that meant or what they did. She knew that they had military ties with the US Department of the Navy and probably contracts as well.
The word technology suggested to her that whatever Switch Sossaman did, it was related to foreign applications. She suspected that it was related to medical tech with weapon components and applications because the US military wasn’t known for its medical applications. Of course, every branch had hospital tech and tried to keep its systems up-to-date in order to give the soldiers the best care. However, when she investigated Switch Sossaman online, she found that it was a wealthy company. Smaller than most companies that have military contracts. It wasn’t on the same level as Lockheed Martin or Boeing, but then again Switch Sossaman didn’t make fighter jets and battleships. But it made something; of that she was damn sure.
The part of the information that the FBI agent from the London office had given her, that she didn’t already know, that shocked her, was that the investigation hadn’t been stunted because of the suspect being in a coma or because of lack of evidence. It had been stopped dead in its tracks by someone higher up. It had been killed stone dead by another agency that had jurisdiction over it.
It had been killed by the NCIS, the Naval Criminal Investigations Service, which was weird to her, at first. An FBI agent had been murdered on American soil in an ongoing FBI investigation and the bureau rolled over to let the NCIS take over?
After digging deeper, which took all of her professional capital, she discovered that the investigation was stopped at a division of the NCIS that she had never heard of. It was a division that had the most obscure name and absolutely zero records that she could access or find and she was pretty good at that sort of thing.
It was someplace inside the NCIS headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, called Unit Ten.
CHAPTER 22
HOGAN AND WIDOW drove down the long, grubby drive to the Sossaman ranch. The daylight was hard on the place, if Widow was being honest with himself, being honest with himself. At night, he hadn’t seen much of the house, focusing mostly on the stars, the moon, and the shadows of animals and the barn and the house in the darkness.
In the daylight, the place was more grand, but not all of it looked good. It was springtime, hell almost summer, and the land around the ranch was green and the sky was big and the Ponderosas were picturesque. It seemed like driving onto the ranch, Widow and Hogan had passed through some sort of invisible barrier, which might’ve been signaled by the rough and bumpy cattle grid, way back near the entrance.
The ranch itself was a little drab and depressing in the daylight. Not what Widow expected. Not entirely. Hogan ha
d told him that the cattle industry was dying out around here, but this looked quite literally like a shadow of its former self. The land even looked unkempt and uncared for and on its last legs.
The grass was tall and waved gently and calmly in the breeze. It was alive, Widow supposed, but it was yellowish green and not the lush green of the lots surrounding the ranch. Widow guessed that maybe the neighbors had moved on from raising cattle, maybe found new trades and therefore took better care of their land. Then again, a second thought occurred to him. The yellow grass and the dowdy-looking land may have been caused by the cattle.
Widow had read about that. Perhaps, the Sossamans had gotten hit hard with the bad economy and their cows were old and not somehow affecting everything else. It had something to do with the ecosystem and so on.
Widow looked over the same land that he had this morning, before the sun came up. This time he saw the trees and the rolling hills in the distance. He saw groups of cows, grazing, wandering around. No one watched them; they were free and alone to go as they pleased. He figured that they were going to be able to roam away anyway, not with the fences and cattle grid. Plus, whatever other types of security that ranchers used. He didn’t know. He wasn’t up to speed with cattle herding or ranching or farming for that matter.
They wound and curved with the road until they returned to the large house and the barn and the horses.
Hogan pulled up onto the driveway and onto a scene that they had not expected.
Casey Sossaman must have just pulled up and arrived and hopped out of the 1979 pickup only seconds before, because they saw the truck parked with the driver side door open and the engine idling, like Casey had pulled up and hopped right out.
On the porch, Widow saw three people, all different heights, all different roles in the Sossaman family. The shortest was a little boy. He was fair-haired and quiet. He stood there staring up at the other two family members, who were in a hugging embrace.
The taller one, only by an inch, was Casey Sossaman. He was a little teary eyed and a little embarrassed, Widow supposed for having run away in the first place.
The next member had her back to Widow. It was the mother.
Hogan parked the car off to the left side of the truck, close to the cluster of growing trees, which Widow saw were greener than the rest of the land.
The Jeep Wrangler was gone, but the old Ford Explorer was still in its place.
The mother’s, Widow thought.
None of the cowhands that Widow had seen earlier were around, indicating that they were out in the Jeep Wrangler, a vehicle a little too pricey for some cowhands, Widow assumed.
They got out of the car and Widow followed behind Hogan, who walked at a slow pace. He didn’t want to disrespect the family moment.
Widow stayed a little behind and stopped five feet behind, looked away.
Don’t stare, his mother’s voice said in his head again.
Obviously, Hogan didn’t have the same kind of mother because he stared on. Widow surveyed the land from the drive and then he heard Hogan clear his throat like he was announcing them.
He said, “Mrs. Sossaman, sorry to interrupt you.”
Widow heard the creaking of floorboards on the porch and the scuffing of shoes as the mother turned around to face Hogan.
Then he heard a soft, sultry voice with a foreign accent. The voice said, “Hello, Sean. Thank you for coming.”
Widow hadn’t been looking at her, not while she spoke. When he turned to face the Sossaman family, he was absolutely and totally astonished and speechless for a good moment, which was okay because no one expected him to say anything.
