Far Gone

by Laura Griffin

  “Andrea Finch.”

  “It’s Ryan.”

  The words were slurred, and she had to think a moment.

  “Ryan Copeland.”

  “Ryan, hi. What’s up?”

  “Is it true?”

  She looked at Jon, who was watching her intently. “Is what true?”

  “About Carmen.”

  She glanced around, making sure they were still alone out here. “Carmen Pena died in an explosion last night. Her son is in the hospital.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “The incident is still under investigation.”

  Silence.

  “Ryan?”

  “I think I killed her.”

  chapter eighteen

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, you killed her?”

  Jon stood up and stepped closer, his brow furrowed.

  “I didn’t mean it. I never thought . . .” Ryan’s voice trailed off into a muffled sob.

  “I need you to explain what you’re talking about.”

  “I never meant for this to happen.”

  “Ryan—”

  “I talked to that reporter. I wanted her to get fired and—”

  “You’re saying you were the source of the rumor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it true?”

  She heard a rattle on the other end of the phone, like ice cubes in a glass. She felt a pang of sympathy for him and hoped he was home, at least, and not at some bar.

  “Ryan, was it true?”

  “Yes.” His voice was filled with misery. “But I didn’t know this would happen. I just wanted her to get fired.”

  She didn’t say anything, wanting to let him talk.

  “You think it’s the same guy, don’t you? That killed Julia. He’s going after all of them.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t discuss details of the investigation.” God, now she sounded like Jon. She looked at him, and he was motioning to her to mute the phone.

  “Tell him we’ll send an agent over tomorrow to talk to him,” Jon said. “Sometime in the morning.”

  “Ryan, an FBI agent will be visiting you tomorrow morning to get a statement, all right? Until then, don’t discuss this with anyone else.”

  Silence.

  “Ryan?”

  “I’ll be here,” he said, and hung up.

  Andrea looked down at the phone in her hand. She looked at Jon. “He feels responsible because he leaked the story about Carmen and the senator to the press.”

  Jon gazed down at her, and she looked away. In the parking lot, someone started up a diesel pickup and pulled out. She watched it fade down the highway. Jon eased closer and reached for her hand. She stepped back.

  “I should get to bed.”

  He watched her. “You can’t hide from this forever, Andrea.”

  This what? This case? This . . . thing they’d somehow started that didn’t make any sense? Her pulse jumped as he reached out and feathered her hair away from her face. The gesture was soft. Tender. And the look in his eyes wasn’t hungry now but determined and patient.

  And that made her pulse race even more, because she knew he wasn’t going to let it go. He wasn’t going to let her off the hook until she dealt with this.

  He stared down at her for a long moment. Then his hand dropped, and she stood stock-still as she watched him walk away.

  ♦

  She fell into bed thinking about him. She slipped into a restless sleep and woke with her heart hammering and her cheeks wet and a breathless, panicked feeling like someone was sitting on her chest.

  She sat up and checked for her gun on the nightstand. It was right where she’d left it. The clock showed 6:14. She glanced across the room, and in the predawn dimness, she could see that the latch was still secured.

  She closed her eyes and let the dream return. She was standing in the crowded kitchen. It was hot and airless, and everyone was staring at her, their faces twisted with revulsion. She looked down at the gun in her hand and touched the muzzle. Still warm. She lifted her gaze to the body sprawled across the floor. She took a step forward, and her feet were like cinder blocks. She took another step. Blood spread out along the floor grout.

  Andrea shuddered, trying to shake it off. She felt the impulse to call Jon or go knock on his door. She’d been spending more and more time with him. More talks. More cracks in her defenses. Last night by the pool, she’d caught herself searching his eyes for something, as if he could understand her somehow or maybe even fill the void.

  Andrea rubbed her forehead. It was probably the stress, the anxiety of the last few weeks wearing her down. A man couldn’t fix her problems. She needed to tackle them herself.

  Her phone rattled on the nightstand, and she answered without checking the screen.

  “Hey, it’s Ben,” the caller said, and it took a moment for her to conjure up an image of the cyber-detective with the goatee. “Sorry to call so early, but I’ve been working on that info you wanted.”

  “No, it’s fine.” She got out of bed and pulled on the jeans she’d tossed over a chair. They had a flight to catch in three hours and still had to return the rental car. “Tell me what you found.”

  “Well, first of all, you were right. The FBI was missing something.”

  Her nerves skittered.

  “But in all fairness, it’s not surprising, given the situation.”

  “What situation?”

  “The comm setup. They’re using a SNAP, and it’s a nice one, too. Not one of those crap-in-a-box things you buy on eBay.”

  She shook her head to clear it. “They’re using a what?”

  “An SIPR/NIPR Access Point. A temporary satellite terminal that allows for encryption. Although whether they’re actually encrypting anything, I don’t know.”

  “Wait. Back up. You’re talking about a sat phone?”

  “A temporary satellite terminal. It’s portable, comes in a few tough boxes. You can hook up a laptop to it and get satellite Internet.”

  “So . . . they’ve got a satellite dish?” How had the FBI missed something so obvious? It would have shown up on the surveillance photos.

  “Yeah, but like I said, it’s portable. Looks like they put it away when they’re not using it, which is most of the time. I ran a broad-spectrum analysis of the area for almost thirty-six hours before I picked up on it.”

  “So they do have Internet access at the ranch? And it’s encrypted?”

  “Yes and maybe,” Ben said. “Someone’s definitely accessing the Net, but I don’t know if they’re encrypting communications. Didn’t get that far. To intercept what they’re doing, I’d have to do node-to-node back-stepping. Are you familiar with that?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s a major pain in the ass, and now that the weekend’s over, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to take that on. Is your agency planning to hire us, do you know? Alex made this sound pretty informal.”

  “No—it is. Informal. And thanks for your time on it.”

  “Not a problem. I had to work the weekend anyway. But like I said, intercepting the communications would be a bigger deal, especially if they’re encrypted. Even if they’re not, I wouldn’t be surprised if the person using this is hopping on an anonymizer site to cover his tracks. Whoever’s running this is pretty obsessed with invisibility.”

  Gavin was probably running it, which meant he’d lied to her about what he was doing at the ranch. What else had he lied about?

  Andrea felt numb. People lied to her all day long. Every time a suspect’s lips moved—lie, lie, lie. But somehow she’d thought that with Gavin, she’d know. After twenty-two years, she’d thought she’d be able to tell.

  “You have no way of knowing what sorts of communications are going back and forth?”

  “Could be e-mails, Web surfing, whatever. But the log-in times raise some red flags.”

  Andrea slumped against the wall, getting more depressed with every word. “How’s that?”

  “Well, like I me
ntioned, this is a portable terminal. Picture a laser that beams up at the sky. It’s got to be outside and works best in clear weather conditions. I only caught two log-ins, both short, both around two in the morning. So whoever’s using it is only setting it up in the dark of the night and then putting it away, which means they could be paranoid about surveillance. Maybe they know the feds are watching them?”

  “Maybe.” Andrea closed her eyes. She was running out of innocent explanations for all this. She was running out of any explanation that didn’t have Gavin involved in something truly horrific.

  “The FBI techies need to step up their game,” Ben said. “This is a complex setup, not to mention expensive. We’re not talking about some guy covering his tracks because he’s cheating on his wife. When I see shit like this? It’s usually people involved in a child-porn ring, bank fraud, drug distribution. Without intercepting the actual transmissions, it’s hard to know for sure, but do you want to know what my Spidey sense is telling me?”

  “What?”

  “Whatever they’re up to out at that ranch, it isn’t good.”

  ♦

  The inn’s fitness center consisted of only a treadmill and a weight bench, but Jon made good use of both before swinging into the lobby in search of coffee.

  “Those biscuits just came out of the oven.”

  He glanced up to see the front-desk clerk eyeing him.

  “Thanks,” he said, putting a lid on his coffee. He thought about getting one for Andrea but decided against it. After spending an hour getting rid of all his pent-up energy, the last thing he needed was to see her sleepy-eyed face against the backdrop of a rumpled bed.

  He grabbed a biscuit from the tray and nodded at the clerk as he slipped out. Andrea’s room was still dark. He neared his own door and heard the muffled sound of his cell. He hurried inside and grabbed it before it could go to voice mail.

  “This is Pete McMurphy in Philadelphia. I got a message here?” Jon had never met the man, but judging from his voice, he had some years on the job.

  “I hear you’re working the university bombing,” Jon said.

  “The Julia Kirby case, yeah.”

  So it was the “Julia Kirby case” now. After yesterday’s press conference, the media had latched onto the theory that an Al Qaeda cell had targeted the senator’s daughter as a political statement. Senator Kirby was on the Foreign Relations Committee, so speculation was running rampant about how that might have motivated a terrorist attack.

  “Thanks for getting back to me.” Jon set his breakfast on the table and glanced at his watch. He had a plane to catch, but he needed this guy’s information. Everything he’d heard so far out of Philadelphia had been secondhand. “I’m on a task force down here looking into some antigovernment groups that might have had a beef against Senator Kirby.”

  “I know.” So the guy had checked up on him. Jon was impressed.

  “I wanted to see if you had any loose ends you haven’t followed up on. Stuff I might be able to check out on this end.”

  Silence as McMurphy digested the question. It was touchy, because Jon was essentially accusing the task force of sloppy work. He muttered something Jon couldn’t hear. And then he said, “You know, when I saw your message, I almost didn’t call.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because so far, this case has brought me nothing but shit.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Another pause. Jon heard cellophane crackling and pictured the guy tapping out a fresh cigarette. “How long you got on the job?” McMurphy asked.

  “Eight years.”

  “I got nineteen. And a half, but who’s counting, right? And I’m probably gonna get canned over this thing, but I’ll tell you what. Reese can go fuck himself.”

  Alan Reese was the associate director who’d given the press conference yesterday.

  “And I’ll tell you something else: this case is radioactive. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “What did you think of yesterday’s arrests?” Jon asked, hoping to get specifics.