He was breathless. He felt his heart rate speed up and his adrenaline pumped and his brain spun, like he had been hit in the face with a shotgun.
The reason for Widow’s sudden shock was Mrs. Sossaman.
He was staring in a way that his mother would not have approved of.
Mrs. Sossaman was the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen.
CHAPTER 23
WIDOW HAD BEEN ALL OVER the world, bouncing from Naval station to Naval station, from aircraft carrier to aircraft carrier. He’d even been on plenty of submarines and Marine installations. Widow had seen the world’s most famous cities. He’d stayed in the best and the worst hotels. He’d flown first class and he had flown in the cargo space. He rode on trains in Europe, Japan, and other parts of Asia. He’d fought in the most dangerous hotspots on the planet. He had taken down sailors who had broken the law. He had taken down Marines who had broken the law. He had taken down officers who had broken the law. He had taken down Navy SEALs who had broken the law. He almost took down a Navy admiral once who had broken the law, but he didn’t quite make the arrest.
Widow had spent much of his career in places that he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemies, not most of them, anyway. But he had also seen the opposite side of the spectrum. He had seen the world’s most majestic mountains and unbelievable manmade structures and white sand beaches. He had seen famous spots in Thailand, the Philippines, Fiji, France, Italy, and Greece. He’d even seen the beaches in South India, which aren’t that well known to Americans, but they are stunning and cheap.
Having been to the world’s best beach, Widow had also seen the world’s most beautiful women, or at least that’s what he had thought. But like most people who assume that they have seen it all, life has a way of surprising. Never in his life had he seen a woman as stunning as Crispin Sossaman.
She walked away from Casey, still holding his hand, and she stepped out onto the top step of the porch. She didn’t look directly at Widow, only a quick glance out of politeness.
There were no tears in her eyes, not like in Casey’s. Widow imagined that Casey had come home and his mother had seen him, grabbed him first thing. He probably started crying right then. He was close to his mother. Widow could understand that. His mother was gone, but they had been close once.
Sossaman said, “Thank you so much for your help, Sean. He’s home now, as you can see.”
Widow listened to her accent and voice, which was almost as beautiful as she was herself.
Crispin Sossaman was Eastern European; that was obvious. She wasn’t tall, maybe 5’5” or 5’4”, Widow figured. She had long, black hair—jet black to the point where parts of it looked dark blue through the sunlight. She had a small waist and would’ve been a hundred pounds, if she hadn’t been so curvy. Widow’s mind flashed the memory of a girl he had spent an incredible weekend with six years ago when he was stationed on the USS Ardent near Bahrain. He had actually met her in a bike rental shop along the beach. She was a beautiful woman, long legs, perfect breasts, and toned, not a skin-and-bones type, just a girl who knew how to use gym equipment. He liked her.
That girl didn’t even match the one standing on the step of the Sossaman porch.
Hogan said, “Yes, Mrs. Sossaman. Everything is okay then?”
“Please, Sean, call me Crispin. I told you before, I prefer it. Mrs. Sossaman makes me feel old.”
“Sorry, Crispin. I just can’t help it. It’s a habit.”
“Sure,” she said.
There was a moment of silence and then Hogan leaned to the right and looked back, behind her at the young boy. He said, “Carson, how are you?”
The boy just smiled and said nothing. Widow guessed that he was maybe seven or eight years old. There was something special about him, about his vibe. He acted like he was beyond the point of teddy bears and army toys. It was something in his face. He smiled at Widow like he probably had been taught to do to guests at his house. He was dressed in little man’s clothes, not kid’s clothes. He looked more like he was a guy who had a regular office job and now he wore his weekend clothes. And the kid was standing tall with his hands down by his side, not slouching over, not putting his fingers in his mouth like other kids Widow had seen.
It made Widow smile. His mother had also told him to stand up straight and to act like a man. The kid was proper.
The boy’s reaction didn’t seem to satisfy Hogan, who paused like he was waiting for more of a hello. The boy sensed this and waved a hello at Hogan.
Crispin Sossaman looked at Widow, eyes meeting, which made him feel his heart race even more than it already had.
While they were staring at each other, Hogan looked at Casey and said, “Everything all right, Case?”
Casey had looked away. He wiped his face and sniffled. He said, “Yeah.”
“Okay, now don’t be scaring your mother like that again. You got it?”
Casey didn’t respond.
Hogan repeated, “You got it?”
“I got it.”
Sossaman asked, “Sean, who’s your friend?”
“Sorry, Crispin. This is Jack Widow.”
Widow tipped his head, like a half Japanese nod or like he was looking for a cowboy hat to tip. He said, “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”
Sossaman said, “Please, it’s Crispin to you too.”
“It’s Widow for me. If you don’t mind. No one calls me Jack. Not really.”
“Were you in the military, Widow?”
“I was. But the last name thing started back when I was a boy.”
Sossaman said, “I see.”
She smiled and tilted her head down. A strand of hair fell across her face and she whipped it back into place.
Hogan said, “Mr. Widow here is looking for work.”
Sossaman nodded for a moment before she connected the dots. Then realization came over her face. Hogan had brought him to ask her for work.
Widow said, “I don’t want to be a bother. I saw your flyer in town.”
“Flyer?”
“For the employment opportunity.”
She nodded and said, “That’s not mine. It was probably from Mr. King. He’s my man in charge. He runs the ranch work.”