  “The arrests were fine. Textbook. Judge signed off on everything. But it doesn’t matter, ’cause our evidence stinks. Videos, cell phones. We even been through the hard drives already. Word is, it’s thin. And some piece-of-shit civil-rights lawyer from Miami already signed these guys up. He’s gonna have a field day, this thing goes to trial.”

  Jon heard him sucking in a drag.

  “Another problem? I’m hearing rumblings out of the ME’s office. Something screwy about the autopsy.”

  Jon scrounged up a pen and looked for something to write on. “The autopsy for Khalil Abbas? I thought we had positive ID.”

  “We do. DNA checks out.”

  There was a carryout menu on the table, and he started jotting notes as the agent talked.

  “This is something else,” McMurphy said. “Don’t ask me what, because I got no idea, and from what I heard, the guy was blown to bits. But what’s left of him—the ME’s got an issue with something. He called in last night, said he had to do ‘additional testing.’ ”

  Jon gripped his pen. Physical evidence was in question now. People could dismiss competing theories all day long, but concrete evidence was harder to ignore.

  “Listen, what can you tell me about that bomb?” Jon asked. “I heard it was ammonium nitrate and racing fuel, but do they have any leads on where it came from?”

  “Don’t know, but I can ask around. ATF’s all over it, so you know how that goes.”

  He meant there was a turf war, which wasn’t surprising. It was conventional wisdom that any action by the FBI in a bombing case caused an equal and immediate reaction from the ATF. Maybe Jon could find someone over there who would talk to him.

  “Hey, there’s one other thing,” McMurphy said. “Long as we’re tossing this around.”

  Jon waited.

  “These three suspects, they’re all with this mosque in Philadelphia. Couple days ago, we got a tip about a DOA who turned up about a block from the church. This is some homeless guy they found in an alley on trash day. Took the locals a while to ID him because he didn’t have a wallet or anything. Had to run his prints through AFIS.”

  “This is near the mosque?”

  “Yeah, only a block over. Apparently, that’s his stomping grounds. They posted the guy in Philly. Autopsy report shows a time of death consistent with the time of the bombing, give or take twelve hours. Maybe a coincidence? I don’t know.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “There’s the interesting part. Single shot to the forehead, downward trajectory, like maybe he was sitting in a doorway or something, and someone walked right up to him—bam. Could be he got hit by some thug who wanted his cash or his bottle. But how many street thugs you know who use hollow-point bullets?”

  “That’s a little unusual.”

  “No shit.”

  “So you’re thinking what? This guy witnessed something go down at the mosque and got killed for it?”

  “I don’t know. But someone should be asking questions about it, don’t you think? I’d say that’s a loose end, but far as I know, no one’s taken the time to look into it. I made a push yesterday, but the brass shut me down.”

  “Why?”

  “No idea. But I’ll let you know if I figure it out.”

  Jon got off the phone and stared down at his scribbled notes. They wouldn’t make much sense to anyone else, but to him, they made one thing clear.

  Despite all the spin out of Philadelphia, the task force didn’t have its case together. Jon suspected they knew it, too, which was why they’d sent a team down to cover the senator. If they were confident they’d neutralized the threat against him, they wouldn’t have bothered.

  Jon needed to get back to Texas. He’d planned to take the nine thirty flight, but there was still time to make the eight fifteen. He crossed the patio to Andrea’s room, where a housekeeping cart was parked beside the door.

  “Andrea?”


  He stuck his head in and startled the maid who was stripping the bed. Jon glanced at the bathroom, but the door was wide open.

  “The woman staying here,” he said. “Where is she?”

  “Sorry?”

  “The woman in this room. La mujer. Have you seen her?”

  “Sí.” She nodded. “She took the taxi.”

  chapter nineteen

  SHAY KNELT IN THE creek bed. He glanced at the range flag, then settled the bipod on the mound of sandbags and considered his shot. Moderate wind posed a challenge, but that was good. There was never a perfect moment, and he trained to be prepared.

  He rested his face against the cheek piece, made his muscles relax, and filled his lungs with air. Then he looked through the scope and made adjustments for wind and gravity.

  Another breath. Another heartbeat. He pulled the trigger.

  A plastic drum exploded two hundred yards away. Ross stepped into his peripheral vision, and Shay shifted his earmuffs.

  “You’re using the fifty?”

  He glanced at Ross, then down at his weapon, a Steyr-Mannlicher HS .50. The Austrian-made rifle fired a .50 BMG cartridge that could penetrate armor and bulletproof glass. Human flesh was like butter.

  “Better to be safe than sorry,” Shay said.

  Ross nodded. He was on board with this phase of the mission. Message Two had been delivered and now Ross was himself again—a soldier unafraid to kill in the line of duty.

  Shay loaded another round, enjoying the smooth sound of the Austrian engineering at work. He lined up the shot. The second target was three hundred yards. He peered through the scope and got his head in the game. Took a deep breath.

  Boom.

  Another kill. He sat back and smiled as he hooked the earmuffs around his neck.

  “So I went into town,” Ross said.

  “Anyone see you?”

  “Just the spic.”

  “Whose phone did you use?”

  “Deb’s at the gas station.”

  Shay glanced at his watch. “And?”

  “And I talked to my brother. We’re all set on that end.”